More news on Borders and Bookbrewer ‘Get Published’

We reported extensively yesterday on Borders and Book Brewers new self publishing program going live on Oct 25th 2010 entitled ‘Get Published.’ We talked with a contact at Borders and get a lot more information.

The new program allows authors to submit books to Borders using a software platform written by BookBrewer. You then get your eBook listed on their store and for a premium fee they then distribute your eBook to many other ebook stores including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and more!

The Current fee is either $89.99 to get listed on all ebook stores in Borders supported network and for $199.99 you have the ability to distribute your ebook yourself. The highest tier model allows you to have your newly made ebook DRM-free book that is 100% yours, to do with as you will. You could give it away free, for example.

Currently the method of payment for the two tiers of access is PAYPAL, which means you can use your bank account, credit cards or an e-cheque. Paypal is also very secure and PCI compliant. Borders has told us that they will be directly accepting credit cards in the near future, so you will have the option to pay via PAYPAL or directly via credit card. Borders has told us that they plan to phase PAYPAL payments out in the next few months and just go completly with online credit card processing.

Borders and Bookbrewer are allowing authors themselves to establish the price of their eBook. Borders does recommend a starting price of $2.99 to $9.99 to help new authors establish themselves and maximize royalty based opportunities. Dan Pacheco of BookBrewer mentioned “For pricing we are currently limiting books sold on Amazon to be between $2.99 and $9.99. This is because Amazon switches the royalties around in their favor for any books sold over $9.99. We’re protecting the author from the shock of thinking they will make more money when, in fact, they could make significantly less money by pricing higher.”

The essence of “Get Published” is if you can copy and paste it, you can make an ebook of it! If you are an established author already, but do not have your book in ePub format, you can simply copy and paste all of the text into the ebook wizard and it will format it into a proper marketable epub format. Borders ‘Get Published’ is all about ease of use, thanks to its partnership with BookBrewer.

One of the great aspects of this new program is that it can pull an RSS feed, similar to Amazon’s Blog for Kindle Beta program. It can then use this RSS information and compile it into ebook format! This is great for blogs like ours, where you aren’t going to read it every day, or if you are in motion you can get the last month of articles and get caught up with them on your e-Reader, Tablet, Smartphone while on the go. BookBrewer also has any excellent FAQ on RSS Questions HERE.

Many people have been asking about the geographical aspects of this program. Many authors are based all over the world and would want to take advantage of this new platform. A representative at Borders told us tht “BookBrewer has been focused on the US Market at this time. If an international author or blogger wants to use the service, they can; the only possible difficulty may be the credit card/paypal issues that are more complicated when dealing with money exchange. However, the retailers are currently US retailers. International retailers may be interested in dealing with Book Brewer and Borders Get Published; we hope they are! As those opportunities arise, we will certainly do full investigation of them.”

When asked to elaborate on the overall spirit of “Get Published” and its influence on Amazon’s Blog for Kindle and Digital Text Platform, she told us the following. “I would just like to say how excited we are at Borders about this program. Just as some of the great authors of the past were diarists, like Dostyevsky and Emerson, tomorrow’s next great authors may be bloggers. We want those people to be able to focus on what they want to communicate, not how they build it, and Borders Get Published powered by Book Brewer will do just that. It is a great tool to allow authors to focus on their thoughts and dreams instead of their format.”

“We also are veering far away from our competition in that we’ve focused on what was best for the customer and the author: maximum exposure. Instead of forcing authors to redo their work over and over for each company individually, we’re helping to facilitate sales at all outlets, not just our own. That way, authors can work on their next project faster, which is good for us all. That’s why we wanted a program that provides an ISBN: it allows the book to be sold anywhere, not just at Borders.”

We were given a list of some of the Charter members publishing under this new program, feel free to check some of them out.

Bryte’s Ascent
Amazon: http://amzn.to/cyb1pE
Borders: http://bit.ly/d3XpOy
Kobo: http://bit.ly/cLn56t

The Dating Dad
Amazon: http://amzn.to/c8SNkV
Borders: http://bit.ly/8YjEQp
Kobo: http://bit.ly/cr7GLq

If you would like to read a full preview of the new Book Brewer and Borders Get Published program click here. You can also register an account and get started on BookBrewer here.

Michael Kozlowski  (1799 Posts)

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about electronic readers and technology for the last four years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the Huffington Post, CNET and more. Michael frequently travels to international events such as IFA, Computex, CES, Book Expo and a myriad of others. If you have any questions about any of his articles, please send Michael Kozlowski an email to michael@goodereader.com

Related posts:

1. Borders and BookBrewer to release GET PUBLISHED
2. Kobo takes over Borders eBook Business
3. Borders Shuts Down Remaining Stores in Australia
4. Good e-Reader Radio – Breaking News on Amazon Textbooks, Borders Collapse and RIM
5. Borders removes the ability to buy books with its iOS APP
6. Borders Selling off Its Intellectual Property