Q: Once my book is uploaded, how long before it appears in iTunes?

I've gotten to know several of the reviewers well as I check on status each week. My favorite is Dana who always sends me the same nice reply "Your title is still under review. We appreciate your patience as your title makes its way through this process. If no errors are identified during the review process, the title will be made available for sale in the iBookstore within 24 hours of the completion of the review."

I suspect that Dana is not a real person but I have this small hope that he/she is a real person who is simply overworked in some pink collar sweatshop outside of Hyderabad, Bangalore, or Mumbai and making a few rupees a day. At least I get a reply each time I send a query.

Someday my free book will be on the store but I'm afraid it will be so out-of-date by then that no one will download it.

I suspect it has to do with cost. My free book is now at day 47 of "pending" while my books that are not free were reviewed and available in 2 days.

Also my free book has 79 pages of mostly images using the gallery and interactive widgets so perhaps this complexity makes reviewing the book difficult.

Not the cost. My free book was approved on the 10th days. Some of my paid books are also around these time length.

Anyway, after 2 months of waiting for some books and 2 rejection from the iBookstore after I uploaded the Retina version of the same books that has been approved, I decided enough is enough and just keep the iBooks here and let them decide when to approved - while I go to the App Store and have fun.

So far my App Store experience is pretty consistent - approved around a week, and 3 of my iBooks-turned-apps already got updated and approved a week later. One of the children music video iBook (Sing to Learn Chinese) that is still in approval process - and the app version just got into iPad education #1 spot in Singapore today!

Same Apple, different experience.

evan20 wrote:

 

My favorite is Dana who always sends me the same nice reply "Your title is still under review.

 

[…]

 

I suspect that Dana is not a real person but I have this small hope that he/she is a real person who is simply overworked in some pink collar sweatshop outside of Hyderabad, Bangalore, or Mumbai and making a few rupees a day.

Who knows, you might be talking to Siri. Have you tried asking her to marry you?

Michi.

What happened if she IS the real person and she said YES?

thye chean wrote:

 

Anyway, after 2 months of waiting for some books and 2 rejection from the iBookstore after I uploaded the Retina version of the same books that has been approved, I decided enough is enough and just keep the iBooks here and let them decide when to approved - while I go to the App Store and have fun.

Let me get this straight: you had a book approved and selling, and upgrading the book to higher-resolution images resulted in rejection?

Wow. That says a lot for this completely out-of-control, designed by amateurs process…

Michi.

thye chean wrote:

 

What happened if she IS the real person and she said YES?

Well, you'd have to marry her, of course!

Michi.

Ya. The book is "Lion". It is a children book with video, picture gallery, facts about Lion and got approved. Went up to #1 in Education category. Then I updated the pictures to Retina resolutions (since we have those great looking Lion pictures taken by our photographer...), and then the book was pulled for "insufficient material" or something like this, even though the book has been approved and got high ranking before.

Picture taken before Lion was pulled. They actually did this.

So, just to make this perfectly clear: you had a book that was in the bookstore and selling. After updating the book with higher-resolution images, you not only had the new version refused, but the old version pulled from the store?

Michi.

Yes. They don't have a old/new version - only 1 version. So if they rejected it, they pulled it from iBookstore. So now my book is no longer on sale.

This is not App Store - where current and updated version are considered 2 different things.

thye chean wrote:

 

Yes. They don't have a old/new version - only 1 version. So if they rejected it, they pulled it from iBookstore. So now my book is no longer on sale.

Hmmm… That's interesting.

I just had a look at my publisher agreement, and I cannot find any clause in it that would require Apple to deliver a reason for pulling a book (which is disappointing). I cannot find any clause that would oblige Apple to keep a book in the store once it is approved either (reasonably so, in my opinion, because no review process can be perfect, and something may always slip through the cracks).

However, pulling the book amounts to destroying your income stream without so much as "by your leave". Refusing to distribute a title in the first place because it is deemed inappropriate is one thing. Pulling a title with no reason given (and assuming that your book doesn't have anything in it that could be deemed offensive, which seems reasonable) is another thing.

