(This is cross-posted from my Deborah Cooke website.)

There’s something about the pending arrival of spring that makes me look for opportunities for improvement. I start a big clean of our house. I plan the garden for the upcoming season and we plan for any repairs. And the same is true of my writing and publishing world – it’s a good time to do some sorting, cleaning and rearranging. I also make a list of items that are due for an update or need to be done.

This year, that means I’ll be opening a new online store very soon. I’ve been building it over the past month and I’m nearly ready to fling open the proverbial doors. As a result, you’ll have a place to buy ebooks directly from me, as well as acquire some titles that aren’t available at all (or sometimes, any) retailers. My bigger digital boxed sets aren’t listed at Amazon, for example, but you’ll be able to buy a copy for your Kindle directly from me. I also have some exclusive ebooks and print books that aren’t available at retailers – these are generally editions that were created at Kickstarter with extra features. As a bonus, the ebooks sold in my online store are stored in your BookFunnel library, accessible from all your devices, and available to you forever. Look for that to launch soon. I’m doing all the ebooks first.

Setting up a store also prompts a review of my book catalogue. Last year, when I set up the Shopify store, I cleaned up all of my pricing at the same time. This year, I’ve identified a few gaps in my collections (especially for digital boxed sets) and also decided that some series need new covers. So, that gives me a list maintenance plan for (at least) the year ahead.

The other thing that’s changing is some of my ebook distribution. I have a huge catalogue and managing it becomes more time-consuming every year. Some portals are more challenging than others to navigate, or slower in maintenance mode. (When you have almost 200 book products, those moments of watching the spinner while the server churns certainly add up.) Last year, I switched all of my translations over to an aggregator, which means one firm distributes them to a number of retail portals. Wow. This works beautifully. Of course, the aggregator takes a percentage of revenue for their part, but the time savings makes that worthwhile for me. (I’d rather be writing than managing metadata. Wouldn’t you?)

So, right now, I’m in the midst of shifting all of my Apple distribution. It has been loaded directly to Apple, but now will reach the Apple iBooks store from the aggregator. Once the change is complete, it will make my life much simpler and this gives me joy.

What exactly does the shift mean?

• My Apple links will change. Each book will have a new product number (a new Apple ID) which means it will have a different link at Apple.

This results in two big changes at your end.

• Pre-orders will vanish. As the old link is retired and the new link goes live, any pre-orders on an old link will disappear. So, if you’ve already ordered The Duke’s Desire or One Knight’s Bride at Apple, your pre-order will vanish and you’ll need to order it again. I apologize for this inconvenience. (I’ve removed the links from the pages for those books this morning, and will add the new ones once they’re live. I’ll let you know when that’s done.)

I thought about leaving the pre-orders until fulfillment, but this is problematic, too. You wouldn’t be able to download updated versions of the book after the publication date, and Apple wouldn’t display the book as part of a series if the other books in the series had moved to the aggregator. (For books to be shown in a series at Apple, they have to all reach the iBooks store the same way i.e. published directly or through an aggregator.)

• Reviews will vanish. Reviews are associated with the specific product number at Apple. Unlike other portals, Apple doesn’t combine editions, so the books coming from the aggregator will be without reviews initially. This makes me very sad, but it’s a transition. Over time, they’ll gain new reviews. If you have posted reviews at Apple in the past, I would greatly appreciate your posting them again on the new editions.

One big upside is that my books will all be restored for Apple readers in the EU – without me creating duplicate editions and doing a lot of acrobatics to make it so. (The ones loaded through Apple vanished from the EU stores at the beginning of March.) This gives me joy, too.

The process isn’t immediate with a big list, of course, As of now, all of the books have been published from the aggregator to Apple. There will appear to be duplicate editions at iBooks while this transition is in progress. I’ll update the pre-orders first, then the current series, then work on the backlist. When the new links are live and searchable, I’ll update the links on my websites, then unpublish the versions at Apple. I hope to finish this up by the end of March.

There’s a peek at my spring cleaning for 2025!