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julian_black
2010-03-03 10:29 pm UTC (link)

I loved this exchange in her LJ:

wah_keetcha: I was so excited to wall around a corner in my local barns and nobel and saw RoadKill sitting there on a nice cardboard display! Grabbed it an all but ran for the check out, way to excited to get home and read it. Know it's going to be awesome, thanks so much for these kick ass characters and stories.

robgoodfella: Sweetie, you totally didn't even read the post, did you? Or any of my posts or tweets. You can't buy until TUESDAY--tomorrow! Or it doesn't count on NYT or any of the other rankings that keep my publisher interested in keeping the series alive. And now you can't have a look at Cal 6 chapter one a year in advance.

Why. Why do I try? Head thunk on desk.

Yes, because the appropriate response to a happy fan who just bought your newest book, and is excited to read it, and who thanks you for writing in the first place is to...berate them for buying it? STAY CLASSY, THURMAN.

And it looks like many booksellers have gone ahead and put Roadkill out on the floor, selling it ahead of the official release date--which spawned this bit of busted logic from

herverylowness (emphasis mine):

You can always mention to the booksellers that the book is not supposed to be out just yet and that it's detrimental to the author's sales. Most places are more than willing to take the book off the floor for a few days.

So...putting a book out for sale, where customers can come in and buy it, hurts the author's sales? Bzuh?

And a sampling of tweets that really, really make me not want to buy this author's work, ever:

# I love it.Spend forever writing a post on DO NOT BUY ROADKILL until tomorrow, win fab prize, & a happy commenter says Whee!Bought it already
9:05 AM Mar 1st via web

# Head thunking on table isn't enough.Head banging on wall is better. BANG. BANG. BANG. Is reading comprehension extinct? Did I miss the memo?
9:07 AM Mar 1st via web

# ONLINE SALES DO NOT HELP MY RANKINGS.Buy at a REAL WORLD STORE.Yes, RT'd this a 1000 times yet no one sees to get it.NO ONLINE. RT plz again
9:40 PM Mar 1st via web

# unfortunately you did it on Amazon-which doesn't count. NYT, no rankings count it. Which I've tweetedx1000.Thanks for trying tho @ceetastic
about 20 hours ago via web

# One more time people:now..cough..FRAKKING LISTEN. I've said it 1000 times in the past 2 wks, ONLINE sales DON'T COUNT. Don't help me at all
about 20 hours ago via web

Yeah.

I can understand her desire to be on the NYT bestseller list. But bitching and moaning and treating fans as if they are a bunch of clueless illiterates in order to get there? And telling fans outside the US they have to buy two copies of the book to see the preview because their sales don't count toward official NYT bestseller-dom? Fuck that noise, dude. There are too many authors I haven't yet got around to reading, and chances are good most of them behave better than this.

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	bigbigtruck 2010-03-03 10:42 pm UTC (link)
	Fancy lists aside, is there a difference between online and brick & mortar purchases in the author's portion of profit? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	jupiterpluvius 2010-03-03 10:51 pm UTC (link)
	No, there is no difference. Writers for large US trade publishers are paid per copy sold on percentage of list price. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	radiotrash 2010-03-04 05:17 pm UTC (link)
	Depends on what you mean by online. Physical copies I don't think so. An author I watch on LJ wrote that she actually makes a higher percentage off e-books though. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	ekaterinv 2010-03-03 10:48 pm UTC (link)
	And don't publishers have sales figures that go beyond the NYT bestseller list? I'd think that every book sale would help her, rather than "don't help me at all." Maybe I just really don't understand the publishing industry. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

jupiterpluvius
2010-03-03 10:53 pm UTC (link)

They do. Total Bookscan numbers, orders, and sell-throughs are more important than any one bestseller list. Especially in mass-market genre fiction, the USAToday bestseller list is more important than the NYT list anyway, because of the NYT list's particular bookstore makeup.

I am convinced that she is not telling the full story, and suspect that she has a contract provision that she will get some kind of bonus if she hits the NYT bestseller list and is trying to game this for that reason.

