I wasn’t going to touch this story because I thought at first that the claim was an exaggeration or misinterpretation, but I was wrong.

If you’ve been listening to the author grapevine over the past few weeks, you may have heard authors griping about Audible’s return policy. While you can usually find someone griping about something, no matter the topic, this time authors have a valid complaint.

Amazon’s audiobook subsidiary is actively promoting exchanges to potential subscribers.

What do I mean by "actively"?

Well, when I checked into renewing my Audible subscription, I saw that Audible wants me to know that if I reactivate my monthly subscription, I will be able to exchange any audiobook I am not happy with:

Also, when I visited Audible’s Memberships Benefits page, I was shown this:

And if you visit the Audible page on Amazon.com, you will see this:

While I think Amazon’s liberal return policy is a great idea because it reassures readers that they don’t have to worry about wasting money on crappy content, I share authors' concern about actively promoting returns. I beleive that promoting this as a "feature" attracts serial returnees – people who will consistently return every audiobook they get.

This does not hurt Amazon, but it does hurt authors and publishers. Amazon isn’t refunding the credit that their customer bought, which means they get to keep the money (this is why it’s considered an "exchange" rather than a "return"). At the same time, however, Amazon is also taking money away from authors each time a subscriber makes an "exchange" of an audiobook which authors paid to produce.

No wonder they’re pissed.

When I reported several months ago that Amazon had shut down the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, several commenters argued I was wrong because they knew a loophole (find a book which is in Kindle Unlimited, and then borrow it using KOLL).

I still think my take was valid, while at the same time I would also agree they had a point. But in any case, the argument will soon be moot.

Amazon has quietly announced on the relevant KDP help page that KOLL is ending in just over two months.

We will no longer offer KOLL beginning January 4th, 2021. Customers may continue reading books they previously borrowed from KOLL. You will earn royalties for any KENP Read from these KOLL borrows.

In addition, KOLL will continue to display on your Historical and Payments reports.

Originally launched under the name Amazon Prime eBooks in late 2011, the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library was Amazon’s first foray into ebook subscriptions. It was only available to Kindle- and Fire tablet-owning Amazon Prime members in the US, but it was popular enough that it convinced Amazon to launch Kindle Unlimited not quite three years later.

And now the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library is going to be shut down.

That is not a huge loss, but it is deserving of a eulogy.

We would not have Kindle Unlimited with KOLL, and KU has been a boon to both readers and authors. Kindle Ulimited has launched multiple author careers while at the same time delivering great value for readers. It paid out over $300 million last year, making it one of the larger ebook retailers all on its own.

It has been over two weeks since hackers had their way with B&N’s servers, and the retailer still hasn’t fully recovered.

The hack, which has since been confirmed as a ransomware attack, originated in B&N’s corporate offices before spreading to their servers, store computers, and even the cash registers. All parts of B&N were affected, and while most functionality was restored within a few days, B&N’s Nook service is still only semi-functional.

And that includes the author side, as well as the reader. I got a comment last night from an author whose book launch has been delayed as a result of B&N’s server issues:

This is even effecting the authors back end of Barnes & Noble. Unfortunately my book was supposed to go live on the 22nd, we get vague updates about how the “dashboard is working” but they are “still working on other issues”….it’s not the 26th? oof. I know one other author who hasn’t had their book live since the hack day itself. every day authors can’t sell books after the pre-marketed publish date is a wasted sales day, every day is a missed book sold opportunity.

Over on the reader side, I can report first hand that my library of Nook ebooks is still mostly inaccessible. I have two Nook accounts, and the one with my thousands of Fictionwise purchases cannot be accessed via the B&N website and it is still not syncing with the Nook app on my Android smartphone. My second, test account can be accessed via the B&N website, but it’s also not syncing with the Nook app.

Just about the only thing that can be accessed from the Nook app are new purchases made in the app itself.

This could not happen at a worst time for B&N. We going into the holiday sales period during a time when ebook sales are increasing as a result of the pandemic. This would have been a great opportunity for B&N to reinvigorate ebook sales and start turning around its digital division, but instead this is looking more like another nail in Nook’s coffin.

image by jjbers via Flickr

So it turns out that my suspicions about B&N’s server issues over the weekend were in fact correct.  The retailer was hacked, and has confirmed that customer information, including email addresses and shipping info, was stolen.

