Publisher’s Weekly is carrying an interesting article about the decision by Barnes & Noble not to carry what it calls, “Amazon published books.” Books A Million has apparently joined the B&N boycott, saying it won’t sell Amazon-published books either.
The article’s author also reports (anecdotally) that independent booksellers are joining the list of bookstores that won’t carry books published by Amazon.
Not a new battle but once again, a battle in which authors and readers lose while the behemoths of the book world do battle in the center ring of the publishing circus.
PW Tip Sheet: This Has All Happened Before.
The comments below the article are interesting and enlightening. I would love to know what you think, too.
Write On Target 
I personally have another reason to boycott Amazon.com. Despite their “secure ordering website”, my credit card was hacked to the tune of about $1000. That’s a big purchase of books made by someone else. I will buy at a local bookstore or other sites that I trust more.
That experience would send me back to bricks and mortar. And it surprises me. How did Amazon handle it?
One of the comments in the article you linked talked about the difference between Amazon’s publishing branch and their selling self-published novels from anyone who wants to put it online. In the article there was a quote from a bookseller who said that they won’t carry the titles in stock, but will order them if a customer asks for them. This won’t cause any problem to the buyer, who has access to both physical stores such as B&N as well as Amazon. It’s not as though there was one bookstore near my house that refused to stock a certain title and closest bookstore that did stock the title was a 3 hour drive away.
True and true. But it still seems a bit draconian for the book selling world to rear up and decide that one of its brethren is going to be ostracized. Will be watching this story as the weeks go by.
I have mixed opinions about Amazon publishing. On the one hand, they are offering a great opportunity to LOTS of authors. On the other, they have opened the door to scams (plagiarism), and generally complicate things. I kind of wish they would spin-off their publishing arm and separate it from the rest of their behemoth.
Interesting idea with real merit. It might placate other book sellers and publishers and might stop possible anti-trust actions. Thanks for sharing it.