GLIBA Board Addresses the American Bookseller Association

"As a board one of the responsibilities that we take seriously is advocacy on behalf of the membership. One of the things that we have been watching closely is the expansion practices of Barnes & Noble. While we fully support expanding access to books, we have been increasingly concerned about the strategy that Barnes & Noble has taken in communities where there is already a strong Independent Bookstore in existence. All of us know of situations where this is happening. To that end, we have sent the following letter to the ABA on behalf of all our membership expressing our concerns about this and other issues related to unfair practices that impact our businesses."
- Tim Smith, GLIBA President 

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Dear ABA Board,

We are writing to you as a regional trade organization to voice our concerns about a few issues connected to the health of independent bookstores as they relate to Barnes & Noble. As you know, there was a time when Barnes & Noble was seemingly on the brink of collapse. At this time both the ABA and various other groups within the world of bookselling were extremely concerned about what impact their demise would have on the overall book business. Out of that concern we all agreed that they, and by proxy the larger book industry, would benefit from them being supported alongside the indie channel. The consensus was, essentially “at least they aren’t as bad as Amazon.”

Since then, Barnes & Noble has bounced back. They are now in an aggressive growth pattern that has shown up in predatory store openings that directly threaten established independent bookstores. Most recently they have acquired Tattered Cover, one of the country’s most celebrated independent bookstores. Instead of approaching this purchase honestly, they are planning to operate the store under the Tattered Cover name instead of their own. This looks like them trying to benefit from the history of an outstanding independent bookstore. While it is good that the neighborhoods that have supported Tattered Cover will not lose access to books, it is still a troubling situation.

Additionally, Barnes & Noble is also consistently violating on-sale dates. Publishers have also given them preferential treatment as recently as the announcement of Suzanne Collins’ next Hunger Games book. Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Bookshop, and many others had pre-order options for this book minutes after the news of this release. Indiecommerce stores couldn’t promote the book until at least Sunday because there was no record for the book, and still on the Monday following there was no cover art to use. We totally missed any opportunity to capture pre-orders on one of the biggest announcements in quite some time. This all feels very reminiscent of the 1990’s independent bookselling environment where bookstores were all constantly at odds with publishers for fair options to promote upcoming books. Then it was Barnes & Noble, and Borders that were getting assets, and selling books in ways that independents could not. This set up an unfair competitive advantage for the chains. We can’t afford to go back to this reality. Too much was done to fight for ourselves to go back to that place.

So, what do we do? We come together again to defend ourselves against unfair competition. We ask you, as our representative in rooms we don’t all have access to, for your help. We ask you to make sure that Barnes & Noble cannot be looked at like the independent powerhouse that Tattered Cover once was. The events that they hosted alone were revolutionary, and Barnes & Noble should not have unfair access to simply carrying on what Tattered Cover built over many decades. Barnes & Noble, and Amazon should not be able to capture all of the publicity, and sales for huge new releases. That has to stop.

Thank you for listening. We are very concerned, but we remain steadfast in the belief that if we are all joined together in our common cause of truly connecting people through books in our stores we all will be successful. We need your help to be our voice. Please help us to continue advocating for strong independent bookstores that help bring life to our local communities.

In solidarity,
Tim Smith
President, GLIBA

GLIBA Board of Directrors
Alyson Turner, Vice President; Nina Barrett, Secretary; Zach Matelski, Treasurer
Melissa D. Weisberg, Gary Lovely, Maxwell Gregory, Shay Carroll, Harriett Logan