October 26, 2010: 11:08 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com)

Barnes & Noble unveiled a new full-color, touchscreen version of its Nook e-reader Tuesday in New York City.

The new version, priced at $249, will begin shipping on or around Nov. 19, and is now available for pre-order. Unlike Barnes & Noble’s current Nooks, the new one won’t have a 3G network connection. It will only be able to get online through Wi-Fi.

The NookColor is latest strike in an ongoing price and hardware battle among e-reader manufacturers – and a bold move away from E-Ink, the technology Amazon and other booksellers insist makes for a better reading experience. E-Ink boasts a backlight-free display and reflects light like regular paper does. It’s more comfortable to read for hours, but it’s far less flexible and much slower than a traditional touchscreen display.

The NookColor is powered by Google’s Android operating system. It’s a half-inch thick, weighs less than a pound, and has a “laminated” screen that minimizes glare, according to Jamie Iannone, Barnes & Noble’s digital product head. The battery allows up to eight hours of continuous reading, and the gadget’s 8 GB of internal memory can hold around 6,000 books.

Barnes & Noble played up the NookColor’s social features and interactivity. A new developer platform invites creators to build “reading-centric apps,” and readers can recommend books to friends on Twitter and Facebook with the tap of a button.

The company is particularly targeting parents and young readers with its new gadget: A new catalog of children’s books will launch with “hundreds” of picture books, plus 11,000 chapter books. Interactive childrens’ books will let kids play with animation, and a “read to me” button has a professional narrator read the children’s story.

A tense battle: The original Nook launched last November with a black-and-white E-Ink screen for reading text, and a smaller color touchscreen for browsing book titles. Prices range from $149 for a Wi-Fi-only version to $199 for the Nook 3G, which can connect to cellular networks.

Barnes & Noble said it will continue to enhance its existing Nook technology, including enabling faster page turns. Those devices will remain part of the Nook portfolio.

“We think there’s a sector of users who want E-Ink only,” Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch said.

The iPad’s April debut cast doubt on the long-term survival of dedicated e-readers. For a starting price of $500, the iPad offers e-book apps plus broader multimedia features for Web surfing and watching videos. Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) sold 7.5 million iPads in the gadget’s first six months.

But competition is still hot. Amazon’s Kindle has largely dominated the e-reader space, relegating the Nook, the Sony Reader and Borders’ Kobo to also-rans. Amazon consistently refuses to divulge Kindle sales, resorting instead to vague press releases — which most analysts take as a sign that sales aren’t earthshattering. Still, the Kindle is believed to have sold several million units in its three years on the market.

“Nook has sold well over a million units, and we’re on our way to a million more,” Lynch said.

Barnes & Noble (BKS, Fortune 500) has a vast retail network, but it’s been the underdog in the e-reader fight against Amazon.

On top of a two-year head start, Amazon has a much larger catalog of e-books — and they’re often cheaper than they are at Barnes & Noble, an issue that has drawn scrutiny from consumer advocates who suspect Amazon and Apple have negotiated some potentially unfair pricing deals.

Barnes & Noble is a major bookseller competing with tech companies, but its Tuesday announcement indicates it views the e-reader fight as one that will be won on technology — not content.

On that front, it lags its rivals. Barnes & Noble touts its “2 million plus titles available” for the Nook, but a giant chunk of those books are pre-1923 texts that are in the public domain. Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500), on the other hand, doesn’t include public domain titles when it says there are 750,000 books in its catalog.

Price fights: Amazon and Barnes & Noble both slashed their readers’ prices in June, after the iPad debut in April.

Prices have continued dwindling since then. Ahead of Barnes & Noble’s event, Borders announced on Monday that would it cut the price of its entry-level E-Ink Kobo reader to just $99.

But the $250 NookColor price tag is here to stay, B&N CEO Lynch pledged at the launch — even if Amazon races out with a cheaper, touchscreen Kindle.

“We’re not thinking of lowering the price anytime soon, no matter what happens,” he said.

I encountered only one error, where the system timed out in the middle of an upload.  I refreshed the screen and was able to continue, but after I was finished I noticed the book was listed twice on my list of titles.  One listing was complete and the other was not. I was unable to find where to delete the unfinished title.  But so far, this is the only bug I ran into.

