KDP Print versus Nook Press

One of my most popular blog posts is from 2016, when I compared using Amazon's CreateSpace to using Barnes & Noble's Nook Press Print. CreateSpace is gone now, replaced by KDP Print, but I recently published Tribes as a paperback on both KDP Print and on Nook Press, so below is a comparison of print publishing via Amazon and Barnes and Noble using the versions of those platforms in use today.

Both platforms have fully integrated print and ebook publication. Each title appears once in the author's list of Projects (B&N) or on the Bookshelf  (KDP), with the ability to add it in a second format and neither one makes you create the ebook first.. Basically, most of the features/options below apply to both ebook and print formats.

Pre-order

Nook Press offered the choice of putting the book on sale now or using pre-order but it didn't give me a chance to say when it would be available. After processing finished, I saw this message on my projects page.

• Your pre-order print book Tribes has a publication date of March 26, 2019. You must upload your final files by March 11, 2019. If you’re unable to do so, you must push your publication date or your book will go off sale.

And that was that! So pre-ordering was available on B&N but without a lot of options.

With KDP, pre-ordering is an option only for Kindle books. It does let you set the date, though. In fact, the pre-order option is the only way you can launch the book with the X-Ray feature enabled from the start. 

Categories:

KDP only allows two categories but it was very easy to add both.

Nook says it allows 5 categories but after I added the first, I could not figure out how to add more.  Also, selecting a category required me to specify three levels: category, subcategory, and sub-subcategory.


ISBN:

Both KDP Print and Nook Press provide free ISBNs for print books, but if you use their ISBN, it cannot be used anywhere else. I always buy my own ISBNs and register them to my imprint, Cracked Mirror Press. I want the paperback to have one single ISBN.

In the past, B&N has rejected the ISBN I used on Amazon KDP, but this time  I had not yet clicked publish on Amazon when I set up the Nook version. Also, I didn't select "expanded distribution" on KDP, which causes Amazon to make the book available on other online bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, Consequently, I was able to use my own ISBN for the Nook Press version.

Formats:

Both platforms offer paperback, but Nook Press can also do hardback. I have no idea of the requirements because I have never used that option, but it is there.

One advantage B&N has is the "Buy online, pick up in store" option that shows up on the product page. It's only really an advantage if a reader lives near a store with an Espresso Book Machine to print the book, but it's there.

Pricing:

Amazon stated my cost to print (which is the cost of author copies) as $4.44 and B&N estimated it as $5.00. This does not cover shipping, of course.

Proof copies:

Both platforms allow you to order a proof copy; the one from KDP had a "Not for resale" stripe on the front cover, but the Nook one did not.

Linking the print and ebook versions:

Both platforms allow you to create a new version of an existing title in a new format just by clicking a button on the entry for the existing format. I had, in fact, pulled the Nook Press version of Tribes from sale before I published the Nook press paperback, but it was still in the system (it was, in fact, still for sale, because before I published it to B&N directly, I made it available to B&N via Smashwords; this was years ago, well before I published it directly on Nook Press, I had quite a time getting that version pulled from sale). .Anyway, B&N automatically added the Nook book description and other details about the ebook when I clicked the link to create the print book .On the B&N product page, it showed one entry for Tribes but with two formats. So, linking product pages was no problem on the Nook end.

On Amazon, for some reason even though I created the paperback by clicking the "Create paperback" button on the Kindle version's entry, it did not link the product pages. If you searched Amazon for the title and author without specifying Kindle, it showed both formats but with two entries, like this:

If you limited the search to the Kindle store, you would see only the Kindle version, with no indication a paperback exists. Likewise, clicking one entry brings up that product page with no link to the other version. Amazon claims linking will happen automatically within 72 hours, but I have always had to ask them to link the books, which is what I had to do for Tribes. It didn't take them long and now it looks like this:

Conclusion

In terms of ease of use, the two platforms are actually pretty similar. Also of note is that the PDFs for the interior and the cover worked fine on both platforms. Of course, in both cases, I had selected white paper instead of cream, which I suspect is why the covers worked for both.

How my recent promotion illustrates ebook market share

The Sixth Discipline, the first book of my two-book Haven series is always free, thanks to price-matching. Smashwords lets authors make ebooks available for free, and since that platform can also be used to push the book to iBooks, Nook, and Kobo, as well as smaller vendors (but not Kindle or Google Play), that means self-publishers can make books free on those platforms (and Nook now allows free books to be published on their platform, too). When an ebook is free elsewhere, Amazon will price-match the Kindle version. As you can see by the results below, the Kindle version matters a lot!

The Sixth Discipline was published in 2011, and had its big run in 2013 when I got a BookBub promotion for it and gave away 20,000 copies. Since then, its distrbution numbers (you can't call them sales figures when the book is free) have slowly dwindled. There are a lot of free books, many of them newer, and in a good month, I had been giving away maybe 20-30 Kindle copies, and 10-20 on all other platforms, combined. 

Update:  B&N reporting was very slow and just came in, so I changed the numbers from the original post to reflect those "sales."

