Self-published authors will get a crack at the iBookstore via deals Apple has struck with e-book publishing services Smashwords and Lulu.
Smashwords takes a small percentage of the royalties that various e-book stores offer. Authors upload a specially formatted Word document with the text of their book, along with an image of the cover. Smashwords uses tools that automatically convert the Word file into the formats specified for online e-book stores such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon Kindle, and Lexcycle Stanza, and uploads books to the stores that an author requests.
Smashwords gives authors and publishers 60 percent of the retail price of an e-book as a royalty, with Apple keeping the usual 30 percent and Smashwords keeping a 10 percent cut for its services.
It also looks like book publishing service Lulu will also begin to distribute books via the iBookstore shortly. Lulu will convert titles to ePub format automatically and upload them to the iBookstore unless authors specifically request that it doesn’t. Further details about pricing and availability aren’t known since no public announcement has been made, but would likely be similar to those offered by Smashwords.
(www.smashwords.com) (www.apple.com/ipad/) (www.lulu.com)
Published on April 02, 2010
