Dealing with Barnes and Noble

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

B&N acquired Fictionwise fairly recently. Customer service has gone downhill and technical glitches have increased since they did. They don't have much experience running an online ebookstore.

I suspected then as well as now that the reason for the Fictionwise acquisition was for their technical expertise. Rather than poach a few key tech people, the big fish ate the leetle fish in order to get their whole tech model as well as their obviously successful business model. Plus maybe part of FW's catalog came at a better price than B&N could negotiate with the publisher.

You know sorta like that Amazon did with Mobipocket who was the best of the bunch and, thus, picked first by the biggest fish.

Really, look at the Kindle Store, it is not terribly sophisticated. As I recall it was only recently they added the ability to add books to a wish list...and forget searching in any sort of organized drill down fashion, then again that might be the weakest point across the whole Amazon site...searching is not great, fast but not really as good as it should be at this point in time.

So, perhaps B&N is doing essentially the same thing. Grabbing the IT part of the equation in order to improve their core site rather than re-invent the wheel, just by the company which already makes them.

[Pardoz]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Pardoz: The instances where book publishers or retailers are selling content without the rights, and without delivering royalties, is rare to the point of near-total irrelevance.

Or simply a topic you're ignorant of, because coverage of cases of actual piracy is rare to the point of near-nonexistence.

I'm sorry, but I simply can't buy your argument that using libraries or lending friends books is criminal, while selling work for profit without reimbursing the author is acceptable.

I.e. I am categorically rejecting your position that "publishers are the 'real' pirates." It's a position I can't even take seriously, really.

That's a lovely straw man. Nice hat, well-stuffed. Do a good job keeping reality away, does he?

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Pardoz

I'm sorry, but I simply can't buy your argument that using libraries or lending friends books is criminal, while selling work for profit without reimbursing the author is acceptable.

I never said, and never will say, that libraries or loaning books is "criminal." Unless, of course, you think that distributing a free and permanent copy of an ebook to millions of your best Internet buddies is the same type of "sharing" as a library loan.

Both happen to be compatible options with DRM, by the way. In fact, library programs already exist. I do concur that loaning is exceedingly limited and ought to be expanded. In fact, I even said that ebook loans should be put into wider use, way back in post #22 of this here thread.

Talk about straw men....

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

I suspected then as well as now that the reason for the Fictionwise acquisition was for their technical expertise.
...
So, perhaps B&N is doing essentially the same thing. Grabbing the IT part of the equation in order to improve their core site rather than re-invent the wheel, just by the company which already makes them.

That was my opinion also when I learned that BN bought FW-but since they don't seem to have used that IT expertise in building the BN ebook store, I'm not really sure what they're doing.

[Pardoz]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

That was my opinion also when I learned that BN bought FW-but since they don't seem to have used that IT expertise in building the BN ebook store, I'm not really sure what they're doing.

It was my assumption when I heard about the purchase too - seemed a logical thought at the time.

As for what they're doing...well, from what I can see, they're running FW into the ground: lots of reports of poor CS lately - not had any problems myself, but haven't had any need to contact CS either - prices on lots of multi-format books going up 50% or more (the new standard seems to be 8.99, even on titles that were under $5 two months ago), and doing away with Micropay rebates on most DRMed purchases.

The question is why. My cynical streak says B&N bought FW precisely in order to wreck it, this not being an unheard of practice.

[Daithi]

My experience with Amazon
1. Bought ice cream recipe book with 1-click
2. Book delivered wirelessly
3. Book was missing ingredients list on recipes
4. Called customer support and who answered immediately and refunded my purchase.

I have no problem letting people know about bad customer service, but I have had a couple of dealings with Amazons customer service, and they've always been good to me. Sorry to hear about the OP's problems with B&N.

[woodworthjohnca]

What some will go through for $.99. I would say, fughedaboudit.

[BearMountainBooks]

Just as an aside...my books are up on B&N--the covers were WRONG for all three books. So to the OP....did you maybe actually get the right book? I'm not sure from your post if you were actually able to open it to find out...

