The Missing Wizard is Everywhere

The Missing Wizard, my first self-published short story is now available in 6 different countries via iTunes (as well as on the Kindle, Nook, and others). The countries include the US, Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, and France. It took almost two weeks for the story itself to appear in the store, but once there it was easy, albeit via a very clumsy interface, to make it available in other stores worldwide.

Apple is known for their great interface work, and the process they use is a model of clarity, just annoyingly redundant when you want to add a book to several stores at once. Each book has to be added individually; select country, specify when it should be available in the store, set price, set duration of price, click Done, repeat for next country.

Here’s a thought for EUR countries, can’t we just group them for initial assignment? Or, why can’t I simply select a Price Tier and then select the countries I want the item to be sold from? Does anyone really want to customize the tier for each and every region? There will always be a few to customize, but all of them? Today I added my product to 5 additional countries and it took about 10 minutes in all, once I figured out the process. I expect when I post my next story it’ll take less time. But, what if I wanted to add it to 50 countries? Now we’re talking a couple of hours or maybe an entire afternoon. Daunting and ridiculous.  Apple can do better.

So, my suggestion for improving it would be as follows. The most common use case for a self-publisher is to make their work available in as many stores in as many countries as possible as quickly as possible. So don’t make me choose each one up front. Give me a page that allows me to select countries, the price tier for my item, and the start date to sell, then batch create all the separate entries using those settings. Once that is done, now I can go in and customize only those countries that I want or need to.

OTOH, I’m excited as all get out that my story can be made available to so many people in just a few minutes of work. I’m looking forward to the results, especially once I can get more products on my author shelf.

Go Me!

About lfrank

Now suffering in the hinterlands of Michigan while trying to transform myself into a fiction author. Don't wait up.
This entry was posted in iTunes Connect, self-publishing, writers and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.