Boycotting Barnes and Noble

Earlier this week I spent the last money I will ever give to Barnes and Noble.

In a way, this is somewhat painful. I have so many good memories of Barnes and Noble. For a long time my little area of Upstate New York had only small bookstores. A Walden's in the mall, a few independent bookstores. But mostly I just got my books from the library. Then a nice, big Barnes and Noble came to our area right around the time I hit my teenage years and started to have more spending money. My friend and I used to spend hours there, browsing, enjoying the atmosphere, and usually left with a bag or two. It was one of our favorite places to spend time.

I always just loved the feeling of being surrounded by wall to wall books. And I've always enjoyed the feel and the smell and the look of books. Barnes and Noble was like a paradise.

A few years back, I came to a place in my life where I just didn't have the luxury of buying books anymore. We've been very poor for a long time and so going to Barnes and Noble became an exercise in futility. I just stopped going altogether for the most part. But this Christmas we got our usual $50 worth of Barnes and Noble gift cards from my grandmother, always one of my favorite gifts in times past. My husband and I ventured to B&N one night to find something to spend them on. We ended up leaving the store empty handed.

You see, it wasn't my Barnes and Noble anymore.

The place was filled with toys and games and gimmicky books and gift items. It didn't feel like a bookstore anymore. It felt like a vaguely book related gift shop. The smell of the books wasn't there anymore. The first thing that your eyes saw upon entering was a giant Nook display. I don't begrudge them their Nook kiosk. Ebooks are totally the future and I LOVE my Kindle Fire, but man, when I walk into a bookstore I want to see books.

In addition to all that, we legitimately couldn't find anything we wanted to buy. Granted, we didn't have a ton of time to browse, we were wasting time before a movie. But who does anymore? How many people can afford to spend an hour in a bookstore so that they can find just the right thing to buy? Oh sure, I had that time to spare when I was a teenager. But I'm a busy mom of four now. My opportunities to get out alone with my husband are so few and far between that we certainly can't devote a whole evening to book shopping.

I decided to just find something online later on. Later on, I tried browsing their site for books. Wow. What a pain. Has anyone here tried to browse the B&N website? It's got to be one of the most poorly designed shopping experiences from a major retailer I've ever seen. I finally filled my shopping cart by just typing "Miyazaki" into the search engine. Knowing what you were looking for seems to be the only efficient way of navigating their website. My order went a little over the $50 on the gift cards I had. And as I pushed the button to submit my order I thought to myself, "That's the last money I give to them."

All that was before I saw this little news item:

Bookseller Barnes & Noble volleyed another shot at rival Amazon.com  by announcing that the chain will stop selling books in its stores published by the Internet retail giant.

Jaime Carey, chief merchandising officer at Barnes & Noble, said in a statement Tuesday that Amazon had “undermined” the book industry by pushing for exclusive deals with authors, agents and publishers.
. . . .

“Their actions have undermined the industry as a whole and have prevented millions of customers from having access to content,” Carey said. “It’s clear to us that Amazon has proven they would not be a good publishing partner to Barnes & Noble as they continue to pull content off the market for their own self interest. We don’t get many requests for Amazon titles, but if customers wish to buy Amazon titles from us, we will make them available only online at bn.com.”

Wait...

 You think Amazon is "undermining the industry" by preventing customers from having access to content and so you're going to respond to this by... preventing your customers from having access to Amazon's books by highly popular authors. 

 I'm sorry, Barnes and Noble, but now you're going too far. You see, unlike you, Amazon has given me an absolutely fantastic shopping experience. I ordered a new camera before Christmas and the estimated delivery date was between Dec. 27-30. You know when it came? DECEMBER 22. My husband ordered a packet of fountain pens and when it came found that it only contained 9 of the 12 pens it was supposed to have. He looked into it a bit, and decided it would just be too much trouble to try to contact them to get the missing pens. Several days later we received a package in the mail containing 3 fountain pens. And their website is one of the easiest websites I've ever used. Shopping there is a JOY.

So, Barnes and Noble, you had your chance, I know you've been trying to adapt to this new digital world. But you're doing a terrible job. You're screwing over your customers in an effort to get back at Amazon for doing everything better than you. So that's it. Amazon is getting all my business now.

Goodbye, Barnes and Noble, from the bottom of my heart, goodbye.

Update 3/5/2012: So I ordered three movies from Barnes and Noble online around 22nd or 23 of February. As of today, we still haven't received them. The latest info we can get from online tracking is that they arrived in Philadelphia recently. (We're about 4 hours north of Philly.) They sat in Kentucky for several days before that. Really, Barnes and Noble, really? It's been well over a week now? I order something from Amazon and I know I'll get it in 2 days. Sometimes sooner. This is ridiculous. Never, never again.

Insecure Writer's Support Group: You Don't Need Validation

Disclaimer: This post is liable to be controversial. Please note that even though I fully intend to self publish, this post is not meant to be a self publishing vs. traditional publishing post. It is not meant to advocate one path over the other. 

As I have wandered and explored the blogosphere for these many months there has always been a certain trend among writers that disturbed me. This is the desperate need for validation.

Aspiring writers, as a general group, tend to be obsessed with getting the approval and acceptance of all the right people in traditional publishing. Writers rewrite, reshape, and polish themselves and their work over and over and over again just to get a nod from certain people in the industry. They query and submit and grovel before these literary behemoths. They wait and wait and wait and then are rejected and then do it all over again as many time as it takes. "Just one acceptance and I'm in," they tell themselves.

Why do they do it?

They need acceptance and they need validation from the system before they can consider themselves real writers.