Barnes & Noble sent out an email Wednesday night, informing customers about the hack, and denying that any credit card or financial info was compromised. (I have a couple reports from readers that suggest this is not true, so I am remaining skeptical at the moment.)

I have not received this email, but several readers have. I have included a copy at the end of this post. If you are a regular B&N customer, I strongly urge you to ask your credit card company place security checks on your cards just in case.

On a related note, B&N is still getting their systems back up and running again. In fact, the Nook servers are still down as of late Wednesday night.

Dear Barnes & Noble Customer,

It is with the greatest regret we inform you that we were made aware on October 10, 2020 that Barnes & Noble had been the victim of a cybersecurity attack, which resulted in unauthorized and unlawful access to certain Barnes & Noble corporate systems.

We write now out of the greatest caution to let you know how this may have exposed some of the information we hold of your personal details.

Firstly, to reassure you, there has been no compromise of payment card or other such financial data. These are encrypted and tokenized and not accessible. The systems impacted, however, did contain your email address and, if supplied by you, your billing and shipping address and telephone number. We currently have no evidence of the exposure of any of this data, but we cannot at this stage rule out the possibility. We give below answers to some frequently asked questions.

We take the security of our IT systems extremely seriously and regret sincerely that this incident has occurred. We know also that it is concerning and inconvenient to receive notices such as this. We greatly appreciate your understanding and thank you for being a Barnes & Noble customer.

Barnes & Noble
FAQ

1. Have my payment details been exposed?
No, your payment details have not been exposed. Barnes & Noble uses technology that encrypts all credit cards and at no time is there any unencrypted payment information in any Barnes & Noble system.

2. Could a transaction be made without my authorization?
No, no financial information was accessible. It is always encrypted and tokenized.

3. Was my email compromised?
No. Your email was not compromised as a result of this attack. However, it is possible that your email address was exposed and, as a result, you may receive unsolicited emails.

4. Was any personal information exposed due to the attack?
While we do not know if any personal information was exposed as a result of the attack, we do retain in the impacted systems your billing and shipping addresses, your email address and your telephone number if you have supplied these.

5. Do you retain any other information in the impacted systems?
Yes, we also retain your transaction history, meaning purchase information related to the books and other products that you have bought from us.

image by MikeKalasnik via Flickr 

Back in July Google started testing new royalty terms in the US, Canada, and Australia, and now they are expanding the terms to cover all markets. Google sent out an email on Tuesday, informing authors that they are now paying a 70% royalty of the retail price set by copyright holders in 60 plus countries.

I see from my post back in August (Google’s help pages concur) that you must accept a revised ToS to get the 70% royalty on ebooks.  If you don’t accept it then you will still get the 52% royalty. Also, ebooks sold in Play Books in other countries will still earn a 52% royalty.

This is a major move for Google; they are in effect matching the royalty terms of the other major ebook retailers, and are giving up the frankly wacky pricing policy. I wonder what took them so long?

According to Google, the 70% royalty is available in  Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela.

Here is the email which an author forwarded to me (thanks, Phil!):

We are making several important changes that benefit our publishing partners.

We are updating the Terms of Service applicable to Google Play Books (ToS) in several ways. The ToS are an agreement that contain important terms affecting your rights when publishing your ebooks on Google Play Books.

We’re increasing your revenue split to 70% in 60+ countries as part of our continuing effort to improve your publisher experience. You will earn 70% of the list price on ebooks sold to customers in these 60+ countries regardless of the price of your ebook. You will continue to receive your current revenue split on sales in the remaining Google Play Books supported countries.

We will unilaterally follow the list price that you provide for an ebook on sales to customers in the United States and Canada. We reserve the right to discount if we see a lower price for the ebook available from another retailer.

We’ve updated the ToS to remove Google Asia Pacific Pte Limited, Google Commerce Limited, and Google Ireland Limited as parties to the ToS and we are adding a sublicense clause allowing Google LLC to sublicense to Google affiliates such as those mentioned above.

Thank you for being part of the Google Play Books publishing community.
The Google Play Books Team

Barnes & Noble is going through the mother of all system crashes right now.

