ERROR ITMS-9000 iTunes Producer

Ok!

Major thank you to RCAustin for your help and pointing me in the right direction!

To help others that may have this problem in the future, I will highlight what I did. So indeed I did use Pages in order to create my book, and yes, indeed, my Table of Contents was missing an element.

• Anyways, having had some experience using Calibre in a Windows environment, I downloaded Calibre for my Mac.
• I saved the book to an EPUB format via Pages export functionality.
• I opened the EPUB in Calibre and clicked on Edit Book.
• At the same time, I ran the problematic EPUB through Pagina.
• Pagina gave me the location of the problem: /OPS/toc.xhtml (line 2, col 1451)
• From there, I found the file called toc.xhtml via the Edit Book function in Calibre.
• I found Line 2 and Col 1451, and generally looking at the pattern for the rest of the entries, I inserted text where there was a missing element in my Table of Contents: <a href="page-55.xhtml">x</a> . (Funny enough, this doesn't affect my real Table of Contents - so something screwy is happening, but since everything looks OK - I didn't bother finding out the root cause).
• I saved the changes I made to toc.xhtml.
• I used Pagina again, and this time - no errors! YAY (or so I thought...)
• I went into iTunes Producer, and submitted my book, only to get a new type of error:

ERROR ITMS-9000: "Invalid prefix attribute in root (package) element of the OPF file.
Please supply a prefix attribute with valid rendition value in root <package> element of the OPF file" at Book/BookAssets

• Now, I realized I had some sort of problem with the OPF file in my EPUB. It would seem I need to make some adjustment to the <package ...></package>.
• My package looked like this - again I viewed this OPF file in Calibre under the Edit Book feature:

<package xmlns:ibooks="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" unique-identifier="BookId" version="3.0" prefix="ibooks: http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf calibre: https://calibre-ebook.com">

So after researching this online, I found out that I needed to include a rendition value - something like this:

<package xmlns:ibooks="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" unique-identifier="BookId" version="3.0" prefix="ibooks: http://vocabulary.itunes.apple.com/rdf/ibooks/vocabulary-extensions-1.0/ calibre: http://calibre-ebook.comrendition: http://www.idpf.org/vocab/rendition/#">

• Once I made this adjustment to the OPF file, I saved it again in Calibre.
• I ran the EPUB file via Pagina again, and everything checked out! YAY (this time the YAY was ultimately founded).
• I submitted the book via iTunes Producer - and VOILA - everything indeed checked out!

When you are successful in submitting your book, you will have a note that says: "Your book has been delivered and should appear on iTunes Connect within 24 hours." 🙂

I must say, I think Apple should improve their book submission process to iTunes/iBooks to make it a little easier. I found the upload and submission process to be pretty seamless with Amazon Kindle. At the end of the day, I am glad I overcame these hurdles - and I hope this may help another potential author out there to get their book in the Apple ecosystem.

🙂

THANK YOU!

Ok -

One last point everyone -

After checking the status of my book submission in iTunes Connect - I got the following message - which does not look too promising.

The "Unknown Issue" problem seems a little unsettling, and after going through the Contact Us menu, the following phone number was made available (7am to 5pm Pacific Time). I will call them tomorrow and see what happens. Apparently, someone else had posted the same sort of "Unknown Issue" problem, and they were able to get it sorted out within the span of 5 minutes by calling in. I hope that's the case with me too! Fingers-crossed. I will let you all know what happens tomorrow one way or another.

(Either one of two results will be known tomorrow: (1) I will just give up on iBooks and stick to Kindle - or (2) I will be on the path to successful publishing on iBooks. One way or another, I don't have any more time to troubleshoot this.) 😝 .

U.S.

+1 (877) 206-2092

Toll-free from U.S. and Canada.

So far I have tried:

• Totally eliminating my Table of Contents in my book. STILL ERROR.
• I realized I did not have Java installed - and so I already downloaded the latest version of Java. (I checked other threads, and they had made that mention). STILL ERROR.
• I also eliminated the spacing in the EPUB name (no spaces, hyphens, etc). STILL ERROR.
• Others have indicated that trying: iTunes Producer > Preferences > Advanced > Uncheck "Signiant". STILL ERROR.

I am using Pages to format my book, and exported it as an EPUB from Pages.

Any suggestions?!?!?!

I used Pagina EPUB Checker:

I got the same sort of error:

I am not sure what I should do to help correct this issue. Any suggestions would be great! 🙂

Trying to do my own troubleshooting and document it for others that may also encounter similar issues in the future.

🙂

On the phone with Apple - I must say, that Apple's customer experience is exceptional!

I fully expected to be on hold for hours on-end, assuming that nearly everyone would be calling into that toll-free number, but actually, if you dial the number, there are no voice menus or anything, you get a hold of someone right away! (Super impressive) I was told by the service representative that they would reach out to their manager in order to understand the issues with the book - and put me on a relatively brief hold. They ended up telling me that there were no technical issues with the submission of the book (which I thought there might be after seeing some other threads), and that it was just simply under review.

In total, the call took me: 16 minutes from start to end.

Again, YAY for APPLE! 🙂 ✅

And just like that - there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Successfully published my first book to iBooks. Got an email an hour ago!

YAY!

Thank you!!! 🙂