Yeah, yeah, I'm going to go blind, but God help me, the Passive Voice had a post today that got me all riled up. Somebody at Ebook Friendly felt obligated to post tips on how to find self-published books at Barnes & Noble.

You know something? When the civic-minded feel an obligation to post pointers to help people find things in your store, your store is badly organized. Honest to Pete, you think B&N could hide the books on its Web site any better?

And HOW can you find self-published books? By looking in the section for books published via PubIt or Smashwords, of course! (Quoth Bridget McKenna: "Wow! Our very own ghetto! I’m so proud…")

Seriously? Yeah, people don't search for books by genre or anything silly like that, they search for books that have been published a certain way, that's totally how they do it. It just amazes me how poorly B&N understands its own customers--you're not selling to school districts, who really do care who the publisher is, you're selling to the general public. Don't they even talk to the floor staff in their own stores? How many people come in looking for a book that was published a certain way versus people looking for a mystery or a book by a particular author or a book like those written by a particular author?

You know, people were snarking on the B&N CEO because he doesn't have much of a background in bookselling, and I thought that was kind of silly. But I may have been totally wrong....