Welcome to the third video in my beginner's guide to self-publishing a book
series. Be sure to watch the other videos in the series.
The first video in the series was the nine steps to self-publishing a book in
2022.
And then the second video was a step by step tutorial on how to self-publish a
book using Kindle Direct Publishing, which brings us to,
which is a tutorial on how to self-publish a book with Barnes and Noble Press.
But not only is it a tutorial I'm gonna be giving you tips and tricks along the
way,
and also telling you all the things that you should know about Barnes and Noble
Press before you publish with them. Today,
I'm going through the process with a hardcover book,
because I feel like usually when someone goes through Barnes and Noble Press
it's so they can print a hardcover book. Now,
while I'll be physically uploading a hardcover book,
know that all the steps apply,
just things are slightly more complicated with the hardcover because the jacket
design is a little different. With that said let's get onto the video.
And if you want weekly videos on the business of being an author with be sure to
give this video a thumbs up, comment down below and hit that subscribe button.
Okay.
So before we jump on my computer and get into the tutorial part of this video,
I do wanna talk about some things that you should know about Barnes and Noble
Press that makes them pretty different from other print on demand companies.
Number one, they print both paperback and hardcover.
Number two,
printing through Barnes and Noble Press means that your book will only be
distributed through Barnes and Noble.
It will not be on just the Barnes and Noble website.
Number three, your book will not be sold in stores automatically. Yes.
If someone physically went to Barnes and Noble and asked for the book,
they would be able to order it. However,
just because you print your book through Barnes and Noble Press does not mean
they will carry it in Barnes and Noble stores.
There has to be enough of a demand for an author and for a specific book in
order for Barnes and Noble to want to carry that book on their shelves
regularly.
Otherwise they usually only order copies if someone requests the book.
Number four,
you can publish through multiple print on demand companies at a time.
So if you print through Barnes and Noble Press,
you can also print print through Kindle Direct Publishing. However,
I learned the hard way in uploading my own files that you actually can't use
the same ISBN. This is different than it works for other companies.
So usually you need to have the same ISBN when you're printing through multiple
print on demand companies. For example,
if you print through both Ingramspark and Kindle Direct Publishing,
the ISBNs for the paperback books need to be the same.
So they link up properly and there aren't two listings on Amazon for your book.
However,
this is the opposite for Barnes and Noble because Barnes and Noble is only
printing for Barnes and Noble. So they want their own completely separate ISBN.
So if you print through Barnes and Noble, as well as Kindle Direct Publishing,
you're gonna have two different ISBNs.
Even if both editions are paperback editions.
So this also means you technically will have two additions of the book
floating around, even though it's the same content, same cover, same everything.
It's just one of those weird quirks that Barnes and Noble Press has.
I even contacted them to ask about it.
And they were very clear that when you publish through Barnes and Noble Press,
it needs to have a completely separate ISBN.
Number five Barnes and Noble Press does let you do pre-orders for your book.
So this is great if you wanna do a pre-order for your paperback or hardcover
book,
like I've said in the past Kindle Direct Publishing does not offer pre-orders
for their print books right now, but Barnes and Noble Press does. However,
again, this pre-order is only through the Barnes and Noble website. Number six,
Barnes and Noble Press actually uses the same printer as Ingramspark to print
their books. This is great for those who want the quality of Ingramspark books,
but you don't like the customer service or some of the other features that
Ingramspark has. Number seven,
they won't put a not for sale bar across the cover.
If you've ever published a book with KDP,
you know that when you order proof copies or any copy of your book before the
book is officially published, they put a lovely,
not for resale bar across the entire cover,
which mostly just makes it really ugly.
A lot of authors like to get advanced reader copies of their books printed,
whether that be for marketing purposes or just for copy to have for
themselves, but because KDP prints that ugly,
not for resale thing on the cover.
A lot of people like to go to Barnes and Noble Press to print a copy or a few
copies of their book before it's officially published.
And this way the book looks official when you get it printed. Number eight,
you don't have to pay to publish your book. Now,
this is kind of how it works for most print on demand companies.
KDP you don't have to pay a fee, but for places like Ingramspark,
you do have to pay a fee to publish your book.
So we just wanted to point out that Barnes and Noble Press is one of the
companies that doesn't have a fee. And lastly, number nine,
you don't have to make your book public.
