Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Authors can end up owing Amazon money.
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No, Quoth, they can't. They can only owe up to what they've been paid.
Also, there are almost NO mechanisms to stop books that turn into crap after the first chapter or two. I should know--I see them all the time.
I would not take the chances on Indy authors that I take now, were I not able to return wholly unsatisfactory books. Sorry, but you guys are all behaving as though every published book is some GEM. Trust me, they're not. And many of them start out okay, with promise and then die terrible horrible deaths in the saggy middle or worse. I have returned dreadful books. Does anybody here
really think that the author would rather have me leave a review, explaining
why the book is godawful, than simply getting back my $0.99-$2.99 or so???? I doubt that they would.
There ARE mechanisms in place to punish serial returners and close their accounts or bar them from buying eBooks. Stop thinking that those don't exist. As far as the braggarts, oh, yeah, right, because
NOBODY ever told a lie on Youtube or TikTok,
amirite?
As far as the pages-paid/read--that's only for books enrolled in KU. If you're not a KU customer, having your Kindle in airplane mode, etc. makes zip for difference. If you buy eBooks, then the pages read makes s**t for difference.
@Critteranne: No, the refund amount is not separate and apart from the delivery fees. The delivery fees are deducted from the gross sale amount. It's not like an author puts a book up for $2.99, has it returned,
and has to replay his $2.10 royalty PLUS delivery fees. That's not how it works.
For that matter, when Amazon accepts returned paperbacks--which, for those of you not paying attention, it does--it doesn't whack the author at all. They simply resell the returned book. If they screwed up the printing and the returned book is unsaleable, they eat it. What, nobody wants to rant and rail about how unfair that is????
I've listened to bitching about eBooks being returned on the KDP forums for a baker's dozen years now, as it happens. 99% of the time, if you look at the eBook that the author is swearing was read-and-returned as a ripoff, it's painfully easy to see WHY the book was returned. I've seen exceedingly few that were rip-and-read.
Oh, I do want to add--I can't say that about porn/erotica/so-called-"romantica." Apparently, short stories and novellas that are porn DO get read and returned a LOT. So, the spicier your story, the greater your likelihood of returnage in this sort of "cheating" way. Nonetheless, Amazon is still
very diligent about the sort of people who do this--don't forget, they are also being ripped-off and denied profit, right?--so they try to stop it in its tracks when it's abused, which is pretty early in a serial-returner's returning lifespan.
Hitch