nothing<\/em> to do with censorship. I get it. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a New York Times Bestselling author. It should have been a no brainer for B&N to carry your book. They (along with nearly every indie bookseller in the nation) turned their back on thousands of potential sales. Not because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trying to keep you from the public. But because you chose to publish with someone they see as a direct competitor and a serious threat to what they do.<\/p>\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not here to argue the future of publishing. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not here to condemn Amazon for allegedly predatory practices or vaunt traditional publishing. Someone with your apparent savvy, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure, knew that making the choice you made would come with consequences. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be really surprised if Amazon and\/or your agent didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t at least discuss with you the idea that your book might ONLY be available through Amazon. You knew what you were getting into. You made your choice.<\/p>\n
Now, instead of living with it, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re pretending to be the wounded party. Worst of all, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re suggesting it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s censorship. A bookstore choosing not to carry a book is no more censorship than a publisher who chooses not to publish a book. Censorship comes into play when government tries to restrict access to information. They crack down and make it impossible to get the information. It’s not impossible to get your book. And in a digital age, I can’t even say it’s still not relatively easy to get your book. You aren’t being censored. You’re not being banned. Put another way, if McDonald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chose to carry Pepsi over Coke, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not censoring Coke. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153banning\u00e2\u20ac\u009d it. They’re making a business choice.<\/p>\n
But I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to explain this to you. YOU KNOW THIS. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just hoping your readers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. You want to pull the wool over the eyes of people who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve turned their hard earned money over to you many times before. A lot of writers work really hard to get recognized, only to find the odds against them when B&N says \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcno.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re disrespectful of those writers when you try to make yourself a special case and when you try to make it seem like something it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearly not. (To say nothing of the writers who have been TRULY repressed. THAT’S the truest, deepest insult your publicity stunt has wrought. And, you know what? Not ONE of them was censored because they wrote a cookbook.) A lot of writers who publish with houses that have done nothing to offend B&N won’t see their work on the store’s shelves. And that’s painful. But in the end, they suck it up.<\/p>\n
I suggest you do the same and stop claiming to be something you’re not.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
*=This is the first time I’ve publicly mentioned this, although it’s been true for over a month now. Please note that at no point, upon learning this, did I kvetch, rant, whine, or play the victim. And as someone who has never enjoyed so much as a minute on any bestseller list, I think I’ve got more cause to do so than you. \u00c2\u00a0But I didn’t. Just sayin’.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hi Tim, I was more than a little…. oh, let’s say surprised, to read this story about you. Look, here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the thing. A LOT of books don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get picked up by Barnes and Noble. Books from Big Six Five publishers. Books from small houses. Books from medium houses. A LOT. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re bad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}