For instructions on completing the sign-up process, using iTunes Connect, and submitting to Apple Books, see Resources and Help.

Our editors curate book recommendations for customers across all genres and categories on Apple Books and focus on newly published books, high-quality, well-written content, and trending backlist titles that are popular in each storefront on Apple Books.

• For information on personalization and recommendations generated in Apple Books, see Personalizing the Stores on Apple Books & Privacy.

• For information on how your book may appear in search results generated in Apple Books, see About search results in Apple Books.

Apple may suspend or terminate your ability to distribute your content on Apple Books, or terminate your Paid and/or Free Books Agreement(s) in accordance with the terms thereto, if Apple reasonably believes that you are engaged in or encouraged others to engage in any misleading, fraudulent, improper, unlawful, or dishonest acts relating to the terms of any of these agreements.

Apple may cease marketing, offering, and/or allowing download by users of some or all of your content (including, without limitation, any artwork or metadata), or take other measures, including, without limitation, termination of your iTunes Connect account, in Apple’s sole discretion, if Apple reasonably believes, based on human and/or systematic review, and, including without limitation upon notice received under applicable laws, that the distribution and/or use of your content on Apple Books violates the terms of your Paid and/or Free Books Agreement(s), including without limitation these Books Formatting and Content Guidelines, and/or any applicable law in any region and/or country where such content is made available to users.

For publishers established in, and which offer goods or services to customers located in, the European Union, more information about redress options available to you in connection with action Apple took against you, for example, termination of your iTunes Connect account or removal of your content from Apple Books, is available on Redress Rights in Connection with the European Union Digital Services Act.

Common reasons for correction or rejection are:

• 1.1 Use of Apple Inc. Copyrighted Terms. Books not produced by Apple Inc. must not use Apple trademarks in the book asset, cover art, or metadata in a way that makes the content appear to be Apple-branded or created by Apple. To learn more, see Guidelines for Using Apple Trademarks and Copyrights.

• 1.2 Accuracy. Metadata, cover art, and the book asset must match and accurately represent the book.

• 1.3 Language. The appropriate language must be designated in the metadata and must match the main language of the book’s text.

• 1.4 Unsupported Language. For a list of the languages we support, see Appendix 1: Languages.

• 1.5 Rights Infringement. Metadata, cover art, and the book asset can’t contain materials that infringe the rights of others. For example, copyright, right of publicity, trademark, and so on.

• 1.6 Legal Requirements. Books need to comply with all legal requirements in any location where they’re made available to users. It’s your obligation to understand and conform to all local laws where your book is offered or sold. If the content is cleared for sale in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or any other country or region that restricts Nazi propaganda, the cover art or the book can’t contain Nazi symbolism as outlined in the Strafgesetzbuch section 86a. If a book violating Strafgesetzbuch section 86a is submitted three times, your entire catalogue will be suspended in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and any other country or region that enforces this for up to six months.

• 1.7 Upselling. Metadata, cover art, and the book asset can’t upsell to another, more complete version of the same product. The book shouldn’t reference or promote content that isn’t included in the current version of the book or future updates.

• 1.8 Competitors. Metadata, cover art, and the book asset can’t promote physical competitors or websites that sell books or compete with Apple Books.

• 1.9 Pricing. Metadata, cover art, and the book asset can't include any wording on pricing.

• 1.10 Advertising. Books can’t advertise or market any other products or services, except as part of a catalog.

• 1.11 Misleading. The metadata and cover art shouldn’t be misleading. For example, the book shouldn't include wording that refers to physical content or other content that isn’t included, such as “CD,” “Disc,” or “Audiobook.”

• 1.12 Objectionable Content. Books cannot contain prohibited explicit or objectionable content.

Common reasons for correction or rejection are:

• 2.1 Primary Author Designation. The authors that appear on the book need to be listed as Primary.

• 2.2 Author Formatting. Format the author’s name correctly. Nonstandard capitalization (for example, all caps or all lowercase) should only be used when consistent with the author’s name as it appears in the book and in publicity materials.

• 2.3 Phonetic Titles and Author Names. Phonetic titles and author names are needed for all books in Japanese and should be entered into the Phonetic Title and Phonetic Name fields. Japanese phonetic author names need to be formatted LastFirst, in either Hiragana or Katakana.

Phonetic titles and author names are optional for books in Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

• 2.4 Translated Author Names. Author names need to be submitted in the same language and script as the primary language of the book.

• 2.5 Extra Information. Author names shouldn’t include any additional information beyond the name. For example, do not add roles or dates.

