Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Apple iBookstore Enters Japan, Now Operates in 51 Countries

The Apple iBookstore today announced its entry into Japan.  Apple now operates iBookstores in 51 countries. Over 140,000 Smashwords titles are available in Japan today.

Apple announce their entry into Japan with a rare press release.  Click here to read it.

The press release contains an interesting tidbit I hadn't read before.  It says the iBooks app, which powers the iBookstore on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, has now been downloaded 130 million times.  Impressive.

Below, for your global ebook distribution pleasure, is the full list of countries in which Apple is now selling your Smashwords ebooks.

List of Apple iBookstore Countries

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Bolivia
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Guatemala
Honduras
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Norway
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States
Venezuela

If you're not already distributing your book to Apple's 51 iBookstores, I invite you to work with Smashwords. Smashwords is an authorized global aggregator for the iBookstore. We make it fast, free and easy to reach these and other global markets to come.   Click here to learn how to publish and distribute ebooks to the Apple iBookstore with Smashwords.



3 comments:

Inkling said...

I published directly through the iBookstore and unfortunately, the process for adding Japan to the previous 50 countries was more than a little confusing. What should have take less than five minutes took about fifteen.

Authors are asked to established a base currency for their prices, with no indication of what that does. And the price database Apple consults seems to be flawed. It assumed that my $4.95 ebook was priced at $14.95, the price of the print version. Strange!

In the end, I stumbled around, guessing at what I should enter until the results were prices in Japanese Yen that were close to those in U.S. dollars.

Oddly, I don't remember my initial setup of the 50 countries being that difficult.



Dovetail Public Relations said...

Hi Inkling, that's actually a good reason distribute through Smashwords instead. We get you up at the new countries on day one, and we automatically sync the prices for all your books.

Ellen Whyte said...

Dear Mark,

Can't find an email for you, so hope you catch this comment.

I love your Smashwords system, and have a lot of fun writing and selling books through it.

I've just made a short story available here for free, in the hope that generating more free stuff will attract more readers - for all of us.

You're doing a great job. Appreciate it.

Storm Chase