UPDATE: 9/25- 4:45 PM:

We’ve read updates on two sites about the situation.  Read to the bottom of the comments on this first link, for an official statement from B&N’s VP of trade merchandising:

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/bullying-nonsense/

And coverage of the situation from MediaBistro:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/bookselling/give_us_links_or_we_wont_sell_your_books_really_136814.asp

My take after reading all comments and the stories themselves is this:

1.) The publishing houses that wrote letters of warning to their clients were overzealous and did a little fear mongering.

2.) The “policy announcements” from booksellers like B&N and Borders were veiled threats, but they’re turning into PR fiascos for both booksellers as word spreads.

3.) It would be *good* to link to the major booksellers on your sites, but isn’t the life and death imperative we were lead to believe.

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Hello Fair Readers.

Yesterday the PPD staff received a troubling e-mail from a top literary agent, who works in both the CBA and ABA markets. The agent had been contacted by several large publishing houses, and each passed on an identical warning:

“Our booksellers say:  NO LINK, NO SALE.”

According to our source, as of this month, a number of the top booksellers have initiated a new policy:

If an author or publisher wants their book to be considered for purchase by these major chains, a link to the bookseller must be featured on the author’s web site.

In fact, the wording on their warning was even stronger:

These buyers explicitly said…

they will not order books for their store/chain if the links aren’t found on the author’s site, and they are going to each author’s web site to check BEFORE they place their order.

If I’d received this message from anyone other than a top-level agent, I would have dismissed it as a classic urban legend. It has all the indicators.  Fear, urgency, threats of impending doom.

Instead, I spent a good part of the afternoon yesterday on the phone, talking to the internet marketing managers at a number of houses, checking in with my industry contacts in both the US and Canada, etc.

From what I could tell, this agent had the jump on this issue.  Other than one publishing house contact, no one had heard about this.  In fact, the trade sales manager at one publishing house laughed when I told him what I knew.  He claimed the policy is completely unenforceable, a flagrant violation of antitrust laws, and that booksellers can never make this initiative stick.

But I disagree.  I’m no lawyer, and I’m sure there are tremendous legal issues at play here, but I think these big box stores can and will leverage author’s fears and make this happen.

Heck, this has even the PPD team a little scared.  The implications are huge.

1.) We don’t want any of our authors’ books to be bypassed, and the threat is real enough we’re driven to act on it.  But yet…
2.) If booksellers can make demands like this, literally controlling the content on an author’s site using the equivalent of blackmail, a precedent is set.  What will they demand next?   Where do authors (and the agencies that protect them) draw the line?

I read an article yesterday about Amazon successfully forcing Library Thing to remove links to any bookseller competitors.

So what’s to keep these big booksellers from demanding the same of an author and their web site?  What’s to keep them from blacklisting as a competitor any author who sells books on their own site?

As the fight for sales heats up in this struggling market, authors could be caught in the crossfire.

The PPD team had a meeting about this yesterday, and we’ve decided to move forward with protective measures for our authors.

From an aesthetic perspective, including links to every major bookseller, next to every single book, on every single book page, is a visual nightmare.  So we’ve created a custom-designed solution that we plan to offer all our client for their books sections.

A “Buy Now” button will be placed under each book, and when that button is clicked, a pop up window will appear, featuring direct links to the book on all of the major bookseller sites, as well as a custom programmed search box, which will allow visitors to locate their nearest Christian book store.

We’ve always recommended that our clients have affiliate accounts with the major booksellers.  We now plan to expand our affiliate set-up services beyond Amazon and Christianbook to some of the other sellers as well.

These bookstores may bully/blackmail our clients into featuring their links, but at least we can make sure our clients have affiliate accounts and get latte money out of the deal.

We’ll keep you posted as we learn more, but in the meantime, we do recommend that authors take this warning seriously, and consider how they can update their sites to keep the bullies and blackmailers mollified.

Have a great weekend, and as always:

Sell your work…not your soul

Posted on September 25th, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Booksellers, Web Wisdom