A word or two about retail "partner" programs.  In creating my retail accounts, I found Amazon.com and Lulu.com to be the best and fastest providers for the a new book product from those I have tried.  Both were online within a very short period, and I started taking orders from Amazon the same day.  I found Lulu later on, and although the upload file was more temperamental, their interface was the easiest to use.   I am new to Lulu and have not had any sales yet.

Google surprised me.  With all their resources you would think they would have a better system.  Uploading a change to a book cover - an essential element in tweaking the marketing campaign - is absurd.  You have to replace the entire book file.  After having some issues with this elsewhere, I am reluctant to do this, so have left my flat book cover in place instead of the very cool 3D version.

A word to e-book providers - the thumbnail used to illustrate your book should be a separate file from the cover.  Reading 'page 1' as your thumbnail is something I would expect from some techy programmer, not a marketing professional.

I set up a Pay Pal account to handle the PDF sales, and that went very smoothly.  I deliver the content from my own website.

Apple still is not in the game, and that is a disappointment.  The ability to create a strict format to my design specifications is the entire point behind the iBook Author program, and The Juno Letters is optimized for that platform.  We are in week 3 and still nowhere.  For some reason, they accepted the book as I submitted it on the free site, but still have not approved it for the pay site, finding some 'issues' to fix- which I did and sent myself back into stasis.  I will be calling tech support again tomorrow.  In my 30 years as an Apple customer I have never seen an application so poorly implemented as their book upload program.

I am going to start the email program without Apple iBookstore being operational - cannot wait any longer.

I have a letter going to the Apple board tomorrow, for what it is worth.