There are so many platforms where you can push your books through. Find out how to self publish an eBook on iTunes and if it's even possible to put your books there.
Today's question has three answers and the third answer is a secret you're going to want to stick around for. Because I'm going to tell you exactly why publishing with Apple Books can be extremely pricey and cost you a lot of money.
The question that was sent in today was, how to self publish an eBook on iTunes? Now, there is a couple of issues with this question. I know what you're thinking because you can't actually publish eBooks on iTunes.
I know exactly what the person who asked this question is thinking about. Because they're thinking about Apple Books on iTunes. You can do movies and music but you are not able to do books on iTunes.
But I'm still going to answer the question which is, what they're getting at using Apple's platform for publishing books? Whether we are talking paper or audiobooks, how exactly you can go about doing just that?
But before we get into the answers, check out my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist. It will help you get started on your self-publishing journey. If you have already started, it will give you some ideas of things you may not be doing.
So let's get into it. How to self publish an eBook on iTunes? Well, I can tell you that there's a couple of things and they'll be partially within the answers. When I first got started, I found the whole thing to be very confusing.
Check out this related article: How To Self Publish On iBooks?
There are so many people selling courses that have all of these modules and things you have to pay attention to. As well as thousands of pieces of software you need to buy that are expensive, and memberships, and all sorts of things that make it super confusing.
That is one of the reasons I started producing my channel because I felt that others shouldn't have to suffer through the exact same thing that I did. When I first got introduced to self-publishing, I started with Amazon.
Then I began to understand that having your books distributed on as many different networks and channels as possible. It will increase your sales and of course I came across Apple Books at the same time. That made me realize maybe I should have my books over there.
Into Multiple Networks
But how exactly should you go about doing that? Now, I did get my books over there, not all of them but some of them. There are a couple of little issues here that you're going to want to pay attention to.
So, let's get into the answer. How to self publish an eBook on iTunes? The first answer is if you publish Apple Books, there are 2 routes that I recommend now.
You can go directly with Apple Books but I would never do that because we want to maximize our distribution. So we are going to choose aggregators. We're going to choose to publish in a way that gives us the ability to have our books get out there.
But not have to do the work to make sure that it meets all of the standards that Apple itself has. You see, we'll meet the standards but we're going to do it at another site. Which gives us the ability to get it into multiple networks.
Check out this related article: What Are The Best Self Publishing Platforms 2020?
The first means that we are going to do it through ACX. It is owned by Amazon and this is for audiobooks. Now, if you publish through ACX, it will be on Audible and also it will go through Apple Books.
So your audiobooks will automatically show up on there as well. It is fantastic because then you're hitting this market of all users who have iPads and Macs and iPhones. Also, we are going to publish our books on Smashwords.
This is part of the person who asked this question key which was eBooks and it will be an EPUB format for Smashwords. If you publish through Smashwords, those books will then be pushed through to get to Apple Books.
So, you don't have to go onto Apple Books and figure out their entire way of doing stuff. If you get your EPUB file accepted through Smashwords, it will then push all the way through and it will be available on Apple Books which is fantastic news.
In fact, if you're publishing only on Amazon and using Amazon Select, then you're not even allowed to do this. So you are going to need to make sure that your books are not on Amazon Select.
As I commented in the second answer, it includes both audiobooks if you're doing the ACX and your eBooks when pushing through Smashwords. That gives us the maximum way to make as much money as possible off of our eBooks.
There Is A Powerful Tool
Your eBook shouldn't only do Smashwords. You should also do Amazon Kindle since with Smashwords unless you're making tons of sales, they will not sell your books on Amazon Kindle. So, you're going to need to go through KDP and out it out as a Mobi file.
You might be wondering, how am I going to get these Mobi files or EPUB files that we're doing with our eBooks on these different platforms? That's where the program Jutoh comes in handy. I recommend you check out that program.
It costs almost nothing and gives you the ability to quickly with a single click produce all of the different file types that you're going to be needing. The files that will be necessary for these different programs that were going to be putting all of our books.
But that brings us to our third answer of the day and the secret answer of the day. It is that you should never publish on just Apple Books because you are going to lose a ton of money.
The reason is that its market is so small. In fact, the market for Apple Books dropped, whereas, Amazon's went up. Apple Books went down from 11 to 9 of the total market share.
If I'm going to be selling books, why in the world would I want to just put them onto Apple Books when they only control 9 of the market share? So, where should you put it? Should you do Amazon?
Check out this related article: Is Self Publishing On Amazon Wort It?
No, you should do Amazon and Apple and any other site you can. When you go through Smashwords, you'll even get into libraries and it costs you nothing to put it out there. The margins are fantastic compared to going through a traditional publisher and trying to do this.
This is just the secret tip of the day which is never published on just Apple Books or is the person asked on iTunes. So, how to self publish an eBook on iTunes? What have you found?
I don't know if there ever was a day when you could publish on iTunes but maybe you would. Let me know below in the comments, I respond to all comments that I get. If you have questions, let me know and check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.