Barnes & Noble has announced it will not be carrying Amazon-published titles in its stores. B&N chief merchandising officer Jaime Carey issued a statement saying that the company was taking a stand against “Amazon’s continued push for exclusivity”, and that B&N didn’t get many requests for Amazon titles anyway.
So, Carey said, if B&N customers want Amazon titles, they’ll just have to order them online at bn.com. Um, what?
Look, guys, if you’re going to take a principled stand, go all the way. Decline to carry the titles on your web store too. I’m sure there are plenty of books stocked in the web store that don’t end up in brick and mortar stores just for lack of space.
B&N is making a lot of noise, but then turning around and trying to have its cake and eat it too. I predict this principled stand will last only until Amazon comes out with a best-selling title that everyone wants to get their hands on. Then watch B&N turn around and carry Amazon titles after all, “bowing to overwhelming customer demand” or some such excuse.
I guess, for now they just don’t want to serve as a showroom for people who would look at the books at B&N and then go and buy these in ebook format at Amazon.
Seems logical to me.
A storm in a teacup, all it shows is that B&N believes that Amazon’s author portfolio isn’t worth a hill of beans at present. No doubt if they managed to sign on James Patterson as opposed to James Nobody you can expect B&N to come up with creative reasons to make a u-turn. Obviously it is in B&N’s interest to prevent this possibility as much as they can so this move was pretty much inevitable.
More intriguing is the reference to their own bricks & mortar shops as ‘store showrooms’. Hmm…