Cheating Authors Out of Royalties and Other Insulting Practices

Note: I wrote this article a few years ago, but found out it’s still relevant and the link is still valid. Amazon has shortened their return window to 48 hours, but fast readers can burn an entire novel in such a short period of time that the window is still not the issue–the percentage read is.

TikTok and FB and Twitter-X and all the social media have long been hotbeds of stupidity, but this one is hitting authors in the wallet. The challenge* had spread on Tiktok for users to purchase then read the book in its entirety and return books within the more-than-ample return window. They think they’re gaming Amazon, or some big time authors with multi-millions. Theft is theft no matter the size of the pot you’re stealing from, but this is stabbing independent ebook authors/self-publishers** in the back. Authors get charged with a delivery fee which does NOT get returned to when the book is refunded. Amazon gets that. So even if these people think they are stiffing Amazon, they’re not, because the big A gets its take and passes the buck to the author, less any fees for the file transfer. Kinda like how the rest of the corporations don’t eat losses; they push that down to the consumer so the costs go up for the little guy.

That there are arguments why this is not somehow theft of intellectual property is mind-boggling. There was even one Einstein who argued that if she didn’t like a book by JANE AUTHOR then she would return the book. My question for her would be “why would you even buy it in the first place if you don’t like her writing?” And there’s enough of a sample out there on Amazon for anyone to get a feel for the writing. Go to the library and borrow the books.

If you’d like to help, you can do so in a few ways. The best way is to buy books you love and NOT return them, thereby supporting the authors.

You can go to Change.org and sign the petition. It’s not a world-bending change, but it can help authors. Potential fixes for Amazon would be to curb the abuses by tracking serial returners (especially those who ignore the samples offered for the book) and tightening up the window for returns for those “mistaken” purchases.

*I’m not going to name the challenge here, but if you really want to see it, you can do a little Google-fu.

**Not that independent “authors” are entirely innocent. There’s a bunch that figured out how to game the Kindle Unlimited payout pool by creating “books” with drivel or collections of other authors’ stories into a massive 1000+ page volume, then putting some free thing or other enticement at the BACK of the book to get the reader to “read” all of those pages, which shows up as “pages read” and receives a weighted payout.

***I haven’t experienced any of these fraudulent returns myself, and I am hoping the process gets changed before that ever has a chance to happen.

A Day Late and Dollar Short

I don’t know how many in the younger generations have heard this used, but I’ve employed it frequently when speaking of my luck. In this case, however, I means I’m posting a day later than I normally do and, well, the dollar short thing? Aren’t we all short a dollar?

For a Few Dollars More, with Clint Eastwood. If you remember the movie, you probably heard the “lo-lo-lo-looooooo, wah-wah-waaaaaah” in your head when you saw this image.

I got knocked sideways for a day due to a sinus infection–I can get over them fairly quickly, or at least “over” enough to get back into my routine, but I have to remind myself that I shouldn’t feel guilty for spending a day to rest and heal. Am I the only one like that, who gets anxious when sick and have to get up and do chores around the house because of the guilt that it’s not getting done?

ANYWAY… to what I’d actually planned to write:

I am one of many in my family who plays video games, and have since all the way back when my dad bought us an Atari. We went through the Atari variants, moved on to the Commodore and Amiga, and hopped right on the PC and Mac. (Well, at least I did, with the Mac, and am quite comfortable on both platforms.) What types of games, you ask? LOTS. Arcade, sides-scroller platformers, first-person-shooters, simulators, point-click-kills like Diablo and Grim Dawn, etc. I’m kinda hooked on House Flipper at the moment, which is a lot more fun than I expected, and whets my interior design appetite. But my deepest love goes to the good old role-playing game (RPG).

Why, you ask? Probably because 1) I’d been an RPG junkie since I could read (and I was four). My brother, 10 years older than me, and I would run through the Dungeon! game a few times a week, which was really my first foray into the genre in spite of it being more boardgame-esque. He had the version with the mat, not the boards. I wonder if he still has it…

But even more important than the RPG aspect was the storytelling aspect. Any of you who play Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) or any other tabletop RPG understand that it’s a cooperative storytelling setting. The only problem is getting together a bunch of like-minded* players who can come together on a regular basis to play. The video game version eliminated that need, as all it requires is a boot up and go. Now, don’t get me wrong, nothing really substitutes for a good sit-down with a few 7-dice sets, my DM screen and a group of enthusiastic players. And most of the video games play through exactly the same way each time, although there are some brilliant exceptions that give you a different play-through or endings depending on your decisions (see the Fallout and Witcher series).

So what is all this about? The storytelling. Someone else gets to be DM for a while and crafted a story that I get to experience for once. It creates an immersive environment that can, and does, spur imagination and other takes for a stalled story.

Not that I’m stalled on writing. It’s the revision that I’m working through–Eater of Dreams, still. If you want more details on my progress you can sign up for my free newsletter and even grab a free novelette, Whispering Dusk, set in the universe just for joining.

---

Speaking of freebies, don’t forget to take advantage of the free stories in the sidebar – two of them are ending on Friday. Some are available in Kindle Unlimited, others available through StoryOrigin (Readers join for free, authors foot the bill).

---

*I say like-minded, because it completely kills momentum for people when someone is only casually involved, or when one player wants a lot of combat and little role-play or vice-versa. Not that one is better than the other, but in order for everyone to have fun, the aim and the commitment have to all be even or kaput.

Bad News for Genuine Authors

So I was doing a bit of research on my MOST FAVORITE topic (/sarcasmoff), Marketing. If you’re here reading this, chances are you are a reader of my blog, but maybe not of my fiction.

In this research I discovered a valuable new resource, and if any of you are writers, I suggest you check him out. I am not affiliated with David Gaughran but so far what I’ve been reading is pure gold.

On his site, along with the marketing advice and freebies, there’s a little button that says “BEWARE”. When you hover over it, it turns a scary shade of red! Being the curious sort, I clicked on the link to read the articles. Lo and behold, the information there was frightening**.

The most egregious for independent authors/self-publishers involved an exploitation of Kindle Unlimited and how the bad actors take advantage of the monthly set-aside where authors get paid by the number of pages read in their work. Book stuffers are scammers who upload a book comprised of maybe one or two shorter stories (the only ones disclosed in the blurb), but the book itself turns out to be thousands of pages long, stuffed with a load of other stories (which by a few accounts were garbage but since I didn’t read any, can’t say if they were worth the read or not), with incentives or redirections from the front of the book to go all the way to the back for some freebie or other, thereby marking the book as read in its entirety or close to the end. 1000 pages “read” in a heartbeat and boom, they grab a majority of the KU budget. That’s oversimplification to be sure, and there are factors and algorithms figuring into it that these scammers use to game the system.

My guess is that if the page count in the stats for the book seems kinda high*** you might be looking at a scammer’s book. They fall through the cracks because on Unlimited, readers read them for free which means there’s nothing for the reader to lose except to check it back in and go for another book. If you see or suspect any title might fall in that realm, the best thing to do is report it to Amazon.

Doesn’t make it a pretty place to try to do legitimate business.

Anyway, fellow writers should go check out David Gaughran’s site. Hopefully you’ll find a wealth of good info over there.

*Okay, okay, red is not scary. It’s quite lovely, actually, accenting Autumn trees as it does.

**And yes, I do mean it was frightening this time for real and honest and truly, at least if you’re an honest person. Can’t say what fancies of scammers it tickles.

***I heard that 3000 pages is the max. Does War and Peace even run that long?