[pata]

I Wish Apple Loved Books

There's an old joke, "how do you know when your friend is a Vegan."

"Don't worry," the answer goes, "they'll tell you."

The same is true about Apple and projects they are passionate about.
Listen to Jony Ive describe the Apple Watch and you know he loves traditional time pieces and was passionate about improving the experience. Look at the Health Kit team and you know they care about improving lives with this device. You've got a team involved in imagining what this device can become...

You might like or hate what Apple has done with music but from programming and content, to software, to Air Pod headphones that you can control from your watch - Apple clearly has a passion for music...

I've joked that if Eddie Cue loved reading the way he clearly loves music, then iBooks, the iBookstore, and iBooks Author would be amazing. Not only aren't they amazing, they aren't even good...

I was an early embracer and adopter of iBooks Author. I could produce beautiful books. The software was initially frustrating but they improved it in significant ways early.

Then they stopped...

OK, so iBooks Author is essentially abandonware, what about iBooks and the iBookstore.

I left the iBookstore a year ago and have recently come back.

I left because I wanted to update my book from the iBook format to epub and Apple wouldn't let me offer it as a free update to my readers...

So I started selling "A Swift Kickstart" as an epub on Gum Road.
When I sell a book I get an immediate notice. When I want to update a book, I send an email to my readers and they know they can go get a fresh copy. When a reader has an issue, I can often resolve it for them. I can sell into every country I want to and if there's something I need to correct in my book, I just upload a new version.

Oh iBooks.

Yesterday, I uploaded my latest version of my book to Gum Road and to iBooks. Within minutes I was getting email notifications of sales of my book on Gum Road.

An hour later my book was approved for sale on iBooks. This is remarkably quick. It used to take days. I looked online and my book wasn't on the iBookstore yet. Also, my name was still listed incorrectly.

Sigh...