How to Get My Indie Books on Barnes & Noble Nook

[Stacey Cochran]

Okay, has anybody figured out how to get our titles onto the new Nook e-reader from Barnes & Noble?

Please post links. Thanks!

[BP Myers]

I'm sure others will respond in greater detail, but you've got to sign up with www.smashwords.com (they're an e-book publisher who has signed on to become Barnes and Noble's exclusive provider of e-books.)

Due to the large number of formats they support, they seem to have fairly stringent formatting requirements, however there is a style guide free for download from their site that should make it easy (I'm contemplating it myself and have begun the process.)

Look forward to hearing other's thoughts.

[Carolyn Kephart]

At the bottom of the B&N portal is a link titled "Publisher and Author Guidelines." Clicking it takes you here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/help/cds2.asp?pid=8148

CK

[Edward C. Patterson]

OR you can ut your book on Smashwords and get into the Premium Ctalog, where the books are being sent to (at some point in time) to Brnes & Nobles, Fictionwise and Sony ePub.

Ed Patterson

[ASparrow]

Some Smashwords books just starting showing up on the Barnes and Noble site a couple of days ago. My book was approved for the premium catalog but it doesn't show up and B&N searches yet.

[Stacey Cochran]

So does uploading your book to Smashwords and Mobipocket screw up your listing on Amazon (through DTP) in any way? Are there multiple versions of the same book on a retailer's site because it was uploaded to different distributors?

[Edward C. Patterson]

Yep, A. Sparrow. I check daily on B&N, but am still waiting.

Stacy, no harm to your Amazon listing whatsoever. The only thing that makes dupication on Amazon are Mobipocket listings, so whn I upload to mobipocket I switch off the Kindle distribution in the channels section.

Ed Patterson

[Stacey Cochran]

I am going to poke around Smashwords this afternoon and see if I can figure it out.

I put a novella up on Mobipocket back on September 23 hoping to get it to show on Amazon for a penny and act as a marketing leader. It's now October 22, and it has not shown up on Amazon.

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/eBookDetails.asp?BookID=222882

Anybody have any thoughts on why my book hasn't shown up at Amazon?

[Edward C. Patterson]

Stacey:

1- You might have the mobipocket distribution switch for Amazon.com switched off. It's an all or othing thing. It's part of your profile, so if you have one book checked to appear, as a duplicate, they all will. And Vice versa.

2- Mobipocket is being phased out (we suspect) because they are not accepting new authors and since Amazon bought them, help requests are being ignored. I believe the format (.mobi) will survive, because it basically a non-DRM's .prc file. (the DRM's .prc is an AZW file).

Ed Patterson

[Stacey Cochran]

Thanks, Ed. It looks like the step I was missing was to "Activate eBook." I think I've got it now.

[Edward C. Patterson]

Thanks Stacey - I see that one of my books has come up on B&N. Next question is how do we track sales. The others are trailing because my books went into the Premium catalog in a few waves. I changed my price from $ .99 to $1.00 to accomodate Operation EBook Drop and a 100% Off Discount and dumped all my books out of the queue (except the FREE one, which is the one that's up - what I do the troops.  ). But it's good to see that one made it up there.

Ed Patterson

[Edward C. Patterson]

Well, I bought my free book at B&N and it added to the library, but it won;t download, saying "Unavailable - Technical difficulties - We are working on it." I sent Mark Coker a comment, but I guess the caltalog is still just drifting on line.

Ed Patterson

[Steve Anderson]

I'm on Smashwords and approved for Premium Distribution, so I'm anxious to see if my book makes it into B&N. I'll let you all know and you do the same!

[Sam Landstrom]

I uploaded to Smashwords, followed their styleguide, and it looks like crap. I assume I'm not approved for the premium catalog. Frustrating 'cause I can convert it into all those formats no problem using Calibre. I don't think their meat grinder grinds so well. Anyway, I'll have to pour some hours into it, 'cause it looks like it might be COMPLETELY AWESOME to be up on that nook store.

Stacey, a few things about mobipocket:
1. I'm still getting my updates through, but I might be grandfathered in.
2. Be careful about uploading one of your DTP books also as a Mobipocket. When I first put my book on mobipocket, I didn't expect it to go into Amazon. Now, I'm going to have to pull either my DTP version of MetaGame or my Mobipocket version 'cause Amazon is not down with multiple versions and will make me do it anyway. Question is which one? Mobipocket is a little suspect and has poor sales reporting. Plus, now I hear on this thread that they're going to phase it out? On the other hand, you can get your price as low as a penny (better price flexibility).

[MariaESchneider]

Sam,

Try starting from an RTF file.  It worked better for me than the other formats. 

M

[Edward C. Patterson]

I uploaded to Smashwords ages ago, long before the style-book was published. I just used the word .doc I used to create the .prc files that I sent through DTP. Now for the Premium Catalog, I had to delete all the colophon information regarding Kindle editions and replaced that with Smashwords edition (considering the Amazon BN war), but other than that, I never had a problem.

