Children’s author Meg Medina is one of the authors affected by Barnes & Noble’s change in stocking policy. The third book in her Merci Suárez series released this month from Candlewick. The first book, released in 2018, won a Newbery award and was a New York Times bestseller. But a couple months ago she learned through her agent that Barnes & Noble wouldn’t be stocking the hardcover edition of the latest book.
Medina said, “My first question actually was How big of a hit is this to me? Because Barnes & Noble in my career has not been a huge player. If you’re asking me what made my career, it’s librarians and teachers. The school and library market is really where I put a lot of effort, and I have seen a lot of return—and from the indie [bookstores] who work within that realm. And I say that to every children’s book author coming in who doesn’t know the landscape. It’s really librarians and teachers who you want to engage with, who will handsell your book to students and use it in the classroom and give it life.”
However, Barnes & Noble remains, in the American imagination, the country’s bookstore, Medina says. “When you step outside the industry … and you go to the average person, your neighbor on the street, and say bookstore, they’re going to think Barnes & Noble first.” She found Daunt’s comments about exercising “taste” in their selections to be insulting. “If it’s about money, say it’s about money. Don’t come to me with notions that it’s about quality. I won the Newbery. I’ve won many, many awards, and I will not be in Barnes & Noble in hardcover,” she said. “What does that communicate to the average person?”
Medina’s publisher has tried to offer reassurance. “My publisher has tried to communicate with me and point out strategies that they’re going to employ, pointing out that I have always done much better with indies, schools, and libraries—essentially trying to keep me calm in the face of what is really a big deal.” Still, Medina said her career has been spent trying to make her work and Latino-centered work accessible and mainstream and not othered. “That’s been, I’d say, the lion’s share of the PR work and so on. Trying to remove the otherness,” she said. “This just feels like a boot to the curb.”
While researching a book about the famous librarian Pura Belpré—the first Puerto Rican librarian in New York City—Medina learned one of the guiding philosophies that Belpré was taught: to give children literature that they don’t normally reach for themselves or wouldn’t find on their own. “Introduce them to things that are new. Introduce them to the world,” Medina said. “That was in 1921, and we are still struggling with this issue. And it’s really unfortunate. A business philosophy should reflect your values. It reflects the bottom line, but it also reflects your values and what a company thinks is important. And I’m not feeling very important to Barnes & Noble right now.”
Medina also worries about how these changes will affect contracts and future deals. “[T]he contracts for the books that are coming out now were negotiated two to three years ago, and [they] took into account Barnes & Noble as a vehicle. How do we earn out? And if we don’t earn out, as BIPOC authors, that’s sometimes used against us for future advances, for future print runs. If we’re moving from one publisher to another, Oh, you didn’t earn out,” she said. “They stigmatize you.” Then, when you add in the current climate of book banning and any kind of cultural content being suspect, she says, “You have the potential to damage and ostracize authors.”
Bottom line: Medina is clear: “I don’t want to vilify Barnes & Noble.” She understands that Barnes & Noble is dealing with a legitimate business challenge and trying to fight for survival. So, she asks, “What is the solution, publishing, to this issue of high returns and the impact it has on bookstores? Something has to change. What is the model? We need to be rethinking.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
How long did Merci Suarez Changes Gears stay a New York Times bestseller?
I wish I could tell you, but I don’t know of a way to search the NY Times bestseller lists for this kind of information. If anyone else does, I hope you’ll comment!