Barnes & Noble is leaping aboard the electronic publishing express in a big way. In addition to their Nook ereader, they’ve announced PubIt, a digital publishing platform for publishers and writers.

Their press release Barnes & Noble Announces PubIt!(TM), An Easy-to-Use Digital Publishing and Distribution Platform for Independent and Self-Publishers – MarketWatch says:

“NEW YORK, May 19, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Barnes & Noble, Inc. (BKS 19.77, +0.27, +1.38%) , the world’s largest bookseller, is extending its deep and longstanding tradition of supporting authors and publishers with PubIt! by Barnes & Noble, an easy and lucrative way for independent publishers and self-publishing writers to distribute their works digitally through Barnes & Noble.com and the Barnes & Noble eBookstore. The easy-to-use publishing and distribution platform offers qualified independent publishers and authors of self-published works expanded distribution, visibility and protection that only Barnes & Noble can offer.”

The details haven’t been announced yet. It’ll be interesting to see what kinds of royalties they offer, and whether they demand exclusivity.

Can the Apple tablet revive the publishing industry? That remains to be seen. Apparently Apple’s been shopping the tablet around to publishers, offering a better deal to publishers than Amazon.

Publishers talk about Apple’s tablet | 9 to 5 Mac reports:

“Apple has been pitching itself against Amazon’s model specifically to the publishers.  Apple’s ‘Agency model’ gives publishers more control and freedom for pricing vs. Amazon who’ve recently restructured a small part of their publisher offering to compete with this surge by Apple.   We received the exact same wording from both people so we think this is the type of thing that Apple is touting to all publishers.  We might hear about ‘the Agency Model’ vs. Kindle’s at the event.”

Fascinating.

Some analysts are predicting that Apple’s rumored device will sell ten million units in the first year. If so, and if the device is content-centric, then your book may indeed appear on the Apple tablet.

We live in exciting times…

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When you work and play on the Web, you’re trained to expect everything fast. As I mentioned in this post about writer’s book contracts, the idea-to-bookstore process takes around two years.

That is, from the time you get an idea for a book, develop the idea, sell the book etc is around two years, minimum. It can take much longer — I’ve had agents who shopped around manuscripts for 18 months before getting a nibble from a publisher.

This may be about to change, for some books at least.

Tina Brown’s forming a new book imprint, called Beast Books, which will publish books by writers at The Daily Beast (blog) site.

Publishers want to make money, so I think we’ll see other publishers ramping up their schedules too.

The Daily Beast Seeks to Speed Up the Publishing Process for Books – NYTimes.com reports:

“On a typical publishing schedule, a writer may take a year or more to deliver a manuscript, after which the publisher takes another nine months to a year to put finished books in stores. At Beast Books, writers would be expected to spend one to three months writing a book, and the publisher would take another month to produce an e-book edition.”

What does this mean for you as a writer? It means that you need to get your skates on, and develop good writing habits, so you can write more, and can write faster too, if you want to be published in the fast-forward years to come.

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I get really, really tired of writing about writing scams — I used to cover them extensively on my writing blog, but there are so many I can’t keep track. (Writer Beware does a good job of alerting writers to scammers.)

Publishers pay YOU, you don’t pay them

This should go without saying, but if you’re a new writer, remember: THEY PAY YOU — you don’t PAY anyone to publish your work.

One particular scammer has turned into an industry on his own. Making Light: Robert Fletcher, Literary Scammer, Part II says about this devil:

“One of the chief points against Fletcher-the-Agent (New York Literary Agency, Writer’s Literary Agency, Children’s Literary Agency, Poets Literary Agency, etc. etc.) was that he demonstrably couldn’t sell books to publishers. But if he owned a publisher….

The difference between Strategic Book Publishing and Eloquent Books is this: Strategic Book Publishing pretends to be a ‘traditional’ publisher—no fees to the author—provided the author agrees to buy five copies per week at full retail price. Eloquent Books, on the other hand, pretends to be a ‘joint venture’ publisher, where the author and the publisher each put up half of the cost. But since Eloquent Books authors typically send Fletcher (under one or another of his names) a thousand bucks plus in advance, it’s clear that they’re paying the whole freight plus a nice profit for Fletcher.”

He’s one among many scammers. You can avoid them all, if you remember this one, very simple point: publishers pay you. You don’t pay them. Nor do you pay agents.

Here’s a slideshow presentation from Kelly Gallagher, VP of publishing services at R.R. Bowker: “The Customer’s Always Right: Who is today’s book consumer?”

It gives you great information you can use in marketing your book — and remember, marketing starts BEFORE you write your book.