ROW80: B&N Needs To Speed It Up

We're what, ten days in now? My first week was a bit hectic with the release of my first book. I'm settling back into my process now.  Here's a look at the goals:

• Publishing lesson learned this week: B&N is slow.  More on that in a bit.
• For new fiction, I got a page in on Monday, plus two pages last night to finish off the next chapter in my WIP.  That puts me a page ahead of schedule, but I figured I probably won't be able to write tonight... have to go coach a football scrimmage after work.  Yay for succeeding in giving myself a little bit of a cushion.
• In the world of posting, I'm at 2 and 2, including this one.  I need to make my fiction practice posts on each site still this week, but should be able to nail that.

So I've set myself up for a 3 for 3 week.  One of the keys to approaching weekly goals, in my mind, is to do what you can when you can.  Don't sandbag and wait for later in the week "just cuz."  If you have a chance to get ahead early, snatch it!  Relax only after the work's been done.  Easy to learn, difficult to master. 

I mentioned in the first goal that I've learned a lesson this week.  We put both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble editions into the grinder at the same time.  The date on Amazon shows July 8th, but actually it was sometime the following day when we actually clicked submit.  We had to wait overnight for the Feds to give us a tax ID number before we could proceed. 

The Kindle version has been up since Sunday the 10th.  Barnes and Noble is still processing the request.  What's up with that?  I can't really say I understand how one can be so fast and the other so... not.  It's a point of consternation for me because not only are we a Nook household, but so is a majority of my family and friends.  Since, as we all know, indie publishers only sell to family and friends (/sarcasm), that is like a huge chunk of my sales.  One of my buddies was so excited that he stayed up late because he wanted to be the first one to purchase the book.  Problem was, he had a Nook. 

If B&N wants to be competitive in the Amazon dominated market, they're going to have to speed things up.  I'm not saying I'm going to abandon my Nook or anything like that, but speed to market represents a significant monetary advantage.  If I were a bestselling author, my readers might not be willing to wait on B&N and eventually get sucked into Kindleland.  Then, you're not just losing out on my sales, but the future sales that individual would have purchased as well.  That's a big deal.

Maybe they're just having a bad week too, who knows.  At this rate, though, we're going to have our print version available before B&N even sniffs at a sale.  I know some people who might just say "screw it" and pick up the print.  Not that it's going to hurt them.  Still, lost business is lost business.  There's nothing I can do about it.  I guess I'll just have to keep in mind that if I ever want a perfectly synchronized release, I'll have to give B&N some lead time.

B&N will have to improve on this, I'd think.  Until then, my buddy is trying hard to at least be my first Nook customer.  His poor refresh key might wear out.  If Amazon is any indication... he'll probably know it's up before I will.