The good news is that I’m writing again. I wasn’t writing for the longest time because of all the work we had to do to get the house in good ship for selling. I stayed behind for a couple of days to give the whole place a thorough cleaning. It was hard to get back into the process of writing after taking such a long break, but that is true no matter why I go on “vacation.”
The bad news? I came down with the nasty cold my kids brought home at the very end of the school year, so my word count has slowed. Not that I was writing as much as before, but now that the ideas are finally coming back, it’s frustrating the energy to write them isn’t there.
But even more frustrating than that is the ordeal with Barnes and Noble. I don’t know what to do about everyone on my “New Release” list. A Most Unsuitable Earl is already available everywhere but B&N. That means it was up on Sony, Diesel, and Kobo before B&N this time, and in the past Sony, Diesel, and Kobo have been notoriously slow.
Now, I did put Smashwords down as the distributor to go to B&N. I don’t want to go into detail in a public forum, but I felt this was the best decision given everything else that is going on. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific than that, but I have a good reason. It wasn’t an easy one to make. In Smashwords’ defense, they sent A Most Unsuitable Earl out to B&N before they shipped the book to any of the other venues I go to through them. That means that even though A Most Unsuitable Earl was shipped to B&N first, it still isn’t up even though it’s on the other sites. I’m not the only author who’s been having this problem, which makes me feel better since I’m not the only one out there going through this.
Unfortunately, this does impact the timeliness of my New Release email.
So here’s my question. I was waiting until the book was up on B&N before emailing those of you on my New Release list. Now I’m wondering if I need to make a separate list for Nook owners. That way those of you who buy my books through Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, Diesel, Sony, and Apple can be notified when the book is live on the site where you like to shop. Then when it’s on B&N, I’d send out a list for the Nook owners. Does that sound like a good plan?
I have about 80 people on the list, and I don’t know who owns a Nook and who doesn’t. That’s one of my problems. I was wondering if those of you with a Nook would be willing to send me an email? I can create a form to make it easy to send me.
Let me know what you think. Otherwise, I can wait until the book is live on all the sites before sending the email out.
Ruth Ann Nordin's Author Blog 
I prefer to get my books from Smashwords when possible because the PDF works great on my NOOK but I can also read it on my PC if I want.
The PDF version of a book does look good on the Nook. It’s one thing I don’t care for with the Kindle (I have the Kindle 2, so I don’t know if the newer Kindle versions make PDFs easy to read or not). What I wish the Nook had is a text-to-speech feature. I usually convert Smashwords books to Mobi files and listen to them on my Kindle.
I hope you feel better soon!
I wonder if authors going directly through B & N are having the same problem or if it’s just the ones going through Smashwords. It’s weird that is not there yet.
Thanks. I am feeling much better. Now I’m just coughing a lot and bugging everyone around me. 😀
It’s Smashwords authors that are having trouble getting their books to B&N. The books ship to B&N fast, but B&N takes a long time to put them up. From what I saw on the Kindleboeards, B&N has been putting some books that were “unpublished” into published status and vice versa, though, so I’ve been checking my dashboard to make sure everything is as it should be. And today I heard Amazon UK books aren’t price matched as they were before. So it seems like there are glitches going on in a variety of places. I can only handle so much stress. Some people want to publish on each platform, but honestly, I am doing good to keep up with Amazon and Smashwords. I can’t handle worrying about the other sites, too. (I had unpublished all books on PubIt to help simplify my life.)
I’ve noticed that Barnes & Nobel has really been lax on making things available. You definitely aren’t the only author who’s having trouble. I would think that they would want to be competitive with Amazon. I’ve had to wait for books to become available on their site that Amazon has had up for months. It’s very frustrating for me as the buyer as well.
You know, I was thinking the exact same thing the other day. “Doesn’t B&N want to be competitive?” It doesn’t make sense that they would drag their feet. Now that I think about it, my friend who is with a small publisher did have to wait six months before her book went on the Nook, and it had been at Amazon the whole time. I thought maybe there was something with the publisher, but now I know better. It is frustrating. I have a Nook but most of the time I end up buying from Smashwords or Amazon because of this. I’m wondering if I should put my books up on PubIt and when it’s finally available on B&N through Smashwords, I can just take down the PubIt version and have the Smashwords version up. I’m so tempted to get A Most Unsuitable Earl on PubIt to finally have it up there. I keep hoping it’ll be on B&N and I won’t have to.