So one of the first things you'll notice as we're uploading the book on Barnes
and Noble Press,
it'll ask if the book is just for you or if you plan on actually publishing it.
So if you wanna just print a hardcover edition of your book for the sake of
having a hardcover edition of your book,
you can do that through Barnes and Noble Press.
This makes it so you don't have to worry about yourself,
accidentally making a listing for your book online.
So let's get started on the tutorial and let me know in the comments down below,
if you plan on printing with Barnes and Noble Press. Okay,
so here we are on the Barnes and Noble Press website. As you can see,
I've already gone ahead and done my own test upload for the paperback edition
of Meet Me at the Summit.
This is because at the end of all these tutorials that I'm posting on YouTube,
I wanna compare the print quality of all these print on demand companies that
I'm talking about. So I did one for the paperback,
and now I'm gonna go ahead and create a hardcover edition of Meet Me at
the Summit so we can test that as well.
So if you're starting a completely new book, you would hit this,
create a new book button,
but because I'm just creating a different version of Meet Me at the Summit,
I'm gonna hit this,
start a new version of Meet Me at the Summit button so I can do the hardcover.
So, uh, they'll ask right away if you want it to be print or for ebook.
If you do ebook know that's for Nook and just Nook,
not like all eBooks, but I'm gonna do print and then hit next.
And then do you wanna sell your book or is it for personal use?
So what I'm doing today is actually gonna be for personal use,
but I'm still gonna hit sell your book because I wanna show you guys the royalty
rates of the book. So I'm just gonna hit sell your book.
But if you don't wanna sell your book and you just wanna print the book for
yourself, you would hit keep it personal. Okay, next up.
Do you want this book to be set up as a pre-order? So for today,
I'm just gonna hit, it's not a pre-order, but if course,
of you do wanna do a pre-order, you would hit that pre-order button. Okay.
So this is when things to get interesting.
So Barnes and Noble does things a little bit different than most print on demand
companies where they ask you for the estimated page count.
And honestly, they do it 50 pages at a time.
And as a book cover designer myself, I can tell you that when you do, uh,
estimates, rounding to the nearest 50 numbers,
the spine on the book may be slightly misaligned because
for Ingramspark, they round it to the nearest even number.
And then KDP rounds it to the nearest 10 pages.
But Barnes and Noble Press rounds it to the nearest 50 pages.
So that means that when you have your book physically printed the text
on the spine,
it's possible that it's not perfectly centered because the page count
is estimated so much. My book is about 300 pages,
so that's what I'm gonna select today. And then the page size,
my books are all five and a half by eight and a half. I'm gonna select that.
And then I'm gonna select regular black and white interior.
And then I'm going to do a hard cover with a dust jacket.
Cause personally,
that's what makes me think that Barnes and Noble Press stands out from KDP,
cuz KDP doesn't offer a dust jacket for their hardcovers right now.
So I'm gonna select the dust jacket and then I want a matte finish
on the cover. And then the paper color,
I find cream to be more professional looking, uh, white.
I will only select for like non-fiction,
especially if the cover of the non-fiction has a lot of white,
otherwise nine times outta 10,
I'm gonna suggest that you guys go with cream paper,
but it's really also just a personal preference. So after putting all that in,
you can see right here that the estimated printing cost is $10.79.
And keep, keep mind. This is for hardcover.
So that may sound a little pricey if you're used to paperback prices,
but honestly it's not bad. So here we are at the next step.
This is where it tells us all about the interior. If you know what you're doing,
you can click this button to skip straight to uploading your file,
but otherwise you can click through and learn everything
about their printing standards.
Now I will say I encountered an issue with Barnes and Noble Press.
If you wanna print the interior book with a bleed.
And this means that there's an image that extends all the way to all the sides.
So I have InDesign opened up a, on my computer right now,
cause I just wanted to visually show you guys something really quickly because
we're talking about the interior files right now.
So I use Adobe InDesign to format my books.
And this is my book Meet Me at the Summit right here. This is chapter one. Now,
as you can see, this image goes all the way to the edge.
So this red line right here is the bleed section.
So you need to have a bleed set up.
If you're gonna have an image go all the way to the edge.
