Meanwhile, I'm Not Sitting By The Phone

You know, I really love Barnes & Noble. I love all bookstores. In fact, bookstores combine two of my favorite words in the world- books and stores (I suppose if you leave the "t" out, they combine books and sores, but that's a whole other topic). I love chains and I love independents and I love street vendors who sell books. So this problem I have with Barnes & Noble stealing my copyrighted material shouldn't be taken as an insult to their wonderful bookselling of my books (or anyone else's, I suppose).

But I have lost a lot of respect for Barnes & Noble The Institution. Part of that is because they stole my copyrighted material, which I take kind of personally. Then there's the fact that according to Elaine Marie Alphin, if you do order my stolen novel About David, they send you the State Constitution of Arkansas instead. Even on their About David page, they have the United States Constitution as a sample of the novel. It's a natural enough mistake, I suppose, but I don't want people to think that About David (winner of the South Carolina Young Adult Book Award) is nothing but a plagarized version of some constitution or another. I don't know this for a fact, but I doubt that the State Constitution of Arkansas ever won the South Carolina Young Adult Book Award (the competition was fierce that year).

I did take another step to correct this whole situation, by calling Barnes & Noble The Instituion and asking to speak to someone in their Copyright Theft Department (which I may have called by its euphemism- the Ebook Department or some such thing). This time their phone receptionist put my call through, and I got to leave a message with someone. I'd tell you who, but his enunciation wasn't all that great. Anyway, I explained in my end of the message that I was concerned about this possible copyright violation and I'd appreciate talking to someone about it.

I still would appreciate talking to someone about it. My guess is I'll continue to appreciate talking to someone about it for quite a while to come. But if I ever hear back, or if it turns out B&N did make a payment and it arrives on Monday, or if they remove the link to About David, I'll certainly let you know. And if none of those things happen, I'll try to solve the problem a different way.

After all, I'd like Barnes & Noble to stay in business. Let's keep them a bookstore and not a booksore!