The promotion consisted of paying for an entry in The Fussy Librarian daily "free books" email. That email lists links for up to five vendors. The results are in, and for the day of the promotion and the day after, I gave away this many copies:

Kindle =  377
Nook = 8
iBooks = 32
Kobo = 0
Google = 19

A few things jumped out at me. The most obvious is the dominance of the Kindle market. I gave away six times more Kindle copies than all the others combined. The lack of Kobo copies wasn't really surprising since  have never had big numbers on Kobo, but only 8 copies for Nook was telling. I do't think B&N is doing at all well with the Nook.  Also interesting is that Google Books' total was more than double Nook's, while iBooks beat out Google and Nook combined.

And of course, the whole point of paying money to give away a book is that I hope to sell the sequel, No Safe Haven.  Time will tell how that goes.

Turnabout is now in other ebook stores!

I always launch new ebooks in KDP Select, which means they're only available on Amazon, but eventually, I let that enrollment expire and launch in other stores.  That has happened with my newest novel Turnabout, now available as follows:

Buy links

US Kindle store (also available in every other Kindle store)
iBooks

B&N Nook, 

Kobo

Smashwords

Google Books  

And as a paperback: Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Updated: Finally got Google Books to accept my file; or rather, their tech staff did. I have to say both B&N and Google Books could make their interface easier to use.

From the first Amazon review:

"This is a fascinating story, looking at a lot of society’s issues from a different view point, but still exploring them in a very interesting way. Buxton creates some wonderful characters to tell this story. Marjani and Esi are two that stand out amongst a cast of exceptionally well written characters that don’t just tell this story, but through their portrayals give us a true understanding of what it is like to live in this alternate universe.
Buxton has also done an interesting job of creating Makoro, building this alternate universe and timeline, and how it has evolved under such different circumstances."

And, as a bonus, I dropped the ebook price to $2.99, at least for now.

Saronna's Gift is available on Barnes & Noble!

As of now, Saronna's Gift is no longer exclusively a Kindle ebook.  I loaded an epub version to the Nook Press platform and successfully published it to the Nook store. I had held off on leaving KDP Select for one additional 90-day cycle because the book was doing well with Kindle Unlimited (KU) borrows, but that was tapering off, and so I went ahead and launched it on B&N.

I plan to also load the book to Smashwords soon, so that I can make it available on iBooks and Kobo, and other vendors.  One reason I started with the Nook platform is that the print version is already available on Barnes & Noble, so with Amazon, this will make two retail stores that offer the book in both ebook and hard copy formats.

And there's one nice thing about KDP; Amazon is still reporting on (and thus presumably paying me for) pages of Saronna's Gift read by users who borrowed it while it was in KU. I'll be curious how long it takes for that to stop completely. I expect people borrow books but don't read them right away, so it might be weeks or even a month or two. 

eBook Self-publishing Platforms: go wide or go narrow?

Barnes & Noble has not done that well with their Nook ereader and tablet sales, certainly not compared to Kindle sales. Of course, like Amazon, they offer an app version for reading on other devices, like PCs, iPads, Android tablets, and phones. The Windows 8 version I have on my laptop is actually pretty nice, once you figure out that you have to right-click to get to the menus.  Interestingly, Nook sales of my books have crept up lately, and they're now about the same (or sometimes better) than my Kindle sales, which was surprising in light of the reported recent bad Nook news.

Barnes & Noble now offers a nice direct-to-Nook self-publishing platform in Nook Press.  One thing it offers is the ability to edit the epub file, and republish a corrected version if you need to. Amazon offers something similar, but only if you uploaded an HTML file, not if you uploaded a Kindle-formatted *.azw file. Some of my B&N books are actually coming from Smashwords, because before Nook Press, the B&N platform didn't offer much of an advantage. Ergo, only No Safe Haven, Tribes, and King of Trees are on the Nook Press platform itself; the others are being published  to the Nook store via Smashwords, which lets you push your books to many vendors. And of course, The Sixth Discipline has to stay as a Smashwords book because that's why it can be free.  Like Amazon's KDP platform, B&N's Nook Press won't let you make a book free forever. Smashwords does, and B&N and most other retailers make their price whatever the Smashwords price is, even if that price is zero cents.  

The one self-publishing platform I have not tried is Kobo's Writing Life. My Kobo sales via Smashwords have never encouraged me to make the effort to check them out. But whether you use individual retailers' platforms or Smashwords, I would urge all self-published authors to consider carefully before sticking with any one platform exclusively, even Kindle. The more outlets you have, the better your chances are of finding readers, and that's why we're all in this game.  

iBooks sales versus Barnes & Noble Nook sales

In an earlier post about my use of a BookBub promotion  back in May, I mentioned that I was guessing that Apple didn't seem to report how many free books they give away any more, but actually, they do. It's just it takes a lot longer to get free book numbers from Apple than it does sales numbers. Interestingly, since my May and early June sales of No Safe Haven (the sequel to the free book) were higher for iBooks than for B&N, I was assuming that I had given away more free copies of The Sixth Discipline on that platform than on B&N. Not so! I actually gave away noticeably fewer (only a little over 2,500 in iBooks, versus 4,000 on B&N). So what does that mean?

