Barnes & Noble Swirling the Drain

I hate seeing a book retailer falling. I hate hearing the whistling whine a business makes as gravity takes over. I hate the smell of the trash compactor as books are stripped and crushed rather than shipping them back to the distributor.

The Barnes & Noble board fired their latest CEO. This was the guy from Sears Canada, a company that also made the same whistling whine right before it hit the ground.

Hard.

This was the same CEO who wanted to put restaurants and wine bars in Barnes & Noble. Chairman Len Riggio is taking over temporarily as CEO. When the board finds a replacement, the new CEO will be B&N's fifth CEO in four years.

*sigh*

I wish I could say I was surprised. After the late payments in May and the conflicting payment statements in June, I decided to cut my losses. I pulled the Suzan Harden books in June, and the Alter Ego books in July. I really didn't feel like giving B&N my money anymore.

Funny enough, they are still sending me coupons though I quit their frequent buyer program in 2013. In fact, I have been receiving more coupons from B&N over the last six months than I ever did in the eight years I was a frequent buyer club member. And the closest B&N to me is an hour away, which makes the multitude of coupons even sadder.

The saddest thing of all is that B&N was the closest to compete with Amazon for the e-book market, but then they gave up. They had the first color tablet on the market, but they failed to provide other media besides books. Then they locked the tablet, dropped the PC app, and made it nearly impossible to download from their store, much less find the books people wanted.

You can't save a company that's already given up.

Data Guy Strikes Back and Other Important Info

I was going to talk about my projects this morning, but Data Guy released the Author Earnings Report for May 2016 yesterday.

HOLY FUCKING CRAP ON A CRACKER!

If you want or have a career as a writer, you need to read this report. It shows the marked changes in the publishing industry.

Another important blog to read is Kris Rusch's current series on contracts. There's lots of scary (and career ruining) contracts these days, and indie writers aren't immune. She focuses on some problems with the now-defunct Booktrope.

To top off the recent spate of writers not getting paid, Barnes & Noble's NOOKPress managed to fully fuck up payments for the month of May. I've counted nearly 300 indie writers including myself who did not receive payment on May 31st. And these are just the folks who bitched. Goddess only knows how many others are in this boat.

Sadly, it took B&N over forty-eight hours to issue any kind of statement. I'll update this post if/when I receive my payment.

Needless to say, I've pulled all of my books from B&N after this fiasco. I'd previously pulled my books from Smashwords, Apple, Kobo, etc. in preparation for the new book covers and updated back matter. Now, I'm wondering if I should try Kindle Unlimited since I have a fresh slate. I'm already researching some other retailers like All Romance eBooks.

The whole incident really bums me out because the original Nook was a decent product. But no, the short-range thinking of Len Riggio, his board of directors, and B&N executives torpedoed their potential before they even got off the ground. And they wonder why Amazon is crushing them.

After all that, I promise more positive news next week!


UPDATE: My payment from B&N/NOOKPress arrived in my business bank account this morning. I received an answer to my e-mail I sent to them on Tuesday at noon today.

Unfortunately, this fix doesn't alleviate my deep concern over B&N/NOOKPress's professional behavior of late, or their lack thereof in this case. This isn't the first time they've had a problem paying authors who indie publish through them. Therefore, my e-books will remain unavailable through Barnes & Noble's website for the time being.

Which means I need to spend tomorrow updating a zillion links. URGH!

The Silence from Barnes & Noble Is Deafening

So what exactly is going on with Barnes & Noble's Nook and NookPress businesses?

The company claims three companies are courting them to purchase the Nook business. But is there really a business left to purchase?

Microsoft, a forced partner in Nook with B&N thanks to an IP lawsuit over the e-reader's tech, has declined to take over the business.

The Nook e-reader itself is gone, replaced by a Samsung tablet. Could Samsung be one of the suitors? Possibly. After the lawsuits filed against them by rival Apple, the Samsung execs may want to stick it to the house that Jobs built.

But the other two? No idea, though there's plenty of speculation on the internet.

As for known buy-out attempts, the sale to G Asset fell through last February. Since then, there have been no obviouos takers. Also, B&N has been noted to announce things in order to jack with the company's share price. Like Chairman Len Riggio saying he was going to buy the B&M retail portion of the business in 2013. He supposedly backed out over concerns from other shareholders.

Speaking of Riggio, he dumped a huge chunk of his stock last April. That sort of act doesn't show much faith in the health of the company he founded.

Concern about B&N's financial health flared among indie writers when approximately 5% of them didn't receive payments due at the end of August. B&N claimed it was a computer glitch. (Hmmm...where have we heard that story before? Ellora's Cave. Dorchester. Triskelion. Silver. And so on...) But they refused to answer e-mails from many NookPress authors, nor did they make an announcement on the NookPress News page. No, they didn't issue any answer until Publishers Weekly bugged them about the issue. Not reassuring to those of us doing business through NookPress. Not reassuring at all.

