Barnes & Noble continues to prove that it should fire its Naming Department with PubIt!, a free e-book self-publishing service. Basically, you can upload any Word or .txt document and Barnes & Noble will convert it into an e-book that they will make available for sale on their Nooks and Nook software—which basically means your self-published e-book will be available on any smart phone anywhere. The pricing structure is smart, though:

You can sell your book for any price ranging from $1 to $200. A price less than $10 nets you 65% per sale, while anything above $10 gets 40%. B&N says that they won't sneak up on you with any hidden fees anywhere along the line, which, along with its simplicity, is presumably what makes PubIt! competitive with Amazon's 70/30 publishing program.

This will enable B&N to advertise that they have a hooptillion e-books available for under $10 and it will also expand their e-book numbers with the sheer quantity of self-publishers who will jump at this deal. But holy shit: Really? Anyone can just turn any Word document into a book? Doesn't anyone see the problem here?

Here's a notice to aspiring self-publishers: If your book hasn't had an editor (a real, paid editor who is not a part of your family or a friend of yours), it's not a real book yet. An editor is just as much a part of the publishing process as a writer.