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	jupiterpluvius 2010-03-03 10:54 pm UTC (link)
	And saying "no bestseller lists count online purchases" is either total cluelessness or an out-and-out lie. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	breecita 2010-03-03 11:39 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, this is driving me a wee bit nutty. It's not just that she's yelling, she's yelling stuff that isn't even right. Also I'm not 100% sure she is differentiating between online and digital sales. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

bobafeis
2010-03-04 06:53 am UTC (link)

Yeah. I have no clue what this is about, because afaik, no Barnes & Noble store has the ability to sell ebooks. The only exceptions are some very, very rare books where the CD or floppy can be ordered in, or walking customers through buying ebooks from the website. E-book sales on PDAs or nooks are through the website as well. The fact that she's even asking that question (as well as the way she's going about this) makes me think she has only the vaguest of clues about digital books and the interwebz.

And honestly, more authors (especially mid-list genre authors) live and die by their Amazon ranking than by their NYT or USA Today rankings.

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	breecita 2010-03-04 01:53 pm UTC (link)
	I'm pretty sure you can't buy ebooks in a B&N unless you're talking about buying a book on the Nook while physically standing inside a B&N. (I'm pretty sure the Nook has wifi access inside most B&Ns.) But still...whose wifi you're using to make the purchase realllly probably doesn't make a difference. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	evilsqueakers 2010-03-05 10:05 am UTC (link)
	Nook has wifi everywhere. I order books online in various places (my mom's home, Walmarts when bored). My nifty toy inspired my mom to buy one, too. Wheee. She loves getting books in text size she can read that's not 50 a pop. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	nightwalker 2010-03-06 10:29 am UTC (link)
	Nope, we can't. Ebooks are, perhaps by definition, website only. I'm thinking she might not entirely understand how they work? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

bobafeis
2010-03-07 11:12 am UTC (link)

I don't think she does, honestly. How would we do it? Call it up in Bookmaster and then somehow transfer it over to the device? Maybe she thinks we're much more high tech than we are....

(I used to work at a store that tested pretty much all the new concepts, and there were always rumors that we'd be getting a way to sell ebooks in the store, but it doesn't look like that one's panned out yet.)

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	breecita 2010-03-07 03:49 pm UTC (link)
	Oh Bookmaster. I once had a customer ask me if I could use my computer to find out if the last Left Behind book would come out before the rapture. And he wasn't joking. Maybe they've included that functionality in one of the updates since I left. ;) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	researchgrrrl 2010-03-08 06:09 am UTC (link)
	This is either absolutely adorable or unutterably terrifying. I'm rooting for the former because I'm in sort of an affection cheek-pinching mood. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)

the_labrat_army
2010-03-03 11:50 pm UTC (link)

She'd better hope that reading comprehension is extinct, because I'd imagine a large number of people reading those posts of hers are quickly being turned off by the idea of buying any of her books.

I've never read Rob Thurman, so I don't know if her books are any good or not. So nothing against them. But I can't imagine buying any of them after seeing this. It's not even like her book is getting horribly criticized; readers are posting telling her that they bought and loved it, and she's snapping back that not only their praise, but their cash means nothing to her if she didn't get it on Tuesday. I'm with the angry bloggers, that's just shoddy behaviour.

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	zumie_ashlen 2010-03-04 04:01 am UTC (link)
	I bought the first one forever ago and never really started reading it, and now I've pretty much decided to donate it, since I doubt I'll be able to enjoy it knowing what a douche the author is. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	comixology 2010-03-04 04:27 am UTC (link)
	I really enjoy two of the three main characters in this series, myself, but after about book 2 I realized it was better to just run away with my favorites and play around with them on my own. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	researchgrrrl 2010-03-08 06:11 am UTC (link)
	This. Exactly this. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lindentreeisle 2010-03-04 06:44 pm UTC (link)
	Wow, major fail there. It makes me feel icky enough that I wish there was something I could do to spite her besides not buy her books. If I buy them in the Negaverse, does that count as a negative sale? ;) (Reply to this)(Parent)

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