Book CommuniTEA: WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN THIS COMMUNITY!? [CC]
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As someone in the "Hardback is the best" party, I totally agree it should be paperback first then hardback. It's heartbreaking that so many books are going to suffer in sales and come across as not having an audience when there *is* an audience, that audience just can't afford to pay $35+ for a single 300 page book.
What's the deal with paperback and hardback?
Jess: don’t even get me started on booktube plants
Me: PLEASE start talking immediately
👀👀👀
Lmao same thought!😂
I feel the same way!!
Yes, please.
Yes please, I’ve only seen myonna reads talk about book tube plants and would love to hear your thoughts.
With Lightlark people are discussing how she has been promoting it as a POC-centred book as she is POC when there is only one person of colour in the story who also happens to be the only gay character and fulfils the cliches of a queer character. She also has been talking about her struggles with not being published for over 10 years when she has had one book published and has an extremely rich family, in particular her sister who is a multi-millionaire, and didn't have to work whilst writing her book unlike a lot of other authors who really have had to struggle. She has been putting all these advertisements for what is in her book and some people who have gotten a final copy early have said that none of her scenes, themes and quotes are not in it, its just so weird. Hopefully this makes sense lol
That's so strange, why go through all of that to promote your book if that's actually not in it???
@@JessOwens she said that the tropes and quotes mentioned are in the final copy and that they have been changed a bit, idk I don't get it😂
@@grace4683 it makes no sense. She advertised the tropes etc in question before arcs went out. I read it, there’s no harshly cut scenes/missing scenes to imply things are missing. But she implies they’re present in the final cut…. So is she trying to imply the arcs were specifically edited and worked on to cut out the specific tropes she’s advertising? Make it make sense.
Then there’s the fact she actually already has a published book, but she’s acting like this is the first time she’s ever got a deal.
Idk how she is considered a poc if she is a white Latina tho 🥴
@@24Kurenai Bc I feel like in the US white Latino isn’t a thing. If you are Latino, you are automatically considered non-white, and therefore a POC. I know plenty of other cultures probably don’t see it that way though. 🤷♀️
Oh man my heart hurts for the authors who achieved that dream of selling their book to a major publisher and yet it couldn't be found in store! 😢
Yes, this truly is a sad day. Shame on B&B.
💔
isn't that awful?! UGH
Yeah I really feel bad for the author's
I have never fully understood the “big following big sales” thought process because so many celebrity books FLOP despite having a ton of followers. Certain social media metrics don’t automatically translate into sales/$$$. Like this HAS to be paired with the right audience nurturing marketing tactics and honestly a good healthy dash of luck/right time right place to pop off.
YES. SO MANY FAMOUS PEOPLE'S BOOKS SELL LIKE 20 COPIES UGH
Yep they couldn’t give away that Billy Ellish memoir.
@@the_broken_spine that was EXACTLY what I was thinking of when I wrote this comment too. Billie’s little picture book memoir was a flop.
And yet every single book CoHo has ever written is available in store 🙄
EVERY SINGLE BOOK 🙃
😂Even in Africa
Here is what is really being taken away: browsing and discovery. On Amazon, people go to the book they want to buy and buy it. Amazon is useless for browsing and finding cool stuff, despite its attempts to give suggestions. When you go to a bookstore or library, you *might* be looking for the latest popular thing, but you're also open to finding something new that you've never seen or heard of. B&N has somehow concluded that this isn't a viable money-making strategy for them. They want to be Amazon and stock the stuff people are coming in to buy. Sucks for every author who is only kinda sorta known or not known at all--whose hopes for success depend on that browsing and discovery model.
THIS! With this new model, it won’t make sense for me to go peruse a B&N on a Saturday if there won’t be anything new and unknown to find.
I completely rely on bookstores' employees (and library ones)'s curated selection: I check their themed tables, their posters, the little hand written notes on the shelves, etc.
Ugh THIS! I don't always go to the bookstore just to buy a specific book, I usually go with the intention to look around and see what I find. If they don't stock new releases, I'm never gonna find anything new and interesting from different authors. :(
YES, I love to browse !!!!!
I love browsing the fantasy shelves for trope-y, D&D/LotR knockoff stuff no one's heard of, it's not really original but sometimes you just want the familiar tropes. The fact that they're so unknown means I will probably never find them in a store or on a site that requires you to know what you're looking for. 😮💨
Former Barnes and Noble employee here. My guess regarding the decision to not stock "untested" authors is because if they don't sell, the stores lose money when they ultimately have to send thousands of books back to the publishers. It sucks because publishers don't market new authors (specifically authors from marginalized communities) in a meaningful way and when B&N booksellers try to throw their support behind great books, but corporate won't fulfill those requests because the ROI is uncertain. That mess used to piss me off, especially when there were so few books by authors from underrepresented communities on the shelves anyway.
Send back or rip the cover and toss in the trash 😬
@@JadaSimons Either way, it's lost revenue and companies tend to not like to do that.