And they explain that in here,
especially if you click on their little formatting guide right here,
it opens up to this lovely PDF that has all this info,
but I personally just put in bleed and I search that and I
find, um, their instructions for bleed. And they say,
if you want your interior to have a bleed,
it needs to have a bleed section of 0.125.
So if you go into InDesign and then I go into document set up,
you can see that my bleed is set up for 0.125 right here,
which is slightly different than the bleed I normally have set up for say
Ingramspark or Kindle Direct Publishing.
But I just had to adjust that quickly to get the correct settings.
Cause if you don't have that bleed set up as 0.125,
it will reject your files saying that they're the wrong size. However,
if you're printing your book without a bleed section. So for example,
if I wanted to do that,
I would just have to go in here and I'm going to remove this image. Now,
if I go back to chapter one, you can see that that image has disappeared.
So now my document doesn't have a bleed,
so I don't have to worry about those bleed settings at all, all.
And I would just export this as a PDF without the bleed and then
upload it to Barnes and Noble Press. And it would be fine.
So now that we've talked about that,
that's really the only complicated part about uploading your interior files,
but I'm gonna go ahead and skip to upload my files so I can show you guys
what it looks like.
I will say Barnes and Noble Press takes a pretty long time for their files to
upload and process and look good.
But I have found that if it takes a long time to upload,
that means that you have your file settings, correct.
If your file settings aren't correct, then they will reject you very quickly.
So if it's taking a while rest assure you probably did something right. Okay.
So it took a little bit, but my files uploaded and here they are right here.
You can either download the PDF or you can just view it right here.
You can just scroll through the, make sure everything looks okay.
Now the only thing concerning here is that my image doesn't go all the way to
the inner edge,
but this edge right here is actually the part that is the spine of the book.
So I imagine that won't be an issue we'll see later when the
physical book actually arrives.
So make sure you subscribe because I will do an unboxing and review of the
Barnes and Noble Press books.
But once you go through and you make sure everything looks good,
you're gonna click that. Uh,
I have reviewed and approved my manuscript button and then hit the save and
continue button. This next step is for the cover.
So you can either upload your entire cover file at once.
Or you can upload like the front,
the spine and the back all separately.
I'm not sure why you would do that unless you designed it that way.
But most people and most cover designers design the full cover wrap.
So I'm gonna select that and hit continue. So again,
just like the interior portion,
it really has a bunch of these different to just kind of walk you through
what's going on and what you need to know. It explains the fold.
It explains the font and how to embed fonts and the file types
and blah, blah, blah, uh, to give you guys a quick idea. Here's my,
uh, book wrap in Photoshop. This is not the official wrap.
Meet Me at the Summit is not a hard cover edition yet.
It will be a hardcover edition.
I will be releasing the hardcover edition for the anniversary of the book.
So be on the lookout for that,
but I just made this kind of placeholder hardcover wrap just so I could get the
book printed. Um,
honestly I would never leave this flap over here like this.
I think this is really ugly, but again, I just wanna print it, do an experiment,
see how it looks. Uh,
but basically this is what I designed in Photoshop and I exported it as a PDF
and that's what I'm going to upload to Barnes and Noble Press now. Oh,
and before I upoad I do wanna note that the way you get this
template right here is that you go to the second step,
which is formatting. And you'll see this little button that says,
download our cover template and you just click on that.
And then once you click this,
it'll give you a zip file that you can download and extract to get the
PDF that you need to use as a template.
So I just uploaded my cover and again, we have to look at it and review it.
So now Barnes and Noble put the, um,
like trim lines and the bleed lines and the fold lines all
on the cover.
So we can make sure that everything looks like it's in the right spot.
I'm actually gonna zoom out so we can double check our work there,
but you get the idea and we can see where the barcode is gonna go,
but it looks good to go. So I'm gonna click that.
I have review and approved my cover and we're gonna click
the next button.
And this is the part where we get to put in all the details about our books. So,
because I previously created the paperback version,
a lot of this is already in here.
So honestly I don't have a lot of it filled out because again,
I was doing this just to test, but I could add in the subtitle,
I could change out the publisher name for my publisher name.
And then I can add in the publication date.
And I'm actually gonna go ahead and click it off as a pre-order so I can put the
publication date, like way in the future. And then later I can delete it.
