Thursday, May 25, 2017

The Thing About Apple

Recently, I received an email from a reader asking me when the last two books in the Kinkaid Brothers series would be available on ibooks. Before I get into that, I have to say that I received this email through the contact form on my website. You know, that form I told you I wasn't so sure I wanted to have on my website. Guess my web designer knew what he was doing after all!

Like I said, a reader emailed me to ask when the novels would be released on ibooks. I was a little surprised by this question. I thought the books were already available in this format. Just to be sure, I logged on to the ibooks website and did a search for them. Sure enough, those last two titles were missing. 

Determined to get to the bottom of the problem, I logged on to the site I use to publish all of my books. Imagine my surprise when I checked the information for my titles and found these last two had been rejected by ibooks, and you're never going to guess why.

At the end of every book I publish, I list the titles of all of my other books. Most authors do. If readers have made it to the end of a book, chances are they liked it. We want to encourage readers to check out the rest of our books. One of the books I have listed there was published last year under an exclusive contract with Amazon. It's a Kindle Worlds novella entitled Going for Wilder. Well, therein lies the problem.

Because I listed Going for Wilder as avaialbe for purchase, ibooks refused to carry my recently published novels. If I remove this title from my list of available books, they will reevaluate placement in their bookstore and likely agree to carry it.

I'm not angry so much as surprised with a touch of amused. That's a pretty petty reason for refusing to carry my newest books, especcially when you consider that Going for Wilder is a $1.99 novella. I seriously doubt making readers aware of its availailbity is going to cost Apple any money, but then what do I know?

No, I'm not going to refuse to make the change. I'm going to revise the available works page at the back of both novels and resubmit. I want all of my readers to have the option of buying my books in the format they're comfortable with, but I learned something about Apple that I didn't know before.

By the way, I have to thank the reader that brought this to my attention and my web designer for the contact form I was so leery of.

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