Prepping Your Book with NOOK Press
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NOOK Press is B&N's indie author publishing portal, replacing PubIt. NOOK Press is a whole new experience and includes a lot of improved and new functionality.
This article explores how to get your book into NOOK Press, including formatting it, generating a table of contents, and so on.
Setting Up NOOK Press
Setting up and using NOOK Press is easy. Follow these steps:
- Go to http://www.nookpress.com.
- Click Get Started Now.
- Enter the requested information and click Create An Account. If you are a NOOK Press user, you can click I Have A NOOK Press! Account And Want To Sync It to bring over the ebooks you published with NOOK Press.
- A screen appears and informs you that you will receive an email for account confirmation instructions.
- When you receive the email, click the link provided.
Your browser opens and confirms that your account has been confirmed. - Sign in and click Log In.
Before you can upload any books, you need to create a vendor account. Follow these steps:
- From the NOOK Press Projects screen (see Figure 1), click the arrow next to your name and click Vendor Account.
The My NOOK Vendor Account screen appears. - Click Provide Contact Information. Update the information on the resulting Contact Information screen and click Save Changes.
You are taken back to the My NOOK Vendor Account screen. - Click Publisher Information. Update the information on the resulting Publisher Information screen and click Save Changes.
You are taken back to the My NOOK Vendor Account screen. - Click Payment & Tax Information. Update the information on the resulting Payment & Tax Information screen and click Save Changes.
You are taken back to the My NOOK Vendor Account screen.
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Figure 1 The My Projects screen on NOOK Press
You are now ready to start uploading content and sell it.
Putting Content into NOOK Press
Now that your account is set up, you can load up your first title. If you don't have a file already, you can start by clicking Start Writing, entering a Project Name, and typing. However, if you have a Word, ePub, text, RTF, or HTML file, you can upload it. Click the guidelines link to open a new window with ways to format the file (for example, for Word documents, don't use page breaks to separate chapters; use section breaks instead).
Follow these steps:
- Click Upload a Manuscript File and enter a Project Name. Click Create My Project.
- To upload your ebook, click Upload A Manuscript File and click Choose A File To Upload. Navigate to the file and click it.
- Click Upload Manuscript File.
The screen lets you know that it is importing your file. If the file you chose is not an EPUB file, NOOK Press converts it to an EPUB file, which can take a while. The result is shown in a screen like Figure 2.
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Figure 2 Your manuscript is uploaded and converted to an EPUB file
From here, you have several options:
- Edit Manuscript: Click this to make changes to the uploaded manuscript.
- Replace Manuscript: Click this to upload a new file. This process replaces all work you may have made with Edit Manuscript.
- Invite Collaborators: Click this to invite copy editors, beta readers, and so on to review your manuscript prior to publishing it.
- Read NOOK Book: Click this to read a preview version of the book in B&N's web-based NOOK reader.
To make changes to your book, click Edit Manuscript. The Manuscript Editor loads (see Figure 3). One of the first things to notice is that this screen looks quite a bit like Word.
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Figure 3 The Manuscript Editor
Let's get oriented to this screen:
- Options: These options allow you to upload a new manuscript file, preview the book in B&N NOOK Reader for web, and save the file.
- Formatting: These options allow you format the text by adding bold and italic, adjusting size and color, and so on. It all functions just as you would expect in Word or similar word processing software.
- Quick Outline: This option lists the chapters and enables you to reorder chapters, delete chapters, add new chapters, or add front matter.
- Text area: Here is where you can add, delete, and otherwise adjust text. You can highlight words and add italic just like Word.
- Comments: Here is where you can see comments any collaborators have made as well as respond to or delete them.
The Quick Outline
This section presents a number of options. The outline lists the chapter names. If you hover over the chapter name, three icons appear on the chapter level (see Figure 4):
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Figure 4 Adjusting the chapters
- Click the Pencil icon to open that chapter in the Text area to edit the text.
- Click the double-headed arrow to reorder the chapter. When you click it, your cursor changes to two crossed arrows. While holding the mouse button, drag up or down in the outline to relocate the chapter within the outline.
- Click the trash can icon to delete that chapter.
