How to publish on Apple Books: from iTunes Connect to pre-orders and series

Apple Books is Apple's bookstore on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and its direct self-publishing route runs through an iTunes Connect account and Apple's publishing portal: one EPUB file, your own prices, and the book sells in Apple's store in the countries you pick. Every claim below comes from Apple's own pages, fetched and read for this guide; where a number is not on one of those pages, it does not appear here. The Amazon half of a wide launch is how to publish on Amazon KDP; the other wide stores are Kobo Writing Life, Google Play Books and Barnes & Noble Press; many stores at once is how to use Draft2Digital.

What Apple Books for Authors is

The route, in Apple's own sentence: "Submit and publish an EPUB file to Apple Books using our publishing portal and an iTunes Connect account." Why publish there, as their list of benefits: "70% royalties on every ebook, regardless of price", "No file delivery fees", "No limitations on offering free books to customers", "No payments for preferential store placement", "No price matching" and "No third-party ads." Signup costs nothing: "Sign up for free and get your books in front of millions of customers."

The account needs three things: "An Apple Account", "Digital rights to your books" and "Authorization to sign documents on behalf of yourself or your company". Who counts as a publisher: "Even if you're an independent author, you're a publisher." Pick "Individual if you're representing yourself or if you're a sole proprietor", or Organization for a registered company; either way "You must use your legal entity name during sign-up", with a Doing Business As name available after approval. Selling then means agreeing to terms in the Business module and entering banking and tax information, and Apple verifies tax details with the IRS, which takes a few days.

How to publish an ebook on Apple Books

The portal's scope is one line: "Publish an EPUB file, set up titles for pre-order, or make updates." Word users have a documented path: "Convert your Microsoft Word document so you can publish your books to Apple Books." Authors holding other formats are pointed outward: for PDF or KF8 files, Apple says to "Search for a partner who can help you get your book file on Apple Books", which is the aggregator door covered in how to use Draft2Digital.

Apple's royalty rate: 70% at any price

The rate appears on two pages with the same emphasis: "70% royalties on every ebook, regardless of price", and "For ebooks, you'll earn 70% royalties on all your titles regardless of price point." There is no band to stay inside and no floor to stay above, which changes the arithmetic for free first-in-series pricing and cheap serial episodes: a free book is allowed without limit, and no delivery fee accrues on any sale. The small print is short too: "No hidden fees or exclusivity requirements." Payment timing: "Payments are made within 45 days following the end of each month."

Pricing and territories: tiers, edits and scheduled sales

Apple prices through tiers: "iTunes Connect uses the information you provide to determine the closest available price tier in the currencies for the countries or regions selected." Your base currency anchors the calculation, and per-country overrides are open: "You can edit the price in any country or region individually to ensure prices are consistent with how you'd like to price your book in that location." Rights can be worldwide: "Select All from the menu if you want to sell your book worldwide."

Sales can be scheduled by date: "Select No End Date if you are setting a permanent price for your book. You can add promotional price intervals later", and "If you note a Price End Date, the price reverts back to the original price on that date." The measure page frames pricing as an experiment loop: "Adjust your prices at any time to test how various price points affect sales", with feedback from "Sales and Trends in iTunes Connect", "next-day sales reports" and the ability to "build customized dashboards to view the data you care about most".

Series pages: linking books so readers keep reading

Series metadata is the quiet growth tool: "When series information is submitted and approved, each book in the series links together on Apple Books." The series page appears at a threshold: "If your series meets our formatting guidelines, the series will appear on Apple Books after you have two or more books from the series available on the store." What it does for readers: "Customers can quickly navigate to the next book, purchase it, and keep reading", or "pre-order the next book, so they get the next installment as soon as it's released." The metadata discipline is exactness: "Make sure the series name matches exactly for all books", entered "including spaces and punctuation, exactly as it appears on Apple Books", with consecutive numbers if the order matters. The craft side of that is how to write a series.

Pre-orders: up to twelve months ahead

"You can set a pre-order up to 12 months in advance of the book's publication date, and all you'll need is some basic information about the book: covers, files, and a sample (preview chapters)." The visibility argument is Apple's own: "Pre-orders allow existing fans and new readers to purchase a book in advance of the publication date, and the more pre-orders you have on your release date, the better your odds of gaining visibility on our top charts." A scheduling rule from the rights and pricing pages: "The pre-order start date must be at least two days before the release date." A launch built around a date is how to launch a book.

Promotional tools: 250 promo codes and the affiliate program

Every ebook gets a marketing allotment: "You can request up to 250 promo codes per ebook, and the codes are valid for four weeks from the date you requested them." They are "free copies available for promotional use, publicity, or testing purposes", redeemed on Apple Books, and limited in scope: "promo codes are currently limited to ebooks", and "you can access your promo codes directly from iTunes Connect." One distribution caveat worth knowing before choosing an aggregator: "If you sell your ebook on Apple Books through a publisher or aggregator, contact them directly for access to promo codes." Beyond codes, you can "earn additional revenue by joining the Apple Affiliate program" by linking to your own books.

Audiobooks: digital narration

Apple's audio door for indie authors is machine narration: "Turn your book into an audiobook with digital narration." The service page describes "high-quality audiobooks from an ebook file", positions the result as "a valuable complement to professionally narrated audiobooks", and is aimed at "Empowering indie authors and small publishers". Cost and rights, as stated: "Apple Books digital narration is free and creating titles is easy", the "Publisher/author retains audiobook rights", and there are "No restrictions on producing and distributing other versions of the audiobook". Pricing runs on "Wholesale pricing (includes pricing tier limits)", a different basis from the ebook royalty; the pages fetched for this guide state no audio percentage, so none appears here. Delivery can also run through partners, "Simple to deliver via preferred partners", the aggregator route again.

Who should publish on Apple Books

It fits the writer whose readers hold iPhones: one store, owned by the maker of the device, with no ads and no price matching. It fits the series writer unusually well: linked series pages, pre-orders a year out, and a pre-order button for the next book on the page readers finish on. It fits free and low-price strategy: 70% at every price, free books without limit, no delivery fees. It does not fit a print plan; no print option appears on the pages fetched for this guide, and print belongs to IngramSpark, Barnes & Noble Press and KDP. The route decision as a whole is publishing paths. Compressed: create the iTunes Connect account before launch season, upload EPUB (the Word path exists when you need it), price by tier and edit per country, submit series metadata from book one, set the pre-order up early, spend the 250 promo codes before they expire, and keep the account direct if promo codes matter to your launches.