Barnes & Noble Says It Won’t Sell Books Published by Amazon

Barnes & Noble Says It Won’t Sell Books Published by Amazon (mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com)

15 points by newmediaclay 14 years ago | 9 comments

abeppu 14 years ago |

Is there a way to interpret this as a smart decision? When your disadvantage is having less selection at higher prices and less convenience, artificially excluding a publisher from your selection seems like it only exacerbates the problem. Imagine that you're one of the people that still drives out to a bookstore to get the latest novel from your favorite author, and when you get there, you learn that your brick and mortar retailer has refused to sell it. That sounds like a terrible customer experience.

And even if they don't want to sell Amazon's books, publicly announcing that fact seems unlikely to achieve anything.

GavinB 14 years ago | |

Authors will be wary of striking a deal with Amazon if it loses them the biggest retail market. The goal here isn't to make Amazon's books do poorly, it's to keep big name authors from signing up with Amazon in the first place.

I'm not saying it's the right decision, but it does have a strategy behind it.

fpgeek 14 years ago | | |

Good point. I think authors will be especially wary because B&N not stocking the book presumably implies no book signings or other events promoting the book at any B&N.

fpgeek 14 years ago | |

IF B&N actually succeeds in pressuring Amazon to open up some Kindle exclusives, it clearly would be worth it to them. However, so far, with the DC exclusive, they haven't been able to do that.

On the other hand, their leverage is probably greater with ordinary books (as compared to comics). I presume they have a bigger slice of the book market and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that browsing-based sales are more important for books than comics.

I'd also say that the customer experience isn't as bad as it sounds. B&N will still special order the book for you and it will be sold at bn.com. With the exception of books by bestselling authors that B&N "should" have, I suspect most people aren't going to realize B&N has refused to stock the book. Instead, they're going to think that the particular B&N they're in doesn't happen to have a copy.

MrEnigma 14 years ago |

I first read this as any book that was sold by Amazon, but it's just the 'Amazon Press'.

While it might be somewhat of a big deal for the authors involved, it probably won't be much of an issue for anyone else.

johnstkr 14 years ago |

in other news, Chevy dealers refuse to sell F150s and Apple stores refuse to sell Galaxy Tabs

jonursenbach 14 years ago | |

Not really similar. You go to an Apple store to buy Apple products. You go to Barnes & Noble to buy books. Who gives a shit who publishes it, you just want to consume the material.

InclinedPlane 14 years ago | |

Amazon stocks B&N published books.

gyardley 14 years ago | | |

Amazon pushes for exclusivity in its own ebook contracts, preventing B&N from stocking certain ebooks.

Seems like an appropriate response to me.