Want to highlight a helpful answer? Upvote!

Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

How many books are you selling?

I am trying to gauge sales figures for a few iBooks in their final stages of production. I know the figures can vary greatly, depending on what kind of book you are selling, but I am hoping I can get some rough idea on sales from people.

iBooks author-OTHER

Posted on Apr 11, 2012 10:10 PM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Apr 12, 2012 10:49 AM

CaptnKrunch, developers are traditionally very stingy sharing information on how many apps or ibooks they are selling. I can tell you however, if you think you are going to get rich from selling books you made on iBookstore, you might want to add a second career 🙂. It is very difficult to find a book in the iBookstore as people can only search on titles or subtitles, name of the author, and ISBN number. There is no keyword search, which makes it very difficult to find anything in the store. You will have to do a lot of marketing with links to the iBookstore, in order to get the word out that you have these books for sale.

12 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Apr 12, 2012 10:49 AM in response to CaptnKrunch

CaptnKrunch, developers are traditionally very stingy sharing information on how many apps or ibooks they are selling. I can tell you however, if you think you are going to get rich from selling books you made on iBookstore, you might want to add a second career 🙂. It is very difficult to find a book in the iBookstore as people can only search on titles or subtitles, name of the author, and ISBN number. There is no keyword search, which makes it very difficult to find anything in the store. You will have to do a lot of marketing with links to the iBookstore, in order to get the word out that you have these books for sale.

Apr 12, 2012 11:37 AM in response to CaptnKrunch

i'll happily give you my specific numbers. When my book was free it was getting 100 hits a day


i made it $1.99 and i get 1 download a day :-)


Natural Portraits - check it out :-)


p.s. it took me 3 months to write my book. I made a balloon popping app in 2 hours. When it was free it got 2000 downloads a day, it's $0.99 and it gets 20 downloads a day.


My book is 100 times better than my app - but them's the figures :-)

Apr 15, 2012 8:46 PM in response to Gregg Mojica

Mostly blogs related to our subjects, sports etc. trying to be pretty specific gettign interest in our subject, gathering twitter followers.

Between myself and my business partner we spend half the time promoting the books and half the time working on them. You could have the greatest book in the world but if no one can find it....

Now it only Apple would make the process to get books onto the bookstore a little less Kafka-esqu I would be a very happy person.

Apr 16, 2012 7:30 AM in response to JoeScrivens

To: JoeScrivens (and anyone else who cares to answer)


I had the concept of my iBook (waiting 5 weeks now) when the iPad first appeared, and wanted to do the book as an app. I soon found that (a) I did not have the skills to build iOS apps from scratch and (b) it would cost many thousands of dollars to hire someone to build it for me. So I gave up on the app idea. When iBA appeared in January, I got to work, wrote the iBook, submitted, and waited.


I am still intrigued with the app idea, especially after reading what Joe wrote. I have been concerned since day one about how anyone is ever going to find our books, for the reasons that UtrechtDom describes above.


What are the options for producing ibooks as apps now? Is there a simpler way so you don't have become an expert in iOS? Are the people and/or companies that will do it for you for a reasonable fee, especially if you already have it done as an iBook?


Thanks.


Jim.

How many books are you selling?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.