Nate Hoffelder

Amazon still hasn’t released a statement about the most notorious Kindle Unlimited abuser, but they have taken the smallest possible step to curb the abuse of Kindle Unlimited.

Amazon has removed the ebooks written by "Chance Carter" from the Kindle Store. The retailer has also removed the ebooks published by Carter under the "Abby Weeks" pseudonym. Both accounts look like the owner was booted from KDP, although there’s no way for third-parties to confirm this conclusion.

To recap, "Chance Carter" was the guest of honor in last week’s hot story about cheating in Kindle Unlimited. Along with Abby Weeks, Chance Carter was the pseudonym for someone who was publishing ghost-written books in Kindle Unlimited (a ghost writer on Fiverr has claimed credit for writing a couple titles published by Carter, yes).

This individual stuffed multiple novels inside a single ebook before uploading the ebook to Kindle Unlimited as one really long, really large file. The latter novels were described as bonus content, and were published on their own as well as stuffed in the back of other ebooks published by Carter.

KU users were then tricked into flipping to the end of an ebook by a freebie offer. Due to a bug in the Kindle platform, Amazon can track your location, but not what pages you have actually read. As a result, this paid Carter the same as if the reader had actually read an ebook all the way through.

Edit: I have seen nothing official from Amazon to suggest it, but a number of authors are convinced that the jump to the end trick no longer works. There is a good chance that I am wrong in the previous paragraph. (I have trouble believing it because if they are right then book stuffing would not be profitable to be worth the effort.

By using this trick, Carter was paid around $14 to $15 per user. All this money came from content created cheaply by ghost writers.

Carter insists that everything they did was entirely within the rules at the time. That may be true (I have a different interpretation of the rules),  but that doesn’t make it ethical nor does it indemnify Carter from public criticism.

At best, Carter is the equivalent of the content mills that stuff Google’s search results with poor-quality content. Those content mills used to rank high in the search results due to good SEO practices, but that only lasted until Google changed its algorithm to punish purveyors of bad content. Content mills are still around, but they don’t enjoy quite the success they used to.

Like Google, Amazon has changed the rules in Kindle Unlimited  several times, all in an effort to fight cheaters. Most recently Amazon restricted bonus content to 10% of an ebook’s length (this rule was announced Saturday), but past rule changes have included switching to a system that paid based on pages read rather than per copy,  limiting the length of ebooks in KU, and banning practices like putting a TOC at the end of a book.

While Carter would claim that they haven’t done anything wrong because they have stayed entirely within the rules, the fact that Amazon kept changing the rules to ban specific practices should have been  a clue that said practices were not ethical or fair.

image by Rusty Clark 

Amazon released a new update for its ereaders this week, and it’s going to make picky readers very happy. The update adds support for Arabic-language ebooks which have been available through the Kindle Store since last fall, and it also gives readers the option to install their own font.

I haven’t had a chance to test it myself (my Kindle has a dead battery), but according to Amazon’s help pages this update adds a "fonts" folder where you can install your choice of fonts. The fonts have to be either OpenType (OTF) or TrueType (TTF), and all you have to do is copy them to that folder via USB.

I have a ZIP file of fonts over on this post, if you need them.

This is great news for anyone who needs a non-English-language font, and it’s a shame Amazon did not add this option years ago.

Amazon will be pushing the update out to Kindles over the next few weeks. If you don’t want to wait then you can download the update from Amazon and install it yourself.

Changelog

• Read Arabic language books: Your Kindle e-reader now supports Arabic language books. Choose one from a selection of thousands on the Kindle store and enjoy reading Arabic content.
• Read with your own fonts: You can now install your favorite fonts on your Kindle and choose one of them from the Display Settings (Aa) menu to read your eBooks. Connect your Kindle to a computer and refer to the “Read Me” file in the “fonts” folder for more information.

You’re not going to believe the email Barnes & Noble is sending out today.

I’ve just learned that B&N is withdrawing support for the Nook 1st edition, the dual-screen ereader than B&N launched in late 2009. (I didn’t realize I still had one on my account until I got this email.)

