[Kimberly Spencer]

After you received your free isbn, how long did it take for your book to be included in the premium catalog?

I got my isbn a few days ago, but my dashboard is still saying pending approval. I thought the only way to get an isbn was to already approved, but I guess I was wrong. :/

 

[Skate]

Kimberley, I got my ISBN yesterday and I'm showing as approved. But it started telling me I needed an ISBN days before the actual approval came through. I just ignored it until it said approved and then applied. So I can't really help. It took 2 weeks for the approval to come through.

 

[kellymcclymer]

You need the iSBN to be approved for premium, but then your ms gets checked over. Has been more than a week for my book. With the paid ISBN you can opt out of Smashwords distribution to B&N and do it yourself on PubIt...and on Apple, if you get impatient.

 

[swolf]

Actually, you don't need the ISBN to be approved for the premium catalog.  If you don't have one, you just won't be distrubuted to the Apple or Sony stores.  You'll go everywhere else though.

It does say you have to be approved for the catalog before you get an ISBN, so I'm not sure why you got one before that.

Also, you can opt out of any distribution regardless of the type of ISBN you have, paid, free, or non-existent.

 

[Christopher Hunter]

I'm trying to get a book approved to the catalog now. It can be so pesky at times. And as far as the ISBN, just get it after the approval to keep things simple..

 

[Kimberly Spencer]

Er I already accepted one. I guess I'll just wait and see what happens.

 

[elalond]

It takes eleven days (if there's no glitches) to get in premium catalogue, and you can get the ISBN before you are in premium catalogue, at least I got it for all of my books before I was in premium catalogue. 

 

[RM Prioleau]

It took me almost a month of 'pending approval' for them to tell me I had to fix something before it can get to premium status >_> So now I'm waiting again to hopefully get approved.

 

[WestofMars]

I just got notice that the first book I'd uploaded there, The Demo Tapes: Year 1, made it through screening. Weird. I hadn't told them to re-check it. And it was approved ... oh, when I first uploaded it back in 2009...

Very strange.

 

[elalond]

It took me almost a month of 'pending approval' for them to tell me I had to fix something before it can get to premium status >_> So now I'm waiting again to hopefully get approved.

Like I said, eleven days - if there's no problems with the MS's formatting/styling.

Have you, after you uploaded your MS, checked all the Ebook reading formats? If there are problems, you can, in a lot of cases, find them on your own -- I always do that and also put my .EPUBs through EPUBCHECK validator.

Hope that you will get Approved on ... soon.

 

[Paul Clayton]

I'm in the same boat.  I uploaded a newly edited version of White Seed last week and it's still pending for premium status.  Maybe there's a gazillion books ahead of it, including yours.  Hope it moves along soon.  Best!

 

[Carradee]

They seem to approve on Thursdays and Fridays, from my handful of times needing (re-)approval for the premium catalogue.  How long it takes really varies; I've had things processed within days and as long as two weeks.  The two-week incident had formatting errors.

 

[opuscroakus]

It takes eleven days (if there's no glitches) to get in premium catalogue, and you can get the ISBN before you are in premium catalogue, at least I got it for all of my books before I was in premium catalogue.

Where did you see THAT? It's taken me sometimes as long as six-weeks before someone can get back there to approve my changes by hand. And that's from Mark Coker's own lips. They don't run the modifications through an autovetter, they check those by hand, is what he told me, which is why it sometimes takes so long.

You don't need an ISBN to get into the catalogue, unless they are changing this. They've changed some of the policies recently, with new Meatgrinder software coming next month, I think is what he told me. And it won't choke on most of the crap it's choking on now.

 

[elalond]

Where did you see THAT? It's taken me sometimes as long as six-weeks before someone can get back there to approve my changes by hand. And that's from Mark Coker's own lips. They don't run the modifications through an autovetter, they check those by hand, is what he told me, which is why it sometimes takes so long.

On my Dashboard. My three books (one novel and two short stories that I uploaded in the last months) took exactly eleven days.

I just copy&paste since making a screenshoot and uploading the .jpg is too much work.

Title ..................................... Date Published Premium Status

Red Moon: Haniel's Slice of Life .... 03/06/11 Approved on 03/17/11

 

[opuscroakus]

On my Dashboard. My three books (one novel and two short stories that I uploaded in the last months) took exactly eleven days.

I meant, where in the FAQ did you see it? Just because it happened to yours twice doesn't mean that's the standard, and certainly hasn't been my experience. Once when I complained about it to Mark Coker, he wrote me back to tell me what I previously said about it: that the modified mss are not autovetted, they are manually checked (he sent me a screen shot about one of my issues being caused by Open Office) and that they get to them when they can. My average wait time for all mss have been over four weeks, with two ending up being close to six.

 

[Christopher Meeks]

For whatever reason, it took about four months for my book to be approved to the premium catalog last year. With my new book, "Love at Absolute Zero," I went directly to Barnes and Noble's PubIt, which works as easily at uploading at Amazon. My book was on the Nook within a day.

PubIt is at http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?a=logout&t=pi_reg_home&time=1302716516725

 

[Lanie Jordan]

My free story took 18 days to get approved, but that was back in January.

 

[Doug DePew]

I got my free ISBN after it was approved. I thought that's what we had to do?

It took around ten or eleven days for mine to be approved. I think it was approved Wednesday or Thursday. Then I got the free ISBN and it immediately went into effect. I'm already in most of the distribution channels.

I actually had one sale at Smashwords! Woo hoo!

 

[RM Prioleau]

Like I said, eleven days - if there's no problems with the MS's formatting/styling.

Have you, after you uploaded your MS, checked all the Ebook reading formats? If there are problems, you can, in a lot of cases, find them on your own -- I always do that and also put my .EPUBs through EPUBCHECK validator.

Hope that you will get Approved on ... soon.

Yes, I uploaded the MS and checked all formats. I ran into a problem I couldn't figure out, but did some suggestions people made and am currently waiting to see what happens now.

 

[Justin Alexander]

For whatever reason, it took about four months for my book to be approved to the premium catalog last year. With my new book, "Love at Absolute Zero," I went directly to Barnes and Noble's PubIt, which works as easily at uploading at Amazon. My book was on the Nook within a day.

PubIt is at http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?a=logout&t=pi_reg_home&time=1302716516725

I strongly suggest that everyone follows Christopher's example and publish through PubIt directly:

(1) It will get your books listed on B&N much quicker.
(2) Smashwords won't be taking a cut of your royalties.
(3) You'll get your royalty payments much faster.
(4) You'll have more control over the formatting of your Nook books.
(5) Your Nook books won't be branded by Smashwords.
(6) You'll be able to track your Nook sales in real time.

We use Smashwords to access markets that are difficult or impossible to access as an independent. But PubIt is large enough and easy enough to use that you're much better off working with it directly, IMO.

Regarding approval times: The dozen titles we have available on Smashwords took from 10-15 days to approve. It's 10-12 days if we exclude the two titles that got initially rejected for having dot-com review site on the cover (which the initial approval process identified as some sort of advertising link and rejected until I pointed out it was actually just a review quote).