ebooks

Amazon backstabs e-book “buyers”

This entry was posted in Publishing and tagged Amazon ebooks publishing on by

If you pay for an e-book that has DRM (digital rights management) on it, you aren’t really buying it, no matter what the vendor says. At best, it’s a long-term lease which can be revoked at any time. Amazon has made this plain by removing the ability to download permanent copies of any and all e-books you may have “bought.” As of February 25, 2025, you will no longer be able to download your “purchases” to a device that isn’t directly under Amazon’s control.

If you care about keeping what you “own,” you need to download all your “purchases” before then. You have to do it one book at a time, which can get tedious if you’ve “bought” a lot of books.
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Update on Smashwords and Draft2Digital

This entry was posted in News Selling your work and tagged draft2digital ebooks publishing smashwords on by

Smashwords is now saying that some accounts will be automatically moved to Draft2Digital. A May 1 email says:

On June 1st, we’ll begin automatically migrating some Smashwords author accounts to Draft2Digital. If you desire more control over the migration process, or want to have your account migrated sooner, please complete the brief questionnaire that was previously sent to the email address associated with your Smashwords account.
 
When Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords in March 2022, we announced that the integration of the two companies would be completed in three phases, with the final phase involving the migration of Smashwords author/publisher accounts over to Draft2Digital. Given the vast number of Smashwords accounts, the migration process itself must be divided into phases to ensure maximum effectiveness and efficiency.

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Migrating from Smashwords to Draft2Digital

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged draft2digital ebooks publishing smashwords on by

A few days ago I got an email from Smashwords saying I’m now eligible to migrate my self-publishing account to Draft2Digital. “Uncomplicated” accounts were eligible to migrate in February. Mine must be “complicated,” which surprises me. Maybe it’s because the two Thomas Lorenz novels constitute a series. In any case, if you’re a Smashwords author and think you may have missed the notification, check out the Migration FAQ.

The good news is that Smashwords says your existing links will continue to work. It would have been very annoying if they didn’t. However, it isn’t clear what the benefits are. The FAQ says, “After you update your manuscript through the Draft2Digital interface, only the ePub format will be available to readers.” That sounds like a downgrade. There’s nothing about whether migration will eventually be mandatory. If you have books published on Smashwords, read the information and use your judgment. This article on selfpublishing.com provides information which could help, though it’s a couple of years old. I’m content to drag my feet.

A win for authors

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged Amazon ebooks writing on by

Amazon is changing its e-book return policy to make it harder to read entire books for free, producing no income for the author. Currently, it’s generally permitted to “return” any e-book within seven days for a full refund, even if the customer has read the whole thing. Under the new policy, automatic returns will be allowed only if the customer hasn’t read more than 10% of the book. People who have read more than 10% can still request a refund, but they’ll have to file a customer service request, which a human will review.

Some authors have reportedly experienced a serious decline in their income due to abuse of the return policy.

Of course, this is a reminder that Amazon tracks your reading habits in detail when you buy their e-books.