You can find the email at the end of the post. It says that owners will not be able to sign in, register, etc on their Nook 1st Editions after 29 June. (If  the device is kept offline, it will continue to work, obviously.)

Anyone who got the email can get a replacement Nook ereader or Android tablet at a discount.

The Nook 1st edition was released on October 2009. It had a 6″ E-ink screen, a 3.5″ control screen, and ran Android 1.5. It shipped with both Wifi and 3G connectivity, and was cheap at $259.

A Wifi-only model was released in June 2010.

This ereader received a few minor updates in 2010, and was supplanted by two Android devices: the Nook Color, which came out in late 2010 with a 7″ LCD screen, and the Nook Touch, which was released in June 2011 with a 6″ E-ink screen.

The Nook 1st edition never really had a lot of support from B&N, although it did have its own hacking community for a while. The hackers added several features, including a new menu design for the control screen and the option to install apps. That feature never came to much due to the limitations of the OS.

This ereader also had a clone, the Spring Design Alex, which was announced a few weeks before and released a few months later. The Alex had a very similar design, only it was thinner and much more capable (I have one).

Spring Design sued B&N in 2010, alleging the retailer had stolen the design. The lawsuit was settled in March 2010 without decisively proving the point one way or the other.

O O O

Dear Valued Customer,

Over eight years ago, we launched our first Nook eReader, and we were thrilled to have you as one of our first customers for what has become a tradition of offering great books on demand to readers. We want to thank you for your loyalty and continued support of the Nook 1st Edition and Nook products.

Because of advancements in our eReader technology, we wanted to let you know that, unfortunately, we are unable to continue to support the Nook 1st Edition.

The good news is we would like to offer you a special coupon for one of our more advanced readers so that you can continue to read digitally and maintain your library. You may choose from the following:

Nook Tablet 7 for $25.00 (50% off the List Price) plus Free Shipping*

OR

Nook GlowLight 3 for $59.99 (50% off the List Price) plus Free Shipping*

Either of these Nook eReaders will provide you with up-to-date, enhanced reading experiences that we think you’ll use and love for a long time to come.

Please note that as of June 29, 2018, you will not be able to purchase new content, register with a BN.com account, or sign in using a Nook account on your Nook 1st Edition. However, you will still be able to access your existing library, or download new content, by using our Nook Reading Apps for iOS, Android, or Windows, on mobile and tablet devices.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause but we think you’ll be delighted with your new Nook device. If you have any questions regarding this offer, feel free to contact us at 877-831-2393 Monday-Friday 8AM-11PM ET and Saturday-Sunday 9AM-11PM ET. Please be prepared to provide your Nook 1st Edition serial number. If you need assistance locating your serial number, click here for instructions.

We truly appreciate your business and look forward to continuing to provide you with the great Nook experience and to welcome you at Barnes & Noble stores.

Sincerely,
Barnes & Noble

image  by lib-girl

Apple is making its big announcements today at WWDC, and they shared a few details about Apple’s ebook app.

iBooks is getting a huge update as well as a new name when iOS 12 is released. It is now called  Apple Books, and it’s going to feature an updated library view that puts a better emphasis on your content as well as a new Apple Books bookstore that includes a section for audiobooks.

Best of all, it will have a “Reading Now” section when you first open the app, showing you a live preview of the book you most recently were reading and where you left off.

iOS 12 is in beta right now. So far as I can tell, the official release date has not been announced.

The Verge 

If you have been following tech news then you’ve probably heard the term blockchain mentioned more than once. This word is rarely explained in non-technical terms, but it is thrown around a lot by tech companies trying to get in on the hype.

We’ve even seen a few companies like Binded or LBRY claim to offer services to authors, and a lot of people in publishing saying that blockchain is the greatest thing since sliced bread. So far, none of the new ideas from either the tech companies or publishing pundits are actually useful to authors, but one day that is going to change.

With that in mind, I think now is a good time to go over some basic guidelines on how to evaluate new tech and whether we should use a new tool or service based on that tech.

I was inspired to take up this topic by the recent announcement about a new startup called Authored.