Some time late Friday night or early Saturday morning the retailer’s entire IT backbone crashed, and it took almost all of the company’s functionality with it. Everything from the cash registers to the catalog lookup is down. Even the Nook platform is down.

Edit: A number of B&N employees have called me on this, and they are right when they said that I exaggerated. The systems were still functional, albeit severely crippled by what some reports described as a ransomware/trojan/virus.

What’s even worse is that it’s Tuesday morning, and everything is still borked. I just checked the B&N website, and while I can see the site I cannot log in, much less buy anything. I also cannot access any of the Nook features.

UPDATE: B&N’s systems are mostly back up around 3 pm eastern.

There are unconfirmed reports on Reddit that B&N has been attacked by a virus or other malware. Given that we are now on day four of this situation, it is more than likely that they are correct.

Second Update: Yep, they were hacked.

I would advise you to start combing through your credit card statements for B&N charges. If I shopped there I would contact the credit card companies so they could add security checks on my cards just in case a hacker did make off with credit card numbers.

As we recall from the Bowker hack in 2018, sometimes the first public evidence of a hack is bogus credit card charges.

Thanks, Steve!

Amazon just took another step towards complete dominance of the book market supply chain. The retailer could already handle everything from production to the retail sale, and now they are moving one step up the chain to also provide the tools that are used to format books as well.

I was just reading in the KDP newsletter that Kindle Create, Amazon’s tool for making Kindle project files, has been updated with support for POD books.

In addition to regular Kindle ebooks and the PDF-ish Kindle format, Kindle Create can now also create the files you would need to upload to create a print edition:

With the latest release of Kindle Create, you can now upload your Kindle Create file to KDP as both an eBook and paperback of any trim size, creating both digital and print versions of your book simultaneously!

Routine but challenging paperback tasks like margins, page numbers, left/right side page layouts, widow/orphan treatment, and table of contents creation are also handled automatically.

Ready to publish your next book? Or ready to publish one of your eBooks in paperback? Download the latest version of Kindle Create today and get started.

The output files are of course proprietary to Amazon, and cannot be uploaded elsewhere (this makes sense when you remember that Amazon’s goal is to dominate the market, not give you a more useful tool). This limits their value, but if you are going to be selling through Amazon anyway, this may have cut out an extra step in your production process.

Has anyone tried the new features?

Amazon

In addition to announcing a couple new ereaders yesterday, Onyx recently also filed FCC paperwork for three additional ereaders. All three are updates for existing models, but have not been formally announced.

Onyx has not embargoed any of the interesting details, but I cannot tell you anything at the moment because the FCC website isn’t cooperating. It took the longest time to download just the one set of external photos, and I do not have more time to spend on this.

What I do know is that the existing Poke 2, Nova 2, and Note 2 models run Android 9,0 and have 6″, 7.8″, and 10.3″ screens.  It is reasonable to assume that the new models will have the same size screens and run Android 10.

Here are the links; I hope you have better luck at viewing the attached files than I did.

Poke 3 (FCC)

Nova 3 (FCC)

Note 3 (FCC)

Audible sent out an email on Tuesday, informing authors and users that it was shutting down Audible Escape subscription service. (Thanks, Isobel!)

Here’s the email that was sent to authors:

Audible Escape (formerly known as the Audible Romance Package) will end on 1 November per an email from ACX.

Since November 1 2017, Audible Escape has provided avid romance fans with countless hours of entertainment and enjoyment, including your titles. We’ve learned s mych about what customers are looking for in an unlimited listening membership, inspiring new offerings and services that present members a diverse selection of titles across a mix of formats (such as audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible Originals) as well as lengths and genres.

As of 1 November, Audible will no longer offer the Audible Escape subscription. This means titles will be removed from subscribers' libraries on that date.

You will receive royalties for all Audible Escape listening of your titles, and qualifying creators will receive author/producer and title bonuses based on the full Q4 2020 bonus pool.

Launched in 2017 under the name Audible Romance, Audible Escape was the second audiobook Netflix-style subscription service launched by the Amazon subsidiary (the first launched in Japan in 2015).  The Audible Escape service was immensely loved by subscribers for the same reason it was disliked by authors: it give listeners access to an immense library romance audiobooks in exchange for a flat monthly fee.

As a result, the payment rate was abysmal, and if Audible ever addressed that issue, they did not ever mention it in public.