It’s really a catch 22, because if they aren’t available to be found, then how will people be able to read them and know whether they are good, therefore indicating to the industry that they will make money. If publishers actually did their job and didn’t just churn out cookie cutter garbage all the time, maybe this wouldn’t be such an issue.
@@jaye61970 thats true, but they could be donated vs trashed. Someone would still possibly read it
What’s terrible about the BN issue for me is that the in store workers, the booksellers, are going to be the direct target for the anger a lot of authors and customers are going to have when they come into a store and find the book they want isn’t there and will take 7 days+ to be in store if they place an order. I don’t think many people realize these booksellers are mainly making minimum wage and whether or not a book is in stock is out of their control. I was an underpaid bookseller for a while and I personally have been yelled at by frustrated customers and authors because of this. Super not fun to bear the brunt of an author’s immediate frustration, I’ll tell you that. Please be patient with booksellers in the coming months when they tell you a book will have to be ordered instead of purchased same day. They know it’s frustrating but it’s out of their control.
So true, I imagine they put up with a lot of bullshit for low pay and now they're going to receive more hate 😭
I am currently a B&N bookseller and having both Major Depression and an Anxiety Disorder leave me vulnerable to having anxiety attacks at work because customers want someone to be a sponge to their anger and malicious intent. I CANNOT explain enough how out of touch corporate is to what's happening in the stores. New York City should not be the prime example of what to do across the entire country. What works for them doesn't work for us, especially down in the South. We barely make enough to support ourselves. Customers need to realize this and imprint it into their hearts so they do not forget even when they're set off by something happening on social media. The booksellers DO NOT get to choose what the store purchases for stock. We can make suggestions and pitch our ideas as hard as we can in this tiny box for comments, and then we just wait and hope that we succeeded. Ultimately, B&N is a business, not a library. They don't want limited shelf space taken by titles they do not have concrete evidence will sell WELL. Us booksellers work hard to fill any gaps with books we really believe will prove worth the investment. If you are angry over a title not being stocked, talk it up to a bookseller rather than attack them about the injustice of stock limitations and corporate decisions.
I will say, as a current B&N employee, that I've had quite a few authors come in trying to find their book in store and it's not there. Luckily they haven't taken out their anger at me, I tell them as much info that is available when I search for it and that's really all you can do.
Fair disclosure. I work for a competing book chain. Not nationwide, mostly East Coast(ish). When we get multiple requests for specific titles, we bust our a$$ to get it in store, with decent success. I am paying close attention to this whole thing. I'm infuriated by the limits B & N is putting on readers. A lot of people really want to LOOK at new books before they buy them. I'm going to push to do a display at my store, up front, with as many new authors, of greatest diversity, that I can pull. I'm just a cog in a corporate machine, but I will do whatever I can to get books into view, and into hands.
You are interested in networking?
Alex Aster made so many tiktoks like she's the it girl of ya. Her books aren't even out yet. Using trendy tropes as marketing is very popular on tiktok so she thinks that is enough.
Everyone is trying to be the next Leigh Bardugo or SJM but forget why those books became trendsetters spawning copycats. They were different when they came out. The authors didn't write to trendy tropes, they wrote what they liked
👏 👏 👏
I disagree with the sjm take, though. Her books (especially the acotar series) are nothing but a more explicit take on the Black Jewels series by Anna Bishop. Basically the same exact thing but with more sex. Without a doubt sjm is currently having her moment, but let's not delude ourselves thinking her work ever had some semblance of originality lmao
I would disagree with LB too her books aren’t that groundbreaking and are pretty generic
@@CiaLaVirago I agree completely with you. Her books are filled with explicit content and honestly I think a lot of people find it interesting just because of the explicitly
@@CiaLaVirago
You're making a point i never made and arguing with that lol
I was comparing sjm to the books that were POPULAR when she first published.
So yes, compared to the rest of the YA that was coming out at that time, she was original. She made YA fantasy popular. Just like Twilight inspired a surge of supernatural romance genre books, hunger games with dystopia, SJM did with female centred fantasy in YA. None of those authors were writing to popular trends, so became the blueprint for years of copycats.
That doesn't mean hunger games, twilight or acotar were the most original books ever created in human history, like you're claiming I said, but they were original compared to their peers
Victoria Aveyard actually made a tiktok talking about movie rights being acquired before books come out, essentially explaining that for those buying the rights it’s just cheaper to buy it early and then wait to see if it does well and it’s worth actually adapting. Victoria does a better job at explaining but yeah, just thought I’d add that because I wondered the same thing!!
Tiktok has attracted so many self published authors who are promoting books with horrendously deranged content marketed as romance.
TBF "mainstream" romance, as made available on Netflix for example, is pretty cringing/full of problematic tropes as well: Twilight, 50 shades of Grey, 365d, Purple Hearts, that show with Sarah Shahi playing a bored but horny housewife in Connecticut, etc.
all the romance books i see marketed on tiktok make me 🥴🥴
Thank heavens my autistic self is too overwhelmed by the short video format of Tik Tok to even register there.
