Smashwords enables publishing to Apple iPad

Great news last night from Smashwords:

One of the benefits of your subscription to this exclusive author/publisher alert
is you often learn Smashwords news before we announce it to the rest of the world.

This is one of those times.

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1. Smashwords to Distribute Ebooks to new Apple iPad iBookstore

We’ve signed a distribution agreement that will make qualifying Smashwords books
available on the iPad. We’re notifying you of this exciting development in advance
because we want your books in the catalog. You must take steps now to ensure
your books make it in time for inclusion in the Apple iPad’s iBookstore’s big
launch April 3.

We’ve been working on this ever since the iPad was announced. Apple wants your
books, and they appreciate the value that a distributor such as Smashwords can
provide them.

What does it take to qualify? Please read carefully:

1. Your ebook must be accepted into the Premium Catalog by March 31. If you’re
not yet in the Premium Catalog, learn more at http://smashwords.com/distribution
We can probably squeeze some stragglers in at the last minute, though please
give yourself time to wrap things up early. If you miss the deadline, we get
in you right after, because we’ll probably do frequent ships to them.

2. Your book must be available in the EPUB format, and the book must pass the
industry-standard EPUBCHECK quality check (this is why we have been upgrading
our converters lately, and creating “scrubbers” to clean your files. The vast
majority of Smashwords books now comply 100% with EPUBCHECK. If your book doesn’t,
we will let you know.).

3. Your book cover image must have a minimum height of 600 pixels. If you do
not comply, we will let you know. We will soon make this a default requirement
for inclusion in the Premium Catalog. To check your pixel dimensions, go to
your book page, click on your book cover image (which blows it up to full size),
and then right-mouse-click on the image and click “properties.” If your image
is too small, talk to your designer, obtain a larger image, and then upload it
at Dashboard: Settings. Whatever you do, don’t try to re-scale a small image
by making it larger, because that will make it blurry.

4. You must *manually* opt-in to the Apple channel. The opt-in, when it’s
available (probably by March 31), will appear in your Dashboard’s Channel Manager.
While you wait for us to finish coding the opt-in in the next couple days, please
complete the following steps below, all of which are required before you can
opt-in.

5. Before you can opt in to the Apple channel, your Smashwords ebook must have
a unique ISBN assigned to it. By “unique,” I mean it must be different from
the ISBN of any other book, including your print book if you have one.

6. Effective immediately, you can attach ISBNs to your books by visiting your
Dashboard and clicking on the ISBN Manager – http://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/ISBNManager

7. If you do not already own a unique ISBN, you can obtain them from Smashwords.
After many months of negotiation with Bowker, I’m pleased to offer you these
two affordable options (thank you to all the Smashwords authors and publishers
who responded to my survey a few days ago posted at https://www.smashwords.com/about/beta
in which I asked you to provide me your suggestions for how we should approach
our ISBN pricing policies):

A. FREE ISBN – You can choose to have Smashwords issue you a free ISBN, even
if your book is priced at free. The ISBN will list Smashwords as your publisher
and list you as the author. This option is available to any Smashwords author
or publisher, anywhere in the world, provided you have been accepted into the
Premium Catalog.

B. PREMIUM ISBN – For $9.95, Smashwords will issue you an ISBN that registers
you as the publisher of record for the book, and Smashwords as the distributor.
You can “purchase” the ISBN by having us debit (deduct it from) your accrued
royalties. In my survey above, many of you expressed enthusiasm for this debit
option. If your accrued royalties are under $9.95, we’ll front you the ISBN
and your account will carry a negative balance until you sell more books. If
your book is priced at zero, this option is *not yet* available to you. If it’s
important to you that you are listed as the Publisher in the ISBN record, then
you should choose this option.

8. In order to distribute to Apple, you must agree to certain requirements to
which Apple holds all book publishers and authors. These include:

A. All ebooks in the Apple iBookstore must have prices that end in .99, so
$.99, $1.99, $9.99, etc. If the price you have selected at Smashwords is not
a *.99 price, for the price we supply to Apple, we will increase the price to
the nearest .99. The price you choose must also be within the boundaries of
B, below. Or, you can proactively go to Dashboard: Settings and give all your
books a price that ends in *.99.