Here’s a look of the preview window that pops up, which shows you how your book actually looks on the Nook.  Like I said in part 1, it’s a nice touch but the font is awfully big and not adjustable.  For some who are new to this, they may worry the actual font in their document (which should be no bigger than 12pt) needs to be adjusted.  The only issues I really had were the odd breaks in the front matter.  For example, the title appeared on one page and my name appeared all by itself on the next.  This can be fixed though by eliminating spaces in your document to make it more e-friendly.

In part one, I also mentioned you can enter an ISBN.  It actually cannot be the ISBN of your physical book, but rather must be an E-specific ISBN.  However, I noticed that once my book, Stealing Wishes, went live on the Nook, B&N automatically linked it to the paperback version, along with previous reviews and everything. And speaking of going live, my third document went live before the first two.  This could be due to file size, but I’m not sure.

As of the time I am posting this, my book cover images have not loaded to their product pages either.  I’m not sure if this is because of a problem with the file itself or just due to the speed of the system. I do know that the image usually loads first for Amazon Kindle, and the product details follow a few days later.  I’ll give it a week and see what happens.  Hopefully, they will appear.

And in closing, hopefully sales will generate from this.  Since the Kindle stormed the market, most of my attention has been focused there, and so have my sales.  If you followed my POD Diary a few years ago, you might remember that the majority of my sales came from the Kindle. They still do today.  Possibly a year from now, I’ll do an article looking back at sales over one year and compare the two. I actually have a coworker who invested in the Nook and allowed me to look at it.  It’s a nice little gadget and let’s hope, for the sake of indie authors, it holds its own in the marketplace.

After a week long hassle with log-in problems at B&N’s PubIt! after it launched last week, I was finally able to get signed in.  I requested new passwords several times, only to receive an automated email with a link to the same screen over and over again, where the same problem kept happening.  I finally reset my password and still couldn’t get in. Requested a new invite.  That didn’t work. Then I got a more personal email saying the “glitch” had been fixed and I could now give it a go once more.  And it worked!  I searched the web for anyone else having this problem, and apparently it was just me.  **sigh**

The biggest negative rant so far has been the payment info B&N asks for up front right when you sign in.  They want your social security number (Tax ID) if you are an individual.  They also want a checking account and routing number, probably to deposit your earnings directly into your account.  And the one thing I thought was strange is that they want a credit card number – only in the rare case that your account has a negative balance one month due to returns!

Next, it’s on to loading your title.  Enter your name, title, publisher, and date.  Then you are ready to upload the actual file, the “star of the show” as it says in parentheses next to this step.  They accept the basics like a Word document, and preach a lot about ePub which is probably their preferred method.  They even offer editing options as such:

Want to make changes?

There are two ways to edit your eBook.

Option 1: Take a look through our Formatting Best Practices to learn more about how best to format your source document, make some changes, and then upload your fixed file and reconvert.

Option 2: Download the ePub file and make changes to it. Note that knowledge of HTML and ePub are necessary to tweak your ePub.

Once you’ve tweaked your original document or ePub file, upload your final file below and preview it again on NOOK.

They love tweaking, don’t they?

The upload of my book was quick, maybe 1 minute tops at 278KB.  After it loads, a screen pops up that looks like the actual Nook device itself, allowing you to preview how your book will look.  Right away, I noticed the font was huge on the preview and there was no way to adjust it to the actual type, even though you are able adjust it on the actual Nook device itself. I think this is just a problem with the preview and not reflective of the file itself.

Next comes the book cover.  “Put on a good face for the world,” it says.  Cute. The cover must be a JPG file between 5KB and 2MB. The sides must be between 300 pixels and 2500 pixels in length. My cover uploaded in maybe fifteen seconds!

Then you’re encouraged to “stand out in the crowd” by adding an ISBN, picking an age group, confirming if your book is part of a series, marking if it’s available in print or not, choosing a language, selecting rights (worldwide, U.S. and Canada, or U.S. only), and DRM if you want it.  That’s Digital Rights Management, by the way.  Besides the ISBN and age group here, I don’t really see how any of this other information is going to help others find your book.  I seem to think that rights should be covered in the last section by itself, but oh well. You’d think this section would be more about keywords and tags and descriptions, but that comes in the following section: Tell Us More (don’t be shy).