Audible Escape has essentially been replaced by Audible Plus, the $8 a month service that Audible launched last month. That service offers access to a diverse range of content, including podcasts, audiobooks, and Audible Originals, and it is available for free to Amazon Prime members and Audible subscribers on the Gold or Platinum plans.

I’ve just learned about an Amazon feature that, while not exactly new, is still relatively unknown and has not been officially launched.

I was browsing Dale Robert’s Facebook group today when someone mentioned Amazon Book Clubs. Kevin Maguire posted this screensnap while mentioning to him that the feature was new to him.

A little bit of Google sleuthing lead me to the relevant page on Amazon, but otherwise turned up little useful info (no one has reported on it yet). According to the FAQ linked at the bottom of the page, ABC is "a great way to help bring your discussions to life. Easily coordinate book selection, get notifications, and more, all in one place. Oh yeah, it’s also free. Because at Amazon, reading and discussing books is available for everyone." (The self-congratulatory tone makes me want to vomit, too.)

There are apparently several thousand book clubs on the platform already; most  are small and have only a handful of members, but the largest "featured" club had several thousand members.

It is hard to say just how many users have joined clubs, or how many clubs there are; there’s no single list, leaving you to search for clubs based on keywords. This is more or less privacy through obscurity, which sounds nice at first but will probably make it harder for potential members to find clubs they like.

On the plus side, Amazon does let you launch "private" book clubs where activity is shielded from public view, and is only visible to a club’s members and Amazon’s algorithms.

You have to be approved by an admin before you can join a private club, while a public club is open to all. That is quite a different definition of public and private from what FB uses. for its groups.

Speaking of which, its pretty clear that Amazon’s goal is to supplant FB groups as a discussion forum, and I hope they succeed. While I like the people I have met in FB groups, the platform itself is unpleasant to use. It was designed with data collection in mind, not user comfort, and Amazon could not possibly build something worse.

Edit: I have to take that back. A reader pointed out that the "book clubs" lack any sort of discussion or other group features. (I missed this at first because I simply assumed that something called a book club would have club-like features.) Since there’s no community or discussion features, I really do not know why Amazon launched this.

So what do you think of the new book clubs? Have you tried them yet?

How do they compare to the user groups on Goodreads?

Woe is me, cried the publisher!

The Association of American Publishers announced on Wednesday that publisher revenue was down 9.4% for the month of July, and down 5.8% year to date. The decline is largely the result of steep declines in sales of educational materials for both college and K-12, while at the same time most other segments of the industry have shown surprising resilience in the face of serious supply issues. (Whether that will remain the case as the impact of paper shortages moves down the supply chain is another matter.)

One bright point is that ebook sales have increased by 25% for the month of July,

eBook revenues were up 25.0% for the month as compared to July 2019 for a total of $103.7 million. On a year-to-date basis, eBooks were up 14.2%, coming in at $652.9 million for the first seven months of 2020. Notably, eBook revenues in the Children’s and YA category saw a 76.4% jump during the month, coming in at $11.6 million. On a year-to-date basis, eBook revenues in the Children’s and YA category were up 63.3% for the first seven months of the year, coming in at $73.2 million.

This is good news for some publishers, just not for those who have spent the past eleven years (since 2009, yes) doing their best to avoid selling ebooks. Those publishers have steadfastly refused to adapt to the market, and will soon be hoist by their own petard.

As Kris Rusch pointed out in her weekly column yesterday, publishers are only just beginning to feel the pain caused by supply chain disruptions. The situation will only get worse as the pandemic drags on, and the publishers who resisted selling ebooks to either consumers or libraries will bear the brunt of financial impact.

image by Pasa la vida via Flickr

If you are looking for new things to do with your Remarkable tablet, I just heard that someone has developed a third-party firmware for it. It’s Parabola Linux, which opens up enormous possibilities for porting software, but at the same time it comes at a cost (Wifi is not supported).

From Hackaday:

Davis Remmel has been hard at work porting Parabola, a completely free and open source GNU/Linux distribution, to the reMarkable. Developers will appreciate the opportunity to audit and modify the OS, but even from an end-user perspective, Parabola greatly opens up what you can do on the device. Before you were limited to a tablet UI and a select number of applications, but with this replacement OS installed, you’ll have a full-blown Linux desktop to play with.

