Self-publishing platform Nook Press arrives

Are you an aspiring writer and would like an easy accessible way to edit, publish and perhaps sell manuscripts? Enter Nook Press, an initiative by Nook Media the Barnes & Noble secondary that includes the Nook line of ereaders and tablets, has launched a new self-publishing platform for ebooks.

This new platform takes the place of PubIt, another digital publishing programme Barnes & Noble launched two years ago, and uses new technology from FastPencil, a digital self-publishing company that the publishing giant partnered with last year.

This neat application allows hopeful writers and authors to write and edit their work as well sell these as completed ebooks at any price between US$0.99 and US$199.99 setting a reasonable price range. As all publishers need to make their profit, Barnes & Noble from Nook Press takes a 35 percent cut of the list price of books between US$2.99 and US$9.99, and a 60% cut of all other book prices. This is the same as other similar applications such as Amazon, Kindle’s Direct Publishing options and Apple’s, iBook Author Publications; that take 30 percent to 65 percent cuts.

These published ebooks are for sale in the Nook Book Store, and available in the UK and US, through Nook mobile applications and on Barnes & Noble’s website. So far it seems that it has been only US authors that have applied and received permission to publish their ebooks, and this only from desktop devices.

Barnes’s & Noble is pushing to integrate more and create a better user-friendly app. Speaking to The Verge, a company spokesperson said:

while Nook Press isn’t optimized for mobile, it contains no Flash elements and should work on mobile devices. As far as expanding access to UK publishers, Barnes & Noble’s spokesperson said it’s “certainly a market we’re taking a look at,” but had nothing to announce at this time. We also learned that Nook Press supports uploads of .doc, .docx, .txt, .rtf, and ePub file extensions, but coverts all files to the ePub standard. There is no direct integration with Microsoft Word yet, but Barnes & Noble’s spokesperson said that’s “certainly a great idea.”

So if you figure you might be the next Virginia Woolf or Joseph Conrad watch out for Nook Press it may be your passport to literary success.