From BEG:

The Authored Platform is an application, which is active on both the iOS and Android platforms. This platform will function like Google Books, Amazon Books, Apress, Wiley, and many other online publishing systems. However, Authored is also a social networking site, which will allow users to publish high-end content from writers and authors of products.

Authored is scheduled to open to the public in in the second quarter of 2019. Right now Authored is raising funds via an initial coin offering (ICO) which may or may not be a scam (I would not invest my money, even if I had any to spare).

The thing to remember about blockchain (this will help you avoid falling for the hype) is that it is a technology, not a service or product.

To put that in perspective, you are reading this blog post in an app or web browser that integrates hundreds of different technologies on a computing device that integrates thousands.

The app, browser, and computing devices are the products that use tech, most of which you have never heard of.

The only reason blockchain is mentioned more than all the other tech we use everyday is that it is the tech buzzword du jour.

Rather than listen to the buzzwords, what you should do is ask whether a tool or service based on blockchain is useful – just like you would with any other new service you encounter.

I usually ask myself these questions:

1. Does the service do something I need?
2. Does it fill that need better than a service I am already using?

We still don’t really know anything about Authored other than it is supposed to be a social network and sales platform, so there’s no reason to think it will be better and more useful than Gumroad or a dozen other third-party sales services.

I do know a few details about Binded and LBRY, the two services mentioned at the beginning of the post, so let’s analyze those companies and see whether we should use them.

I have written about Binded before; it offers a blockchain-based alternative to "poor man’s copyright" that does absolutely nothing useful while at the same time misleading creators about how it protects their copyright.

LBRY, on the other hand, is a sales and distribution platform where the content is locked inside the LBRY apps. This is arguably less useful the many existing sales platforms, and at the very least it offers no obvious improvement over what we have now.

If we let ourselves be swayed by the hype then we might sign up for one or both of these services just because they use blockchain, but when we step back and ask the hard questions it is clear that there’s nothing to recommend either service.

The next time you encounter a service that pitches itself on its use of blockchain, you should ask yourself the two questions I used in this post. These are actually the questions you should ask about every new service you encounter, but they will be especially useful in keeping you from falling for the blockchain hype.

image by wuestenigel

Amazon has not yet responded to yesterday’s story about a book-stuffing scammer, but they have quietly changed the rules to make it more clear that book stuffing is not allowed.

According to the new rules bonus content can make up no more than 10% of an ebook:

If you choose to include bonus content (e.g., other stories, or previews of other books that are not part of your book’s title), it should be relevant to the customer and should not disrupt the reading experience. To meet these guidelines, we require placing additional content at the end of the book, and listing the bonus content in your book’s table of contents.

To provide an optimal customer experience, bonus content should make up no more than around 10% of your book. If you would like to include multiple stories within your book, consider creating a collection of works. When selecting your book’s title, always make sure to follow the Metadata Guidelines.

Primary and bonus content must meet all program guidelines (e.g., bonus content in KDP Select titles must be exclusive). Translated content must be high quality and not machine generated. Disruptive links and promises of gifts or rewards are never allowed.

For more information, see our content guidelines and Terms and Conditions.

You can find a previous version of this page in the Wayback Machine.

The rules change was inspired by yesterday’s story about a scammer who is cheating Kindle Unlimited via the book-stuffing con. They were stuffing whole novels in the back of each book, effectively making the book an anthology mis-labeled as a single book, and then collected the maximum payout in Kindle Unlimited by tricking readers into visiting the past page of the ebook.

Amazon has not yet commented on yesterday’s story, nor have they banned the scammer. It’s not clear why; the scammer is clearly violating both the spirit and the letter of several existing rules.

For quite some time now I have been reporting on Amazon’s over-reliance on poorly programmed bots that punish the innocent while letting scammers run rampant.

Today I have an example scammer to show you. "Chance Carter" is the nom de trompeur for one of the scammers currently infesting the Kindle Store. They are running a book stuffing scam in Kindle Unlimited, and have apparently been operating there with impunity for years. At the same time, "Carter" is also breaking Amazon’s rule on incentivized reviews via an ingenious "contest" trick.

