When we stumbled across an item on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books last night about allegations that Barnes & Noble was leaning on authors, through their publisher, by “REFUSING to put in an order if their site is not listed as a place to go to buy,” we thought, okay, that’s certainly interesting if it’s true, but we didn’t really have anything to add to the conversation, so we figured we’d tweet the link to the story and see what people thought about it.
It wasn’t fifteen minutes before we heard from somebody who runs a website for an author whose name you would recognize if we told you who it was (though our source prefers to remain anonymous). “On two separate occasions I’ve had to make additions to the blog because of B&N’s bitching about not having a link to their site,” this webmaster told us. Another anonymous source (who we don’t know) comments on the Smart Bitches article to aver that “my editor emailed me yesterday and said I needed to link to B&N immediately or else suffer their buyers’ retribution,” and that’s in addition to the quote from the email sent from a publishing company to authors stating “I’m not exaggerating when I say they WILL NOT ORDER the book unless their site is listed.”
So it certainly seems like something’s going on—and, in fairness, there’s an implication in several comments that B&N isn’t the only retail account that is making or likely to make this demand, and it’s increasingly considered smart for authors with websites to have links to multiple online vendors anyway. (It’s worth noting, though, that B&N isn’t said to be requiring exclusive links, the way Amazon.com has pressured LibraryThing.)
Now, you could make the argument both ways: Retailers may well have a right to refuse to carry books by authors who aren’t going to send them business in return, but it could also be true that authors should feel free to only give those referrals to vendors they feel have earned their trust. And, as another Smart Bitches commenter observes, if that policy is real, it’s not likely to withstand a challenge by an author who can generate sufficient consumer demand. (Just like B&N wasn’t going to carry the O.J. Simpson book, until it decided not to take that particular stand.)
The deeper question, it seems to us, is: How much influence should one vendor—any vendor—exert over the marketing plans of authors and publishers? Are we being naively idealistic, or does that kind of hardball tactic from a bookseller cross the line?
(UPDATE: One editor writes in to say the message she’s seen from B&N hasn’t been quite so stark: “What I’ve heard is B&N requesting that if you are linking to Amazon to please link to them as well.”)