Michi.

I think we are in their world, so they can do anything they want.

iBookstore is not our income stream... yet. We are doing multimedia stuffs, so Kindle/Nook/etc are not really a good alternatives for us. This leaves us App Store - that's why we go back to it, and move our content together with it. We are actually in the process of negotiating the rights of some children books and port them to iBooks, but have to reconsider now.

This is a good learning process for us, and App Store and iBookstore differences did explain why one is the biggest store on earth and another one is a very small one. Yes, redesigned books as apps need us to rethink the whole UI and process (because we believe what people wanted from an app and book are different), but overall it proves worthwhile for us.

We really loves iBooks Author... but Xcode 5 with storyboard support isn't that bad.

thye chean wrote:

 

Yes. They don't have a old/new version - only 1 version. So if they rejected it, they pulled it from iBookstore. So now my book is no longer on sale.

Another thought: once anyone has a book approved, it might behoove them to never update it again, just in case they draw attention to themselves…

Michi.

Also found it's not the cost on my side... I had a free version of my book up and running on Feb 8 and an update (although I bodged the update process somehow and both versions seem to be on the store... Odd) on Feb 13 (here if you're interested: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/stylus-t-frog-weapons-mass/id502944121?mt=1137 pages/50+ pictures of iPad art (plus half a dozen videos)  - although it says 22 pages in the description. Also odd). Anyhow it was uploaded at 10pm UK time and I woke up to find it was downloadable from the stor the next morning! Very exciting and not unlike waking up to find an extra and completely unexpected Christmas present.

From that beginning I then fell into the swamp of getting an UK IRS number (NOT a smooth process) and then to the wait of getting the updated book - 100 pages plus, way more pictures and videos - sorted. My plan had been to get a second book sorted: a series of iPad art app tutorials to follow the release of the art book but I've dound the QA process so dispiriting that I've not picked up iBooks Author since (although ironically I'm teaching people how to use the app in a number of INSET sessions coming up soon).

Every morning and evening I check Connect. Every morning and evening I'm dissapointed. 30 days and counting (since upload). Hard to stay motivated on it, to be honest. I still think iBookstore and iBooks author is a one two sucker punch of brilliance... But the QA process is probably hard for Apple to keep on top of and hard for me to retain a hopeful outlook on.

Yes, I think the iBookstore team still thinking the old way - the book, once published, should not be updated. Regardless of typos, updates of new technologies (says Retina graphics, or iBooks Author introduced some nice navigation enhancement), etc. A book should never been updated, just like the REAL book.

This is the new century, my friend. An eBook should works like an app, which can be updated with new info, bug fixes, new features, etc. But we are learning the hard way that that team probably consists of members coming from the real publishing industry working the old way.

thye chean wrote:

 

This is the new century, my friend. An eBook should works like an app, which can be updated with new info, bug fixes, new features, etc.

You are preaching to the converted

 

But we are learning the hard way that that team probably consists of members coming from the real publishing industry working the old way.

Not sure about that. To me, it looks more like a completely disorganized process where everyone is running around like headless chicken and the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Apps with "iBook" in both the name and the description are approved in the App Store, while books with "iBook" somewhere in the text are refused in the iBookstore. Titles that are approved in the iBookstore and that are selling well are pulled without explanation when the author commits the unspeakable crime of updating the images to higher-resolution versions.

This is clearly a case of a system that is completely overwhelmed by demand, and had sub-standard people design the submission and review process. The problems reported here in this forum are clear evidence of that. Newly-minted graduates in business management could do better than this. (Every trouble-ticketing system I have ever seen will automatically send an email when an item in a workflow undergoes a state change. Heck, even the forum software we are all using here sends email when a thread I have contributed to is updated. Not so for the submission of eBooks with Apple…)

The only redeeming feature for Apple I can think of at this point is that they were probably taken by surprise at just how popular publishing with IBA would be, and grossly under-resourced the submission process. Still, that's a poor excuse for someone who has a book selling in the store and then finds the book pulled for daring to make it better…

Michi.