Move Carefully To Nook Publishing

If you publish through B&N Pubit, you probably received the email yesterday with their big announcement for self-publishers.

Who Is Target Audience

B&N is replacing the Pubit program with Nook Publishing. To me, this seems designed to attract self-publishers who currently do not publish through B&N, but use an aggregator or intermediary like Smashwords.

Most of the touted features involve editing, formatting, and publishing while directly on the site rather than creating the pub file and uploading it.

Plus

The new publishing system is supposed to migrate all your existing Pubit books to the new program without losing rank, reviews, sales stats, etc. They also promise special promotion for selected books as well as author support. (Perhaps I'll file that under "believe it when I see it.")

Minus

If you already have books you published through Pubit, be cautious since this is a new program. Some authors have been beta testers for several months. They sent in suggestions for changes, but I don't think those changes have been made yet.

Biggest Problem

The biggest problem is for those with books already in the Pubit system. Anecdotal evidence from those who jumped in as soon as they received the email says that once you migrate a project from Pubit to Nook Publishing, you can no longer upload a replacement manuscript file or make changes to the manuscript, even if you remove the project from sale.

To make changes to a manuscript that you have already put on sale -- that was originally published with Pubit and migrated to Nook Publishing -- you must download the ePub file, create a New Project, and upload it as a Manuscript File. Then you need to provide the Book Details again.

Takeaway Truth

With existing books in the Pubit program, you might want to wait and let others test Nook Publishing first.