I think once upon a time, a hardback was something that an author earned because their paperback sales were amazing enough to warrant their next novel being a hardcover. Once they got to that point the author was always in Hardcover first. At least it used to be that way, I worked for years in a smaller chain bookstore a very long time ago.
It's ridiculous that B&N is doing what they are, but I seriously think they will regret it, but also makes me wonder just how close to the edge is Barnes and Noble. Are they that close to toppling over? It seems like the big box book stores don't know how to stay in business.
There is NO WAY she didn’t know people would be offended by the titles of her books. She 100% did that for attention to the book series. There is no just no way she was ignorant of what the connotations of that word are.
1000% like ma'am please don't pretend with us, we know you know
Genuine question, I get what the assumed connotations of the word hoodlum are with a black person as the main character and the stereotypes mentioned but the small amount of digging I did stated that while it’s origins are uncertain it was actually a word aimed at young men in San Francisco in the 1870s who engaged in violent and criminal behaviour such as hate crimes against Asian people that culminated in the San Francisco riots and Chinese exclusion act. None of that seems to be relevant to this story so while I can see the stereotypes being harmful and insensitive I’m actually not understanding why the word hoodlum is so bad? Is it the criminal/gang connotations of the word or is there more to it?
@Bella Mia It doesn’t matter where the word originated from, what matters is how the word is currently being used. The N-word’s origin is in the Spanish word for the color black, does that make inoffensive today? No, because the use of the word has changed over time.
@@taylorgayhart9497 I totally agree I just wondered if there was more too it than the criminal/gang usage that I was unaware of
@@bellamia8867 I understand where your coming from in the sense that I don’t like to assume the worst, and that sometimes people can accidentally offend others by having a different understanding of a topic or word. But in a case like this where you have a very established connotation and definition for a word, if you have to go digging to find another connotation that no longer is relevant at the time of publication or use, then you’re just making excuses. This to me is a clear case of a white woman knowing what the word meant, but not educating herself about how harmful it can be, or knowing and choosing to do it anyway.
Something else I wanted to point out, I looked at the dates of publication for these books, and they came out right in the middle of the George Floyd, Black Lives Matter movement. Literally the second book came out three days after his murder, and the rest came out in the two months that followed, including the prequel called Hoodlum Heat with a black man on the cover. That means at the height of everyone online educating each other about how prevalent racism still is today, and the importance of representation in media, she was writing and publishing these books. I’m sorry but you cannot convince me that this was an accident.
"Dark romance" is rotting peoples brain istg
like somethings we should just leave alone...
Or! OR! People just have different tastes.
Seriously just because one Author is going off the deep end, doesn't mean the entire community is like that. I've met so many lovely, self aware, intelligent people in the dark romance community. Don't throw them all into one bag.
Very humbled that Jess shared my thoughts about "Hoodlum Heat" here. (There was so much cringe while I read it and I had so many typos. But if it gives others a heads up about it, totally worth my cringing experience with it to save y'all the trouble.)
I'm still in surprise at the stuff going on with B&N, as someone who shops there a lot. I will probably be curbing back from there and buying more from my local indie bookstores.
Girl thank you for calling out the problematic stuff, but I feel bad you had to read that garbage!!! Wow, just wow!!
We thank you for your service for reading that mess 🥴
Thank you for reading so we don’t have to! 🙁
This b&n stuff is so depressing. The more I learn about the publishing industry and try to imagine my future in it, the more I feel like laying down and sleeping for a thousand years 💀
It's really disheartening
Begin Rant.
As a current bookseller, I'm embarrassed. I've been rooting for this company to be good since being a kid, wanting to work at a bookstore. Now that I've work through a change of corporate management that should have been a change for the way better, I'm beyond frustrated. What is bookselling? I'm sick of the Colleen Hoover and SJM solo displays. They will sell from wherever. Now that tables are supposedly no longer bought by publishers it should be our job as booksellers to display whatever books WE are excited about to share, especially lesser known books (old and new, a variety of voices) for readers to come across and discover. Instead we let Booktok and Reese or whatever social media bookclub do all the bookselling for us. No offense to any title. No one title is to blame. It's the bigger picture of cycling the same titles and authors, the overbearing commerciality of these titles over others that is tired and boring. (Some will observe the same about booktube.)
I have to repeatedly request a stock of other books and provide a reason for the shortlist before the powers that be approve it before it's officially ordered. Some new books are categorized as Non Replenishable too soon, not even 3 months since it's release. We are supposed to encourage ship to home orders instead. Yeah, we're just sending Amazon the money direct. Ridiculous.
A brief mention of the obvious favoritism that takes place somewhere between publishers and stores, ie 20 copies of Skandar plus marketing out of nowhere, no worthy pre-release sales there, mind you. We can afford that, but not 20 books from x other authors.
BN is in a position to do better than Amazon and it's just not. If anything, it's sending people straight to Amazon. No one is shopping at BN for its prices, so if the in store browsing, VARIED selection is not there, what's the point? 😤😮💨
End Rant.
