I'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'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're going to withhold authors' money to use it for yourself, and then changing your mind once you've realised it's a PR disaster.

It's good that @Smashwords and @Draft2Digital pushed back against B&N's attempted appropriation of authors' 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's yours is mine"). We don'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't try it again.