Late in June, Barnes & Noble announced a new initiative of Nook Press, its self-publishing service for authors: it now offers a free print-on-demand service that makes print books available for sale at BarnesandNoble.com.
Such a service more or less competes against Amazon’s CreateSpace (also free) and IngramSpark ($49 per title), which can get authors’ books available and on sale in BarnesandNoble.com. However, B&N’s print-on-demand service offers one carrot that the others don’t: the potential of in-store distribution of an author’s print books at the largest bookselling chain in the United States.
So, is it a game changer? Not really. Here’s the deal.
- First, the self-published title must qualify for consideration, which requires selling at least 1,000 ebook units through Nook in the past year. (We confirmed with Barnes & Noble that sales have to be through Nook specifically.)
- Once the ebook qualifies, then the print book—only if uploaded and available through Nook Press’s POD platform—may be reviewed by Barnes & Noble’s Small Press Department and one of the store’s corporate category buyers.
- Assuming your print book gets the thumbs-up from the internal teams at Barnes & Noble, then it may be placed in-store on a local, regional, or national level. Worst case, that could mean no more than a couple titles placed on store shelves in your city.
- If your ebook has sold over 500 units in the past year, then you “may qualify for consideration” for an in-store event.
These guidelines could be viewed cynically as a helpful fallback for Barnes & Noble employees to tell any troublesome self-published author who walks through their door: “Sorry, we don’t consider self-published titles unless you meet these specific qualifications.”
As far as the finer details of their print-on-demand service, when we tried Nook’s Quick Quote tool, we received an estimate of $5 per unit for a 6×9 black-and-white paperback that falls between 201 and 250 pages. CreateSpace quotes a 6×9 paperback of 250 pages at $3.85.
When we originally published this article, no information about the payment split between the author and B&N had been made available to authors in advance of enrolling in the service, but B&N later followed up with details. Authors will receive 55 percent of the list price they set, minus the printing cost. Example: List price of $12.99 x 55 percent minus $5.06 in printing cost = $2.08 to the author.
Bottom line: Professional self-published authors have long had the ability to set up in-store events at Barnes & Noble, especially when their books are available through Ingram. (That doesn’t necessarily mean the store managers are welcoming or seeking out such authors.) Established self-published authors also are no strangers to Barnes & Noble in-store distribution. We question why Barnes & Noble wouldn’t proactively reach out to authors selling well through Nook to take advantage of an untapped sales opportunity for print. Maybe they already do, but regardless, Nook Press’s print-on-demand services hardly seem necessary for that to happen. Overall, we’re puzzled as to why B&N would make an investment in this type of service at this stage.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
