Refusing to Go to Bed Before Midnight…

On a Friday Night…

But it will be close. I’m tired from a day that I don’t much remember, and I’m getting up early tomorrow to go out into the wilds of Las Vegas grocery stores. I get in with all the old folks because the fact is that I am an old folk. Less crowded and old folks, for the most part, tend to be more careful.

And they move slower so I can dodge them easier.

And the store shelves are stocked.

Just amazing seeing Las Vegas on a Friday night now. We used to be able to stand on our balcony and see downtown Vegas and hear the battle of the bands along Fremont. Now there isn’t even a car moving at midnight.

One more quick topic before sleep… A number of people have asked me to do a longer post on B&N. B&N came out today and backtracked on not paying indie authors through D2D and Smashwords. Seems B&N quickly realized that was a mistake, pissing off thousands of writers with web sites and blogs. But they have admitted they are not paying off their invoices for big traditional publishers.

Oh, oh…

That, to say the least, is a horrid sign. It means they have no surface cash and hope to either borrow their way out later on, or hope book sales come back when all this is over in enough volume to help them catch up. Nope. Even if they go back to the way it was, getting that far behind will be deadly.

So B&N has another option besides the obvious one of bankruptcy. They can simply return months and months worth of books, more than likely never opened, for credit. This I am sure they will do to a level which will just send shockwaves through traditional publishers and destroy many, many author’s careers who have banked on that old traditional system.

And in case you haven’t been listening to me and Kris over the last decade, the publishers will blame the authors for the bad sales, not the plague. Not B&N. Not kidding.

So nothing more to really talk about. B&N made a huge mistake not paying D2D and Smashwords even for a few days, and letting us all peak behind the curtain to all the ugly business and cash flow problems the chain has. Now we all just sit and wait for the next very, very large and dirty shoe to drop.

Stay safe.