Dragoness Eclectic's Journal

It's hard to go to sleep when you are utterly enraged. Last night, I discovered that Barnes & Noble defrauds e-book purchasers: you do not actually get your epub file. Instead, you get permission to read your purchased ebook in their choice of ebook reader, the Nook App, or in their web viewer. When you "download" an ebook to the Nook App, it is hidden on your device; you cannot access it with another e-reader app, nor can you back it up to your computer or other storage. THIS APPLIES TO NON-DRM books as well, so if you purchase say, a Tor sci-fi book (Tor does not add DRM to their ebooks), you still cannot access your own book.

I purchased Martha Wells' two latest MurderBot stories from B&N, and then tried desperately to get them into my Calibre library and visible to FBReader (my favored e-reader app). No go. The books were simply not available to be copied or moved. B&N's order status considers the books to be "delivered" once your Nook App downloads them, even though you don't have them accessible. Their support website arrogantly tells you that you don't need to backup your ebooks, because they are always available on the Nook server. So when B&N goes bankrupt or decides not to support that format of ebook anymore, they will be "always available"? If I move to another country, they will be "always available"? If I lose my account info in some kind of catastrophe, they will be "always available"? Yeah, no, fuck that shit.

My final solution? I hoisted the jolly roger, searched for torrents of the two books, and within five minutes had unencumbered, accessible, readable epub files of the two books I HAD ALREADY PAID FOR (AND NOT RECEIVED). The lovely Martha Wells has already received her royalties and whatever arcane sales performance metrics from B&N on my behalf, so no harm done. The second thing I did was delete my credit card info from B&N and put in a Data Rights Request to delete all my personal info (since there does not seem to be a way to just delete my account). The third thing I did was write a one-star review of the Nook App in the Google Play store, highlighting the fact that it HIDES YOUR OWN BOOKS and that B&N lies about "delivering" your ebooks to you.

I will never do business with Barnes & Noble again, neither for ebooks nor physical books, and I encourage you not to do so. Businesses should be punished for shady practices in the only way they understand: in their sales. Spread the bad publicity, too; it can only help.

To friends & family: please do not give me Barnes & Noble gift cards in the future; you will be wasting your money because I will not use them.