Update: Amazon has responded to my coverage and the public outcry by first banning the KDP account behind Carter, and then banning other book stuffers.

The book-stuffing con is one of the long-running problems in Kindle Unlimited.

In the first year of Kindle Unlimited, scammers took advantage of the system by uploading ebooks so short that they got paid after only a few pages were read. Amazon put a stop to that in July 2015 by switching to a system that paid based on pages read, and in response the scammers invented the book-stuffing con and started uploading really long books.

The way that the book-stuffing con works is that scammers stuff lots of extra content into an ebook before uploading it to Kindle Unlimited, and then trick readers into jumping to the end of the book.

Thanks to a flaw in the Kindle platform, namely that the platform knows your location in a book but not how many pages you have actually read, the scammers can get paid for a user having "read" a book in Kindle Unlimited by getting the user to jump to the last page.

This has been a known problem in Kindle Unlimited for over two years now. Amazon has responded by limiting the length of ebooks in KU, and banning practices like putting a TOC at the end of a book, but neither has really had any impact on scammers.

Chance Carter is the perfect example of both how the book-stuffing con works, and how Amazon is completely incapable of stopping the scammers.

Carter’s trick is to publish a ghost-written novel, stuff an extra six or seven of their ghost-written novels in the back, and then add a free ebook offer on the last page as bait for unsuspecting readers.

Each of the six or seven novels in the back of the ebook Stranded are also published in the Kindle Store under their own title, and each has a bunch of extra novels in the back.

This is a blatant violation of Amazon’s existing rules for KDP (see the section on disappointing content) and yet Amazon can’t seem to spot Carter’s operation, or that of the other scammers.

Remember, some of the scammers have grown so large that Amazon took them to arbitration. While this may have been intended as an object lesson, what it really did was show that there were massive scam operations going on in the Kindle Store.

And operation is a good word for it, because not only does Carter publish scam books, they also instruct readers how to support the scam:

Back to Amazon KU scamming & chance carter. This is Chance's PA explaining a few times to readers how to do the "KU flip" & how to "double dip" & don't forget to flip that bonus content! we want chance to get max profits for the stories he probably bought from ghostwriters. pic.twitter.com/ixpXUjC2hy

— Nikki (@ease_dropper) May 31, 2018

And Carter goes one better; they also encourage reviews through a contest:

So how are clever authors getting around Amazon's new review policies? By giving readers a chance to win some Tiffany jewelry of course. All you have to do is purchase & review Chance's new book on Amazon. This is so ridiculous pic.twitter.com/k3l9Z25jPa

— Nikki (@ease_dropper) May 30, 2018

This, too, is against Amazon’s rules on incentivized reviews.

Amazon is not the first huge tech company to lose control of its ebookstore; in 2015 I showed how Google Play Books was so infested with piracy that Google had to shut down its book publisher portal, and start vetting everyone before letting them sell ebooks in Google Play Books.

One key difference between Amazon and Google, however, is that Amazon is unable to stop the major scammers while at the same is letting its bots go after innocent authors.

David Gaughran recounted his experience yesterday on Twitter.

Here’s how enforcement of rules and sanctioning is totally broken at Amazon right now. Last August, I got in trouble with Amazon. I remember clearly what happened because it was my birthday and I was dying in bed with a virus.

Amazon’s Kafkaesque "Compliance Team" sent me a nastygram. Said I was breaching the exclusivity terms of Select. I had no idea what they were talking about, of course, I’ve always played it straight and never took any risks.

Turned out a tiny German ebookstore had a bug and inadvertently reactivated a load of dead listings from 2013. Lots of authors were affected. It was nothing to do with me. I got no benefit from it. But Amazon dropped the hammer.

They threatened to boot me from Select and take away my page reads, and even close my account. For a bug on a site, nothing to do with me.

Not only that, Amazon cancelled my Countdown deal without even telling me. Cost me hundreds of dollars in promo. I was advertising a 99c deal to my readers that didn’t exist. It was a real dick move. I appealed – no good.

