Nook UK is dead. Sainsbury's Entertainment takes over but...

[jaydax]

I'm told, in the official announcement email from Nook, that Sainsbury's Entertainment will be taking over Nook content. (https://www.sainsburysentertainment.co.uk/) I went and checked for my books there and couldn't find them using the search or drilling down by genre. So I looked for other indie authors and couldn't find them either. As far as I can see Smashwords isn't distributing to them.

Check to see if your books are at Sainsbury's. If not - say goodbye to the Nook UK market. I've contacted Smashwords about this but maybe it would help if others did too. Sainsbury's doesn't accept submissions from individual indie authors.

[Ted]

Thanks for the update on B&N shuttering Nook in the U.K. Here's a link to an article on the subject: the-digital-reader.com/2016/03/03/bn-to-close-nook-uk-store-will-hand-customers-off-to-sainsbury/

I'm waiting until the end of March or beginning of April to see if my ebooks are at Sainsbury. It's probably going to take a while to integrate the various ebooks and related sales software.

I checked my Smashwords sales page 'country location' column for sales in GB or UK and only found sales for Apple containing the country_GB designation so far this year. In 2015 the sales report shows few ebooks sold in GB through B&N. Lots of Apple sales in GB, but not that many B&N sales.

[jaydax]

I'm much the same Ted. Not many B&N sales in the UK but any are better than none and unless Sainsbury absorb all of the Nook e-books quickly, none is what we'll get.

[Ted]

Sainsbury's doesn't carry many self published books at this time, according to Mark's Site Update post.

"March 3, 2016 - During Barnes & Noble's earnings announcement today, they announced they're exiting the UK market. This means effective very soon, their UK store will close down. For customers who purchased books from B&N UK, they'll have the option to migrate their purchases to Sainsbury's.

This means your Nook UK customers won't lose access to their books, but you'll want to direct them elsewhere (iBooks, Smashwords, Kobo, etc) to purchase ebooks in the future. Sainsbury's doesn't carry many self published books at this time.

Barnes & Noble remains committed to operating their US ebook store which is the second largest sales channel for Smashwords authors after iBooks."

I'm not going to bother checking Sainsbury unless Mark makes an announcement of a tie-in with Sainsbury for self-published ebooks.

[jaydax]

Matt from Smashwords replied to me as follows:
Hi John,

Thanks for writing in. The option to transfer one's library from Nook to Sainsbury's is a one-off option so readers don't lose their books. We do not have a distribution agreement with Sainsbury's, nor is that likely to change in the near future: their focus is on traditionally published works rather than self-published ones.

That's not entirely consistent with Sainsbury's website where they state:
eBooks: If you would like to display and sell your eBooks through our site, please send the following information in an email:

• country you are based in (for the moment we can only sell in the UK, but we welcome publishers from all over the world)

• extent of your digital catalogue

• file formats available (we accept epub/ pdf)

• metadata format (onix 2.1 is mandatory)

• any aggregator you use (we are implementing a number of them and so might be distributing your titles soon anyway)

We are unable to consider individual submissions by self-published authors; however, we do work with aggregators who submit self-published eBooks to us.

Once you have all of the information above, please do get in touch with us ([e-mail]).