Ed Patterson

[Stacey Cochran]

2. Be careful about uploading one of your DTP books also as a Mobipocket. When I first put my book on mobipocket, I didn't expect it to go into Amazon. Now, I'm going to have to pull either my DTP version of MetaGame or my Mobipocket version 'cause Amazon is not down with multiple versions and will make me do it anyway. Question is which one? Mobipocket is a little suspect and has poor sales reporting. Plus, now I hear on this thread that they're going to phase it out? On the other hand, you can get your price as low as a penny (better price flexibility).

Thanks for the heads up, Sam. My plan was to publish a novella on Mobipocket and price it at a penny, so that it could act as a marketing leader on Amazon. The book I published is not available through DTP (because I didn't want to run into the conflict of having two versions of the same book), so it shouldn't be an issue.

I went through Mobipocket Creator yesterday and discovered that I had not "activated my eBook" for distribution through their distribution chain. It was only available directly from Mobipocket.

I think it's now activated, and so will see if it shows up in a week or two.

If it does show up, it'll be a neat experiment to see if I can get it to act as a marketing leader that'll drive up sales for The Colorado Sequence and CLAWS. 

[Carolyn Kephart]

I see that one of my books has come up on B&N. Next question is how do we track sales.
Ed Patterson

Now that my books are up there too (I just checked...the cover images aren't visible yet, so I assume they're still working on the listing), I'm asking the same question!

Conga time!

CK

[Edward C. Patterson]

Carolyn:

I wonder if yours are purchaseable yet. Mine have technical difficulties. Maybe I'll try to make a purchase.

Ed Patterson

[Carolyn Kephart]

Carolyn:

I wonder if yours are purchaseable yet. Mine have technical difficulties. Maybe I'll try to make a purchase.

Ed Patterson

Mine both have the 'Buy Now' link, and can be purchased/sampled; no cover images yet, however, and my short story 'Regenerated' hasn't made the list.

I just set up my B&N account, and am in the process of filling out my profile.

CK

[Edward C. Patterson]

Yours works. Mine don;t yet. I'll ask Mark. Bought Wysard as a test.

Ed Patterson

[Sam Landstrom]

Sam,

Try starting from an RTF file.  It worked better for me than the other formats. 

M

Maria, an excellent suggestion! Thank you. Unforutnately, it didn't take. I think it has to do with all the italics I use. Just messes up on it. The content will look good for a while and then all of a sudden the flipp'n font changes! I made everything New York Times as recommended by the style guide.

Here's the URL to the free online view in case anyone knows what chicken needs to be sacrificed in order to get this to work: http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/4400/1/metagame
In the meantime, I'll poke around for more ways to fix it.

[MariaESchneider]

My "Catch and Honest Thief" just showed up on BN!!!!  Woot!  Haven't tried to order it yet.  

http://books.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?SRT=R&WRD=catch+an+honest+thief&SZE=10&DREF=2207

Edit:  I haven't figured out how to tell which formats are available.  Or if it just ships in one format...oh, the exploring that must be done...

Sage, which was out first...is showing up yet.  Just goes to show that we have no control, none at all...

Sam,

I had issues with formatting--would work great for a while and then all of a sudden be messed up.  Look at it in HTML--LOOK at the CODE, not the html and see if you can spot what is getting left in.  It took me a while of looking at the mark up language to see that some codes were not deleted despite my changing or deleting them.  Once you do that, you can sometime go in and actually hunt for the code (like \t for hunting down rogue tabs).  Won't work in all cases.  I had to hand change some of the html code in one of my files because I could not make it take any other way.

Luck!
Maria

[MariaESchneider]

I'm messing around with the Barnes and Noble site.  Hmm.  I selected "download a sample."  Apparently this put the sample in your BN elibrary.  Took me a while to FIND that.  I think you have to go to "Your BN."   Then I couldn't figure out how to look at it without downloading their reader.  So that's what I'm in the process of doing.  It looks like it's going to be mobi reader or something similar...

Edit:  Wow.  This is amazingly complicated.  I downloaded their reader.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to read the sample.  Several "Free" titles came with the download app.  This isn't quite what I expected...

Edit 2:  Okay, got the sample and it's readable!  Took a bit.  I had to right click on the book to find "read" but even that took a while to show up.  I'm not sure how it would work with a different reader (can I use the readers I already have downloaded if I buy the book?)  But Thief looks decent.  There's some blank pages, but I noticed some blank pages with Dracula (one of the freebies) as well. 

Oookay.  Progress!

[pidgeon92]

^^^ I just downloaded the Reader as well.

I chose a sample, and it said to open the Reader and download the sample, which made no sense. I finally found the web-based my e-book library, and then had to click download again, and I finally got a save dialog box.

I installed the Reader on my iMac, and found that it added an eReader folder to my documents folder. Their FAQ is not so good, and the manual says nothing about downloading samples or e-books. There is no interface between the Reader and the B&N ebook store. I would not call this user friendly.