This was my thinking too. If the opportunity for browsing and discovery is being cut down in B&N stores, how exactly do they expect to compete with Amazon? They CANNOT compete with their prices. What indeed will then be the point of going to a B&N store? Smh
Barnes & Noble and Waterstones are owned by the same entity… I’ve been hearing from UK book shoppers that Waterstones says they are having “warehouse issues” leading to empty shelves however it seems like simply decreasing book inventory to me… not cool.
Wow. I was watching a booktuber yesterday who talked about Waterstones "warehouse issues" when they went in to buy.
Supply chain is still recovering and adding the paper shortage, I tend to believe that they're actually having "warehouse issues". :\
It should be said that the Waterstones CEO just in the past two years became the CEO for BN. I know someone highish up in the BN chain who sat in on some of the conferences when the deal was going through and this new CEO sold himself as being the person who was going to drag BN out of debt and into wider profit margins doing “whatever it took.” So you know that means he’s looking at profit over people and the arts 🙄 What a time to be alive - even literature isn’t safe from the capitalist ideology that’s killing us as a society. Defend the authors you love and uplift the community that surrounds them, y’all. It’s gonna get rough out here.
OMG NOOOOO
Waterstones don’t even bother to have a romance section even though romance is one of the biggest selling genres, if not the biggest. Unless it’s the latest Colleen hoover or a Tik tok trend or something you can’t get it in there.
Anyone else watching/reading something else - suddenly see that Jess has tea - pause everything to click over for Jess' tea. I do! 😁
I sure as heck did stop working on my course work.
@@doomcathedral yup! Always! Jess has tea to spill - I drop everything-gotta go. Byyye. 🤣
I do the same thing!!!
Yes, I literaly paused my podcast!!! First things first.
🍵
🙋🏾♀️
I can't believe people are claiming that white male authors are struggling when BNN is pulling this crap
I am a librarian, most libraries cannot stock a physical book until it has been peer reviewed. But, we also have indie authors on an online database. Please check with your local library for their resources because the more you request books from your county the more they can order. This demand, and your reviews of the books, will still help the authors.
As for the Barnes and noble story I wish there were more independent book stores. Where I live there are no independent book stores and the closest one is a 45 minute drive away. Target and Barnes and noble are the only places that sell books irl near me. Sucks that they are picking and choosing who to cover
You can order from independant bookstores online but I know, it will never really replace the sheer joy of being inside a bookstore and perusing the shelves.
Same, my closest bookstore is 75 minutes away. But even as someone who buys most of her books online and secondhand, nothing will ever beat the atmosphere of a bookstore. The smell of coffee and paper is just the most soothing scent to me. 😁
If you walk into a bookstore in Australia almost every single book available, including new releases, are paperback. This probably has something to do with the price of printing/transport/whatever, but it just makes so much more sense than the US hardback/expensive edition first culture. Maybe this is something which the publishing industry should give thought to.
It's the same here in South Africa. 🤔
I'm torn with the whole B&N thing. I try to shop at my local indie when I can, but not everyone has a local bookstore they can go to and get rely on the nearest B&N. With that in mind, I think it sucks to have to research online what books you want and then either have to buy them online or have B&N specifically order it. That takes away the enjoyment of going to the bookstore to browse and see what catches your eye - without a fucking algorithm 🙄 it's like B&N is trying to be Amazon, and that makes me so sad. I don't want to walk into a B&N to browse and see the same authors/books every single time.
I also personally wish the industry standard was to publish the paperback first and then the hardcover. A brand new adult fiction hardcover is almost $30, which makes it hard to buy and support as many new authors/releases as some of us may want to. This is why I usually shop at my local indie as they have a buyback counter for store credit and they stock used copies at a discount.
B&N needs an overhaul so bad. Like get rid of all those magazines and toys and craps for one. And PLEASE can we have more books other than the same ten authors?
you can also ask your library to stock it!
It’s your subtle glances and faces that actually KILL ME! When you looked up after after about K Webster’s other book, the look on your face actually sent me to tears 😭😭
It just happens, I can't control my face LOL
Also don't forget that a lot of celebrity publicists buy followers and engagement to "create" IG and Tik Tok popularity for their clients - This could potentially happen in publishing, too...
HOOD RIVER _RAT???_ That's a REAL romance title by a hwhite lady?? I almost lost my life choking on my lunch just now!! Let me stop eating before I hear something else in this video that truly takes me out because there's no one around to do the Heimlich right now and I'm not trying to d-word ✋🏽
like please, i do NOT want to read that from the title alone
lmaooo like bffr 😭😭
I never heard of her in my entire life and was not surprised when I went to block her on Instagram that she is white.
Do you know what’s worse, these books were published in the spring and summer of 2020! Book 2 came out three days after George Floyd’s murder! No words!
You summed it perfectly I couldn't believe my ears as well.
