If you logged into PubIt recently you may have gotten this pop up:
But what is it talking about? Nook Press is Barnes & Nobles new self publishing platform. To tell you a little about it, here is the email they sent out to users today:
Dear Publisher,
Over the past two and a half years, our working partnership has made PubIt! a resounding success. Because of PubIt! publishers like you, we’ve been able to offer millions of NOOK® customers exciting new content from independent authors.
Our success is your success, and we’ve been working hard to bring you a platform that takes our partnership—and self-publishing—to the next level. Today, we’re pleased to introduce to you NOOK Press, our new and improved self-publishing platform!
NOOK Press is self-publishing made simple. With the NOOK Press platform you can write, edit, collaborate, publish and sell your eBooks all in one place—at no cost.
The NOOK Press platform features these exciting new tools and services:
- NEW! One-stop Publishing Solution: Write, edit, format and publish your eBooks in our web-based platform, instantly reaching millions of NOOK customers within 72 hours.
- NEW! Easy ePub Creation and Editing: Upload your manuscript file and make changes directly in NOOK Press. Editing and previewing in one session saves you time and effort.
- NEW! Integrated Collaboration: Collaborate with editors, copyeditors, and friends, allowing them to review and comment on your manuscript without ever leaving NOOK Press.
- Visual Sales Reporting: Our new visually-enhanced sales report makes tracking your sales progress even easier.
- NEW! Instant Chat: Live Chat customer service is now available to quickly answer your questions Monday through Friday between 9am-9pm EST.
- Pathway to Passionate Readers Everywhere: Publish once and reach millions of customers using NOOK and NOOK Reading Apps in the US and UK and more coming soon.
- Same Great Terms: Our favorable PubIt! business terms and commitment to a transparent retail partnership remain unchanged.
NOOK Press Presents
Our booksellers are currently hand-selecting titles for a new merchandising program: NOOK Press Presents — Our Top 100 Picks for Summer. NOOK Press Presents will be an ongoing merchandising channel for independently published content that comes to NOOK through NOOK Press.Once you moved your existing PubIt! account to NOOK Press your titles will be considered for this program, which will promote books across the NOOK ecosystem.
Get started with NOOK Press today! Click here to be guided through a quick, one-time account syncing process. Once completed your PubIt! account, sales, payment, and title information will automatically appear in NOOK Press. To find out more about the changeover to NOOK Press, see our support page here.
We’re excited to turn the page together on a new chapter in self-publishing!
Sincerely,
The NOOK Press Team
If you go to the NOOK Press page – https://www.nookpress.com/ – and scroll down to the very bottom, you can find links to some Frequently Asked Questions. Among them are a few I found interesting.
One thing they tout is the manuscript editor, however:
Can I edit my old PubIt! titles in the Manuscript Editor?
No. You will not be able to access the Manuscript Editor for any titles you created in your PubIt! account. If you need to upload a replacement manuscript file for a title that was created in PubIt!, you can go back to PubIt! and upload your new manuscript file there.
Perhaps not a big deal except that the pop up clearly says PubIt is being phased out in a few months. What happens after that?
Another concern I have is this:
Can I edit my Project after I put it On Sale?
NOOK Book Details can be changed after you put your Project On Sale as a NOOK Book, but at this time, the NOOK Book itself cannot be updated or replaced. To update or replace a NOOK Book that is currently On Sale, you would need to take the Project Off Sale, download the ePub from the Project page, create a new Project, upload the downloaded ePub or create a new Manuscript in that Project, and then put that new Project On Sale as a NOOK Book
Essentially this says to me that if you need to upload a new version ie. you’ve fixed typos, or you’ve added a preview of your next book, or you’ve just updated your bio and your list of “other books by” you will lose your reviews and your ratings. Not a very cool prospect in my book. Of course, it does say “at this time”, so perhaps this is something that is coming in the future?
Because of those two questions I have not switched my PubIt account over yet, however I have shot off an email to the NOOK Press support and will happily share whatever they answer me.
Have you switched over yet? What has your experience been?
Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors 
Reblogged this on Ramblings of Jen.
That doesn’t sound like a smart move until they work the bugs out. Hopefully they fix it before PubIt! is phased out. Will it affect books that they list through Smashwords?
From what I understand this only affects books you publish directly through them since we edit the smashwords distributed copies and such on smashwords itself.
