Nook Press Expands to UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium

[DBDigital]

In a email sent out today to all Nook Press (Barnes and Noble's epublishing system) users they announced expansion to UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium:

Dear Publisher,

You may notice some changes the next time you log into NOOK Press.
We've been working hard to get NOOK Press ready for some new guests –
starting today, publishers in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain,
the Netherlands, and Belgium will be able to publish with NOOK Press
and reach Barnes & Noble's millions of book-loving customers. This means
even more great indie content for customers and increased visibility for
you and your NOOK Books in the months to come!

The changes we've made for this international expansion mean you can now:

View nookpress.com in 7 languages: Work and publish in US English, UK
English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch. Select a new
language in the dropdown from any page in NOOK Press.

Set your EUR (€) list prices. If you have indicated that you have
Worldwide Rights, we’ll automatically convert the EUR list price from
your USD list price as we do for GBP prices, or you can enter your own
EUR price.

Thanks to the changes we've made, your titles will soon be on sale in
France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium if you've
selected Worldwide Rights in the NOOK Book Details of your project.
Because we have a very high volume of NOOK Press content, we are
making your titles available in those countries over several months.
We appreciate your patience as we work to put all NOOK Press content
on sale in our new marketplaces.

With these expanded sales opportunities, it's a great time to set up a
vendor account and get all of your books on sale, if you have not already
done so. By signing up now, you'll have NOOK Books on sale in just 72
hours. If you are looking for self-publishing advice or inspiration from
fellow authors, we've got you covered. Check out the NOOK Press Blog,
which we've launched as another way to bring together writers and
readers and to expand the conversation about self-publishing, both here
and in Europe.

We want to assure you that we've been working hard to implement the new
features at NOOK Press – including testing, testing, testing! As we open
up NOOK Press to international publishers, our primary concern is to make
sure that your experience is seamless. In case we missed something, please
let us know so that we can fix it right away. We've added a new contact
form so that you can send our support team an email directly from within
NOOK Press:
*removed as it was a unique link*

We want to take this time to thank you for being a valued partner, and
to wish you continued success in your self-publishing with NOOK!

Sincerely,

The NOOK Press Team

With the recent announcement that their Nook Windows app was being discontinued, this is surprising and perhaps encouraging showing that the nook is not quite dead yet. But I do find this comment interesting: "... will be able to publish with NOOK Press and reach Barnes & Noble's millions of book-loving customers." Considering they haven't been international before, they don't have millions of customers in these markets yet.

[HarryT]

This seems a little curious, given that the only non-US market in which the nook is currently sold is, to the best of my knowledge, the UK, and you'd struggle to find anyone here who's actually heard of it.

[fjtorres]

Nook is contractually obligated to setup those ebookstores and to stock them with ebooks as part of their deal with Microsoft. With Microsoft taking over development and distribution of the Windows reading app, those stores are effectively Microsoft ebookstores, with Nook serving the role of Bluefire, Txtr, or Overdrive. This gives MS contingency options in case Nook goes away.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by DBDigital

But I do find this comment interesting: "... will be able to publish with NOOK Press and reach Barnes & Noble's millions of book-loving customers." Considering they haven't been international before, they don't have millions of customers in these markets yet.

Barnes & Noble was already international, they ship paper books to most places, so maybe they do have millions of customers in those countries already. It was just the Nook and ebooks that they tried to restrict to US/UK customers.

[DBDigital]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Barnes & Noble was already international, they ship paper books to most places, so maybe they do have millions of customers in those countries already. It was just the Nook and ebooks that they tried to restrict to US/UK customers.

Very true, I should have been more specific. But still what they are implying (they the already have many ebook customers) is certainly not true, and as they know customers in one format doesn't necessarily equate to the other (although I am sure they are going to try). All things considered I hope that the Nook does turn around. I like the platform, or at least I did with the first edition and the Nook Tablet. Never liked simple touch that much or the newer tablets. But still they are decent hardware (at least in my experience) and very customizable (after a bit of hacking). I understand why they tried to lock down the hardware, but I think they would have done better to make it more open. Also website was great when the Nook first came out, then they took a wrong turn and haven't made a right one since lol.