This morning I received the following email from Barnes & Noble’s NookPress:

Dear Publisher,
We have determined that many of your titles available for sale are in violation of our Content Policy. Accordingly, the offending titles have been removed from sale and your account is being terminated. We will pay out any and all outstanding royalties during the next payment period. If you attempt to publish similar content under a different account, we will terminate that account as well and withhold royalties from those sales.
The NOOK Press Team

Umm…okay…please explain which of my titles currently for sale are in violation of their content policy. I would love for them to answer that question for me. Unfortunately, NookPress doesn’t have a contact phone number, and they keep sending me form letters in response to my email inquiries.

While I have published erotica in the past, I unpublished my erotica TWO YEARS ago. And even if it was still for sale at Barnes & Noble (which it isn’t) I don’t see how they would have violated any of the terms at the time. After all, they did allow erotica back then, and I tend to play by the rules. (I am a bit of a compulsive rule follower.)

The majority of my books on sale at Barnes & Noble are books in the Haunting Danielle series—a very G-rated paranormal cozy mystery series. I have four very light romances under my Anna J. McIntyre pen name, and several nonfiction. Nothing smutty in the bunch, and all with registered Copyrights—so no violations there.

I know it isn’t a phishing email, because when I log into my NookPress account, it has a notice that the account is on hold. It is always possible this is some kind of a glitch. A few months back they sent me an email claiming there was a new payment pending—one they didn’t owe me. A few days later I received an email claiming the payment message had been sent in error. However, I am hearing from other authors that Barnes and Noble has been sending similar emails to erotica authors.

Funny thing, my titles are still live at Barnes & Noble, at least they were a few minutes ago—telling me none of them were the offending ones. (So what exactly have they removed?) While my books are still there, according to the email, my account is about to be terminated.

Ironically, many of my fellow authors have tried talking me into putting my Haunting Danielle books on Amazon Select. To do so means I have to first un-publish from all non-Amazon sites. I have been reluctant to do this—in spite of the extra money the authors claim I can make—because many of my Haunting Danielle fans like to buy their books at Barnes & Noble, and I don’t feel right about making them exclusive to Amazon, in detriment to my fans.

However, even if I wanted to put them on Select right now I can’t. Why? Because NookPress has my account on hold, and I can’t make any changes—not even to un-publish. So, on one side they claim I can no longer sell my books on their site—and on the flip side, they continue to sell my books, not giving me a way to remove them, therefore making them ineligible for Amazon Select.

Annoying….

 

 

SaveSave

SaveSave

11 comments on “NookPress closing author accounts?

  1. Doreen Ferington

    Wow… how frustrating for you… I cannot see how any of your books fall into this category..i’ve read them all! There should be someone to contact..hope you get it all straightened out… I’m glad I have a kindle and only buy from Amazon at the moment..especially with your new book coming out soon 🙂

    1. Bobbi Holmes Post author

      Thanks. It is annoying, especially when there is no “person” to talk to.

  2. Audrey

    I would highly recommend you reach out to them publicly on social media – Facebook and/or Twiter. This will help you get a real person fast. Don’t let up either, keep posting on their Facebook Page and Tweeting at them every single day until you talk to someone real.

    Best of luck and warmest wishes!

  3. NetM

    They are targeting unpubbed erotica as well. I’m uploading dummy files as fast as I can. I don’t believe my erotica is against their guidelines (I don’t write taboo or anything over the line) but these sweeps never end well for anyone. I’ve been caught in them before 🙁

    Although if this is prep for selling the site my efforts may be moot anyway.

    1. Erin

      Just FYI, I’m good friends with an author who’d already gone through months ago and uploaded the blank files and covers to his erotica, and his account just got closed for exactly the same thing. All he had left published was some Christian novels and nonfiction.

      So having dummy files in place doesn’t help or do anything, just to save you some time…

  4. paula moore zimlicki

    Just a thought since your letters are not getting responses–have you gone to a Barnes and Noble store and asked to speak to the manager there? While they may not be responsible for Nook, they sell Nook and they may have a corporate phone number you can call.

  5. Raminar Dixon

    Many other authors, both with past & unpublished erotica titles and those will currently-published erotica titles have also recently had their accounts terminated.

    It’s a real shame that we all received essentially zero notice about this.

    B&N must not realize that by mass-culling accounts like this they are also very forcefully pushing away many, many authors who also happen to write in other genres. Some of those authors just so happen to have other pen names. Some of those are multiple-time bestsellers with droves of readers. Some of those authors are directly responsible for a good chunk of B&N’s revenue, too.

    Not only that, but then they also run afoul of someone like me, who has advertised hundreds of books for them over the years on top of being a fairly successful publisher with multiple pen names. I plan to move all my titles away from B&N as soon as possible. Why stay? And after this incident, I have no intention of continuing to advertise NOOK titles to any of my readers or through any of my paid newsletter services (around 40k subscribers total). I’m not the only one. There are several other authors out there who I have spoken to already with even greater numbers than mine and they are in the same boat and same mindset concerning B&N.

  6. Pingback: B&N Terminating Nook Press Accounts for Publishing Erotica (?) | The Digital Reader

  7. Erin

    I also got caught by this. I’d unpubbed my erotica months and months ago, and all that I had left published were my western romance novels. I too know for a fact that they aren’t something that needs to be unpubbed; I am a USA Today bestselling author because of these cowboy love stories. I just got a BookBub for one of the books on the first of August. They were promoting one book in their own in-house promotions!

    So yeah, I spent yesterday emailing anyone and everyone I could think of at B&N, panicking over this. I just got an email about ten minutes ago that I have my account back. Yay!

    However, I shouldn’t have had to go through that. As of right now, out of 15 titles that should be for sale, only 3 are. This is obviously greatly hurting my sales, all because they decided to just banhammer everyone instead of using their brains and looking at accounts first.

    This whole thing is ridiculous and B&N should be ashamed of themselves.

  8. Heidi Angell

    At least they are still going to pay you. When Amazon shuts you down, they keep all royalty payments owed to that account. Even after they reinstate you, they don’t give you your money back.

  9. Pingback: Erotica Authors Blindsided by NOOK Press Account Terminations

Leave a Reply to NetMCancel reply