Then you can put in the short description, the long description,
you can preview it to make sure it looks pretty. You get the idea,
we're gonna move on to the next step. This is where you add the contributors.
So if you have any co-authors, you can add that in there. Um,
I'm just me. So I have my,
about the author info section there. We're gonna hit the next button here.
We have categories. My category is young adult teens.
And then you can also add in more categories,
if you want a couple tips on how to think up categories,
be sure to check out my KDP uploading tutorial video,
because I talked about a few tips on coming up with categories and keywords
there. Um, but basically what you wanna do is when you get to these steps,
you wanna have a Google doc going of all your info of your books.
So you already know the keywords, you already know the categories,
you already know the description.
That way you're just copy and pasting things into Barnes and Noble Press,
and then it's simpler.
And then you can just hit that next button to get onto the next.
So here we get to the pricing portion.
So this is where things get a little bit more, uh, disappointing.
So it set the retail price at, uh, $21.18.
The printing cost for the book is $10.59.
And the royalty I get is a $1.06.
And that's because Barnes and Noble Press and Barnes and Noble and whatever you
want to else count as a retail gets $9.53.
And honestly,
I like to get a $3 royalty per book sale because I feel like that's
just reasonable for indie authors to expect. So if that's the case,
I would have to raise my price of my hardcover,
which is why when indie authors do hardcover books,
you see the price so much higher than regular traditional hardcover books.
Um, so I'm gonna do $23.99.
And that would put me at $2.60 royalty rate.
Um, I'm gonna try $24.99.
And then that would put me at $3.15.
So that's more of what I'm comfortable and used to earning per book
sale. That is the retail price right there.
But I hope that explains, um,
the royalties a bit for Barnes and Noble Press. So with that said,
I'm gonna hit that save and continue button.
This is just saying that you own the rights to the book. If it's public domain,
it means that anyone can own the right to the book because it's been released
for so long. Um, but I I'm gonna hit no, because I actually own the copyright.
And then you have to say,
if you have an existing version of this book available on Barnes and Noble Press
right now. So if your book is printed through Ingramspark,
that means that Ingramspark will have it.
So your book is available through Barnes and Noble.com. So in that case,
I would have to hit yes. And then in the ISBN, like it is right here,
but if that's not the case and you don't have your book already for sale on
Barnes and Noble.com, you would hit that, no button.
This is just where you can add editorial reviews.
So if you had like other authors give quotes about your book or anything like
that, you can add that in. Or you can just add it in later,
if you end up getting that information later.
Here's where you can add in the ISBN. So, like I said earlier,
if you publish on Barnes and Noble Press, you need to have a separate ISBN.
Then the ISBN you might use to also publish on say Amazon.
Um,
so you can either upload your own paid ISBN or because
this is just an experiment for me.
I'm just gonna use one of Barnes and Nobles free ISBNs.
So I'm gonna hit that, create free ISBN button right there.
And there's my free ISBN. All right.
So now we just get to review everything, make sure it all looks good.
And from here, you wanna hit that, submit for approval button.
This just submits all your files and all your information,
and then Barnes and Noble goes through it,
makes sure that there's no weird glitches. And then once you get approval,
you can order a copy of the book for yourself.
Otherwise you would just hit this put on sale button. Um,
and that would basically publish it to the Barnes and Noble website.
And if you set it as a pre-order,
it will publish it as a pre-order or if you didn't set it as a
pre-order, it will just instantly publish it.
And I assume it takes a couple days for it to show up on the website.
I wanna order a print copy of this book.
So I'm gonna hit that submit for approval button,
and then the Barnes and Noble team will review it. So as far as printing goes,
I will say Barnes and Noble takes quite a while to print their books.
I believe when I printed my paperback,
they said it would three to four weeks to print it.
And then they also made a note that it takes even longer to print the hardcover
books.
So it's gonna be a while before I physically get these copies of my books in the
mail.
So make sure you hit that subscribe button and stay tuned because when I do get
the copies in the mail,
I'll make sure to do an unboxing here on my YouTube channel and review the
quality of the books and tell you guys what I think.
Otherwise that is it for today's video. Thank you all so much for watching.
If you enjoy the video, let me know in the comments down below,
otherwise I'll see you all next week.