Has any experienced long waits for Apple quality assurance in iTunesConnect?

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

I waited nearly 6 weeks until my book passed quality assurance. Apple didn't let me know when this finally happened, by the way, I had to check daily in my itunes connect account. The entire Apple ebook experience was extremely un-Apple like.

To you maybe. sorry, but having been in the store since 2009, I'm aware the process, in all cases, requires heaps of patience. Now you know 🙂

If you've seen where Apple has promised anything specific about waits for books, I'd love to see it, but I don't think they've made unkept promises.

Devs have some eye candy for newbies in the resource center that shows the current average wait for a given % of new and updated submittals. Over time you get into a rhythm for 1st pass approvals and repeat rejections, so you learn what to expect. If Apple knows there will be a delay, such as occurs over the holidays every year, they send all devs notice.

Right now there are tons of people submitting books....the process is new and backed up...not a surprise (sort of a build-it-they-will-come approach) - over time the load will lessen and the process improve, but again, now is still rush hour, so be patient.

As always, feel free to use the 'Provide iBooks Author Feedback' menu item for features, changes, improvements you'd like added in the future, etc.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ibooks-author.html

None of what you say kt makes up for the lack of notification. When you submit an app to the app store you get 4 emails. All of which are automated.

1. Your app is waiting for upload

2. Your app is waiting for review

3. Your app is processing for app store

4. Your app is available for sale.

None of this happens in the ibooktstore submission. Forget the patience you need. The issue is that they don't tell you when there is an issue or when your book was approved and this means checking every day. That's unreasonable and it's bad service.

Apple does for apple you say - so tell me how not having an automated system to inform the author of when their book has a problem or is available for sale is good for apple. How does that benefit them?

As always, use the feedback to give apple feedback etc. yes, I know this and have done. But this is still a place for discussion so let's call a spade a spade. The lack of notification is lame.

Agree or disagree?

Agreed completely.

After going back to App Store development and re-developed our books as apps - the whole App Store process now seems so good and reasonable. Approved in 1 week! They actually tells you the state of the submission! If rejected, they gave you proper reasons with suggestions, and you can actually submit a feedback to ask for re-evaluation! You can change meta-data anytime without resubmitting. You can update the app anytime without the existing app being rejected!

I now believe Apple must have outsource their iBooks review team. There is no way to explain the situation otherwise.

My ibooks review process has been going on 3 weeks now. I hear it's due to the volume of ibooks submitted...

Having waited 8 weeks for some find of response.. being adviced books were rejected for "Lack of Functinality", I Gave up.. asked them to ignore or delete everything. How do I correct lack of funtionailty.. they are photo books - not War and Peace!

The store was a plus to selling from my websites.. I now concentrate on the websites.

When Apple get their act together.. then I may try again,,,but I am not putting money into ISBN and my time for idiot none advisory comments which just leave you floundering!

AND I use Book Creator,, a $5 app on the iPad!

You are not alone here. Some are leaving, some go to Nook or Kindle, and people like me go to App Store.

Hope you feel better. I still got 14 books in pipeline - including 2 that has been approved but later rejected due to updated content.

vinnyvg wrote:

Having waited 8 weeks for some find of response.. being adviced books were rejected for "Lack of Functinality", I Gave up.. asked them to ignore or delete everything. How do I correct lack of funtionailty.. they are photo books - not War and Peace!

Someone on here recently had the same rejection reason and it turned out that book wasn't working in Portrait - they hadn't checked that part. Apple was right and the book needed to be changed. Be sure you've checked the operation of your book completely and have others help you test if possible.

There are many people trying to submit books right now, so it should not be a surprise that the process takes time. Good luck with your books in any case.

KT, if the book has to work in Portrait, what are we to make of this guideline in the Apple Support section about viewing modes:

"Landscape (horizontal): Pages are wider than they are tall. Landscape is the recommended authoring orientation."

Then they tell you how to turn off Portrait. When making my book, I interpreted this to mean that it was okay to have book that can only be read in Landscape.

Layout in landscape

Edit in portrait.

We've known that and I've suggested that all along. As you point out, those are recommended practices for building/writing/authoring your books direct from the Mother Ship.

'only landscape' is allowed, but we are not relieved of the duty to pull the related levers that fulfill how a given book performs for the user on a device in that case. Without the proper iBA/book settings by us before shipping our books, as we've seen exampled here, a user can load a book with their device in portrait and see nothing when they try to navigate inside that book.

