Delivering our iBook from outside U.S. - our story
Hello Everyone,
Last year when starting our iBook project I was hungry for as much reliable information as possible. This community was very helpful and I hope to be able to help anyone interested in creating and delivering their iBook. So I hope to provide recommendations for people to help them.
My wife wrote a huge book on caring for Eclectus Parrots and I desinged the book using iBooks Author. We live outside the U.S. (Australia) and so we looked at several of the publishing houses to deliver our book for us. The 'process' of setting up tax ID's and handling all of that seemed daunting at the time - but it is not. I highly recommend that if you speak english well and can devote a day of phone calls, and about $100 you will do just fine and you will be 30% richer in the long run.
Setting up an iTunes Connect account is easy. Getting an EIN from the U.S. is also reletivly easy. For some reason we had trouble last year contacting the tax office, but once we got through they were very helpful and within about 30 minutes we had our EIN. Next, you need your ISBN which are easy to get and once you pay the fee with Thorpe-Bowker you get your ISBN immediately. As long as your local tax info is correct, finishing the iTunes Connect tax and banking account is simple.
When designing your iBook in IBA, make sure to follow the guidlines Apple provides. Be sure to have your copyright page in order (the page where you have your ISBN and your "all rights reserved" disclaimer).
Once you are ready to deliver, uploading your book with iTunes Producer was sketchy. I had to upload it a couple of times (800+mb). I have not yet used the new version of iTunes Producer so that may be better. We are selling our book, so it took about 3 days to show up in the iBookstore, but it did and it is incredibly exciting to see your hard work in the store.
If you are in the process of designing your book I highly recoomend you start planning your promotion process. Once it hits the iBookstore you will want people to know about it. It helps to have a small website setup. Start spreading the word through any relatable means possible.
Overall, the process seemed daunting to start with, but it really isn't as hard as it seems. It is so rewarding to see your efforts come to fruition and even more - to see such a positive response from people. I hope this helps in any way.