One of the saddest things about the Barnes&Noble thing is that it also has an effect on worldwide sales. If a book does not hit the New York Times best seller list it might have a really hard time to get translated into other languages. Since there are already very few marginalized authors on these lists, limiting the space where debut authors might get more visibility does even more harm. Not everyone follows book news on the internet and their only source to discovering new books is to go to the bigger bookstores and see what is available.
I work in a bookstore in Finland and I see the affects of this every day. For example well known authors like Tiffany D. Jackson whose books I've heard about for years on the bookternet haven't been that visible until 2020. In Jackson's case the first book of hers to be translated into Finnish is Grown and it comes out next month. N. K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season got its first translation last year and the rest of the series is translated this year. If you are that widely known as an author and it still takes years for your books to get translated what chances does a debut author of color have to get these deals? I see it as a big issue because publishing in here is already very white, cis and straight focused. There are a few publishers who make a conscious effort to spread more voices but it is still not enough. If one of the western world's largest booksellers limits these spaces, it does not take long for it to have an effect in here also when it is already a problem.
I very rarely buy hardcovers unless I already like the book... If more new books were paperback when they first launch, I might be able to afford them. Maybe publishers should change their ways rather than the shops?
It's a crap situation for authors for sure though! While we should support independent bookshops, the value of a book being stocked in B&N or similar shop cannot be understated.
Recently the Barnes and Noble store in Boston closed It's doors. It just wasn't selling the books. It was the last major bookseller in Boston. We are losing bookstores left and right. It is absolutely stinky that this is happening, but I understand the decision. Bottom line, money talks.
That one was one of my favorites. It's really sad not to be able to go there anymore. I like Brookline Booksmith, but I would always go to B&N at Prudential. 😔
@@triofan9 I had only been there once when I was in Boston for a visit. It was a really nice B & N. If I had lived in Boston, definitely would have been my go to store for new books. 😊
@@lindamoore3530 That's nice you got to see it. I guess we're lucky we both got to visit before it closed. The rise in rent must be crazy at that location. I feel for the independent bookstores, also.
I cannot stop watching your videos! You have such a wonderful energy and charisma and girlllll you are gorgeous! Your channel is definitely my favorite of 2022
I got the email from my publisher (scholastic) Wednesday night that my debut wouldn’t be stocked while others still would. Funny enough, I’m disabled and have a fat girl and a hijabi on my cover 🤔 sus
anyway, I have more info in my community tab and on my Twitter thread, but if you could add THE GLASS WITCH, out Oct 18th, to your list it would mean the world! 🖤😭
I'm curious what Barnes and Noble will be stocking instead?? Like old stuff? Additional copies of books that are already popular? Part of the reason I go to bookstores is just to browse, that's how I find a lot of new books. Very strange decision.
Apparently, the idea is not to have stock and they will be ordering only the top 1 and 2 best-selling authors from each publishers.
@@moustik31 That seems like a very limited selection. What are they gonna do with the rest of the store? Make the Starbucks bigger or fill it with legos?
@@encyclopediaofelizabeth Bites me. We need people to go and vlog what's left on the shelves exactly, after this policy had time to be implemented.
I'm a bookseller over in the UK but I think b&n is doing this push is to force publishers to release straight to paperback (as hardbacks are more expensive and "unpopular") I really hope it doesn't happen over here as waterstones is the same company as B&n
Perfect timing, time to eat lunch and figure out what the hell is going on 😂
Exactly what I did, laid out my lunch and got the tea 😂
I went to B & N last week to look for a book that was being released by an established author, literally her 3rd YA (A Girl’s Guide to Love and Magic by Debbie Rigaud) and I think 5th book overall and it was NOWHERE to be found there. I found it so strange but when the news came out, it made soo much more sense
As someone who worked for years at that southern big box book chain, this is not a new issue. Corporate chains are there to make the easiest sell. Booksellers are the hand selling heroes of lesser known books, but they can ask corporate to send more books till they are blue in the face. All corporate is going to send is two hundred more copies of James Patterson's ghost written book of the week.
I’m not in the US. Our biggest book store is Kinokuniya. I am a member and go there at least once a month to browse. Meaning, it’s fun to discover books I haven’t heard about before. I think that’s the fun of physical bookstore- you go to discover new books and authors not go in to get what you already know or the latest hot book that you can get everywhere and probably cheaper. We have 3 indie bookstores but I will be honest and say that most of them are only good for specific things (local South East Asian authors for example) but meh for anything else. They also have annoying rules like “don’t browse/ flip through books/ don’t take photos inside the store or the sells person looks at you like you are out to steal everything out there… like… I want to support them more but browsing in them is not even half as fun as at the giant that is Kinokuniya… :/ The hardback thing just hit me… I was just complaining how some books seem to only be released in hardback. Specifically new translations if Korean literature and some American books and I wondered WHY because I just don’t like them ,specifically the ones with a dust cover, but it’s because most publishers translating Korean books to English are from the USA! I had no idea the hard back first culture existed! This makes no sense to me still but at least I know the reason!
