Has anyone had decent success selling iBooks?

If you have not seen it already, this might be of interest

http://9to5mac.com/2015/08/11/opinion-ibooks-vs-kindle/

sorry, but can't help but opine on this thread.

read the article posted by the notable tom, but i think that there is a fallacy in the analysis. here are my points, some of which i have posted before in a similar post.

1. from the author's perspective (not the customer who is buying the book), apple is a hands down winner as the bulk of the money from the selling of your book goes to you. this works just the opposite on amazon for ebooks. they take the lions share of the money, leaving the author with peanuts. there was considerable press on fights between amazon and distributors last year or so over this. i didn't follow it closely though.

2. amazon's core business model was originally books and then they expanded to other merchandise. if you think about books, you think amazon as a first thought. apple's main business is not books. amazon sells hardcopy, apple doesn't. now i wish they would enhance this part of the business, in particular make ibooks transparently portable to other readers, like those from amazon. but i realize that they are in the business of selling iPads and i haven't a clue if it would be reasonably technically feasible. i believe that a few years ago that apple decided to drop efforts that didn't make a lot of money. remember idvd and several other great programs from apple? the bottom line is that when thinking about buying a book, most people will think amazon first.

3. i'm going to speculate, even though i don't know for sure, that apple has better anti-copying protection for books than others. if that is true, then from the author's perspective, apple is a better vendor to deal with. again speculation.

4. the fallacy i believe in the article is that what needs to be determined is what the number of sells would be if the book was only offered from apple and not amazon. obviously if someone wants to buy it and apple was the only place to get it, they would download it onto their iPad from apple because they can't download it from amazon because they don't have it. i doubt that someone who has an iPad would not get it because it was only available from apple.

5. i remember when apple first came out with the iPad and books. they made a big deal about making books affordable to everyone. if you are a college student, you well know that your student loans only increase because of $200 books.i think this ties in with apples desire to keep book prices low. i have to think that perhaps others, who i will not name, are only thinking about their bottom line.

6. the key to better sells of your book is a great book and a great advertising campaign. Authors need to make their books must have's (easier said then done) and then advertise it in a colossal and ginormous way (easier done than said).

richard the old wrote:

apples desire to keep book prices low.

You have that backwards. Amazon is the one with the low, even money-losing prices. Apple is the one the USG took to court over price fixing.

i am more than glad that your book is doing very well and it is important to mankind. i have no idea of what your book is and expressed no opinion on its sales or importance in my post.

but you misrepresent the facts by making it seem that amazon's 70% royalty is the same as apple's plan. apple takes 30% and gives the author the rest. amazon takes 30% but then starts deducting a fee for downloading. those fees can be immense. here is a simple example.

let's say book sells for $15 on amazon. they will deduct $4.50 as their 30% share. for a book in US, they charge downloading fee of $0.15 per MB. let's say the book is 400 mb. last i checked, that calculates to a fee of $60. i will pay that fee partly with my $10.50 profit and send amazon another $49.50 to settle the transaction. if my book could only do 1/10 as well as your books, i would have to file for bankruptcy.

now i realize that your book might not have that much content. but for those textbooks that do, my original statement is valid.

also, amazon eliminates much of mankind in restricting the 70% minus fees deal to only a small number of the countries in the world.

i am sorry you fail to see the value of advertising. i guess all advertising should cease to exist.

we will have to agree to disagree. a 400 mb book can be sold on apple's bookstore for $15 and still make a very nice profit of $10.50 for the author. that same book would need to have a retail price of $100.07 on amazon to net the author the same $10.50.

i don't think it can be argued that $100.07 is a lower price than $15.

I'll keep politics out of this discussion by not replying on the wisdom of any court actions.

or to be complete, one could take the 35% royalty fee option from amazon and sell the book for $30 in order for the book to net the author the same $10.50. of course, amazon would see the book for sale for $15 in the apple store and lower the price of the book to $15. then the author receives $5.25 while amazon pockets the large majority of the price of the book.

i don't think it can be argued that $30 is a lower price than $15 either.

richard the old wrote:

i don't think it can be argued that $30 is a lower price than $15 either.

You are correct that Apple's pricing system lets self-publishers sell their work for less with the same profit. But Apple's and major book publishers' goal in adopting this system was exactly the opposite of keeping book prices low: It was to force Amazon to raise its prices toward's Apple's higher level, and this was successful enough that Apple got into major legal trouble.

thank you very much for acknowledging the logic of my response. you are and continue to be a class act and in my opinion the best contributor on this forum.

my comments were not related to any court case. i am not a lawyer, have not followed this case closely and am skeptical about anything i read about court cases in general. the issues involved in this case are too complex for me and will eventually be decided by the imperfect courts. i'll pass on that discussion.

however, i have felt for a long time now that hardcopy prices of books are out of control, that electronic versions of those books seemed to me to not represent a fair price compared to the hardcopy version, that someone was making a lot of money, but in general the authors were very low in the food chain in all of this.

Whickwithy wrote:

If you can tell me that Apple allowed one to sell a book at $0.99 (at 70%), that may make a difference.

Yeah, my book will change your world...for the better.

Apple's lowest positive price tier is in fact $0.99. Of course you can also "sell" for $0.00.

and thank you for seeing my point of view. if your book can already be put on any electronic reader, then perhaps there is no need to put it into another format. however, a lot of people have an iPhone which can host books also. iPods too.

what is really strange here is that in this same thread there is not one but two authors (you and me) who have a book that is destined to change the world. mine is finished and i am in the process of preparing it for the bookstore. but the probability that we would both show up in the same thread are truly low. it's amazing.