If you want to add a chapter, type the name of the chapter in the text box Chapter Name and click Add Chapter. The chapter is added.
You will want a front matter for your book. To add it, click Add Front Matter. The Add Front Matter dialog appears (see Figure 5).
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Figure 5 Adding front matter
Click the plus sign icon next to the items you want to add. You will see them appear in the Quick Outline area. When you finish adding front matter elements, click Done; the Add Front Matter dialog disappears.
After you add the elements, notice that Cover and Table of Contents have an eyeball icon instead of a pencil icon. That means these two are read-only items.
The Table of Contents is created based on the chapter names. So for each chapter you add, you'll get an addition to the Table of Contents. You can modify the title, dedication, and introduction just like any other chapter element.
If you want to hide the Quick Outline, click the small left-pointing arrow labeled Quick Outline. If it is hidden, you can show it by clicking the right-pointing arrow.
The Text Area
This part of the screen works much like Word. You can type or delete text; change text to italic or bold; and so on. In the Text area, the bar above the chapter allows you to change the chapter name (click the icon to the left of the chapter name), save your work on that chapter (click the disk icon), or delete the chapter (click the minus sign).
The Extra Formatting Options
To the right of the familiar text-formatting options, you have a few other tools to create your ebook. The left-pointing arrow undoes the most recent action. The right-pointing arrow redoes the action that you just undid.
If you want to find or replace text in your book, click the Find button. The Find & Replace dialog appears (see Figure 6). This dialog works much like the Find And Replace dialog in Word. When the text you entered is found, it is highlighted in yellow in the Text area.
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Figure 6 Finding stuff in your manuscript
If you want to include an image in your book, place the cursor where you want the image to appear and click the Image button. The Insert Image dialog appears (see Figure 7). Click the Choose An Image To Upload button. Browse to the location, highlight the image, and click Upload Image. The file name of the image appears. When you click it, you see a preview and two options become available: Delete Image and Insert Image At Cursor. Click Insert Image At Cursor. Don't worry if the image is gigantic on the page. When it appears in the ereader, it will be sized appropriately.
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Figure 7 Inserting an image into your ebook
If you entered a lot of text and you decide you want to split that text from one into two chapters, you can use the Split Chapter At Cursor button. Place the cursor in front of the text for the new chapter. Click the Split Chapter At Cursor button, and the Splitting Chapter dialog appears (see Figure 8). Enter a chapter title and click Split. You'll see the chapter appear in the Quick Outline.
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Figure 8 Splitting a chapter within the Manuscript Editor
One of the great things about ebooks is that you can put in links that the user can tap. Perhaps you have footnotes or chapter or section references. To make the link, highlight the text you want to create the link from. Then click the Add Internal Link button, and you receive a message that says Click the Target Area Inside the Manuscript to Set the Link. Navigate to the link and click it. The text you had highlighted turns to a hyperlink. To remove the link, highlight the text and click the Add Internal Link button.
If you want to see how all this looks, click Preview, which opens a new window or tab in your browser and displays the book in the B&N NOOK for Web app (see Figure 9). Be sure to go through this carefully, adjust the font sizes, and so on.
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Figure 9 Previewing your NOOK book
Speaking of the My Projects Screen
We've been here a few times (see Figure 10), so it is worth your time to review some of your actions here.
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Figure 10 My Projects Screen is the hub of your publishing life at NOOK Press
Under Project Status, you can filter what you see on this screen to All (which is the default), In Progress, On Sale, and Off Sale. You can also filter to see only your projects or all projects that you are either the owner of or a collaborator on. For each individual project, you have a few options:
- Update Manuscript: Click to make changes to the manuscript.
- View Details: Click to update title, price, and so on.
- List Price: Click to update the price.
- Take Off Sale/Publish: Click to either remove the book from sale or to publish it and make it available for sale.
- Trash Can: Click the trash can icon to delete that project.
Click Sales to get sales reports.
Finally, click Support to get help. NOOK Press features online chat representatives available Monday through Friday from 9am to 9pm Eastern time.
That's it, really, to using NOOK Press. It is now even easier to publish your books on B&N.
For more information about collaboration, adding a cover, and publishing your book, see my article Reviewing and Publishing with NOOK Press.