I came across a blog post yesterday which shouldn't really have astounded me and yet it did. It was entitled "Dear Agent". I've seen many such "dear agent" posts but this one was the most piteously sad. You see, the bulk of the post was little more than a video of the song "I Want You to Want Me" by Cheap Trick and the words "This about sums it up". The main verse of the song, of course, goes like this:

I want you to want me.
I need you to need me.
I'd love you to love me.
I'm beggin' you to beg me.

The singer also goes through a list of the things he's willing to do to have his feelings reciprocated:

I'll shine up my old brown shoes.
I'll put on a brand new shirt
I'll get home early from work
if you say that you love me.

I say the post was piteously sad, even though the author almost certainly meant it at least partially in jest, because even if you try to laugh it off, this is exactly how many, many aspiring authors approach traditional publishing.

Do you see the problem? I do. Here it is: publishing is an international business and authors are approaching it like a romantic relationship. They are approaching it from an emotionally needy position. They want to be wanted. They need to be needed. They'd love to be loved. They'll do just about anything to get that validation.

But today is the Insecure Writer's Support Group and I am here to tell you that you don't need their stinking validation.

Now, I am NOT saying that you shouldn't traditionally publish. I'm saying, don't go into it from an emotionally needy position. I'm saying, don't treat publishing like a relationship. I'm saying, don't grovel or rewrite yourself just to get a publishing deal. It's not worth that.

Validation is something that ultimately, if you persevere, you will get from your readers. From their reviews and their letters of thanks. Don't look for it from people who only care about the saleability of your writing. Look for it from the people who buy your writing just for the joy they find reading it.

Right now it may seem like you'll never get to that place. And perhaps, if you focus on trying to please and impress the industry instead of just selling books in a business-like manner, you won't. But if you stop looking for your validation from them and become more secure in your role as a supplier of a product that there is an increasing demand for, you can succeed and achieve great things.

Believe in yourself.

I realize that this is a somewhat hard post to swallow so here is some validation that is good for everyone.

Pay it Forward... or Backward? or Sideways?

Considering the number of participants and the fact that this badge is probably all over your dashboard, I doubt have have to explain what this particular blogfest is about. But, let's be honest here, three blogs out of the 200+ blogs that I'm following is an impossible choice to make. It really boggles my mind. So what I've decided to do is recommend the three most useful blogs I follow from professionals in the publishing business. These blogs have changed the way I view everything about publishing. They've given me so much knowledge and insight and helped me to really see a clear path forward. They've helped me immensely so I hope they help you.

If you read just one blog about the publishing industry and all the changes going on, read the blog of Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Every Thursday she writes a post in a series called The Business Rusch and it is, quite seriously, the best thing since sliced bread.

From her most recent post:

In this blog over the past few years, I’ve been detailing the changes as they’ve occurred. I’ve been trying to impart my knowledge as a former (and current) publisher, an award-winning book-and-magazine editor, and a bestselling writer to all you folks as the changes occurred so that you would have the information you need for the choices that you have to make.

Read through her articles and you will learn so much about the history and current state of the publishing industry that it will boggle your mind. This fantastic lady knows what she's talking about, she's been in the industry and seen in from many sides for decades. She's not just a writer who managed to get a few published books, she's a professional who has built a career in publishing. She's a smart and savvy businesswoman.

Ms. Rusch emphasized that the industry is radically different than it used to be. It used to be that there was only one path to getting published. One size fits all. Now there are many paths and every writer has to choose the one which is right for them. But you can't make that choice unless you understand your options, understand the business. She encouraged writers to learn about the publishing business so that they can take their careers in their own hands and make the right choices for themselves.

I know that, having read her blog obsessively for some months now, I certainly feel better armed to faces all the choices and challenges ahead. I can't possibly recommend it highly enough.

My second recommendation, which easily matches my first for usefulness, is the blog of Dean Wesley Smith. He's another industry professional: best selling author, former editor, former publisher. Dean is actually Kristine's husband and it's a wonder that their house doesn't burst into flames from too much collected sense. He writes a few insanely useful series on his blog: New World of Publishing, How to Think Like a Publisher, and Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. Killing the Sacred Cows is probably my favorite because one could just as easily call it "Debunking the Logical Fallacies of Publishing" and I'm like Spock in my love of logic.

His point is that there's been a lot of faulty thinking perpetuated by the publishing industry over the years, most of which is beneficial to publishers but dangerous to authors. Dean, despite having worked as an editor and publisher, has his loyalty firmly with the writer and so he actively works to help us overcome these illogical ways of thinking that publishing has ground into the writer, hoping to help us step up and take control of our own writing careers, to be smart businesspeople with our writing. I guess he's developed a bit of a reputation as a reactionary in some circles, but as I read his posts I can detect nothing but solid knowledge and experience, good sense, and reasonable advice.

He's a defendant of and advocate for writers everywhere, wanting us to get the most out of our careers that we can, and I appreciate that.

Finally, I recommend the blog of Robin Sullivan, Write to Publish. Robin is another savvy businesswoman. In this case, she was successful in other fields first before becoming a publisher and publicist for her author husband, Micheal J. Sullivan. She worked hard to make him successful in the arena of self-publishing first, but now she runs a small press called Ridan Publishing. I like Robin because she recognizes the worth in multiple paths to publishing success. She's not a self-publishing only advocate, or a small press only advocate, or a traditional publishing only advocate. She works in all those arenas (having secured a nice 6 figure deal for her husband's self published books with a major publisher) and has success in all those arenas.

Her blog offers a lot of practical information and tips. She monitors the market and the industry and often posts her findings in hard numbers. She also offers great tips to authors from how to pick a title, whether to use a pen name, to branding, to how to use social media to increase your author presence and much more. It's definitely a valuable resource for writers.

I really hope that some of you will explore these blogs and get as much out of them as I have. It's because of them that I feel confident about my future as an author, that I know how I want to create my career. Good luck and happy reading!