As many authors know, or don't know, or guess, or deduce, or think, or figure, or remain oblivious to, or . . . I'm getting out of hand, aren't I? . . . Apple's iBookstore is available in lots of countries. Smashwords distributes eBooks to Apple as well as to other bookstores. They do it efficiently and also have the option free isbn numbers for writers, a requirement for publishing with Apple.
It's a little difficult to find your books on iTunes, but not impossible. Smashwords has this information in their FAQs: http://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq#findonapple
How to Locate your Smashwords Ebook in the Apple Store:
Take a look at this (study the URL before you click):
http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9781452300030
http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9781452300030
country code ^ ^ISBN ^
On Smashwords, find your ISBN by clicking your Dashboard's ISBN Manager.
Note: be sure to take the dashes out of your isbn when you paste it.
They also promote Russell Phillips' Tools for Authors: http://www.russellphillipsbooks.co.uk/pages/tools.php which has a tool to create the links for Apple.
Now you've found your book.
Here is what my first book, "Rojuun" looks like. Once you enter the above info, the URL is adjusted to add the name of your book.:
Also, you should now have an author page, which can be found by clicking on "View More By This Author" in the upper right hand corner.
If you look at the numbers in the links above for my first book and my author page, you may notice that the author number is one greater than the first book. I've done some research and it appears to be that way for all Smashword authors.
Finding your books internationally
Okay, in the links above, you may have noticed that they all have /us/ in the link right after .com. That is the country code. I know for certain of 32 countries in which Smashwords distributed books are available. You can read the recent Smashwords anouncement where Apple added 26 European and Scandinavian countries here: Smashwords Blog
If you would like to be able to see your author page or book in each country, simply replace /us/ in your link with the country code listed below.
US us
Canada ca
U.K. uk
Germany de
France fr
Australia au
Austria atBelgium be
Bulgaria bg
Cyprus cy
Czech Republic cz
Denmark dk
Estonia ee
Finland fi
Greece gr
Hungary hu
Ireland ie
Italy it
Latvia lv
Lithuania lt
Luxembourg lu
Malta mt
Netherlands nl
Norway no
Poland pl
Portugal pt
Romania ro
Slovakia sk
Slovenia si
Spain es
Sweden se
Switzerland ch
I found the data on the country codes here: http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/codes/country.htm It seems like a very useful page to anyone who might need info like that.
Anyway, I hope this helps all you authors who have books distributed through Apple. This is another useful tool that I'm creating largely for my own benefit, but also for other authors.
All my best and happy writing. :)
John
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