This is from Sarah Madison's Twitter and more of the All Romance Ebooks event

[charisstoma]

http://www.sarahmadisonfiction.com/2017/01/authors-be-warned-the-ongoing-impact-of-the-all-romance-ebooks-debacle/

Authors Be Warned: The Ongoing Impact of the All Romance Ebooks Debacle
Posted on January 2, 2017
I’m sitting here shaking with anger and disbelief.

The other day, I decided to make a few tweaks to my long-standing free story, A Summer Fling, with a view to making it exclusive to Amazon. No big deal, right? The only other place it was offered was Smashwords and All Romance Ebooks–also for free.

Last night, I received an alarming email from Amazon asking me to prove copyright or face permanent ban from publishing there again. Shocked, I consulted friends, who assured me this wasn’t that unusual and that it was probably in view of recent incidents of several people in my genre being impersonated online. I sent the required information back to Amazon and went to bed thinking it was over.

Imagine my surprise when I get a response from Amazon KDP that states due to an undisclosed third party claiming copyright, and their policy not to get involved in third party disputes, they have chosen not to publish my story. A story that had been on their site for three years. A story that is MINE.

Who could this mysterious third party be, hmmm? Which retailer–RETAILER, mind you, not publisher–recently massively screwed authors over by closing their doors with four days notice, sending an email out offering an insulting 10 cents on the dollar for owed royalties only on the promise that the author didn’t sue? Which retailer then told authors they were holding the files of stories offered for sale on their site for the next seven years for tax purposes? Which retailer allegedly began manipulating sales data to reflect even less royalties owed than just 24 hours before? And which retailer has been accused of improperly reporting sales data in the past, and prevented authors from removing their books from the site (you could only inactivate them) while the allegations of unethical and illegal actions keep piling up?

Lori James and All Romance Ebooks, that’s who.

Let me just say this: the sum owed me initially wasn’t very large. I only had a few self-published titles with them. I’m not worried about James laying claim to my Dreamspinner Press titles–I know DSP will defend them. And after I neglected to capture the data in time (the download links would not work and I could only make screen caps of the info) and my reported royalties dropped by 2/3 with no way of proving it, I decided I would let it go.

summer_fling-200x300But now SOMEONE is disputing copyright on a story I created and published myself. Someone has stolen not only my past income but threatening my future income. A Summer Fling is a lightweight little story written for the M/M Romance Group on Goodreads back in 2012. It’s not a story worth fighting over. But my other self-published titles once hosted by All Romance, books I can no longer retrieve from the site, ARE worth fighting for. So while I once considered letting this battle go, I can’t AFFORD To close my eyes to this. The possibility that someone associated with All Romance intends to set up shop again under another name, selling books they is not entitled to sell is real.

For the most complete summation of the extent of fraud perpetrated by the management of ARe–and more importantly, what you can do to prevent them from getting away with this scott-free, please check out this valuable post: Publisher All Romance: Closing Hits New Low in Stealing from Authors. The details in this post are jaw-dropping. If these allegations are true, then criminal charges need to be filed.

So if you have been a victim of the recent actions of All Romance Ebooks, I invite you to file a report with the Florida Attorney General’s Office and The Department of Justice for Internet Crimes. Please spread the word to anyone you know who may be affected by this. If you are an author living in another country, please look into filing fraud charges in your country, making this an international crime.

In the meantime, I’ve put A Summer Fling back up on Smashwords. Snag a copy. Enjoy. And if you wouldn’t mind leaving a review, that would be helpful. But if you BUY this book anywhere online–you’ve been ripped off too.

Comments

[mee-eep.livejournal.com]

wow what a shit-storm

[charisstoma.livejournal.com]

I would love to know if the ebook is still on Amazon or if it had been taken down because of the conflict over who owns it. If it's AR that is claiming the ebook, I'm wondering if the author accepted the 10 cents on the dollar owed for unpaid royalties or held out.
Some place I read that AR is holding onto ebook rights for 7 years. I'm thinking they didn't give back the rights if the person didn't take the 'deal' but I'm not sure.
I'd need to contact Id_locke. She got her rights back according to her.
Then again Torquere Press also went belly up and those books are still up on Amazon. She's posted don't buy from the Amazon site. Hmmm Maybe it was Torquere who returned the rights.

As you said a shit-storm.

[mee-eep.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how the rights work.
ARe was a book seller not a publisher to my understanding though people could self-publish through them?
A lot of authors were removing or disabling sales of their books at the end.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah. Talked to Id_locke. Think she only dealt with Torquere Press. I checked on Amazon which, if any, books she had up there and if they were still up as TQ. They were and she wasn't aware they still were there. She's going to go see to that again.

[charisstoma.livejournal.com]

3 guesses on who Anonymous is. First 2 don't count.

[dyoklako.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Poor writers! D:

The problem is the site is already down and no way to get to them unless u have good intarnet!skillz! to get to their defunct site.

Another problem is that technically, they did release stories or themed stories exclusively on their site but I don't know if that count as they are the publishers themselves....

Lastly, the problem here is whatever was initially agreed has been broken and the affected authors should and MUST sue ARe for violation of said rights.

I hope all this will be resolved soonest. I feel really bad that it has come to this. :(

[charisstoma.livejournal.com]

I've heard of this happening more and more.
Torquere Press did this just before ARe did. Similar problems, though Torquere seems to have done better by their authors.

[dyoklako.livejournal.com]

Oh no! D:

I always say to start small and not plunge on without knowing the full repercussions. It's why I try to support indie authors via smashwords or their own sites or their indie publishers as much as possible (gumroad and another one that I plan to visit as well but can't recall at the moment).

my local writer friends have been writing romance stories in english and they have their own group's site to publish them aside from their own pages and amazon. (i don't like buying ebooks from amazon hence this alternative that i love from them) but i know that some of them have also sold their works over at ARe so i hope theirs will not have problems as well. :/