Thanks. That’s one less thing I have to worry about now. 🙂
I thought Smashwords had something going with B&N so that anything uploaded through Smashwords was automatically featured on B&N’s Nook library.
Yep! This only applies to people who use PubIt directly. If you’re through Smashwords then you don’t need to worry 🙂
Good to know! I do mine through Smashwords.
Good! I hate worrying. It’s such a waste of time and energy.
Sounds interesting. Anything that makes the process easier sounds good to me, though, and since I don’t have any titles with PubIt, that’s not a problem. Sounds like making changes would be a pain, though…
Yep, if you’re just through Smashwords then no worries. I have started recently uploading to PubIt directly just to get the books there faster, so we’ll see how it goes.
Reblogged this on Jill James, romance author and commented:
Self-publishing is changing at the speed of light, I swear!
I switched only because of the “phase out” aspect of the whole thing. I figure if they’re phasing it out, my only other option is to go through Smashwords or the D2D (not familiar with that one) to distribute to B&N, and I need the B&N money to help make my voucher payments to the government. Smashwords pays out two weeks too late for me to make the government deadline, and I don’t like having the IRS breathing down my throat. So I didn’t really see a choice on my end.
I’m not a fan of some things in the new Nook thing, the whole changing the file thing being one of them. I expect them to change that feature, though, when they get flooded with emails.
I just uploaded a new book today and it was a lot easier than what I’d done through in the past on PubIt. (The biggest improvement was the preview of the ebook. You no longer have to click as if you’re on the Nook. You can click on the web and make your font smaller to check for page breaks that shouldn’t be there, etc. That process used to take me an hour but only took me ten minutes this time.) However, I was very careful and went slowly to make sure I did everything right since I know I can’t go back and change anything. And you won’t only lose reviews, but you’ll lose rankings, and those are tough as nails to get going.
But as for being user friendly, I think it’s a lot smoother than PubIt. You can upload Word and rtf files now instead of only epubs. I like that too since epubs aren’t my strong point.
As for switching over, that was extremely easy. I clicked to switch, logged in for the new thing using my PubIt email and password and there I was in the new system. It took under five minutes. I do like the graphs they have showing your sales at a glance over the past months and current month.
Thanks for sharing, Ruth! I imagine we’ll have to all switch over eventually whether we want to or not. I do think some of the things look more user friendly. Hopefully they get the update issue worked out.
Ruth, I’ve always uploaded Word files to PubIt rather than ePub files. They convert them. Unless something has changed in the last few months.
That’s right. They did. I just gave up on using Word when I kept getting abnormal page breaks. I did epub after that, but I should try Word in Nook Press and see if those page breaks are as they should be.
From what I read on the Kindleboards, someone emailed Nook Press about the file updating (something that concerns me as well) and they said they’re working on that. I don’t see why they wouldn’t get that going since we end up making changes to our files at some point.
Hmm. I’ve never noticed any unusual page breaks in the previews, but then I have never actually downloaded and tried the files ON a NOOK or NOOK capable device… Maybe I should…
It was something in my formatting that caused it. I could upload to Amazon and Smashwords without the problem showing up, but PubIt was more sensitive to my errors. LOL I even had Stephannie format for me and it didn’t help. I don’t know what I did in the original file to cause the problem but even the notepad method didn’t work. The only thing that resolved it was going through Word Atlantis and saving it as an epub file. I’ve never heard of this happening to anyone else, so you’re probably safe.
That is so strange! Though I;ve heard of all kinds of odd ball things! I’m fighting with Amazon right now over a ToC LOL!
Ugh on the ToC fight. I hate those. Good luck!
Cool! Thanks for sharing this info 🙂
Rohan.
You’re very welcome 🙂
I haven’t switched over for the very reason you mentioned…you can’t upload a new manuscript. I have a book that I know needs some changes. I’ll be very interested in what you find out from your email inquiry.
Still waiting for an answer, sadly.
Barnes & Noble. I read this and thought they’ve made another bad move. And I’m sorry. No company the size of B&N is going to ‘hand select’ books.
What they will “hand select” will be sales numbers, IMHO. They’ll likely just pull up the top sellers and give them even more exposure, so I don;t imagine it will be helpful to me, LOL!
I agree. My first thought when I read that part was that they’d give more exposer to the best selling books. I don’t know why they’d think this would be a “wow” factor.