Do you have any idea how difficult this was?
No, not creating the ad: that part was easy. Fun, actually.
The hard part was making Beauty School Drive-By available at Barnes & Noble as well as Amazon.
Amazon is the #1 bookseller in the country for a reason. They made it very easy for me to upload my manuscript, create a cover, and present my first book in the most professional way possible, even though this was my first time publishing a book at this level. They even got me through the funky part of formatting my manuscript in book form. Thank you, KindleCreate!
Now, I don’t like to put all my eggs into one basket, so I went to the Barnes & Noble website to see if I could set up the same self-publishing deal as I did with Kindle Direct Publishing. Yes, the capability was there, but the process was much more frustrating. I won’t go into too much detail, but I had to format by hand, work my magic trying to resize and convert my book cover to their satisfaction, and take my book on and off sale to make the corrections that THEY told me that I had to make–all while praying that it would all work. They don’t even make it easy to access my self-publishing dashboard. I had to copy the link from the response to my strongly-worded email to them.
It’s like they really don’t want authors to self-publish with them. For me, it was an easier option than trying to broker a deal where I’m ordering a boatload of books from Amazon (with money that I don’t have) and then shipping them to B&N’s bookstores.
I may have to do that anyway, with smaller brick-and-mortar bookstores that have not closed yet, but since B&N gave me the option to just reprint my book with them…
The truth is that B&N are closing their brick-and-mortar stores, too. Their website may still be going strong, but if they want to continue competing with Amazon, then they need to make the process simpler and their website easier to navigate.
This may be my only way to get my book(s) to booksellers during a pandemic.
Help an author out!
