Apple initially named five of the top six major publishers as launch partners for its iBookstore for the iPad. More recently, we heard that two independent publishers had signed deals to provide e-books and that Apple plans to offer free public domain titles from Project Gutenberg. Now, self-published authors will also get a crack at the iBookstore via deals Apple has struck with e-book publishing services Smashwords and Lulu.
Smashwords and Lulu are for e-books what TuneCore is for music. TuneCore will take your CD (or indie film) and upload it to the iTunes Store for a flat fee, eliminating the need to jump through all the hoops necessary to set up an account directly with Apple. All the royalties earned on sales of the album and individual tracks are then forwarded to the artist.
Smashwords works a little differently; instead of an up-front free, it takes a small percentage of the royalties that various e-book stores offer. However, authors merely need to upload a specially formatted Word document with the text of their book, along with an image of the cover. Smashwords uses tools that automatically convert the Word file into the formats specified for online e-book stores such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon Kindle, and Lexcycle Stanza, and uploads books to the stores that an author requests.
Details of a deal to add the iBookstore as a publishing option leaked after an e-mail to current Smashwords clients was widely published online. Though he couldn't comment on specific details, founder Mark Coker told Ars that he could confirm that Smashwords does have a deal in place with Apple.
The e-mail was sent to current Smashwords authors to make sure their books were ready in time to be on the iBookstore at this weekend's April 3 launch. It also explained that books destined for the iBookstore have a few extra requirements, which Smashbooks will make standard for future submissions. All cover images need to be at least 600px tall, titles must have a unique ISBN number (separate from the print version if one exists), and books must have a price that ends in ".99" (i.e. $4.99 versus $4.95).
Apple also requires that pricing for e-book versions should be less than a print version if one is available, and there are limits to the maximum iBookstore price for the first 12 months after release depending on the price of the print edition. Currently there is no option to sell books on the iBookstore without FairPlay DRM, and Apple didn't respond to our request for comment on the matter.
Smashwords gives authors and publishers 60 percent of the retail price of an e-book as a royalty, with Apple keeping the usual 30 percent and Smashwords keeping a 10 percent cut for its services. "Our general policy for the last two years at Smashwords has been to return 85 percent of the net to our authors and publishers," Coker told Ars. Even with Smashwords keeping a small percentage, though, that's a far better deal than the 35 percent authors are getting publishing directly on the Kindle.
It also appears that book publishing service Lulu will also begin to distribute books via the iBookstore shortly. Lulu will convert titles to ePub format automatically and upload them to the iBookstore unless authors specifically request that it doesn't. Further details about pricing and availability aren't known since no public announcement has been made, but would likely be similar to those offered by Smashwords.
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