Sea Breeze Books in Singapore is great for Chinese books, and I have ordered from the Southeast Asian indie publisher before. Sea Breeze and Kino have stock availability stated online which is VERY helpful for me.
I've seen some negative reviews for Lightlark from arc reviewers and the book sounds terrible. I completely agree that she only got published because of BookTok, the writing looks awful and the story stupid. People are allowed to call publishers/authors out, I really dont think she should have been published. There is no need to hate on Alex but there is also no need to hate on BIPOC booktok creators who dont' even have a quarter of Alex's followers who called her out.
In Australia books will almost always come out in paperback in stores first, and then they might get a hardback version (or already have an option that comes out a bit later) but they usually won’t be in stores, more so online…i like paperback because books are getting more expensive and bumping it up to hardcover increases the price 😂
With the B&N news, this feels like they (B&N corporate) are trying to cater to TikTok and that is so frustrating because TikTok's algorithm only favors very few authors/genres! B&N is a bookseller, why not leverage that to their advantage?
Alexa Donne was saying on her channel back in June that all Debut books are going to company publishing Warehouses and placed on the shelf while they work on well known authors. I am not liking this big shift going on here....at all.
The Undead Truth of Us is so good too! I can't believe they're not stocking it.
The B&N stuff is wild because relatively recently there was a big feature on how the CEO of B&N (also owns Waterstones - these titles probably aren't write, but the white man in charge) was giving individual stores more autonomy to stock what they thought would sell in their local community. I want to say that piece came out in the last 6 months, and people were being really positive about B&N still existing as an alternative to Amazon, especially in places that don't necessarily have a local indie. It's easy to say as dedicated readers that folks should order from an indie, but the casual reader who wanders in to their B&N while out shopping is going to miss out on all these debuts. If the booksellers think they can sell them, why tf is corporate banning those orders?
“The white man in charge” actually made me laugh out loud 😂
if B&N aren't going to be stocking books for people to impulse buy, i'm really not sure why they exist.
The mediocrity is the American way moment in this video has me in tears! You're so funny.
Traditional publishing is starting to feel less and less worth going for. Free editing and that initial payment, but everything else is on you (the author.) They’re not giving enough back for the control they make you give up.
Ngl, it annoys me when I see authors have entire tables set up for them. I get it if their series is popular, but showing unrelated books from their backlist and not showing other others smh...Make room at the table! Literally and figuratively
B&N gives so much space to certain people and then crams everyone else in the corner 😭
@@JessOwens tell me about it, at my local B&N I asked them to add author(s) to genre tables because they only had one book by one poc on the entire table. 8 of the books on the same table were by the same white author (whose series I love, but she already has a shelf, a wall, window display...)
I am so glad that my last day as a bookseller at B&N is tomorrow. There have been so many policy changes that booksellers have no knowledge about or little say over. I have to find out about these changes though tiktok/book tube? No thanks. My heart breaks for authors and I worry about how this will impact publishing.
I'm so sad that I've now heard the phrase "in between eating chunks of their mother". YYYiiiiikkes.
I hate this B&N news. Sooo much. I live in this weird book void where there are no small bookstores and the public library is attached to the middle school (in an extremely conservative area) so no books with swearing, sex, gore, or queer people are available there. There is a HPB, but I try to avoid those because how they treat workers and customers plus they usually never have the books I want.
And the closest B&N is an hour and a half away so I can only go every few months. So them screwing over authors and buyers like this really sucks and I hate the idea of having even less options for reading. The amount of times I have gone in there and just randomly picked up books (especially from debut authors) is too many to count but apparently soon I will be able to.
I might have to open my own damn bookstore so I can have books to read. 😂😭
Yessss!!! The queen is here!
What is so hard for B&N to have a New Releases shelf and having 2-3 of each book and THEN ordering more? It's exposing the authors and the books AND still gets B&N sales... Like what's so hard about it? Besides possible space issues cos so many new books come out every week.
Oh, why wasn't I ready for Hood River Rat?
The way I clicked this 0.05 seconds after seeing the notification 👁👁. Watching this w my morning coffee
I will say that a recent shift at B&N is giving regional mangers more control over what books they shelve, so if authors build relationships with the managers in stores near them, they are more likely to get their book stocked there. And like you said, sending readers to B&N (or ANY bookstore) to request the book is a huge help, too.
As a former BN Bookseller, this hurts my heart!
When Alex Aster's mid grade book came out, she hustled the hell out of it on IG, an di feel like I remember her also having been in a band or something? So she definitely came in with a following. But something about her rubs me wrong, which is why I have book 2 of the mid grade unread and about to donate. But I don't think she's a plant.
