Barnes and Noble’s new self-publishing platform, Pubit, is now live. To put it simply, it’s Barnes& Noble’s version of Amazon’s DTP platform, and it has very similar terms:

Books released through Pubit! can be priced as low as 99¢ and as high as $199.99, but there’s definitely a sweet spot where Barnes and Noble encourages publishers to list their e-books. That spot is between $2.99 and $9.99, where publishers take 65% of the money collected. Titles priced less than $2.98, and more than $10.00 only earn publishers 40% of the list price.

So authors can earn somewhat less than Kindle authors for a book priced $2.99 (70%) on Amazon, but slightly more for books priced under $2.99 – 40% compared to 30% on Amazon.

According to Pod People, the release has had some hiccups. Shannon Yarbrough of the LL Book Review, writes,

Don’t hold your breath. I had to re-request an invite and have yet to receive it. My current log-in is not working and although I’ve contacted PubIt! support, I have yet to get a reply. When I attempt to log in, it just reloads the log-in screen and doesn’t take me anywhere. I’m not sure if this is an isolated situation with just me or if they are experiencing issues across the board. I’m guessing the latter.

If you’re already distributed to Barnes and Noble via Smashwords, it could turn out to be a headache to remove a book from distribution and re-enter it – though obviously this would mean getting a better royalty percentage. Publishing via Smashwords means that you get 85% of the net of books bought on the Barnes and Noble site.  This 15% loss would be in addition to whatever percentage you set at Barnes and Noble.

Keep in mind also that charging less on Barnes & Noble than you charge on Amazon could lead to pricing difficulties on Amazon, as they require that their price is the cheapest available. This is one of the arguments for staying at Smashwords, as it’s easier to set one price and distribute to a collection of different stores.  Depends how hands-on an author wants to be.


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