I could hypothesize either that there are more free books on the iBooks platform, which makes it harder for an unknown author to stand out, or that there are simply fewer iBooks customers. But either way, iBooks readers have a higher follow-through on actually reading books they get for free. I know from my own experience and from anecdotal evidence that lots of books downloaded for free are never even opened, let alone read. You'll notice I'm assuming that sales of the sequel will be higher for folks who read the first book!

On the other hand, in July, I had higher sales numbers on Nook than on iBooks, so go figure.

Where Magic Rules is now in iBooks and on Nook

It looks like Apple is the fastest of the Smashwords retailers, as the fantasy novella Where Magic Rules is now for sale in the iBooks store for 99¢. That means it took just over a week for the book to get to Apple and be put up for sale (counting from when it made the premium catalog, a requirement for shipping to other retailers).  The novella has also "shipped" to Barnes & Noble, but I don't yet see it for sale in the Nook store.

Added Saturday:  And now the novella is in the Nook store! Looks like Barnes & Noble was behind Apple only by a day.

The Sixth Discipline is free on the Nook!

I just checked Barnes & Noble, and The Sixth Discipline is now free in the Nook store! That means Nook came in second to iBooks in the race to match the Smashwords price change. Also, it means you can make a book free on Nook if you use Smashwords to publish. You cannot do that via the Pub-It platform, which, like KDP, sets 99¢ as the lowest level price authors can charge.

Any Nook users out there, head on over and pick it up now!

A whole crop of new eReaders!

Barnes & Noble just announced a new touch-screen e-ink Nook ereader with a Pearl screen for only $139. In an amazing coincidence, that's the same price as a wi-fi-only Kindle, unless you get the cheaper one with ads.  Ooops! I mean the one with special offers. -)

The new Nook looks pretty cool! And now they are claiming superior battery life over the Kindle. No mention of how it competes with Sony Reader Touch, who now has the dubious distinction of being almost $100 more expensive than the new Nook for what looks like the same features.

And then there's the Kobo touch screen  which Border will sell in the US for $129. It's like ereaders are coming out of the woodwork.

Personally, I'm not that enamored of touch screens in an ereader.  One of things I like about the Kindle is the one-handed reading, which, with the cat in my lap (see his photo in the right-hand column) is all I can manage.  I can hold the Kindle in my right hand and press the Next Page button with my thumb with no problem. That works while standing on the subway, too. I have used my husband's iPad to read, and while the color screen is fabulous for short term reading, I get tired of needing two hands to read.

But the best thing about new ereaders is it shows companies like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo are invested in digital reading.  Remember it's not printing that makes a book; it's the story that counts. And ereaders mean that reading is now more convenient, which will (hopefully) mean that people do it more often. 

Do It Yourself Publishing

Well, I now have two books out as ebooks. In case anyone is interested, I thought I would report on my experience with the self-publishing process.

So far, I can report several facts, as seen from my perspective (even facts can have perspective):

1) Amazon sells a lot more ebooks than anyone else; of course, I don't have much to go by yet, as almost the only people who have bought my books are people who know me, IRL or online. But I gave my family and friends three choices and 90% of them picked door #1, Amazon. This may not be typical as probably 2/3 of my friends and family don't have ereaders yet— hard to believe, I know -) — and ereaders determine a lot of folks' choices.

2) It pays to get a pro to convert your MS Word file. I used a company called 52 Novels. I think it's really one guy with his wife helping out, but he did an excellent job. I am very pleased with the appearance of the ebook. Plus, he took care of embedding the cover and creating a table of contents, so everything links as it should. The Kindle offers a nice feature that lets you jump chapter-to-chapter by pressing the right and left sides of the 5-way controller, but it only works if the chapters are coded as chapters. This works in my books, but not in a lot of traditionally published novels.

3) Smashwords, Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), and Barnes and Noble's PubIt are all very easy to use, if you have your files in the right shape. This is where it really paid to have the pro bundle everything up for you. Smashwords was actually the fastest to get the book up, with PubIt next, and then KDP. A nice plus for Smashwords is they will push their books out to other platforms. I don't recommend using them to push to B&N or Amazon, since both vendors provide an easy-to-use interface that lets you have more control over how the book will look, but Smashwords is one way to get a self-published book into iBooks (although you need an ISBN and really good formatting to do that).

4) Covers matter! Even though the book is digital, it still needs a cover. For one thing, it's what ebookstore browsers see when shopping on the web, so it needs to be eye-catching in both thumbnail size and in book-size. I paid a graphic designed to create my covers.

5) There is writing the book (write, edit, proof, get feedback, rinse and repeat). There is creating the ebook (getting a pro to do both the cover and the conversion, in my case); you need to be sure you allow for a review step, to see the book as it will look and proof it one last time. There is loading the ebook (the easy part, if you have the right files, all ready to go). And finally there is marketing. That is the hard part. In order for strangers to buy your book, they have to know it's there, and have a sense that they want to read it. Writing the blurb is not the end of marketing! I'm working on getting reviewers, even while I'm still proofing my next book Tribes (not part of the Haven series).