“Have y’all not witnessed America?” I’m dead 😵
I learned from a creator friend of mine breaking up comments help the algorithm on here so separating my thoughts. GOOD READS NEEDS TO BE ABOLISHED. They are not honest with reviews and bombing a book because you dont like the idea of someone having an easy win is bullshit. THE NEED for people to struggle because you're struggling is so wack.
sorry, just 8 minutes in but TWO BROTHERS DOING WHAT NOW?????????
mhmmm, yep
I don't even go into my local B&N anymore cause they never have what I'm looking for and such limited selections. I will call ahead, and when I get the inevitable "but we could order it for you", I just go order in on the big A. 🤷♀
Love Times Infinity was def a low star read for me for several reasons but this deserves to be on the shelf just as much as any book about a yt kid growing in high school!
YES I was hoping you’d cover this!! So messy
I'm in Australia, so a lot of our books are traditionally published from the start in paperback - and I know for example "The Marvellers" is on the shelf in junior fiction section of the bookstore where I work.
Even read an ARC of it early on before it came out that was sent to the store.
So not sure what the difference is over her with that of the industry compared to that of the USA!
The B&N thing is only really in the US I think, and tbh everyone I know who reads gets there books from libraries and online. The main thing that gets us to read a book is seeing someone recommend it, not if it's on the shelf of a random corporate store.
"What a time to be alive and anxious" ...this shirt is everything ❤ I need one lol
There is no way that Webster didn’t know what hoodlum meant and “it’s just a play on words for the location!”. Girl…..no no no🙄🙄
Also when are authors going to learn that lying about your books or marketing it incorrectly is going to hurt you in the long run?! Yes you might sell a bunch right off the bat but you’re going to get bad reviews and people will not buy from you again. Is the bad press worth it?
Its been my biggest pet peeve this year that so many of my 1 star books have mostly been due to the marketing being straight up lies about the content.
You always have the best/funniest tshirts!
Oh that beach 100% knew what she was doing when she called it that. The only people I've ever heard call people hoodlums are white boomers... also dear god that description I almost tossed my cookies 🤢
I'm really interested in how this will affect libraries since I know that a lot of inventory is based on donations and requests
I love that shirt! Turns out I love most of the shirts at Boredwalk, so that's going to be a problem. 😅 I'm with you on wishing paperbacks released before hardcovers-I *love* paperbacks but waiting a year for them sucks for me and for authors' sales. And re: Chloe Gong, this will be the second time she's blurbed a questionable book recently, so I'm giving her work a pass for the time being.
The Barnes & Noble policy doesn't make sense because bookstores can return books to the publishers if they don't sell.
Honestly love that you have a Boredwalk code, I follow them on TikTok and their T-shirts are so amazing!
I know for me... MOST debut authors of color that I have read, I have freaking loved! I get 70% of my books from B&N... I have found some new authors going there and just looking at every alse ... 30% is either Amazon, BookOutlet, and 2nd & Charles ... I know I will be making sure to do my research and looking harder to find those amazing books!!!!
I wonder if K Webster wrote fanfic like this because this sounds like bad fanfic. Like this some unedited garbage that she figured the world needed more of when it really don’t.
When I was a youth, I really loved quirky and indie bookstores, but, I hate to say, even those now have pretty same-y options. I actually find more variety on Amazon. I love the smell and experience of B&N stores, but I tend to find new stuff browsing at the library or online.
It’s so sad how much traditional publishing is being affected by the tiny attention spans of media people who look to TikTok for pretty people rather than developing relationships with authors.
I've read many books that tackled subjects of racism, sexism and SA well in contemporary fiction to create antagonistic traits, and in classics they defined a certain era when such things were openly prevalent. Awareness has reached a certain height when body shaming, racism, cultural appropriation is being addressed and taken in consideration. The titles are heartbreaking and appalling, especially when I live in a country where I had experienced second hand embarrassment and humiliation in name of derogatory remarks (I am a person of color and my friend still struggles with racist remarks).
"That was extremely appalling to me and my eyeballs." Same, Jess. Same.
I feel like every time there’s a big drama on book news online, Chloe Gong appears. It’s like she has attraction to bad drama even though she’s the least toxic author I know nowadays. Talk about bad luck 😅
Anyway thanks for the video, Jess. I’m surprise Barnes and Noble operate like that but I’m not surprise. Any conglomerate chain store do such shady actions but all those poor authors and debut ones! Wished they’d realize the damage to their career they doing….
One, this is why I self-publish and love it. Two, I have worked my buns off too, and gotten little to no buzz about my books. I write about jazz in fiction and nonfiction. Three, B&N doesn't want to carry self-pubbed authors. There is a HUGE world of indie authors whose books are really freakin' good. The days of self-pubbed books equalling crap are gone. There is *great stuff* out there!
You’re cracking me up with this Barnes and Nobles pronunciation.
Barneys and Noblays 😝
As a romance reader, the first part of the video is just…yikes. I think there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed. It was bad enough before hearing about the incest and cannabalism 💀 like people, you do you, but are these authors okay?!
What really drew me to this book was the fact that our premise are almost similar:island curses and Fighting. Mine are awesome gods a tournament hunger games style with the vibe of children and blood and bones so I was invested.