My preference is to put in the extra work and ship books that work in both landscape and portrait (same as with my apps), but I can see where some only want landscape, so that's fine w/me 🙂 - in both instances, the requirements to test properly are still the same.

K T wrote:

Someone on here recently had the same rejection reason and it turned out that book wasn't working in Portrait - they hadn't checked that part. Apple was right and the book needed to be changed.

Agree, that's something that needs fixing. It would be nice though if the ticket, instead of flagging "lack of functionality", would say something like "there are problems with the layout of your book in portrait mode." A more precise error report is likely to save time for both the author and for Apple.

Michi.

I have to jump snd shout..WHAT ABOUT COMMON SENSE??

Apple created IBOOks primarily for the wriiten word. Along came people like me who only want Pictorials.

I have 20,000 photo images from teh 1970s Oval racing in the UK. They are now soght after be fans or the "heriatge of their sport", Most photo images are in landscape.and as mentioned, I can disable portraint mode anyway. SO if "they" want both modes.. why give an option to turn one off??

Also, I use "Book Creator" a $5 app for iPad... I make a book in landscape - in portraint mode.. it shows two pages minmised to fit the width and they are flip turn animated pages.

Mega Apple make an app, and if you make in Landscape and then turn the iPad portraint.. it blanks out!!

As an "author" I want to display my work how it suits me.That done by disabling portrait. Also.. WHY put a slide show in a photo book? Just because Apple want to enhance the viewing experience of the user !!

Why not just have a slide show and do away with pages??

Typical of Apple, they see money coming into Amazon et al from eBook reader.. and jump in to grab the major portion without condersations for ALL types of publications.

Lastly.. I can accept a vetting process.. after all teh internet is glutted with "Our Holiday in Miami" websites that need to be Googled out! BUT sending back rejected and notated "Lacks funtionality" OK... which bit..

? where..? why ? what do you want putting in..?

I sent a reply giving examples.. Dan S Photography, a Russion photographer has a free book. It has 11 single photo pages. Turn to portrait where you are in teh 10.. you get page 11 THE END Turn page to landscale and you get page 1 !! and that passed for the store! Another book, AUSTRALIA sub titel and New Zealand.. another photo book. portrait locked out 20 odd pages and 1 slode show with 10 images...

Seems that really.. at first they passed anything to get content.. now they are awamped the do like Aussie council staff and ignore everything for week then send a totally useless reply making you reply back. and so on!

I use the cheap app, on an iPad sitting outside and know out photo books to add to a growing list on my own websites.

I just wonder if its a violation to create in IBooks and screen shot pages to use in the iPad app!!!

vinnyvg wrote:

I have to jump snd shout..WHAT ABOUT COMMON SENSE??

Most photo images are in landscape.and as mentioned, I can disable portraint mode anyway. SO if "they" want both modes.. why give an option to turn one off??

It appears that the problem isn't disabling portrait mode. By the acounts here, a number of people have done that and had their book accepted. The problem is that, if portrait mode is enabled, what the reader sees in portrait mode needs to work (which is reasonable, I think).

vinnyvg wrote:

Mega Apple make an app, and if you make in Landscape and then turn the iPad portraint.. it blanks out!!

I don't know why that's happening in your case. But it's a good idea to test the book on the iPad in both orientations before submitting. (I think Apple's documentation suggests that too, from memory.)

BUT sending back rejected and notated "Lacks funtionality" OK... which bit..

? where..? why ? what do you want putting in..?

Yes, that's not very useful at all. Giving precise error messages to authors would be in the interest of both Apple and authors, to avoid creating more work with follow-up questions.

I just wonder if its a violation to create in IBooks and screen shot pages to use in the iPad app!!!

I'm not sure whether I'd want to be the first person to test that… Doing this would lose all the interactive features. And I expect that Apple would argue that templates provided with IBA are for use with IBA only. If your submission clearly were a series of screenshots of an IBA book using one of Apples templates, I strongly suspect that would be a copyright violation. If you were to use your own template, you would probably be in the clear though (if only due to the difficulty of proving that the images were created using IBA).

Michi.

I guess I am one of the lucky ones. I just had my first book approved and appear in iTunes in a little over a week - 8 days actually. I have no idea what determines this time?? But it can be very frustrating! rk