Even worse than what happened to me are the authors who were rank stripped, page stripped and had accounts closed because Amazon is using a dumb automated system to catch scammers which doesn’t work.

The human cost of the actions of cheap crooks like Chance Carter are real. One of my close friends was rank stripped when she was just getting her career back on track. It upset her so much she has given up writing. Thanks Amazon for nothing.

O O O

It is clear at this point that letting large automated systems run without human supervision is a failed idea.

We can see the consequence of bots run amok in Youtube’s ContentID, which has a history of false copyright claims, as well as a dozen other examples including the 2012 Hugo livestream getting blocked because it showed clips of the episodes that won awards.

In Google Play Books we have a tacit admission that the only way to keep pirates out of the store is to add humans to the control loop.

And even Amazon’s smaller competitor Kobo has realized that automation can only do so much without human supervision. Christine Munroe told me that Kobo has flesh and blood people vetting content:

From a self-published content perspective, we have created two systems: first, trust tiers at the account level where trusted account content goes through with low intervention, known spam/scam offenders are thoroughly vetted, and a substantial in-between yellow tier requires a combination of automation and human approval or rejection. Second, our analysis system scans for piracy and adult content.

Our Publisher Operations team works hand in hand with automation to classify all incoming content, as quickly and seamlessly as possible. When classifications are unclear or flagged, humans must intervene. Currently, our team looks at 65% of new KWL content being published every day, on average.

When do you suppose Amazon will figure this out?

P.S. Numerous complaints have been filed about Carter, and I also brought them to Amazon’s attention last night. That account was still active when I published this post.

In its infinite wisdom, Amazon has decided that its Australian customers will no longer be allowed to shop from its main site, and have their orders shipped from overseas. Instead, these unwanted customers will have to buy from Amazon’s Australian site.

And that could be a huge issue for Australian Kindle users.

From Sydney Morning Herald:

Australians will be blocked from shopping on Amazon’s international websites and restricted to using its smaller local platform as the e-commerce giant responds to the government’s new GST rules on online purchases.

The move is seen as a win for local retailers which had lobbied for the 10 per cent tax to apply to all goods purchased from offshore retailers – not just on those greater than $1000.

…

Amazon said that Amazon.com, its American website, and other overseas sites would no longer ship to Australian addresses from July 1.

…

Shoppers visiting those sites will be redirected to Amazon.com.au, which launched late last year and stocks about 60 million products, compared to almost half a billion on its US site.

July 1 is the date new rules come into effect forcing online retailers to apply the 10 per cent GST to all online purchases being shipped to Australia from overseas.

This is going to be a minor annoyance for most of Amazon customers but possibly a huge problem for Kindle users.

You see, Amazon has set up its Kindle platform in such a way that you can only have a Kindle app or ereader attached to a specific account with one of its websites. If you have accounts through both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.fr, you can only register an app or a Kindle through one account.

Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but with customers being forced to switch to Amazon’s Australian site it means that they could lose access to their ebooks:

So, according to @Amazon, if I want access to the FIVE THOUSAND ebooks on my account after July 1st, I can never buy another book again. Literally the options they are giving me right now because they can't port the books over. What. The. Fuck.

— Aislinn Kearns (@ardentaislinn) May 31, 2018

Note: I am using the indefinite phrasing in this post because I have not confirmed the accuracy of this initial report. Amazon was queried before this post was published, but has not responded.

Amazon has forced customers to switch Kindle Stores in the past, with different results.

Back in 2013, customers in Canada, Japan, and Brazil were all blocked from buying from Amazon.com. In at least some of the cases I found back then, users were able to transfer their accounts, but only at the cost of their purchase history, gift card credits, and wishlists. Users also lost books that were not available from Amazon in their respective national markets, as well as other content.

At the very least, Amazon’s customers are facing a painful disruption, and for no good reason.

Goodreads  has been quietly testing a new version of its Android app which is described by early users as "a bit nicer to navigate, with less nesting in areas like the "My Books" tab". The beta app, which so far as I can tell was just launched, is promised to be "faster, redesigned, and overall more usable".

