Barnes and Noble vs Amazon Self-publishing platforms – which is better between these two popular companies?
These platforms allow you to provide readers with different options and resources for books.
There are factors to consider to ensure that your self-publishing endeavor succeeds.
What if you run out of ideas and have nothing to publish? We have an answer to that, too.
You can check the Kindle Direct Publishing Success Guide.
It is a comprehensive platform that will work with you throughout your self-publishing journey.
Barnes and Noble Vs Amazon Self-publishing
Choosing a suitable platform is one of the major challenges for self-published authors today, with the rise in sales for self-published ebooks.
They must determine what kind of support and services they need before deciding on the appropriate platform.
Barnes & Noble Press
Barnes & Noble Press, or Nook Press, is an easy-to-use, fast, and free self-publishing service.
The company is known in the book industry and has been a leader for many years.
It was launched in 2018 and became one of Amazon’s closest rivals, especially in the ebook market.
It allows you to publish your work and sell it directly to millions of readers from its physical bookstore locations and online store, bn.com.
You can check various sales reports on your B&N dashboard, making it easier to monitor your profit.
Uploading your file to the B&N Press platform is free, and it can support paperback and ebook formats for your work.
For every book sold on Barnes & Noble, the author receives 55% for paperback and 70% royalty rate for ebook sales.
The company does not demand exclusivity, allowing you to publish your work elsewhere.
It offers an affordable printing cost with good printout quality.
However, it’s hard to seek customer support whenever you need one.
Kindle Direct Publishing
Amazon is not just the largest retailer of books worldwide, with more than 80% of the book market share.
It is also the biggest platform dominating the self-publishing world today with expertise in international distribution.
It uses its Kindle Direct Publishing service to publish your book in several versions: Kindle, paperback books, and ebooks.
Although your book is distributed globally, you will only find it on Amazon sites.
Also, the royalty rates on Amazon are lower compared to other platforms.
The Kindle Direct Publishing service supports ebooks and paperbacks, and you don’t have to pay anything for uploading your file.
Authors receive 60% royalty for a paperback version, while ebooks priced from $2.99 to $9.99 can have up to 70%.
Amazon does not require exclusivity of your book, allowing you to publish your work on other platforms.
However, the platform has an exclusive program, the Kindle Unlimited and KDP Select.
With Amazon’s global reach, you can be sure that a large audience will see your book.
The user-friendly interface of Kindle Direct Publishing makes the free uploading of your book faster and easier.
It offers affordable printing services with good quality printouts. What’s more, the platform has excellent customer support if you need one.
However, the platform does not support audiobook or hardcover versions.
KDP Success Guide
You can make the most out of the KDP platform if you will also subscribe to Kindle Direct Publishing Success Guide.
It’s a platform that can cater to different levels of publishers, from beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
The creative concepts offer actionable advice to ensure your followers buy your literary work.
Self-publisher Categories
As you look at different self-publishing companies, know that they are divided into two categories.
Aggregators
Aggregators offer specialist services.
They allow the authors to upload their books for distribution to major retailers like Google Play Books or Apple Books through a single service.
Using an aggregator helps you save time and effort because it will not require you to upload your book manually.
However, there is a trade-off if you want to have this convenience.
Some retailers ask for a one-time fee per book upload, others require a monthly subscription, while others want a royalty cut.
Retailers
Online retailers are the stores or companies like Amazon, allowing the buyers to browse the title and buy the book directly from the seller.
With retailers, authors will have to upload final copies of their books.
Authors collect their payments from the retailers.
Barnes & Noble and Kindle Direct Publishing are both retailers.
Other Self-publishing Resources
In addition to actual self-publishing companies, authors can also take advantage of other different self-publishing resources.
Publishing Educators
Publishing Education companies offer author education programs through coaching and self-publishing courses.
They want to help authors build careers by learning to handle the self-publishing process.
A self-publishing school is an example of a publishing educator.
Self-published Author Services
These companies offer self-publishing services to authors, including book editing, cover design, formatting, illustration, etc.
You can work with reputable companies, even if some are not under the publishing category.
Other Self-publishing Platforms
Barnes & Noble and Kindle Direct Publishing are the two most popular platforms offering self-publishing services.
However, you might want to check other self-publishing platforms available in the market today.
Reedsy
This company provides several self-publishing services for authors.
Its impressive outsourcing platform connects authors with cover designers, editors, formatters, ghostwriters, marketing strategists, and proofreaders.
These are the people that can help an author in getting his book ready for publication.
Reedsy even offers an editorial assessment of your book or a query letter review for those who want to go through the traditional publishing method.
Kobo
Kobo is a Toronto-based company boasting 25% of ebook sales in Canada.
The company also caters to international markets, including the UK, New Zealand, Australia, and other non-English speaking locations where they like English-language books.
Kobo Writing Life is the company’s free and easy-to-use self-publishing platform.
After uploading your file, your ebook becomes ready and available in more than 190 countries.
For ebooks priced at $2.99 or higher, Kobo pays 70% royalties – anything lower than that gets 45%.
Kobo also offers a promotions tool built into the program’s dashboard where authors can take advantage of promotional opportunities.
The Kobo Writing Life platform partners with different libraries and a free app called OverDrive.
The app is widely used by schools and libraries in providing digital content for their users.
Authors can add their titles to the OverDrive library marketplace, set a library price, and get 50% of the profit.
IngramSpark Publishing
IngramSpark Publishing may not be as popular as the other companies, but Ingram plays a big role in the book industry.
Most retailers get their stock from Ingram’s large catalog of wholesale books.
For this reason, the Ingram Book Company decided to create IngramSpark Publishing as a self-publishing aggregator.
IngramSpark is one of the few that lets you print your book in a hardcover option in addition to ebook and paperback versions.
Each print title is priced at $49, and every revision costs $25 with royalty rates of 45% to 65%.
Apple Books Publishing
Apple Books Publishing is in competition with Barnes & Noble for the second-largest ebook retailer today.
However, the primary concern for Apple’s iBook is you need to be a Mac user to upload your file.
In any case, you can always find an Apple-approved aggregator.
On the other hand, it is a major advantage for those with a Mac computer.
Mac users only need to go through three simple steps to upload their files: sign up, set up an account, and submit.
While it only supports an ebook format, it provides a 70% royalty rate.
Apple’s direct marketing approach focused on Mac users fares well against Amazon.
Lulu
Lulu is not new to the publishing industry and is one of the oldest platforms around.
Its publication and distribution of ebooks began in 2009, producing up to two million books by 2014.
Working with Lulu is straightforward – as an author, you only have to upload your book to the platform.
You can distribute your book to the online bookstore by getting an ISBN.
With Lulu, authors receive a royalty of 80% for print books and 90% for ebooks.
Final Thoughts
The pandemic outbreak has brought a drastic change to everything we do.
While traditional publishing struggled, digital bookstores boomed.
Choosing between Barnes and Noble vs Amazon Self-publishing platforms is hard because each has its strengths and weaknesses.
However, you can max all the potential of the Amazon self-publishing platform as you subscribe to the Kindle Direct Publishing Success Guide.
