Amazon's CreateSpace vs. B&N's Nook Print Press?

Laer Carroll

Aerospace engineer turned writer
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Recently when I did my taxes I was a bit surprised that I'd sold any Nook ebooks at all, and that the sales were as large as they were. Still pitifully small, nevertheless they were almost a third of what I got from selling my Amz ebooks.

I even sold some CreateSpace print-on-demand books, which also surprised me. I've only once in several years bought a POD book, from a favorite author whose book I wanted to read and re-read.

When I copied the Excel spreadsheet from B&N for 2016 I also discovered the fact that we can now create POD books there. And B&N's books can have not only paperback covers but hardback covers, including hardbacks with slip covers. Which got me to thinking that maybe I should put out my books as B&N POD books. I see two issues (at least), however.

One is the legality of having two separate publishers of the same book. Does Amazon allow that? Does B&N? They allow it for ebooks, but "pbooks"?

The other is the likelihood of getting printed books on B&N physical shelves. B&N says it can be done. I think that's technically true, but morally a lie. I'd guess that B&N's conditions for such placement make it a million-to-one possibility.

Anyone have opinions on these issues, and others I've not thought of?
 

Catherine

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Thanks for this information. I was thinking of self-publishing something in a hard cover. Does anyone know about the quality of the books? I'm wondering if the quality is similar to when you order a hardcover photo book from Shutterfly.
 

Sleeping Cat Books

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One is the legality of having two separate publishers of the same book. Does Amazon allow that? Does B&N?
YOU are the publisher, not CreateSpace, not Amazon, and not B&N if you chose to use them. These are just printers. As the publisher, you can use any printer you want. The caveat to this comes with the ISBN you've used. If you used a free CS ISBN, then you cannot use it with any other printer. If, however, you bought your own ISBN, you can use that ISBN with any other printer.
 

WriterBN

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Hardcover POD books would be well outside the price range that a self-published book typically commands, but there's no reason you can't do it. On Amazon, it will simply be listed as another edition.

I suspect B&N simply uses Ingram for POD fulfillment, but I don't know for sure. If that's the case, you may be better off going directly with Ingram Spark.