Nook Press | Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes

As I mentioned in my last post, I sent Barnes & Noble an email thanking them for reinstating my account—and also asking: Why was it terminated in the first place?

This was their response:

Dear Bobbi,
Thank you for contacting NOOK Press.
We evaluated your account and only removed those titles that were in violation of our content policy. We then released the account after our review. We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you.

Ummmm…actually, that is not what happened.

They did remove the hold on the account.

But, I am not sure what they meant by “removed those titles that were in violation of our content.”

None of my titles were removed, not even the erotica.

However, ALL of my titles were set to unpublished status.

Nook Press did disable the publishing link on three of my titles, meaning I cannot republish them. However, one of those was NOT erotica.

I went through my account and republished all my titles that were NOT erotica.

So, Barnes & Noble, no worries—I have no intention on republishing any of our erotica on your site, even those whose publish links have not been disabled. Several years ago, Robeth Publishing made the decision to move in a new direction, and erotica did not fit into our company’s goals.

Hopefully this kerfuffle is finally behind us. Yet I suspect, one reason we are back—our Haunting Danielle readers. So many of them wrote in telling me they had contacted Barnes & Noble and wanted our books back.

So to my readers, thank you.

And to anyone out there who hasn’t read Haunting Danielle, rest assured, they are books that you can recommend to your teenager or grandmother. Very G-Rated.

A final note and reminder: When Barnes & Noble’s Nook Press put my account on hold last week, I had NO erotica published at Barnes & Noble. Not one single title. I had unpublished all the erotica our company had ever published about two years ago.

As of this morning, all of my books have been removed from Barnes & Noble. I am still waiting for an explanation as to why.

I have only received two emails from Barnes & Noble’s Nook Press regarding this matter.

The first email arrived on Monday, telling me my account was on hold. It instructed me to contact them “for information on why your account has been placed on hold and to discuss any necessary next steps to reactivate your account.”

I was clearly led to believe I simply needed to take some steps in order to reactivate the account. But what steps?

After I contact them, I received an email the following day—yesterday. It did not include any steps to rectify any problem—instead, it informed me my account had been terminated. According to this second email, “We have determined that many of your titles available for sale are in violation of our Content Policy.”

At the time all this was happening, I was hearing from other authors who claimed their NookPress accounts were also being closed, and it is all about an erotica purge. They explained, even if a publisher no longer had erotica published, accounts were being closed.

But perhaps it was all a coincidence—for me and them.

I never meant to suggest Nook Press considered Haunting Danielle erotica—yet I did believe the termination had something to do with past erotica content by the publisher, as the other authors claimed.

So, if not erotica, what else is in their updated Content Policy? I took a closer look and discovered it is a violation for the author to include any hyperlinks or contact information in the eBooks. It has always been standard practice to include a link to an author’s newsletter—and even the standard eBook creation software inserts a hyperlink to the publisher’s website.

In the past, it has always been understood to never include links to competitive stores, but the others links were typically accepted. Was it about hyperlinks or past erotica?

Unfortunately, NookPress never gave me those steps they said they would be sending—the steps to put the account in compliance. Instead, they simply terminated. So, I don’t really know if it was about hyperlinks or past erotica.

Either way, I am moving on. I have a new book to write and another to get off to my editor. You can still find my books at Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords and iTunes.

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A final word on the Barnes & Noble termination—I think…

Update on NookPress Termination