The next day B&N rejoiced that their second quarter losses were less than their first quarter's. It doesn't stop the company's steady bleeding of red since 2012.

Even more bizarre was an e-mail I received from B&N (and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who received it). They would give me twenty dollars for every Samsung Nook Tablet that was sold through my affiliate code.

Affiliate code? This was the first I knew they'd finally activated their affiliate program. But this late in the game why would I shill for a company that refuses to answer my e-mails about missing sales?

Then there's the "data migration" B&N announced last Saturday. NookPress would not be updating sales data from Sept. 16th through 22nd.

Again, no explanation for what this "data migration" is. However, reports from customers started trickling in that the DOWNLOAD button to load a copy of the books they bought to a third party app or device had been removed. B&N has already stopped supporting the Nook App for PC. One of the few things B&N had going for it over Amazon, and they yank it with no warning?

B&N's constant stonewalling of information scares the crap out of me. I have no idea what they're doing or why they're doing it. It's difficult for me to make business decisions when a business partner is hiding information. This is one of my biggest complaints about Amazon. However, B&N has taken it to a whole new level.

I've already decided not to load any of my new releases onto the NookPress platform. I'm disappointed to be forced into this position. For the last two and a half years, I've made more money from my Nook books than all other e-book retailers combined. But I cannot deny any longer that B&N is dying.

I'll make the decision whether or not to pull my current books from NookPress at the end of the month. If I don't receive my payment, it'll make pulling the plug that much easier.

The 2013 Year-End Wrap-Up

2013 saw the tipping point in how writers in general regarded indie publishing, and how publishers regarded e-book sales.

Indie books made regular, steady appearances in bestseller lists. Indie publishing workshops dominated the annual Romance Writers of America conference. Both indies and traditional publishers  saw record e-book sales.

Here in the U.S., retailers saw a reversal of roles. Barnes & Noble paper sales are way down. Chairman Len Riggo has withdrawn his offer to buy the brick-and-mortar stores and dumped 2 million of his personal shares in the company. B&N itself is under an SEC investigation for misstatement of earnings. Half-Price Books is selling more recent releases in order to capitalize on B&N's reversal of fortune, while Books-a-Million has remained notoriously silent in the situation. On the other hand, more independent book stores are not only opening, but thriving, than since the heyday of Main Street.

In the meantime, trad publishers and agents are issuing more draconian contracts in an effort to tie up both writers and their rights.

The Kernel, a nasty little U.K. rag, launched a smear campaign against Amazon that only ended harming a ton of indie writers in the fall-out as other booksellers were dragged into the fray. As a result, most e-book retailers are cracking down on covers, descriptions and content, the terms of which are confusing and illogical.

For more thorough breakdown and predictions, check out:

Dean Wesley Smith has his run-down on the state of publishing at the end of 2013.

J.A. Konrath predicts what's on the horizon for 2014.

What do I think will happen?

- Barnes and Noble isn't going to survive much longer. They are showing the same penny wise/pound foolish behaviors that preceded Borders demise. The question is when they will go under. (Understand that I don't want to see them go under because I sell the most books through them.)

- Amazon and Kobo's over-reaction in the Kernel mess will come back to bite them in the ass and possible give Apple more market share.

- Since customers are getting away from e-reader devices and using more apps on their tablets and smart phones, we may see more e-book retailers spring up.

- More and more writers will jump into the indie publishing river. But just as many will leave based on their erroneous belief that one book flogged to death with marketing should make their career. By the same token, more writers will find they can make a living on their own.

- The trickle of agents leaving the business will turn into a tsunami when they find they can't make a living even by stealing delaying payments to writers.

So what do y'all think will happen in the craziness of the next year in publishing?

The Barnes & Noble Merry-Go-Round

I had lots of post topics for this week, but Monday's late afternoon news blew everything else away. Two weeks after Barnes & Noble stated they were withdrawing from the tablet business and less than a week after they announced the imminent closing of Pubit!, their self-publishing initiative (don't worry, it's being replaced by Nook Press), B&N's CEO William Lynch resigned.

Since the resignation was effective immediately, the consensus among various pundits is that Lynch was asked to leave after the corporation's losses doubled last quarter from the quarter before. There's a lot of speculation of what happens next. The fact that the CFO Michael Huseby was named the CEO of Nook Media, LLC, and president of Barnes & Noble is cause for concern. Based on my past experience, bean counters as boss usually spells disaster for a company.

Was Len Riggio, B&N's chairman and main shareholder, serious about taking the company private last spring? He filed paperwork with the SEC to that effect, but nothing has been done in that regard (at least, not publicly). Will Riggio take B&N private in an attempt to save it? Was he only looking to prop up the falling stock price? Is he and the board planning to sell off the Nook division, or are they now planning to let it die quietly?

As for how everything will affect publishers, both trad and indie, losing a large retailer will be rough, but survivable. Still, I would hate to see Barnes & Noble disappear into the sunset like so many other book stores.