Here, you choose a category (5 max), enter a description, keywords, about the author, pretty cut and dry stuff. And you can also add an editorial review excerpt which is a nice touch.  Great place to fill in those blurbs (5 max)!

You then save your information, confirm you have the rights to sell it with one check, and then click on PUT ON SALE!  The title supposedly goes live in 24 to 72 hours.

And that’s it. The PubIt! log-in is divided into 4 tabs and seems to be organized quite well.  While Amazon’s DTP was a hot mess at first but has gotten better as far as organization goes, I think B&N is off to a good start. More to follow after I get a chance to see how my book looks after it goes live. Questions? Or thoughts about your experience with PubIt!?  Let’s hear ‘em.

PubIt! is now open and ready for you to start selling your eBooks! In no time at all, you can create an account, add your first title, and put your eBooks in front of millions of readers with the world’s largest bookseller.

Please note that to complete the PubIt! registration process you will need to have:

• Your U.S. bank account information (routing number and account number)
• Your U.S. credit card information (credit card number, expiration date, and billing address)
• Your tax identification information (Social Security Number, ITIN, or Employer Identification Number)

Click here to begin the PubIt!

I’ll post more about this once I’ve had a chance to go through the steps to upload one of my own books. 

But Lulu has always been a very different star shining down on the great big world of POD by not charging its users any up front fee for producing a product. Lulu basically takes the manufacturing cost and gives the author the opportunity to make money by marking up the product at their leisure. For instance, at present, Lulu’s cost calculator shows the production cost of a 6×9 perfect bound 150 page black and white print trade paperback as being $7.53. If I was the author of such book, I’d probably mark it up at least 5 dollars. That makes the retail price of this book $12.53. That’s not too bad for a trade paperback.  Having no control over pricing when I published with Xlibris in 2003, the retail price of my 176 page book was $19.99 for a paperback.  My cut of a sale was 10%.  End of story.

However, Lulu could easily tack on another 3 or 4 bucks onto this business model, ultimately increasing their cost to counter the fees Amazon will probably bestow upon them. Heck, if Amazon’s fees are going to be as high as most blogs are saying they are, Lulu could double their manufacturing costs to cover their expense. But this would quickly throw them into the expensive pricing realm that authors all too often experience with other POD publishers. Would it even make a difference by now?  Who knows? Only time will tell. But consider this….will this increase only affect authors who purchase an ISBN to get their book listed on Amazon, B&N.com, etc?  If so, that would probably require Lulu to build an additional set of services (and pricing) only for those who plan to get their book listed on Amazon.  For the author who plans to just use Lulu for set-up, binding and printing, but not purchase an ISBN, should an increased pricing structure apply?  Chances are it will across the board just so Lulu doesn’t have to come up with a separate business model for ISBN purchasers.

At this point, I highly agree with Angela Hoy’s advice she gives to BookLocker authors.  I quote:

1. Remove all Amazon.com links from your marketing materials – website, ezine, blog, email signature, press releases, articles — everything.

2. Change those links to your book’s page on BarnesandNoble.com. To obtain that link, search for your book’s title at http://www.bn.com. All Booklocker.com print books are on their website.

3. Don’t forget to contact Amazon to tell them what you’re doing in response to their horrible actions!

Angela has done a magnificent job at Writer’s Weekly of covering this issue. Catch up with her blog here.

As Angela states, the success of a POD book is really left up to the author.  It’s all about self promotion and marketing.  Your readers will more than likely buy the book from wherever you tell them to.  You DON’T have to send them to Amazon.  Almost all POD publishers, Lulu included, support their own online bookstore.  Lulu even prints a link to your book on their marketing materials.  They have free BUY links available to you as well which you build onto your websites and blogs. And if your book has an ISBN, then B&N lists your book as well.

Book Reviews: Check back this weekend for this month’s first review:  OH Brother by Paul Ciccone, Jr.

