There seems to be a serious case of ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ in the publishing industry. Last week saw the announcement that Amazon had bought online bookclub Goodreads, hot on the heels of the launch of the similar Bookish site, backed by the big guns of the industry who are Amazon’s competitors.
In another round of corporate fisticuffs, Barnes & Noble have put their eBook dukes up against Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) by launching NOOK Press, their own self-publishing service.
‘NOOK Press authors bring variety, new voices and value to NOOK’s ecosystem that allows us to continue to offer our customers a great selection of noteworthy eBooks by independent authors at unbeatable prices,’ said Theresa Horner, Vice President of Digital Content at NOOK Media.
There’s long been a veiled, if not outright, disdain for self-publishing in the book industry, but all that seems to be changing with booksellers embracing self-publishing with a fervour usually reserved for lonely Grandmothers. And why not? By doing so they snuff out the middleman – the publishers – enticing bigger returns for themselves.
If the figures they’ve supplied are anything to go by, the stigma surrounding self-publishing is fast evaporating, with readers bypassing the gatekeepers in the major publishing houses when selecting titles.
According to Barnes & Noble, customer demand for independent content is increasing, with 30 per cent of NOOK customers purchasing self-published content each month, which represents 25 per cent of NOOK Book monthly sales.
But NOOK Press really isn’t anything all that new, in essence it’s a rebranding of PubIt!, Barnes & Noble’s original self-publishing platform, which has been operating for the past two and a half-years. What is different is the incorporation of a web-based authoring tool, integrated collaboration (allowing authors to invite friends and editors to read and comment on their projects), sales reporting and merchandising opportunities.
‘We’re thrilled to bring all the new and exciting features of NOOK Press to existing PubIt! authors and new writers looking for a quick, effective and free one-stop self-publishing platform that delivers high-quality eBooks to millions of book-loving NOOK customers,’ says Horner.
Some of those new and exciting features being touted are the ‘Live Chat’ function, which offers support throughout the publishing process during the week, 9am to 9pm EST; a new easier to use content creation system to turn manuscripts into an ePub file; visually-enhanced sales report for authors to track daily sales and month-by-month progress; and marketing and merchandise opportunities via the use of the NOOK Press channel on NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ tablets.
How the NOOK HD tablet integrates the NOOK Press experience, particularly the social side, will be interesting to compare to Amazon’s inevitably and ensuing synthesis of the Goodreads site into their Kindle device.
But the real question is what do authors who chose to self-publish through NOOK Press get? This burgeoning market is serious bucks, and the people creating the content are going to want their share. So here’s the breakdown for all you would-be Matthew Rileys.
NOOK Press’ compensation model means that authors who price their titles between $2.99 and $9.99 receive 65 per cent of the list price for sold content. Titles priced $2.98 or less, or $10 or more, will receive 40 percent of the list price. Unlike Kindle Direct Publishing, which either offers a 35 per cent royalty, or 70 per cent royalty for sale within certain territories, NOOK Press has no ‘delivery rate’, which takes into account the digital size of the content. For instance, if you sell your KDP title on Amazon.com, and you’ve chosen the 70 per cent royalty option, you get charged US $0.15 for every megabyte transferred.
Hopefully all this competition between NOOK Press and KDP will lead to a better deal for authors.