Thank you for the update. Since I hate Twitter, it's mental overload for my brain, I love that you do these. No, Barnes and Noble is awful for doing this. I don't shop there because I shop Indie but so many people do, in some places it's the only bookstore option. And to choose not to carry books, in that market, is evil.
Looks like B&N is giving up and handing business to Amazon
Thank you for the information regarding Lightlark. I put it off my tbr.
The Barnes and noble situation really scares me. They are our last main book stores (outside of the smaller bookstores) and it’s clear they are trying to find a way to bring up their profits. They had a HUGE 50% off sale last year on all hardcovers and it’s clear they are trying not to go completely out of business. Even though I know people are upset with them, it’s clear they are not doing good and just trying to find a way fo make sure Amazon doesn’t win again.
Their having that sale right now.
Yeah I get that impression as well; there not doing good, they should be more transparent about that so we as a consumer can see why there making these drastic changes. We don’t have to agree on there strategy but we can at least get an idea of why certain things are happening. To be honest I’m surprised BN has lasted as long as it has with the convenience of buying online via Amazon etc.
I kinda hate myself for thinking about this, but this reminds me of Ana from the second Fifty Shades movies, where she's like (completely paraphrasing here) "I think we should focus on new authors as well as established authors. . ." And everyone thought it was a great idea! Innate that anything in that franchise makes any kind of sense, but here we are.
Regarding B&N, I went yesterday and confirmed they are also not carrying hardbacks in ANYTHING once the paperback comes out because of the price difference means paperbacks sell more. This includes Sarah J Maas books.
I also agree that the "hardcover first, paperback later" model is so... like, it could be better 😅 Almost all of my favs were in paperback first! And especially big books are made even heavier to carry around when in hardcover. It's not just the content, but the physical nature of the book that matters too, including covers and titles
I WAS WAITING FOR THIS LMAOO!!! I'll edit my comment after I finished watching the whole thing.
Edit: Finally watched it with my cup of tea.
The K. Webster racist books thing was all over my TL and then the stuff about her incest book came out and I was like "Why am I not surprised this is a white?" lmao.
Barnes and Noble fucking themselves up what's new? Hoping they change their minds but I'm not holding out. It sucks that writers, especially BIPOC ones get fucked up like this. Also I saw that Toy R Us tweet too and was howling lmao.
The Alex Aster thing hoooo boy. I actually remember reading a review trashing it and I was like huh this sounds bad and put it on my avoid. And then about a few days later I saw all the tweets and instagram posts dragging it for all other reasons and it's just been a mess. I know a lot of people are saying that "at least she didn't make racist/abusive content" (I guess harassing reviewers doesn't count lmao??) and honestly while I agree, she did pretty much try to scam people and I'm preeeetty sure that's a felony in some countries so yeah. D:
Anyhow keep doing the good work and stay blessed. Also who was the new doggie in the back? They looked like they wanted to be in the video too aww.
Trad. publishing gets worse every month. Also, why are people tearing apart Alex Astor's life because the book was bad? Jfc.
I'm a contributor for a comic anthology that's going to be distributed by Simon and Schuster (published by Andrews McMeel), and I know I should just be happy my little comic is going to be published at all, but it really sucks knowing there's barely a chance it will be carried physically in Barnes and Noble because we're new authors. My heart goes out to all the other authors who won't get to see their books on the shelves.
The whole Barnes and Nobles situation has me asking questions. Does the publisher not have a deal with them? You can't rent out bookspace? How does this work. Because I think there's more blame to dish out
the B&N thing is SO awful. Publishing keeps getting worse and worse and hurting authors (esp. marginalized authors) more and more. Books and storytelling are such magical things and it sucks that their industry is so messed-up.
I'm hoping the pushback is enough to make B&N reconsider, but I'm worried this is another thing that is a huge deal but only the book community knows about.
At least now I'm definitely glad I've been preordering more books lately!
same, i hope they (corporate and not the employees in-store) get a lot of pushback and realize they need to get it together
when I saw the K Webster titles I audibly gasped - I cannot believe she did that
When I found out about BN’s new strategy, I was livid. Still am.
Funniest part, is author names don’t always mean much. Our store is still sitting on a case pack (24 copies) of Rowling’s “A Christmas Pig, and a dozen or so copies of Rick Riordan’s newest book. These titles aren’t selling - even when we discount them!
But god forbid we give marginalized authors a chance. Nope, gotta prove themselves on tucking booktok first. Ridiculous.
The amount of children who asked me for Kelly Yang’s new book and were told I don’t have it in store, just breaks my heart. Because the reality is, not everyone wants a book shipped. And as these authors and others have pointed out, this decision is gonna fuck over so so many people.
Girl Jakobi Diem is a bomb ass romance narrator. That voice…chile
He really is. And it hurt seeing in the initial Tik Tok that the author didn't seem to remember who he was. I'm like "How can you forget the name of person who narrated your own audiobook? With that voice?" 😔
he truly does
I'm glad I go to Books a Million instead of Barnes and Noble.