Karin Kallmaker, a wonderful (and prolific) lesbian romance writer, has a blog where she answers fan mail as well as just chit-chats with readers. She has a post about what Border’s bookstores are up to. Seems as though they are cutting back drastically on the books they carry in order to arrange the books with the cover facing out, vs the spine facing out. This means a single paperpack fantasy novel would take up the space of roughly three or 4 novels.
I agree with Karin that this move may not sell as many books as they think it will. But I do agree that this move could push people more toward Amazon.com.
Speaking of Amazon.com, Writer’s Weekly has another post up about the mess.
WritersWeekly was also the first to report Amazon’s actions to the Washington State Attorney General’s Anti-Trust Division, simply giving a bullet-point synopsis of what had occurred and asking them if Amazon might be violating any laws. They responded to my initial fax in under one hour, and have since been bombarded with complaints about Amazon’s plans. Last night, the Washington State Attorney General sent us an update, which states they are investigating the situation and that “it may be more appropriate to refer this matter to one of the federal antitrust agencies for review.”
Late last week, the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), the Author’s Guild, The Independent Book Publishers Association (PMA), The Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN), and the UK’s Leading Writers Website, YouWriteOn.com, have all publicly questioned and/or denounced Amazon’s actions. The Author’s Guild is asking anyone with any information about the subject to contact their legal services department.
Be sure to read the rest of the article. Oh, and be sure to read the article she links to at the end. I don’t know if I understand all of it (after all, it is nearly 2am) but it presents some interesting ideas.