iBooks Store publishing overview

You can submit your book for publication on the iBooks Store, or export it in a variety of formats and distribute it yourself. Before you can publish to the iBooks Store, you need to do the following:

• Get an Apple ID (a user name you can use to shop the iTunes Store, sign in to iCloud, and more). If you don’t have an Apple ID or aren’t sure if you have one, go to the My Apple ID website. You must have a valid credit card associated with your Apple ID on the iTunes Store.

• Enable iTunes Connect with your Apple ID. You can do this for free during the publishing process (after you click Publish). When you enable iTunes Connect, you choose whether you want to only offer books for free, or both sell them and offer them for free.

• Download iTunes Producer, the application you use to submit your book to the iBooks Store. You can download iTunes Producer for free as part of the publishing process.

• Create a sample book (required if you’re selling a book) for customers to view for free before deciding to purchase your book. During the publishing process, iBooks Author can create a sample based on one of your book’s chapters. Or you can create a sample manually.

Books you sell on the iBooks Store can be protected by Apple’s proprietary FairPlay DRM (digital rights management) system, which helps prevent unauthorized duplication of your book. (Movies and audio included in HTML5 widgets are not DRM-protected.)