Happy Monday, 3.5 readers.
Wait. Are Mondays ever happy?
Interesting article in The Columbus Dispatch.
Barnes and Noble, which has allowed self-publishers to sell their books on their site to Nook users (Nook being B + N’s version of the Amazon Kindle) will let self-publishers sell books in their brick and mortar stores.
According to the article above, there is a catch, namely, that the author must have sold 1,000 books in the past year.
On the surface, it sounds like a great development for the self-publishing community.
I’ve yet to self-publish, but I’ve read (on blogs) and heard (on various podcasts) that there are a number of self-publishers who are iffy on Nook, they just don’t see the sales that they see on Amazon or other sites.
Still, getting your book in a bookstore…that’s the dream of every author, isn’t it? Might as well reach out and grab it while bookstores are still around.
My gut tells me this is a recognition that print media is rapidly going the way of self-publishing. More writers are bypassing the traditional publishing run around by building their blogs, their social media, their online fan base and as that continues, physical bookstores will need to get print copies of those self-published books into their stores to keep sales up.
That’s my take on it. I can’t think of any other reason why they’d do it.
What say you, 3.5 readers?
If you are a self-publisher, will you try this out?
Bookshelf Battle 
This is going to be interesting as I do work part-time for Barnes….
Cool. Do you have any info? Is my guess right? That they’re realizing the future is self-publishing or bust?
I honestly don’t know. Just saw this news today, so it’s a complete shock to me. Its probably because (like you said) that some new authors are pushing away from the big publishing companies and are doing self-publishing or small press publishing.
My first reaction is that I’ll still go with Amazon in the beginning but eventually I’ll sign up for BN’s program just to achieve a lifelong dream of seeing a book written by me on the shelf in a bookstore.
Sounds like they had a good idea here.
From what I understand you have to sell exclusively on Nook to be eligible.
Hmm…I assume just exclusively that one book? If so, if you have several books it might be worth it to try it out.
Or maybe not. I don’t know I’ve yet to sell or even finish a book sadly.
I’m still struggling to get my second book out.