Barnes & Noble’s trademark problem for indie authors

Back in the teens, when the Wawa gas station chain initially expanded into the Florida market, one of the first things the Pennsylvania company did to establish itself in the Sunshine State was to sue a little Kissimmee mom-and-pop restaurant called Wawa Curry Taste of India. The guy who owned the diner, Yogi Patel, told local media that back home in India “wawa” is a word that means “something good.” Nonetheless, the gas station company said his use of that word as a business name is a trademark infringement. Wawa Inc. demanded he change his restaurant’s name, or else. Patel told a local TV station that he couldn’t afford to fight in court; it was going to be cheaper and easier for him to just think up a new name and spend the money necessary to redo his signs, menus, and other stuff.

That action by Wawa Inc. was a swift, clear, decisive, ass-kicking defense of a company’s brand name, reputation, and market. It also demonstrated strong, protective instincts on the part of Wawa Inc. for its potential Florida customers—the little guys like you and me—who, let’s face it, easily could have been drawn to the little Indian food restaurant in confusion, thinking we might buy gas or breakfast burritos there.

You have to applaud Wawa Inc. for taking care of business.

I bring that up in exasperation for what I’m seeing going on with Barnes & Noble. This post is yet another discussion of the wild-west lawlessness of the indie publishing biz.

I like B&N. I shop there. They carry one of my books online. In my local B&N store, I’ve chatted at length with the manager, and she’s wonderful.

Barnes & Noble has a trademark problem though. And the company doesn’t seem to be doing anything proactive about it—to the potential risk of innumerable indie authors.

There are many, many imposters of trusted names in the publishing and writing biz; just about every prominent literary agency, publishing house, book company, and affiliated business, and a great many of their individual agents and executives, have been impersonated. The vast majority of those scams involve various phishing, email, text, and phone solicitations. They arrive out of the ether. By design, they are tempting for indie authors to believe and respond to, yet hard to track. You’ve seen them. Victoria Strauss at WritersBeware does yeoman’s work watch-dogging the phenomenon, though keeping up must be like playing whack-a-mole.

With Barnes & Noble, I’m seeing something that strikes me as more brazen, next generation impersonation. This involves ads bought on Facebook and maybe elsewhere. These should be traceable, and their presence on an established platform must lend instant credibility.

There is an entity out there calling itself Barnes & Noble Publishing House that has zero affiliation with the 139-year-old bookseller company, and it is marketing publishing services to indie authors.

For the sole purpose of keeping these two entities clear in this post, I’m going to call the original Barnes & Noble the “real B&N” and the other one the “imposter B&N.”

I’ve come across the imposter B&N ads many times lately on Facebook. If you’re active as an indie author, I’m sure you’ve seen them too. There is nothing in the ads I’ve seen to disclose that the imposter B&N isn’t affiliated with the real B&N. The imposter B&N even uses similar logos to the real B&N’s.

I contacted the imposter B&N via the Messenger chat link. Someone who chatted with me acknowledged that the entity was not connected to the real B&N. Then he added that it never claimed to be—as if that made it okay to use the name and look-alike logos. He said there was a disclaimer on the entity’s webpage clearly explaining that it has no affiliation with the real B&N. ( I couldn’t find a disclaimer that was clear about that, even when I went back to double-check.)

The real B&N has its own publishing services subsidiary called Barnes & Noble Press. If the real B&N is aware of the imposter B&N—and it should be by now—it has done nothing that has resulted in a cease-and-desist order yet. The imposter B&N ads have not ceased.

The real B&N’s Press website had a pop-up advisory, warning that some authors “have reported being contacted by someone representing Barnes & Noble” who demands book placement fees. The advisory warned this is a scam. The advisory I saw said nothing about an unaffiliated entity calling itself “Barnes & Noble” trying to get money out of indie authors.

The risk here is not like the risk of people mistaking a little Indian food restaurant for a big gas station chain that sells convenience store food. The risk here is of people giving thousands of dollars to an entity of unknown existence, quality, credibility, or accountability after mistaking it for the biggest brick-and-mortar bookseller in America. If there is such customer confusion, it does not arise from a coincidence of similar-sounding names. A name like “Barnes & Noble” can only come from the appropriation of a well-established brand name, a deliberate deception.

I sent an email with my concerns to the real B&N. Someone wrote back advising that the real B&N is concerned about a scam out there. Her reply to me, though, used similar wording to the pop-up advisory, so I couldn’t be sure if she actually read, considered, and responded to what I had written; or if she just hit the “Respond,” “Paste,” and “Send” buttons. She did add, though, that she would forward my information to the appropriate department for review. I followed up, but I haven’t heard back yet.

Nor have I seen any evidence that the imposter B&N is dissuaded from its pitch for indie authors’ money.

We indie authors have enough scams to worry about in the indie publishing world without also having to worry about imposters of trusted brands placing ads on established platforms like Facebook.

Come on, real B&N, go all Wawa on these guys!