Books-a-Million is Shutting Down its Self-Pub Portal, BAM Publish

27.02.2019 Nate Hoffelder 1 Comment

It’s been hard to keep an eye on the USA’s second largest bookstore chain, given that B&N continues to be such a distracting train wreck. You would be forgiven for not knowing that BAM sells ebooks and has a self-publishing services portal called BAM Publish.

Or at least Book-a-Million used to have a services portal; it is reportedly being shut down. TNPS reported earlier today that BAM is sending emails to users with the news that BAM Publish is shutting down:

You have received this email because you have an account with BAM Publish. We are writing to inform you that beginning March 1, 2019, Books-A-Million, Inc. will discontinue the BAM Publish imprint and will no longer offer publishing services. All BAM Publish users and their projects will be now be managed by FastPencil, an authoring tool with similar services and user experience. We’re confident that FastPencil will be able to provide the same level of service you have had under BAM Publish. Please click here to schedule a call to learn more about moving your project to FastPencil.

FastPencil was the company that has been running BAM Publish ever since it was launched in April 2015, so this is more a matter of paperwork than a transfer of accounts from one provider to another.

Or at least that is how I would hope things will turn out. But given that it’s the 27th, and that Books-a-Million hasn’t seen fit to mention the change on the site or inform all authors (I have not heard this mentioned on KBoards, FB, or anywhere), I am not reassured by BAM’s suggestion that authors call FastPencil to organize their transitions.

This is a recipe for chaos.

BAM was contacted before this post was published, but did not respond.