paidContent reports that self-publishing firm FastPencil is going to offer a new service to its higher-end customers. The company is now promising that those customers who publish through the company’s Wavecrest (packages ranging from $4,499 to $7,499) or Premiere (no prices listed, so presumably if you have to ask it’s too expensive) programs will have “full access to online and in-store placement through Barnes & Noble as well as NOOK bookshelf merchandising.”

Except this doesn’t mean quite what you think it does—it just means that FastPencil will pitch Barnes & Noble at quarterly meetings on “all Premiere and ‘most’ Wavecrest titles”. So “full access” means “you’ll get in if B&N likes you enough,” basically.

FastPencil seems to be a lot more of a full-service self-publisher than most of the do-it-yourself places that exist these days—for one thing, it offers a service where you can actually pay to have the book ghost-written for you, which might be just the thing for busy CEOs but not exactly something the average would-be self-publisher will find attractive. On the other hand, for people who are happy to pay that much for the kind of professional attention FastPencil offers, this could make an already good deal even better.

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