You still won’t be watching videos or gaming on the reMarkable (though technically, you would be able to), but you could certainly use it to read and edit documents the original OS didn’t support. You could even use it for light software development. Since USB serial adapters are supported, microcontroller work isn’t out of the question either. All while reaping the considerable benefits of electronic paper.

The only downside is that the WiFi hardware is not currently supported as it requires proprietary firmware to operate. No word on whether or not Davis is willing to make some concession there for users who aren’t quite so strict about their software freedoms.

The Remarkable tablet is a 10.3″ writing slate designed to replace a paper notebook. The first model launched several years ago, and a second model launched just last month. Retail is $337.

This Parabola port is being sold for $20. That is not unreasonable, although I do think that a paid firmware should include Wifi.

Are you familiar with Draft2Digital’s Universal Links feature, the tool which helps authors find and link to all the stores where their ebooks (and audiobooks) can be found?

I have some good news for you today: Mike Cane has tipped me to a competing service. Launched in May, Boook.link is a service that authors can use to find all of the websites that carry their books.

It’s not quite as comprehensive as its competitor yet, but the developer is adding more stores all the time. What’s more, as you can see on this page, Boook.link also includes links to WorldCat and GoodReads as well as sites that sell the print book (AbeBooks).

Clearly Boook.link was built with an entirely different purpose in mind than was Draft2Digital’s Universal Links feature. To put it simply, if you want to link to ebook retailers, use Draft2Digital’s Universal Links feature. But if you want to link to all types of sites where your book can be found, check out boook.link.

Romance has increasingly gone indie over the past decade as more authors discovered they can reach readers without having to go through a publisher. As a result, trade publishers such as Harlequin have seen steadily declining romance sales, but according to NPD that trend reversed itself this year.

NPD released data yesterday which showed that US sales of trad pub romance titles rose along with the rest of the market this spring, with the genre closing out May with sales at 0.1% onver the same period in 2019.

“With brick-and-mortar retail bookstores closed in the U.S. this past spring, e-book sales, which have always been stronger for romance than in other categories, really took off,” said Kristen McLean, books industry analyst for NPD. “Print romance books also rose slightly, as newly housebound readers looked for fun and immersive germ-free reads while waiting out the pandemic.”

Romance book sales, which had fallen 11% in January 2020 over the previous year, began trending upward in March. As you can see in the chart above, this was largely the result of a very pleasing increase in ebook sales. Unit sales for trad pub romance ebooks increased 17% from January through May 2020.

In all, 16.2 million romance ebooks and print books were sold during that period, with ebooks making up 60% of trad pub sales in the genre.

Historical romance was the top growth subject in the romance category on a unit basis, in both print and e-book formats, but top-selling e-book titles differed from print book sales leaders. “Golden in Death” (Macmillan) led e-book sales in the overall romance category, followed by “Hideaway” (Macmillan), and “Chasing Cassandra” (Harper Collins). Print book sales were led by “Window on the Bay” (Random House), followed by “Every Breath” (Hachette Book Group), and “Country Strong” (Harlequin).

Originally launched under the name Amazon Prime eBooks in late 2011, the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library was Amazon’s first foray into ebook subscriptions. It was only available to Amazon Prime members in the US, but it was popular enough that it convinced Amazon to launch Kindle Unlimited not quite three years later.

And now the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library has been shut down. eBook Friendly initially reported, and I can confirm, that the KOLL has been discontinued.

The relevant page on Amazon has been replaced with one that promotes Kindle Unlimited, the service is no longer mentioned in Amazon’s FAQ, and you can no longer access the KOLL menus on either the Kindle or the Kindle Fire. The Kindle no longer even mentions KOLL, while my Fire still lists it in the menu but sends you to a KU menu when you click the link.

While there has been no formal announcement from Amazon, it’s pretty clear that the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library is deader than Jeff Bezos’s conscience.

That is not a huge loss, but it is deserving of a footnote.

We would not have Kindle Unlimited with KOLL, and KU has been a boon to both readers and authors. KU has launched multiple author careers while at the same time delivering great value for readers. It paid out over $300 million last year, making it one of the larger ebook markets all on its own.

It’s a worthy successor to the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, which will not be missed.