• 2.6 Compound. Submit one author per author field. Two or more authors in the same author field will result in a “compound author” error. If more than one author is credited on the cover art and in the book, list those authors individually and identify each one as Primary.

• 2.7 Using “Anonymous” or “Unknown” as the Author. Only authors that have published anonymously to remain unknown, or authors that are historically unidentified, can be designated as “Anonymous” or “Unknown” in the metadata. Otherwise, books without a credited author need to use the publisher’s name as the author in the metadata.

• 2.8 Inconsistent Author Spelling. Spell the author’s name consistently for all content. If an author already has content available on Apple Books, the author information you provide us on a new title must match our existing content information.

Common reasons for correction or rejection are:

• 3.1 Accuracy. The title and subtitle need to be spelled correctly and match the cover art and book asset file.

• 3.2 Subtitle Field. If a book has a subtitle, it can only be entered in the subtitle field and nowhere else.

• 3.3 Censoring Words. The title or subtitle must be written as the author intended. All words should be completely spelled out and no words should be censored. Apple Books automatically censors certain explicit words in titles (for example, f**k and s**t). Don’t insert the asterisks yourself unless they were included in the original title.

• 3.4 Use of Exclusive. The word “Exclusive” must not be part of the title or subtitle when used as a claim, because the titles are a permanent part of the book, and the “Exclusive” claim may only apply for a limited time.

Common reasons for correction or rejection are:

• 4.1 Accuracy. The description needs to be accurate and not for another book.

• 4.2 Incomplete. The description should be complete.

• 4.3 HTML Tags. When you enter a description, use Rich Text Format (RTF) to format your text instead of HTML tags. For example, use the Command-B keyboard shortcut to make highlighted text appear in bold. Or, copy and paste pre-formatted text into the description.

  When you update your book description in My Books on iTunes Connect, you can use HTML tags. But don’t use the following HTML tags, since these can cause issues on Apple Books:

  <font>

  <table>

  <div>

  <ol>

  Also, make sure you don’t have any “escaped” HTML tags. For example, the string &#60;B&#62; will appear as <B> in a description, instead of making the text bold.

• 4.4 References to Future Versions or Updates. The description shouldn’t reference or promote content that isn’t included in the current version of the book. In other words, don’t reference or promote content that is coming in a future update.

• 4.5 Unique Description. The description should be unique for each book, even those included in a series. No duplicate descriptions for multiple books.

• 4.6 Additional Information. The description should be free from additional information—such as search terms or keywords beyond what’s necessary to describe the book.

• 4.7 Formatting. The description needs to be formatted correctly. Use sentence case for descriptions with the correct use of line breaks. The description can’t be in all bold or underlined text.

Common reasons for correction or rejection are:

• 5.1 Accuracy Series information needs to be accurate, spelled correctly, and match the cover art and book file.

• 5.2 Series Name Required. If a book is part of a series, then the name of the series needs to be included in the Series section of the metadata.

• 5.3 Consistency. The Series Name needs to be the same for all books in the series. Otherwise, you risk creating another series that will not be associated with the correct series.

• 5.4 Duplicate. A series can’t contain duplicate book numbers. If your books are part of a sequential series, provide a unique value in the Number field in the Series section.

• 5.5 Series Number. If a book is part of a sequential series, provide the book number in the Number field in the Series section. The number needs to be a numeric value (only use 0 to 9). Numbers can have up to two decimal places, such as 2.50. Negative numbers, numbers with more than two decimal places, and sequence-based numbers, such as 1.2.1 aren’t supported.

• 5.6 Casing and Capitalization. Series information needs to follow the same casing and capitalization guidelines as titles and subtitles.

• 5.7 Books Not in Series. Don’t include books that aren’t directly part of the series. For example, series shouldn’t contain collections, omnibuses, or enhanced versions.

• 5.8 Incomplete. All series must be complete to date, with all books currently available in that series.

Common reasons for correction or rejection are:

• 6.1 Accuracy. The subject category needs to best describe the book. Books must not be obviously misclassified.

Common reasons for correction or rejection are:

• 7.1 Accuracy. The cover art should accurately represent the book. The information on the cover should be spelled correctly and match the information provided in the metadata and book.

• 7.2 Size. The art needs to be at least 1400 pixels on the shortest side.

• 7.3 Quality. The art can’t be blurry, pixelated, mismatched, misaligned, rotated, incorrect, or have other similar quality issues. The image should include only the front cover and not the back cover.

• 7.4 Unnecessary Borders. Don’t include unnecessary borders in your art that are extraneous or weren’t part of the original cover design.

