Kindle Unlimited, Free Audible, & Copyright Infringement

Hello, dear Readers, I don’t have KU so I’m not familiar with all the ins and outs of how it works. Today on Twitter I caught a tweet by David Gaughran  about this so I toddled off to read what I could find (because this is ever so much more interesting than packing for my imminent move).

Simply put, Amazon’s KU has been offering free Audible on some books in KU without the permission of the owners. And without compensating them.

Read this link and Nate Hoffelder posted this

Nate posted this yesterday so maybe Amazon is taking care off the problem but only time will tell. Outrageous that it took months before Amazon responded with more than a “we’re looking into it” and left some of the books still listed with free Audible.

Amazon appreciates their authors like Paul appreciates a statue.

 

 

AUTHOR RACHEL ANN NUNES WINS HER COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT LAWSUIT AGAINST AN AMAZON SCAMMER

Writer Beware posted this on the long battle by Rachel Ann Nunes against one of the nastiest plagiarists ever.

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

In 2014, author Rachel Ann Nunes learned that her 1998 novel, A Bid For Love, had been plagiarized in its entirety by someone calling themselves Sam Taylor Mullens. Re-titled The Auction Bid, the book was being sold on Amazon, and the “author” was not only promoting it, but sending copies to reviewers.

Unfortunately for the plagiarist, some of the reviewers had read Nunes’s book. Although the plagiarist had switched the narrative from third to first person, the similarities were unmistakable.

Read the whole post here.

Congratulations to Rachel Ann Nunes for a well-deserved and hard fought for win.

Please Help An Author Fight This Crazy Court Case

Ah, Rebecca Hamilton yet again. What can I say, probably quite a bit if I can find the screenshots.

Scammers Break The Kindle Store

Found this through Ilona Andrews blog post on the subject.

California’s New Law Could Halt Live Author Book Signings

R. Gardner Goldsmith reports on a California law affecting author signings.

 

So, I’m a writer. Hopefully, that comes through not only in the fact that I’m setting caveman fingers to keys, and you’re reading the results, but also in the quality of what I write, the idea that it has value. I write non-fiction on political economics and ethics. But what some folks don’t know is that I also write scripts, short stories, novels, and novellas. As a result, I’ve become familiar with how publishing works, and have become friends with a number of terrific authors.

Many of those truly fantastic writers don’t have the backing of big-name publishing houses. Some sign with small “indie” publishers, while others split from the old guard and self-publish. And what every author, even the well known who have the backing of promotional departments, will tell you is that personal, hand-to-hand and word-of-mouth connections are what sells books.
As a consequence of this, making appearances — at conventions and at book signings offered by local booksellers – is not only essential for authors to exist in the pro field, but the crowds these events generate are also important for the bookstores to stay in business.
But, on January 1, an amendment to a California law kicked into effect that makes it virtually impossible for authors and booksellers to conduct “book signings” the way they once did. And only the folks of the Pacific Legal Foundation, hired by an indie bookseller based in San Francisco, are fighting it.

Read more.

Harlequin Closing Five Lines, including Kimani Romance

Found out through Bookriot this morning.

Although Harlequin has yet to make an official announcement, word has broken that they are no longer acquiring titles for five of their series: Harlequin Western, Harlequin Superromance, Love Inspired Historical, Harlequin Nocturne, and Kimani Romance. The last books for these lines will be released next year.

Author Courtney Milan broke the news on Twitter.

Read full story here.

Just found RWA’s announcement of  the closures here.

On Sale Now- The Grendel Affair

The first full length adventure of Makenna Fraser is sure to be one of the most enjoyable books of 2015. Shearin has made imminent death and destruction a whole lot of fun.

Mac is the seer for the New York office of Supernatural Protections & Investigations, a small town girl who moved to New York to become a journalist and is now wreaking her own brand of havoc on the supernatural community of New York.

