Barnes & Noble shopper reads the sign ‘Commercial Fiction’ at a table. Then she looks at the books and claims the store is doubling down on a bias

A shopper said a display inside a Barnes & Noble left her upset for hours. Janey, who posts on TikTok as @janeyillustration, filmed herself walking through a mall and into the bookstore. She said she had already been shopping for about two hours when she decided to show what had bothered her. The video has gained 1.1 million views, 139,600 likes, and 5,570 comments.

In the video, she stopped at a table with a framed sign titled “Commercial Fiction.” She read the sign aloud. It described the category as “fiction written to entertain a broad audience and achieve high sales, often prioritizing plot, accessibility, and readability over literary experimentation.”