It’s currently missing some features, and according to the FAQ the developers are still working on adding features so you can:

• Find and add your Facebook friends
• Add custom shelves (tags)
• Add books to your custom shelves (tags)
• View your Kindle Notes & Highlights support
• Use the app without creating an account or logging

You can find the app in Google Play, and read more about it in the FAQ.

Android Police

The American Association of Publishers reported a surprising jump in trade revenues on Friday. Overall revenues rose 6.2% ($143.2 million) while trade revenues were up 6.2%, to $1.59 billion.

In comparison, revenues rose 1% during the same period last year.

These figures reflect the revenues for the legacy publishers who send their data to the AAP, of course.

Press release

Publishers’ revenue increased by $143.2 million (+6.2%) for the first quarter of 2018 (Jan – March) compared to the same period in 2017. These numbers include sales for all tracked categories (Trade – fiction/non-fiction/religious, PreK-12 Instructional Materials, Higher Education Course Materials, Professional Publishing, and University Presses). The increases are attributed primarily to strong growth in trade (consumer) books in January and February.

Trade books increased by $94.7 million (+6.3%) to $1.59 billion in the first quarter of 2018 compared to the same period in 2017, with growth in Adult Books, Children & Young Adult Books and Religious Presses. Publishers also saw increased revenue for Professional Books, University Presses and Higher Ed Course Materials.

Some First Quarter trends include:

• Publishers saw revenue gains in Adult Books, Professional Books, and University Presses continuing trends from 2017
• Adult Books saw double-digit growth in January (+13.7%) and February (+12.4%)
• While eBook revenue decreased for the quarter, March saw 1.5% growth for the format
• Downloaded audiobooks continue their rapid growth, with publisher revenue up 32.1% for the first quarter

First Quarter 2018: Trade Book Revenue (in millions)

Trade Book Formats

In the first quarter, print books generally continued their growth from 2017. Revenue from print books totaled $1.14 billion, up about $67.7 million (+6.3%), from the first quarter of 2017. The increase is attributed to growth in trade’s two largest formats – hardback books (+12.0%) and paperback books (+3.2%).

Downloaded audio continued its significant growth into the first quarter of 2018, up by +32.1% over the first quarter 2017. In the first quarter of 2018, the format added $24.0 million in revenue growth compared to the same period last year, making it the format with the second highest revenue growth – just behind hardback books (up $57.1 million).

While eBooks declined by -3.2% for the quarter, they had one month of growth. Publisher revenue for eBooks grew 1.5% in March 2018 compared to March 2017, with Adult eBooks being the reason for the increase.

Total Trade Net Revenue by Format (in millions)

Education, Professional and Scholarly Publishing

Trends from 2017 continued through the first quarter of 2018, with revenue growth in Professional Books (business, medical, law, scientific and technical books), University Presses, and Higher Education Course Materials. Prek-12 Instructional Materials was the only tracked category that saw a decline in the first quarter.

First Quarter 2018: Education and Scholarly Publishing (in millions)

Publisher net revenue is tracked monthly by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and includes revenue from about 1,100 publishers, with participation subject to change over time. AAP also tracks revenue annually with AAP’s StatShot Annual Report, which includes reporting from additional publishers and data about unit sales and channels. For more information about purchasing the StatShot Monthly and StatShot Annual, email [email protected].

Companies like Amazon often have two sets of policies. The first type are the official policies that can be found on the T&C pages (such as the $50 minimum purchase before you can post reviews), but Amazon also has other non-official policies that have not been spelled out or announced and instead have to be discovered and complied with in a process akin to navigating a minefield (and just as stressful).

Amazon’s new policy on advanced reader copies (ARC) books definitely falls into the latter category.

Update: This problem has reportedly been fixed. Amazon hasn’t responded to my queries, but a couple sources have told me that these reviews are no longer being blocked.

You won’t find this policy mentioned on Amazon’s site, but numerous authors are reporting on KBoards, Facebook, and elsewhere that Amazon is no longer letting people post un-verified book reviews before a book launches.