B&N was pretty quick (working with Smashwords--Mark and Smashwords has always been responsive every time I've dealt with him) to fix two of the covers. The third cover got lost in the dryer or something and it took about 3 weeks.

The books are now up correctly so far as I can tell. B&N recently posted some questions in their forum about improving some things on the site. Well, I saw one question...

Maria

[gr8npwrfl]

The file was named HG_Wells

The content of the file was Marquis de Sade

Never could get through to electronic division to get the problem corrected.

After spending 2.5 hours on the $.99 book I gave up.

[gr8npwrfl]

I sent a letter of complaint about fraud to the California States Attorney about my dealings with Barnes and Noble.

They sent me numerous emails saying there was no refund of any kind for ebooks which I ignored.

A person from Barnes and Noble contacted me today to tell me they had issued a complete refund and to not make any more complaints to the States Attorney's Office.

LOL

All this for $.95 and they probably lost $1,000 in sales

[Pardoz]

Originally Posted by gr8npwrfl

I sent a letter of complaint about fraud to the California States Attorney about my dealings with Barnes and Noble.

They sent me numerous emails saying there was no refund of any kind for ebooks which I ignored.

A person from Barnes and Noble contacted me today to tell me they had issued a complete refund and to not make any more complaints to the States Attorney's Office.

That is all.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by gr8npwrfl

I sent a letter of complaint about fraud to the California States Attorney about my dealings with Barnes and Noble.

They sent me numerous emails saying there was no refund of any kind for ebooks which I ignored.

A person from Barnes and Noble contacted me today to tell me they had issued a complete refund and to not make any more complaints to the States Attorney's Office.

LOL

All this for $.95 and they probably lost $1,000 in sales

Good for you!

[Elfwreck]

Reminds me of this:

[BWhite]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Yes. Now, given modern darknets, that means that either she was aware this simply meant she was passing up a good deal of compensation for her work or she's being deliberately ignorant.

I am not calling it either, way, just saying...

Truthfully I do not know what you are stating about J.K. Rawlings. Just saying some of your posts are a bit obtuse.

She is famous enough to know what it is actually going on, if you want to look it up. She has chosen to be a Luddite.

She writes her manuscripts on paper, using pencil or pen, and she has instructed her publisher there are to be no electronic editions of her books so that her readers "have the pleasure of handling a real book." (I am unsure of J.K. Rawlings' precise wording).

When her fans OCR her works into electronic files and place on the Internet her publisher hunts those files down and issues requests they be removed. You and I both know they are still out there.

Conclusions:
o she wants to be compensated for her works
o she wants her works to only exist in physical, paper form
o she is no Scrooge - she donated quite a bit of money to the English Government for a social cause (don't recall what that cause was)

Rumors:
The rumor is that she IS concerned about electronic piracy - but there is no direct quote for this, only the one about her readers handling a physical book

Why this discussion is pertinent to these forums is from a moral point of view I am unsure about giving authors rights as to whether or not one of their works can only be viewed written on the back of McDonald's hamburger wrappings (you can see what I am getting at).

In J.K. Rawlings' particular case you know her book was in electronic form at the printers, it is how modern printing presses function. She is stating she has the right to keep that electronic form away from you, the reader, forever.

Sure, maybe governments gave her that right but it seems a bit overdone to me. Go kill one thousand trees to make J.K. Rawlings happy?

Maybe governments should take her right away?

[BWhite]

Originally Posted by Daithi

My experience with Amazon
1. Bought ice cream recipe book with 1-click
2. Book delivered wirelessly
3. Book was missing ingredients list on recipes
4. Called customer support and who answered immediately and refunded my purchase.

I have no problem letting people know about bad customer service, but I have had a couple of dealings with Amazons customer service, and they've always been good to me. Sorry to hear about the OP's problems with B&N.

I am seeing on this thread that Amazon apparently has great customer support.

I am seeing on this thread that Barnes and Noble is struggling at this point in time, the Nook business has apparently overrun their CS Department and the Information Technology aspect of running eBook retail servers - do not know if B&N's IT Department ever had that under control.

I have had a good experience purchasing from Fictionwise in the past. I have no idea regarding the present.