• 7.5 Setup Shots. The art can’t be a setup shot, three-quarter image, or a 3D representation of the book. Don’t use photographs of the book’s physical cover as cover art.

• 7.6 Non-unique Cover. The cover art should be unique for each title. Don’t submit duplicate images for multiple books.

• 7.7 Other. Other cover art issues that can lead to customer confusion and complaints may result in the removal of the book from Apple Books.

Common reasons for correction or rejection are:

• 8.1 Accuracy. All books should be correct and contain the content that’s indicated by their cover art and metadata.

• 8.2 Samples or Incomplete Titles. All books need to be complete and must not be missing chapters, referenced indices, footnotes, or other content. Samples and excerpts are considered incomplete books and won’t be accepted.

• 8.3 Test Book File. Don’t submit any test versions of your book with placeholder or non-final images or text.

• 8.4 Formatting. Make sure your book follows standard formatting conventions. Paragraph indents or line breaks after paragraphs are required. The book content can’t overlap or lack proper spacing.

• 8.5 Quality. Text that is part of the main body of the book shouldn’t be submitted as scanned images. Don’t submit illegible text or cut-off characters. Don’t submit images, maps, and charts that are blurry, pixelated, mismatched, misaligned, rotated, incorrect, or have other quality issues. Tables should display correctly with properly formatted rows and columns.

• 8.6 Spelling and Grammar. Spelling and grammar needs to reflect the author’s intent and style. Supported languages should always use the appropriate accents and characters. Spaces, hyphenation, and punctuation need to be grammatically correct.

• 8.7 Links. All links should be functional and lead the user to the correct location.

• 8.8 Data Collection. Books can’t transmit user data without clarifying to the user that data is being transmitted to a third party.

• 8.9 Nonfunctioning Books. Your books need to open and function as expected in the latest version of Apple Books on all devices. Please note, that interactivity in Apple Books on a Mac requires mouse or trackpad input, while interactivity on iOS devices requires touch input. JavaScript interactivity needs to take into account both touch and mouse or trackpad events, and must work on Apple Books for iOS and Mac. Also, don’t suggest functionality that cannot be supported by Apple Books. For example, Apple Books doesn’t have interactive features that enable writing on the actual page.

• 8.10 Embedded Page Numbers. Flowing EPUBs shouldn’t contain page numbers embedded in the body of the text. Use references to physical page numbers as defined via the EPUB page-list functionality. In flowing and Fixed Layout EPUBs, page-list can be used to define the page numbers that Apple Books assigns to each page. For more information about the page-list functionality, see the Apple Books Asset Guide. Embedded page numbers in Fixed Layout EPUBs need to match the page numbers generated in Apple Books.

• 8.11 Custom Samples. A custom-created sample must be provided for Read Aloud books.

• 8.12 Apple Books-Generated Table of Contents. All books need to contain a complete listing of all chapters or book sections. You’ll need to create a table of contents in your EPUB using an NCX (EPUB 2) or Navigation Document (EPUB 3).

  • EPUB 2. The NCX file contains the table of contents and is typically named “toc.ncx.” The navMap in the NCX file is used to create the table of contents in the Apple Books app and provides a direct navigational link to the appropriate sections of the book.

  • EPUB 3. The Navigation Document is typically named “toc.xhtml” and contains the toc nav element. The toc nav is used to create the table of contents and contains a list of links that lead to the appropriate sections of the book.

    For more information see the Apple Books Asset Guide.

• 8.13 Text Highlighting. For Read Aloud books, the correct text needs to be highlighted as the words are spoken.

• 8.14 Automatic Page Turning. Read Aloud books should support automatic page turning in Apple Books. For more information on creating Read Aloud books, see the Read Aloud Books section in the Apple Books Asset Guide.

Common reasons for correction or rejection are:

• 9.1 Quality. Your book’s media can’t have skips, static, corrupted files, pixelation, or other quality issues.

• 9.2 Placement. The audio or video file can’t be placed in the wrong section of the book.

• 9.3 Duplicates. Your book can’t contain duplicate audio or video files.

Common reasons for correction or rejection are:

• 10.1 Duplicates. If you provide us with two books that are exact duplicates, one of them must be removed from Apple Books. However, if one of your books is enhanced to offer more content than the standard version of the book, you must indicate the difference in the title of the book.

• 10.2 Spamming. Publishers spamming us with many versions of similar books may be blocked from distributing their books on Apple Books. This also includes books that share or use the same images, text, or other content.

The following languages are supported by Apple Books in both EPUB (.epub) and Multi-Touch (.ibooks) format. Languages that need advanced display features, such as vertical writing and Ruby, are only supported when using the EPUB version indicated below or later.