Barnes & Noble

In The News – Indie Authors to Finally See their Books on B&N Shelves

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In The News – Articles Of Interest For Authors

This should be filed under about effing time, if it works out. I have been rooting for B&N to become competitive with Amazon and Apple. The more choices authors and readers have, the better. But B&N continually steps on their own feet.  There are quality based caveats on an indie author having their titles in the store,  which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But will B&N manage to make good this time? Head on over to Good eReader for the full story.

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Indie Authors to Finally See their Books on B&N Shelves

June 28, 2016 By Mercy Pilkington

barnes_nobleAbout three years ago, then-VP, Digital Content and GM of Barnes and Noble’s Nook Press division Theresa Horner sat down with GoodEReader at the Frankfurt Book Fair to discuss the state of the company, namely its self-publishing option and its ebook self-publishing platform. She posed the question as to what it would take to effectively compete with Amazon. Our response–which was not at all tongue in cheek–was for the retailer to stop banning indie authors’ books from brick-and-mortar stores. If Nook Press had developed a viable print-on-demand option and then told authors there was even a possibility of seeing their titles in their local bookstore on the condition that they pulled their books from Amazon’s exclusive KDP Select program, authors would have jumped at the chance.

Unfortunately, that didn’t come to pass and Theresa Horner is no longer with the company. The concept of opening the doors–and the shelves–to great self-published titles fell by the wayside.

Since that time, B&N has announced two print-on-demand options, both of which fell far short of meeting indie authors’ and small press publishers’ needs. One was to simply allow the upload and creation of print editions for what basically amounted to collectors’ editions and gift giving. The books were not listed for sale through B&N, and there was a significant upfront charge to produce them–unlike CreateSpace, just to name one example, that charges nothing to produce a print book then takes a portion of the sales price after it distributes the book to Amazon. Even though the Nook Press print option also included the choice to create a hardcover edition, there was no help in selling the print titles.

Read the full post on Good eReader

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In the News – Barnes & Noble Should Carry Indie Books

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In The News – Articles Of Interest For Authors

I have to admit Barnes & Noble just frustrates me. I want them to succeed, I want there to be competition and a lot of choices with books and eBooks.  But if you told me that Barnes & Noble was deliberately trying to fail, I would believe you. First they make affiliate advertising a horrible painful experience, and their support of self-publishing books is non-existent.  on Digital Book World agrees and makes his case why Barnes & Noble should carry indie books.

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Barnes & Noble Should Carry Indie Books

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Expert publishing blog opinions are solely those of the blogger and not necessarily endorsed by DBW.

Barnes & NobleAn open letter has been making the rounds the last couple days that pits the self-publishing community against one of the banners of big corporate publishing.

Here’s an excerpt from indie author Cambria Herbert’s “An open letter to Barnes and Noble” (Emphasis is hers):

This isn’t just an angry letter because I got another form rejection. I’ve had many. I’ve also had many successes and my career doesn’t hinge on store placement. This is about change, and about asking for a chance to be equal.

I’ve been in this business a while now, I don’t know everything, but I do know some things. I know you have the capability of helping to lift up the talented writers who do ALL their own marketing, publishing and branding.

It’s time, Barnes and Noble. It’s time you step into the new era of publishing. It’s time you acknowledge there are good books out there that don’t just come out of big six [sic] publishers.

It’s time you recognize us.

What this all comes down to is respect. The self-publishing community is a passionate one, believing its authors have just as much of a right to publish a book as do authors who have traditional publishers. Moreover, many of them believe their mode of publishing is the right one.

At the end of the day, they just want to be treated as authors, not self-published authors.

As evidenced by the need for Herbert’s letter, there is still a significant stigma surrounding self-publishing and indie authors. Hell, I’ve been accused of perpetuating it myself.

But I don’t think that stigma is reduced when proponents of self-publishing say authors need to be writing several books a year. As one commenter on our interview with Hugh Howey wrote, “That’s not writing; that’s typing.”

What’s more, there are two types of self-published authors: those who write a manuscript, get the book proofread and professionally edited, have a cover professionally designed, create a marketing plan, etc; and those who don’t.

New Barnes and Noble CEO Will Kill NooK

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This post by Michael Kozlowski originally appeared on GoodEreader on 7/3/15.

Barnes and Noble has lost over one billion dollars on trying to make the Nook brand into a viable business model. Since 2009 the largest bookseller in the US has gone through two CEO’s and has just announced they have hired their third, Ron Boire, who starts this September. It looks like the Nook brand is in seriously jeopardy.

Boire—who has only been CEO of the faltering Sears Canada department store chain for the last ten months has kept the store in business by closing retail locations and axing thousands of job will be the new CEO of Barnes and Noble. His number one priority with the company is to stem the blood loss from the ailing Nook division. Last week Barnes and Noble announced that Nook hardware and e-books sales fell 40% in the three months ending May 2 and declined 48% year on year.

 

Read the full post on GoodEreader.

 

Book Publishing May Not Remain A Stand-Alone Industry And Book Retailing Will Demonstrate That First

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This post by Mike Shatzkin originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on 1/29/14.

You are missing some good fun if you don’t know those AT&T commercials where the grown-up sits around a table with a bunch of really little kids and asks them questions like “what’s better: faster or slower?” There always seems to be an obvious “correct” answer. Those kids could answer some important questions about ebook retailing in the future like these:

“What’s better? Selling just ebooks or selling ebooks and print books?”

“What’s better? Selling in just one country or in all countries?”

“What’s better? Selling just books or selling books and lots of other things too?”

“What’s better? Having one way to get revenue, like selling books with or without other stuff, or having lots of ways to get revenue so that books are only a part of the opportunity?”

And the answers to those simple questions, so obvious that a 5-year old would get them right, explain a lot about the evolving ebook marketplace and, ultimately, about the entire world of book publishing.

Book retailing on the Internet, let alone an offer that is ebooks only, hardly cuts it as a stand-alone business anymore. The three companies most likely to be in the game and selling ebooks ten years from now are Amazon, Apple, and Google. The ebook business will not be material to any of them — it is only really close to material for Amazon now — which is why we can be sure they will see no need to abandon it. It is a strategic component of a larger ecosystem, not dependent on the margin or profit it itself produces. And the rest of their substantial businesses assure they’ll still be around as a company to run that ebook business.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Shatzkin Files.

 

Barnes & Noble's Nook Nightmare Stars Amazon and the DOJ

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This article by Brad Stone originally appeared on Bloomberg Businessweek on 1/9/14. It’s a worthy read for authors or publishers releasing books for the Nook platform.

Let’s boil down Barnes & Noble’s (BKS) Nook nightmare into a handy juxtaposition concerning the price of the digital version of Donna Tartt’s gripping new novel, The Goldfinch.

Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle price: $7.50.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook price: $14.99.

There are plenty of reasons for the stunning decline of the once-promising Nook. Barnes & Noble has found itself unable to compete with the likes of Apple (AAPL) and Amazon in the broader arena of multipurposed tablets. The New York-based retailer has also been undermined by the continuing migration of its customers from physical stores to online book-buying and by the desire of its risk-averse institutional shareholders to support deep, profit-draining, long-term investments in new frontiers.

Even that doesn’t completely account for the dramatic upending of its Nook business. Barnes & Noble today reported gruesome numbers—a 60 percent drop in its digital division, to $125 million, from its sales in last year’s holiday period. (Sales in its physical stores fell 6.6 percent from the previous year.)

 

Click here to read the full article on Bloomberg Businessweek.