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I would like to produce and distribute ebooks in Arabic, as there is a huge market for it.
Anyone who has any knowledge why this is not supported by Apple?
Obviously, the iBook is supporting it, so why not let the iBookstore support it.
It does not make any sense at all.
Enlighten me please, as I am missing a business opportunity here.
iBookstore-OTHER
Nobody in these forums can tell you why Apple does this, but of course you can ask for a change via
Apple itself does not consider that iBooks Author supports Arabic correctly. Arabic is on the list of languages where Apple requires the epub3 format, which neither iBA nor Pages can produce. Other languages on the list include Chinese and Japanese.
Arabic is also not the only language which the iBookstore is not yet ready to support for some reason. Others are Amharic, Aramaic, Burmese, Persian/Farsi, Hebrew, Khmer, Lao, Malay (Jawi/Arabic), Sinhala, Tamil, Urdu.
My personal guess is that Apple does not yet think the iBooks app can display books in these languages with the quality level they want to have in their store.
The bottom line is that in the meantime you have to try to exploit this market via other stores like Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Googlbooks, Sony.
I had the same question for years, and I'm working on finding out the real reason behind it.
As of the end of 2016, the EPUB3 standard fully supports Arabic, and so is the iBook app for more than a year now. The Arabic Fixed-Layout books I developed are displayed perfectly, even with Read-Aloud functionality.
I don't think that the reason is technical, neither is political. Perhaps, no one has asked for this decision to be changed. It would help if all of us try.
iBookstore not accepting Arabic ebooks - technical or political reasons?
