Working with iBooks
Novelists, Inc. Conference St. Pete Beach Oct. 2014
Representatives from iBooks spoke at the Ninc conference. They said their readers like free ebooks, so Apple offers the first free in series promotion. Their readers are also willing to pay more for a book so don’t be afraid to price higher.
Pre-orders count double toward your sales ranking—when a pre-order comes in and when the book releases. You can do pre-orders up to one year before the book’s release. You can offer a sample of the story when the book is in pre-order. So Step One is to set the pre-order date, which is when the book is available for ordering. Step Two is to set the sales start date, when the book can be sent out.
iBook sales count on the USA Today list. iBooks are only allowed on five devices for one person. You should put your iBook links on your websites, Twitter, newsletter and elsewhere. For Twitter, use the hash tag #iBooks, not #iTunes.
It takes time to build readers on this platform. They recommend you have three books minimum in your series when you offer the first one free. In the back material, make sure you include links along with covers for your other books.
Make sure your name is readable on a thumb-sized cover. For the URL, take out the specific country, and the URL will redirect to the country of the buyer.
i.e. Take out the U.S. part from this link:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/nancy-j.-cohen/id411505950?mt=11&uo=4&at=1l3vsrx
And it becomes this link that redirects to the buyer’s country. See if this works for you:
https://itunes.apple.com/artist/nancy-j.-cohen/id411505950?mt=11&uo=4&at=1l3vsrx
They can only link your series titles if the books are uploaded by the same publisher. So if the books come from different sources, they won’t be able to link the titles in a series. [NOTE This is no longer true. It doesn’t have to be the same publisher but be consistent with your series title in the Metadata for each book.]
You might want to join their Affiliate program so you can share in some of the revenue from sales.
iBooks is in 51 territories. The German market is huge. We need to think more globally. Apple has a strong worldwide presence. India will be an emerging market for ebooks.
Note: Any errors in this article are due to my interpretation.
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Nice tip about taking out the ‘us’ in the URL. I’ve had one of my books in the iBooks First in Series Free promotion for mysteries, thanks to the NINC contact, and I’m seeing a very nice uptick in sales across the board for all my titles, especially the next 2 books in the series.
You’re lucky. They can’t link my series because the books all have to come from the same publisher.
Thanks for your very helpful report, Nancy. I’m just getting the first four books in a series ready to go on iBooks, so everything you said is gold. 🙂
Glad this is useful to you, Carole.