I’m very excited that I have just finished writing my short book on the gas laws (something you learn when studying the states of matter in chemistry). This book is set in the world of Greek Mythology and teaches some simple concepts of introductory chemistry. This is the first in a series of books I am working on that will all use mythology as a backdrop for introducing a number of scientific principles. I have three more in progress (one dealing with the physics of gravity, one dealing with population genetics and another dealing with inheritance / breeding) that I am hoping to finish up at a rate of about one a week.

My work on this actually gets me back to my original purpose in setting up this blog, that is to walk through the steps of producing material for sale through Apple’s app store / iTunes.

Just like app production, making and selling iBooks requires an iTunes Connect account (itunesconnect.apple.com) and several other hidden steps. One thing I was disappointed to find was that you can’t just use the iTunes connect account you may have set up to distribute apps. In fact, you can’t even use the same apple ID, email or address to set up this account (I believe that I mentioned this in a previous post).

You also need to download the ‘Book Proofer’ and ‘iTunes Producer’ programs to your computer. I confess, I have not used either of these programs yet, but I am anticipating problems – just because everything has baggage.

The last hidden issue I have found is that you need ISBN numbers for every book you produce. I expected this to be a free process through the library of congress, but instead, it’s a pay service through Bowker identifier service (https://www.myidentifiers.com). One ISBN costs $125, I bought ten for $250. If you are really producing a lot of books, you can get 1000 numbers for $1000 – certainly a great discount per number, but I’m definitely not going to be writing 1000 books no matter how easy it is!

by the way, I should give some recognition to my artist, Allyson Kelley, who has been a joy to work with. you can find samples of her art on her sketch blog http://allysonkelleyillustration.tumblr.com.