Amazon claims it can print and bind a book on site in its facility in about 2 hours (yeah, I’m sure that’s quality), allowing it to be married with multiple purchases made at the same time by a single customer and they can all ship together at once.  This will help to save shipping costs and fuel.  I wonder if this savings will be passed on to the customer?  It’s true.  Amazon does already offer free shipping on orders over $25.00, but that doesn’t mean they ship your items the same day.  It also doesn’t mean they use a preferred method like UPS or Fedex.  I seem to recall a multi-item purchase I made once that took 7 days before they shipped it, and they shipped it in two boxes days apart from one another using the postal service although all the items shipped from their Kentucky warehouse.  14 days later I got one box, and the other arrived a few days afterward.  I would have received the items in 3 days had I just paid the shipping.  Amazon might have saved here, but I certainly didn’t.

I wonder if this means they actually have Booksurge printing facilities in every single warehouse?  How much money will they spend on programming to make sure your POD book purchase actually prints in the same warehouse where your other items are in stock to ship?  Will they pass on that fuel and shipping cost savings to the POD publishers, or charge them an ungodly fee for file uploads, storage, and PRINTING!?  If the publishers get hit, you can bet that will then increase the fees bestowed upon the author, and probably the pricing of the actual books as well.

True, Amazon claims you can continue to print your books as you like and just ship them about 5 to keep on hand to fulfill orders.  Hmm..an excellent way to slap POD publishers with a storage fee, inventory upkeep fee, receiving fee, etc.  So, Amazon saves on shipping and fuel, and makes money by charging POD publishers like crazy for their service!  It will be interesting to see if Booksurge soon becomes the preferred method chosen by POD authors and/or who will be the first POD publisher to go belly up (if any).

For now, Amazon is no longer my preferred method for shopping!

Based on their press release, it sounds like PublishAmerica is backing down. They plan to work closer with other distributors and with B&N to combat the issue. Remember a few weeks ago when Starbucks closed for three hours to retrain employees, and all the other indie coffee shops jumped at the chance to gain that business? Let’s hope that B&N comes up with a plan and is ready to step up to the plate!

Although not much has been released as of yet, I’m sure other POD Publishers will be approached by Amazon soon. Who knows what this means for Lulu, but keep your eye on this Lulu forum to find out. Based on a quote, it seems that Bob Young has already been approached. Here’s the quote from the forum…

Publishers will “have to abide by Amazon’s pricing,” said Bob Young, CEO of Lulu Inc, a print-on-demand publisher based in Raleigh, N.C. Mr. Young said he believed BookSurge’s prices to be “slightly higher” than other printers. An Amazon spokesman declined to comment on that issue. “A significant number of our authors do request for their books to be available on Amazon,” said Mr. Young, who hasn’t yet decided whether he will agree to Amazon’s terms.

For someone like me, who uses Amazon almost everyday as a informational book source for work, and is also a POD author with a book on Amazon, this news really saddens me. It reminds me of a move another billion dollar company made a few years ago. It was all the rage on the internet and made lots of money while making lots of shoppers happy. Then, it started raising it’s pricing and making lots of rules, tightening the grasp it already had on the www market share. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? It’s called Ebay.

It’s sad that a POD author’s most valuable online marketing tool, someone we probably thought was a friend to our industry, would choose to do this. So what do we do now? Check out Angela Hoy’s article on the subject if you’d like Amazon’s contact information to send a letter and voice your own concern to them. Good luck though! Amazon’s quite known for not really listening to its consumers. Who knows? Maybe Amazon will become a fad and another site will take over as the ever-growing internet continues to change. I’ve already tried to use B&N and Abebooks a bit more these days for purchases. And I suggest you do the same!

And hey, while you are looking for an outlet to support, try your local bookstore. You know… That building on the corner with bookshelves filled with books. There’s a person standing in it to help. You take the book off the shelf and walk up to a cash register. You reach in your wallet or purse for cash, a credit card, or a check book. That’s right! You have to GO to the bookstore. The postman doesn’t bring the book to you. While you are there, if you are a POD author, take a copy of your book with you and put it in the hands of the manager or community relations manager. Don’t be pushy! As a matter of fact, thank them for being there. Tell them your book is a thank you gift even and that you’d appreciate their support in return. I’ve always thought Amazon might end up bringing about the demise of the brick-and-mortar bookstore, but let’s NOT let it monopolize the POD industry too.