In case you're as clueless as I was about iBooks tools and affiliate program, this is for you!! I plan to start putting all of this in place in the next two weeks as I ramp up for an amazing 2015. This goes for bloggers and authors who are looking to earn more income from book referrals and sales, or who are looking for ways to fund great promotions for their readers.

Did you know?…

iBooks offers 7% commission to affiliates, and you don't need to be a direct upload author to get in on the action.

Even bloggers and regular non-published folk can be affiliates. Anytime anyone buys ANYTHING at the apple online store following one of your links to get there, even computers and such, you get 7% commission on it. [I'm pretty sure about the hardware thing. But if I'm wrong, at least I know it works for music, movies, books, applications, and things like that. Working off memory here.]  This works for 24 hours after they've followed your link. And no, you do not need to link to a computer. Link to your books or the books of other authors' books and if they buy anything in the online store after following that link, you get commission credit.  I use my affiliate money to fund promotions. It's free, it's there for the taking, and my readers love promotions, so why not take advantage of it?

iBooks also has these great author tools to help market your books on iBooks. I talked to several authors whose income on iBooks has surpassed their income on Amazon. (whoa nelly) These people are using these tools. I've linked to them below.

If you're wondering why you haven't heard this before from the iBooks people directly, here's the explanation, provided to me by one of the two Apple iBook reps: Apple makes it impossible for iBooks people to contact you about this stuff. They have told their reps they cannot and they don't give them access to it (email addresses of authors) anyway. They call it a concern for privacy. I call it hamstringing-oneself, but what do I know.

Anyway, iBooks is becoming a contender in the ebooks retail space, despite their inability to properly market their services and despite their ridiculously inadequate book search capability, and what with the KUpocalypse, I figured getting the good word out there about other programs is important. We need to be survivors to be career writers in this day and age; survive to thrive, baby.

Thus, here is a link to the affiliate sign-up: https://itunes.phgconsole.performancehorizon.com/login/itunes/en_us  and http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates

And here is a link to various author tools you have access to, including the ability to make widgets, banners, and other helpful links directing people to your iBooks portfolio:

1. for iBooks badges to use on your sites: http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentation/badges.html
2. to make links to your or others' books: http://linkmaker.itunes.apple.com
3. auto link maker: https://autolinkmaker.itunes.apple.com
4. banner builder: http://banners.itunes.apple.com
5. widget builder: https://widgets.itunes.apple.com/builder
6. general FAQ about iBooks: http://itunes.com/iBooksFAQ
7. guidelines about how you're allowed to use Apple badges and so on using social media: http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentation/identity-guidelines.html

All of these items were provided via this document: https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/ra/resources/download/iBookStoreMarketingAndAffiliateKit/zip
And here as well: http://www.apple.com/itunes/working-itunes/

Best of luck to all of you getting more sales across several platforms!