Friday, July 12, 2013

I Lost My Nook Press Virginity

The same morning that news of William Lynch's resignation as CEO of Barnes & Noble filled the publishing industry's blogosphere, I uploaded a book to Nook Press for the first time. Compared to Pubit!, the experience frankly sucked.

First of all, I had to access the portal through Chrome because it decided it didn't like IE8. Yeah, yeah, I'm still on WindowsXP, and I know I need to upgrade to a new computer. I will not sully Isabella with Vista, and she can't handle Windows7, much less 8. I've never been able to get FireFox to work right on Isabella.  All of this to say, I HATE FUCKING CHROME!

Instead of one page to fill out, B&N have broken it into five different pages. Instead of letting me fill in the blanks, they're trying to "help" by pre-populating fields. That course of action isn't helpful when I'm uploading a book under Alter Ego.

On the plus side, B&N now lets you upload a cover that's the same size as Amazon, Apple and Smashwords. It's a relief not to have an extra cover file clogging up my directories.

The most annoying problem was the pricing page. For some reason, Nook Press decided it wasn't going to recognize my $2.99 the first time I saved the page. It took four tries before it would finally recognize the same input and let me publish the damn book.

I discovered another quirk. If you're on the Sales page, Nook Press will not let you log out. It merely flashes the options, but if you try to click on it, the logout button disappears. Go to the Projects page, and it will let you log out just fine. Note: This problem only happened on Tuesday. In subsequent logons, I haven't been able to replicate the bug.

Normally, I'd report the bugs, but in this case, I know they will be ignored. Everyone at B&N is too busy updating their resumes.

3 comments:

  1. Your last line was a funny ending to this post. I haven't had to deal with any of this stuff, but it is interesting to read about.

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  2. I haven't uploaded to Nook Press yet. But after reading this...I'm just so looking forward to it...NOT. Why is it that companies can't leave things alone? If it ain't broken, don't fix it. BTW...I agree with Ivy...loved your last line. :)

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  3. Ah, ladies, I wish I could say I was joking with that last line. I've been through enough corporate flame-outs to recognize one. I actually feel sorry for the B&N employees because I used to work for Waldenbooks, which was a subsidiary of the now-defunct Borders.

    Savannah, I suspect the new system was a separate development in case they managed to find a buyer for the Nook subdivision. But you're right. the whole develpment is a pain in the ass.

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