The Barnes & Nobles Nook device is an Android-based e-reader device that incorporates Amazon’s pioneering E-Ink technology. The price of the device ranges from $99 for the Simple Touch reader to $249 for the Nook Color.

One difference between the Nook and the Kindle is the Nook’s “GlowLight” technology. This makes it easy for people who own a Nook to read books in the dark, something that the Kindle is completely incapable of doing.

Publishing on the Nook gives you access to millions of highly active readers. The Nook and the Kindle are often neck in neck in terms of sales. If you’re publishing your book on either the Kindle store or the iBookstore, there’s no reason not to also publish on the Nook bookstore.

Here’s how to publish your eBook to the Nook bookstore.

Step 1: Click Create an Account

Go to: http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com

In the upper right corner, click “Create an account” to begin the account creation and book creation process.

 

Step 2: Creating Your Account

Fill out the PubIt registration form on the next page.

 

Give PubIt your contact information.

 

If you have a publisher, enter your publisher’s details.

Enter your bank account information. This is used to deposit your payments. You need a US-based bank account to use the Barnes & Nobles Nook bookstore.

Give PubIt your Social Security number or your Federal Tax ID number (if you’re a corporation.)

 

Finally, give PubIt a credit card. They do this primarily to verify that you are who you say you are. They also use it as a protection mechanism, if your book refunds happened to exceed the amount of sales you make during a payment period. (This is highly unlikely.)

 

Once you hit “Submit,” your PubIt account will be created. You can then begin creating your first book.

Step 3: Enter Your Title and Author Details

Enter your title. Then choose your list price.

Look through the Nook bookstore to see what other comparable books are charging. Unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise, you should try to list your book for about what other people are listing them for.

If you’re using your book as a loss leader to get more people aware of your brand, you can sell your book for a much lower price just to get more people to buy.

Your title needs to stand out among the sea of other books that your book will be swimming in. It should say something so unique that people can’t help but wonder what the description says.

Finally, list your author name and publisher details.

 

Step 4: Upload Your Book

Click “Browse” to find the book on your computer. Then click “Upload & Preview” to upload your book.

 

Step 5: Preview Your Book

You’ll be taken to a preview of what your book looks like. You can click the “Next Page” button to see what the other pages in your book look like. Make sure your book’s formatting came out the way you want it to before continuing.

 

Step 6: Upload Your Book Cover

Upload your book cover.

Remember when you’re designing your cover that people really do judge a book by its cover. Much of your book’s ability to make sales will depend on the strength of your cover.

Your cover should convey credibility, as well as make a strong promise. It should have good overall design aesthetics as well as be a strong marketing piece.

 

Step 7: Publishing Details

Barnes & Nobles needs a few bits of information before it can publish your book. It needs to know if you have an ISBN number, whether it’s part of a series, whether it’s in print and whether it’s a public domain book.

 

Step 8: Age & Language

What age is your book geared towards and what language is the book written in?

 

Step 9: Rights & DRM

Let B&N know whether you have worldwide rights, or rights in only the USA or the USA and Canada.

Choose whether you want to DRM encrypt your book. This helps protect your book from being stolen or passed on.

 

Step 10: Categories and Keywords

Choose the categories and keywords you want to use to market your book. You can choose up to five categories.

Try to list your book in the most obvious categories, as well as one or two non-obvious categories. Get your book into categories that your competitors might not necessarily think of, but are shared by your target market.

You can also try to pick a category that you think you can dominate. In other words, pick a category that isn’t too competitive and try to get your book to the top.

Your keywords will help people who’re performing searches to find your book. Use tools like the Google Keyword Tool to identify keywords that people search for on a regular basis.

 

Step 11: Description & About the Author

Write a compelling description of your book. If your book’s an informational book, try to titillate people by hinting at some of the things they’ll learn in the book. If your book is a non-informational book, try to give people an emotional dose of what they’ll experience once they’re reading your book.

Your “About the Author” section is the perfect place to demonstrate your credibility. Talk about your past experiences that make you uniquely qualified to read this book. Give specific figures (E.g. “helped over 8,000 entrepreneurs raise startup capital”) and drop names wherever possible (E.g. “helped raise capital for Groupon, eBay, Dropbox and more.”)

 

Step 12: Submit!

Once you’ve confirmed that all the information you’ve submitted is correct and complete, click the checkbox and hit “Put on Sale.”

 

That’s all there is to submitting a book to the Nook! What comes next is the hard part: Marketing and promotion.

Leverage your social networks, your email list and you website to get the word out about your book. You need to get some attention to your book first, before people will start to come to your book on its own. Once your book gains some momentum however, at some point it’ll be able to swim on its own and become a real money earner for you without you having to constantly promote it.

 

Proper Formatting and Conversion for Nook

 

Formatting for the Nook is all about making your text appear the way it appears on your screen, on the Nook. While the Nook can convert most .DOC files and formatting to the proper format, there are a few things you need to do beforehand to get your document ready.

For the purposes of this guide, we’re going to use a .DOC upload, as that’s the most common format used. You can also upload a as an EPUB document,  .HTML or .TXT.

 

Step 1: Fix Your Spacing

 

If you’re using two return carriages at any point in your text in order to create a new paragraph, that’s going to come out wrong in the Nook. While on screen two returns might give you the look you want, on the Nook it’ll look like too much space.

For example, this is what spacing looks like to a lot of people in Word:

 

The single spacing doesn’t look like it creates enough space above it for a new paragraph. So people do two return carriages instead. This works in Word, but not on the Nook.

Instead of using double returns, select the text whose spacing you want to change, then click “Paragraph.”

 

Change the spacing. Usually the field you’ll want to change is the “After” field.

 

Step 2: Change Your Indents

 

Tab indenting doesn’t work on the Nook. If you want to indent the first line of a paragraph, again use the paragraph tool.

Right click, select “Paragraph” as shown in step 1, then change the indent using the “Indentation” section.

 

To indent the whole paragraph, use the left side controls. To indent just the first line, use the “Special” section.

 

Step 3: Insert Section Breaks

 

The Nook converter cannot read Page Breaks. You also can’t start a new page by just pressing return until you get to the next page. In order to have your page breaks be properly formatted for the Nook, you need to instead use a section break. Use this at the end of chapters and when you want to start a new page.

To insert a section break, position your cursor where you want the break to appear. Then go to “Page Layouts,” click on “Breaks” and select “Next Page” under “Section Breaks.”

 

 

Step 4: Lists

 

If you have lists, such as bullets or numerical lists, make sure you’re using Word’s built in list tools. Don’t try to create your own lists by placing numbers then a dot, or any other makeshift method of creating lists.

 

 

 

Step 5: Change Your Font

 

Use either Arial, Times New Roman or Courier New.

 

Step 6: Format Images

 

Your images can be aligned in the middle, the left or the right. Text should be above and below the image. Don’t use formatting that causes words to wrap around the image. By and large, choose the “In line with text” wrapping style (it’s on by default.)

 

Step 7: Remove Symbols

 

Remove any non-standard symbols from your text. Remove any superscripts and subscripts.

By default, Word converts the “th” and “st” texts that come after a date or a fraction into superscripts. If this is the case with your text, you’ll need to go through all of them and remove them. Having symbols or superscripts can disrupt your book’s formatting.

 

Above are two examples of Word automatically creating superscripts. To change it, just backspace over them and re-write the text. If Word tries to change something, just press CTRL+Z to undo it.

Once you’ve made all these changes, your .DOC file will be ready for publication on the Nook!