Things Don’t Look Good for My Future With Apple

By Holly Lisle

This is the follow-up post to Uncrippling the Lesson.

As I said I would, I paid my book packager to create a separate version of How To Think Sideways, Lesson 6 that did not include links to Apple.

I uploaded the corrected version.

A couple days later, I got this message:

Dear Holly Lisle,

One or more assets from your submission, How to Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers, need to be replaced:

Ticket #: 1438977
Ticket Type: Book Asset
Apple ID: 541126811
ISBN: 9781937533304
Vendor ID: 9781937533304
Please note that the changes in this ticket were not executed. The ticket has been returned to you for additional corrections. Please make all of the changes requested below.

Full book asset:

Competing Website(s)
Rejected Reason(s):
Competing Website(s)

Notes:
Jun, 29 2012, 12:13PM – Apple:
Book file contains links from competitors: Amazon, in the chapter Q&A 6, under “Question 9”
Jul, 18 2012, 4:54AM – Apple:
The following ticket task(s) have been updated by the feed: Full epub
Jul, 18 2012, 4:54AM – Apple:
Epub internals validation passed
Jul, 18 2012, 1:21PM – Apple:
Please Note: The original change request was not fulfilled. Your changes were not saved. Previous issue was not addressed. Please review your file before resubmitting it. Thank you.

Problem is, the changes WERE executed.

And I tested and uploaded the corrected file again, just to be sure. It’s still blocked with the “Fix this first” ticket attached.

I’ve contacted Apple through their producer customer service. Best case, I’ll hear back from them Monday, and this file and Lesson 13 will be cleared, and I’ll be able to continue adding the rest of the course. In the best-case scenario, it may take longer than Monday.

Worst case…

…between Lesson 6, which Apple has rejected three times now (in spite of the changes it requested having been made), and Lesson 13, which is still unavailable, though with no error message to let me know why, I’m going to end up having to pull the course off of Apple permanently. I cannot offer just SOME of the lessons.

So for those of you who are die-hard iBookstore fans, I’m preemptively stating here: “I have done everything I am willing to do to fix this.” If Apple does not want my course content, or the content of some of the lessons, on the iBookstore, I CANNOT fix that.

And if I have to pull the How to Think Sideways course from the iBookstore because some lessons do not meet whatever criteria Apple has set that are beyond what I can fix (MEANING I will NOT rewrite ANY portion of the lesson content itself), I will not waste my time trying to get How to Revise Your Novel accepted. Nor will I offer my novels there. Nor will I continue to make available those courses that have been deemed acceptable. Such of my presence as I am capable of removing, I’ll remove.

(I have no control over my work offered by other publishers.)

If that means you’ll no longer buy my work, I’m sorry. I’ll note that DRM-free epubs of the course are available from my own shop, and they will work on your iPhone and iPad. If your issue is buying things from Amazon, you don’t have to. If your issue is punishing me because I am not willing to jump through hoops beyond those through which I’ve already jumped…

…well, you wouldn’t have gotten anything useful out of the course anyway.

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