Her boss is a dragon, the company lawyer is a vampire, her partner is a frighteningly competent human, and Mac, well Mac is armed with a paintball gun and her ability to see through any disguise or veil conjured by the paranormal. That’s a good thing because on New Year’s Eve someone is going to unleash two almost unstoppable, human-hating monsters on the revelers in Times Square. As New York prepares to toast the new year, Mac and the SPI are trying to keep New York from being toast in the new year.

Highly recommended. On sale on Kindle for $1.99.

Beware of Sharks in Publisher’s Clothing

DO you read The Book Designer? If not, then you should and here is one excellent post why.

 

by Judith Briles on March 1, 2017

Tate Publishing bit the dust and formally closed its doors on January 24, 2017. There are millions of dollars in lawsuits including one from Lightning Source (that’s Ingram) for over $1.8 million. In February, a default judgment was entered against Tate when its owners did a no-show in court. I can’t even imagine the number of authors and books who have been damaged.

Why another column on what I call the Publishing Predators?

1. The self-publishing / indie publishing avenues now publish far more books than the traditional publishing stream from New York.
2. Whenever there is growth, it identifies opportunity.
3. Opportunity encourages darker forces to surface. The floodgates opened for self-publishing went into high drive when Amazon introduced BookSurge, the predecessor of CreateSpace in 2007. Scammers paid attention.
4. In other words, scammers, publishing cons and publishing predators are breeding.

 

Continue reading here.

“We did our part…”

Let’s file this under “bitch, please”.

On January 2 Jaid Black posted this on her FB page:

This was the first time in, well, quite  a while that she has mentioned EC. And when someone posted their regrets for the closing she had this to say:

“No longer worth it”? Not enough authors left that she wanted to not pay royalties to, I guess. And on a post about the sudden closing of All Romance Ebooks she offered up another excuse:

The “Amazon did it” excuse. Amazon did not not pay EC but EC sure as hell did not pay part of their authors. EC/Jaid Black/Patty Marks never seemed to understand that Amazon wasn’t going to roll over and give them special treatment because they thought they deserved it. Black played the victim for years.

And there were, and still are, plenty who think she is. Or maybe just a weak-minded, dull-witted, easily duped fragile flower.

Aaaannnnd Kevin Weinberg gets it wrong, so wrong, again. Oh, he never got paid but the reasons why were much different than he wants Redditors to believe. They had a falling out over politics for sure but Weinberg was stupid enough to tell her to her FB face that he knew better than she did about racial discrimination. (My sympathies were totally with Black on this one.)

Not surprised he didn’t get paid. Not surprised that it wasn’t his fault. Really, these two were a match made in denial heaven. And speaking of denial heaven, Black posted this today:

So many retorts spring to mind. I do love the “We cannot continue to expend time on an endeavor that provides us with no income” line. Isn’t that what part of your authors were doing? They received no income, EC got the money, the authors got nothing but insults and accusations. I love that Black tries to herself in with the affected authors because we all know that if Amazon doesn’t correct this problem soon that Black/Marks/EC will be receiving money from Amazon and all those other authors won’t.

 

 

 

 

Short Notice! All Romance Ebooks Closing 12/31/16

As we leave, not soon enough, 2016 behind there comes notice another ebook venue is closing. At very, very short notice. KT Grant posted the following on Babbling About Books, and More!

 

Yesterday at 2pm I received an email in my inbox that most authors like myself, and I assume publishers (both epublished and traditional) received who sold their books at the online book vendor- All Romance Ebooks aka ARe. This email sent shockwaves through the publishing community for not only self-published authors and epublishers, but readers as well who have used ARe’s services for 10 years.

As of midnight on Saturday, December 31, 2016, the All Romance Ebooks site will go dark, aka they’re shutting their doors, and all content there, aka digital books for sale, will no longer be available through their platforms. This means authors and publishers have two days to pull their books off the site, and for readers to download their library of content before midnight on Saturday, or their books they purchased will be lost to them forever.

What has the publishing community raging, including myself is the email All Romance Ebooks, or rather Lori James, the Chief Executive Officer of All Romance Ebooks sent about the sudden closing of ARe. This section below is what has authors, and I assume publishers enraged:

Link to blog.