B. Apple requires an ebook be priced less than its print counterpart. The
vast majority of Smashwords books already comply. If your book is not available
in print, you can price your book at any price you like. Free is an acceptable
price at Apple. If you do have print editions, here are the rules you must follow:
For ebooks, if you publish print counterparts elsewhere as mass market paperbacks
(small, airport size) or trade paperback, then allowable pricing bands are as
follows: For all print books published with a list price of $22.00 or less,
your Smashwords ebook price cannot be greater than $9.99 during the first twelve
(12) months after publication in those print formats. Thereafter, you, the publisher
may set whatever price you want, provided Apple doesn’t deem it unrealistic.
For any mass market or trade paperback books with a list price greater than $22.00,
you can set whatever price you want. If your book is only available in Hardcover,
and the Hardcover price is under $22.00 (U.S.), then the maximum allowable price
for your ebook is $9.99. If your price is $22.01-$24.00, the maximum ebook price
is $10.99; $24.01-$25.00 is $11.99; $25.01-$27.50 is $12.99; $27.51-$30.00 is
$14.99; $30.01-$35.00 is $16.99; and $35.01-$40.00 is $19.99. If your hardcover
book is priced above $40.00, you can price your Apple ebook at any price you
like.

9. How much does distribution to Apple cost you? Nothing. Like all Smashwords
services, it’s free. We earn our income when your books sell. We will pay you
60% of the list price for all your sales.

10. We promise glitches: Since we are on this exciting journey together, you
should know and expect that there will be glitches, bugs and delays along the
way. We cannot promise that all books will make it into the iPad by launch day,
as there may be hangups beyond our control such as strange formatting of your
book, problems with your book cover image, problems due to our own mistakes,
or problems we cannot foresee until they smack us in the face. If you discover
a bug, please click the customer support link at the top of any page.

That covers the gist of it. Please go to your Dashboard now and follow the instructions
to assign an ISBN to you books.

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2. Smashwords Adds ISBN Support

You just read about this above. We’re thrilled to provide you such affordable
and professional ISBN options.

What are the benefits of ISBNS? – Smashwords retailers such as Apple and Sony
will not accept your Smashwords book unless it has a unique ISBN. Even Smashwords
retailers (such as B&N and Kobo) who do not require ISBNs still prefer to have
them. It is the primary digital identification number that many major online
retailers use to track and catalog your books, and to report your sales back
to Smashwords. The ISBN provides you additional marketing benefit as well. An
ISBN helps make your book more discoverable to readers and other book buyers.
The ISBN gains you free inclusion in Books in Print, the world’s largest catalog
of books, which is licensed to all major search engines and thousands of bookstores
and libraries. Your ISBN record will also receive a free online listing at the
online Books in Print bibliographic database that’s available on the open Web
at http://seo.bowker.com. Since your ISBN is a living record, you can update
your metadata details directly at Smashwords.

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3. Smashwords Readies Shipment to Sony

Prior to the addition of the new Smashwords ISBN service, Sony supplied us free
ISBNs to attach to your books. While this would have satisfied their need of
ISBNs, it would have created unnecessary complexity to have ISBNs that were tied
to Sony but not available for you to use elsewhere. Our new ISBN system will
simplify ISBN management for all involved. Now that the system is in place,
we will work to get all ISBN’d books to Sony asap, hopefully this week.

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If you have questions relating to anything about Smashwords, please review our
Frequently Asked Questions first: http://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq

Do you know an author or publisher not yet on Smashwords? Please invite them
to join. Every new author and publisher who publishes at Smashwords brings with
them fresh readers who can then discover your material as well!

Thank you for your continued trust, support and confidence. Tell a friend!

Best wishes,

Mark Coker
Founder
Smashwords
http:/www.smashwords.com

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