“Just A Reminder That Amazon Is Not A Library”

[German Translator]

https://www.boredpanda.com/returning-ebooks-costs-authors/?cexp_id=53108&cexp_var=60&_f=featured

“Just A Reminder That Amazon Is Not A Library”: Writer Noticed People Started Returning Her eBooks After They’ve Finished Them And Now She Owes Money To Amazon

Writer Lisa Kessler received a lot of ebook returns and went to Twitter to vent, finding out it is actually a trend lately

In the tweet, Lisa reminded people that Amazon is not a library and informed them that authors get charged for every returned book and she now owes Amazon

[Maggie Ann]

I haven't gotten any serial returns lately. Hope this doesn't spread like Covid.

[idontknowyet]

Last month i had 4 full series returned. It made me grumpy.

[LilyBLily]

I'm really glad my books don't appeal to the TikTok crowd of amoral jerks. I'm sure there's a TikTok crowd of very nice people, too, only apparently the jerks actually like to read books. Who da thunk it?

[littleauthor]

Returns have been up for me since the TikTok thing like never before since I started in 2014. I retaliate the only way I can - by cutting my ad spend on AMS.

[Eric Thomson]

My average return rate since April has been double the long term, jumping from 0.7% to 1.4%. It's not a large change in terms of absolute dollars, but it is annoying that Amazon doesn't smack the thieves hard and repeatedly across their purchase privileges. In the meantime, I keep doing my thing and worrying about the important stuff, like whether it's paper or plastic/glass/tin recycling pickup on Monday.

[writeway]

This has been going on for months but no change for me. I usually have 1-3 returns a month and that's a catalog of 100+ books. I'm not on TikTok BTW. It seems to me the serial returners are doubling down out of spite. The more authors call them out, the more they do it. It won't stop unless Amazon changes the policy and they aren't going to.

[David VanDyke]

... it is annoying that Amazon doesn't smack the thieves hard and repeatedly across their purchase privileges.

They do, actually.

It just takes a lot more abuse than we think is fair, to get them to take action.

Personally, I long ago decided to ignore returns, unless they are on one book and indicate a problem. (I once found out about a problem this way--returns plus a bad review--and I was able to fix it.) It's a purely emotional situation, like someone offering me something and then snatching it back--I never really had it in the first place. Not until it's in my bank account.

[notthatamanda]

Hard disagree. Returns never bothered me, but when I did an international bookbub on the first book of my contemporary trilogy and got more returns, in matched pairs, of books 2 and 3, than I had in 7 previous years of publishing COMBINED, I was pissed. It's stealing. Is there anything I can do about it? No. Did I waste a lot of time being pissed about it? No. It's still stealing.

[Cabbages and kings]

https://www.boredpanda.com/returning-ebooks-costs-authors/?cexp_id=53108&cexp_var=60&_f=featured

“Just A Reminder That Amazon Is Not A Library”: Writer Noticed People Started Returning Her eBooks After They’ve Finished Them And Now She Owes Money To Amazon

Writer Lisa Kessler received a lot of ebook returns and went to Twitter to vent, finding out it is actually a trend lately

In the tweet, Lisa reminded people that Amazon is not a library and informed them that authors get charged for every returned book and she now owes Amazon

So if I have this correct. Amazon charges the author a "delivery fee" when a customer buys an ebook, and the delivery fee isn't refunded if the ebook is returned and that's why returns end up being a negative for authors. Is that right?

Does anyone know how much the delivery fee is?

[Post-Crisis D]

So if I have this correct. Amazon charges the author a "delivery fee" when a customer buys an ebook, and the delivery fee isn't refunded if the ebook is returned and that's why returns end up being a negative for authors. Is that right?

That's the claim, yes.  I have not been able to determine whether the claim is true or not.

Does anyone know how much the delivery fee is?

It varies based on the size of the book.  For my books, it seems to be a few cents.

[Lynn]

Find a report for a month with a return, check it for a negative balance on the sale. I don't think I've ever seen that happen for an ebook.

In fact, I just went looking and it took no time to find a sale that was returned that had a delivery charge of .06 and a royalty of 0.00. The sum of the royalty column equals the amount of the deposit I received for that month. No delivery fee was deducted from my royalties for the return.

[She-la-te-da]

Any book I've had a return on, only the royalty amount I was paid was charged back to me. I did get a negative balance once, early on, because I hadn't made any sales yet. Once the sales started coming, the balance went in the positive side again. Of course, that was minus the return.

I think at this point, Amazon needs to change their return policy for ebooks. I see no reason to allow people to completely read something, then return it. Especially if they're reading and returning in series order. Should be easy enough for them to set up their bots to catch it.