Edit: I misunderstood the reports; this is after a book launches, not before.

If you buy the book from Amazon, you can post the review, but if you get a free copy from the author, publisher, or NetGalley (like many reviewers do) you will instead see this message when you try to post the review:

Sorry, we are unable to accept your review of this product.

This product currently has limitations on submitting reviews. This may be because we detected unusual reviewing behavior on this product, or to maintain the best possible shopping experience. For more information, see the Customer Review Guidelines.

I have seen dozens of reports from authors who say that this message has appeared on traditionally published books and independently published books alike.

While free review copies is still allowed under Amazon’s official policies, clearly they have been banned under some unofficial policy that Amazon has not told anyone about.

The most likely reason for the non-announcement is that Amazon has let its bots decide which early reviews are legit. These are the same bots that cannot tell the difference between a paid review and a legit review.  These bots are also responsible for punishing innocent authors for supposedly fraudulent activity in Kindle Unlimited.

As in those earlier cases, Amazon customer service has not been able to adequately explain why the policy has changed. This is because the Amazon employees talking to customers and authors are not the same employees running the bots.

How could they be, when no one is actually running the bots?

Update: This problem has reportedly been fixed. Amazon hasn’t responded to my queries, but a couple sources have told me that these reviews are no longer being blocked.

Amazon still hasn’t fixed the ongoing fiasco that is Audible Romance. The new royalty payments for Q2 2018 today are still unreasonably low, but on the upside Amazon has allowed some authors to escape from Amazon’s sweatshop.

According to reports from KBoards, the royalty rate for the second quarter was about the same as for the first. One author said the rate was "about 10 cents per 100 minutes listened to", while another wrote that they "made about 50 cents per listen".

Last quarter, Audible paid $0.0009556 for each minute that an Audible Romance subscriber spent listening to an audiobook. That is almost the same as the rate for this quarter, and that means Amazon still hasn’t found a fix to its funding problem.

They have, however, finally started letting authors leave the program. Here’s the text of an email sent to one author:

While we are sorry to see your titles go, we are removing them from the package at your request. Please note that we will not be able to re-enter your titles to the Audible Romance Package for 12 months following removal. You may continue to earn royalties from the titles removed from the Audible Romance Package as we will not remove titles from listeners' libraries. Listener minutes will be reflected in future earnings statements.

In order to remove titles, please reply to this e-mail with the specific names and URLs that you would like removed from the Audible Romance Package. Once we receive this information, all changes will take up to 20 business days to take effect. We will send you a confirmation email once titles have been removed from the Audible Romance Package.

Thank you for your participation in the Audible Romance Package.

Launched last November, Audible Romance is a subscription service where you can listen to as many romance audiobooks as you like for a flat monthly fee. This is great for users but not for authors because, as you would expect, romance fans can consume an impressive number of audiobooks each month.

Since authors were paid from a pool funded by subscription fees, this meant that authors were paid an incredibly low rate for their work in Q1 2018 – about 57 cents for a ten hour audiobook.

That pay rate is unsustainable; it has made romance audiobooks financially unviable, but so far Amazon has not said how they are going to fix it.

If and when they do I will cover that story.

Thanks, Isobel!

The European Union’s new privacy rules, the GDPR, takes effect next Saturday.

The new regulation requires, among its many measures, that every website publish a privacy policy detailing how they use the data they collect from customers and visitors. We also have to sanitize our mailing lists by confirming that we actually had people’s permission to send emails.

There’s obviously more to GDPR than that, and I will go into it in detail in the newsletter I am sending on Monday. This post is less about the new rules than  about our experiences with compliance.

I’d like to hear about the problems you encountered. For example, how many email addresses are you going to have to remove from your mailing list?

After a careful check, I found that I have exactly 24 emails (out of thousands of subscribers) where I hadn’t made it clear that people were signing up for a mailing list.  Those two dozen emails were given to me in exchange for a free ebook, which means I have to get their permission before sending them another email.

Have you encountered problems complying with the new rules?

If you share your story below, maybe we can help.