I& #39;m really hacked off about this Smashwords update on Barnes & Noble.

1) There is no difference between not paying authors who are with publishers and not paying indies. It& #39;s all NOT PAYING AUTHORS. Most published authors even with big houses earn <£10K pa from books.

2) There is absolutely nothing admirable, gracious, or impressive about announcing you& #39;re going to withhold authors& #39; money to use it for yourself, and then changing your mind once you& #39;ve realised it& #39;s a PR disaster.

It& #39;s good that @Smashwords and @Draft2Digital pushed back against B&N& #39;s attempted appropriation of authors& #39; money for their authors but there is nothing else good about this situation.

B&N are still screwing authors who are with publishers, and they have clearly flagged their approach to royalty money (ie "what& #39;s yours is mine"). We don& #39;t need to praise them. We need immediate redress for all authors.

And until B&N releases a statement acknowledging that what they did/tried to do was wrong and explaining wtf they thought they were playing at, it is very hard for me to believe they won& #39;t try it again.