KDP quirks

The book is now on both the kindle store, and the ibooks store.
iBook- 49p 

Kindle (not iOS) - £1.49

It's minimum price allowed on both stores.
The idea isn't to make any money, but to see how that side of things works, and I'm learning a fair bit.

What I'm learning is that there are some quirks, particularly with the Amazon store.
The Amazon KDP admin tools are far easier to use that the iTunes Connect/iBooks publisher except when they aren't.

For example I created the kindle version in the "kindle kids book creator", because it's a fixed format book  and letting the text flow as it does in a normal e-book just wouldn't work.

However it seems Amazon have some beef with apple, and won't let you port this format of book to an iPad... they don't mention this until it's in the store.
Of course it could be that the iPad simply can't handle the format... but that seems technically very unlikely, and as Amazon manage the app for the iOS devices they could easily tweak it?

If I were suspicious I'd think they might be trying to drive sales of their Fire things... but they'll probably just hack off a bunch of people.

I did ask why the book wouldn't work on an ipad and here's the reply from Amazon:
"Please note that in order to provide readers with the best possible experience, fixed layout books are currently only available in the following devices and applications:

Fire Tablets:

"Kindle Fire HDX 8.9''
Kindle Fire HDX
Kindle Fire HD(2nd Generation)
Fire HDX 8.9 Tablet
Fire HD 7 Tablet
Fire HD 6 Tablet
Kindle Fire HD 8.9"
Kindle Fire HD(1st Generation)
Kindle Fire(2nd Generation)
Kindle Fire(1st Generation)

Fire Phones:
Fire Phone

Free Kindle Reading Apps:

Kindle for Android Phones

Kindle for Android Tablets
Kindle for Mac
Kindle for PC

This is the reason why you were unable to open the book using iOS. When you create a fixed layout book, our system identifies it as such and determines the content is best viewed on a color device that supports Kindle Format 8."

Back to my mac

I've had a useful, if not entirely entertaining back and forth with the version of 24HCD A-Z (the thing I did for last year's 24 Hr comic day) in the iTunes iBook store.
Chiefly the issues concern the layout of iBooks, which change radically from Landscape to Portrait mode... niot much of a problem in a regular book, but very significant for a picture book. The solution is to lock the book in Landscape mode, with a setting in iBooks Author Inspector, but for some reason the setting wasn't sticking:

In some ways it's good to have had these issues with the free book, with it's simple layout rather than running into issues when I eventually get round to publishing Ninja Dinaosaurs vs Pirate Robots.
The feedback from the iTunes Connect service has been helpful, and suggests fixes,  and then dug deep into the problem when the suggested fixes didn't work.
This stands in contrast somewhat from the stories from app developers, but I appreciate the testing processes are going to be different, and there are more unknowns....

Anyway, the iBooks version of 24 HCD is back in the iTunes store:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/24hcd/id496960784?mt=11 

When I get a little time I'll write a post on the submission process.

Tumult Hype iBooks widgets

I want each of the pages in my iBook to have a bit of interaction, and it seems a good way to do this is to use widgets. I found a useful "how to" on YouTube, and started following it, only to find that Hype now has a direct export to iBooks widget function. It is useful to view the video to see what constitutes a widget however... not much :)