# All Romance Ebooks Closing :(



## SummerWynter (Dec 19, 2016)

Just got this


ALL ROMANCE EBOOKS, LLC
6252 Commercial Way #145, Weeki Wachee, FL 34613

To Whom It May Concern:

It is with great sadness I announce that we are winding down the operations of All Romance eBooks, LLC. For the first year since opening in 2006, we will be posting a loss. The financial forecast for 2017 isn't hopeful and we've accepted that there is not a viable path forward.
We are grateful for the opportunity to have worked with you. On midnight, December 31, our sites will go dark and your content will cease to be available for sale through our platforms. This includes any content you are having us distribute to Apple. If you wish to inactivate your content sooner, you can do so by logging into your publisher portal.

We will be unable to remit Q4 2016 commissions in full and are proposing a settlement of 10 cents on the dollar (USD) for payments received through 27 December 2016. 

(REDACTED)

Sincerely, 
Lori James 
All Romance Ebooks, LLC


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

I'm seriously WTFing right now.   

But you probably weren't supposed to post this on a public forum, tbh. You didn't include this part:



> Please note: This message is intended for use by the person or entity to which it is addressed. Please do not disseminate, distribute or copy. If you have received this message by error, please notify us immediately and destroy the related message. Re-disclosure without appropriate consent is prohibited.


I don't even know what to make of this, though. I was just invited to submit to their own publishing wing not that long ago! 

As for the proposed remittance...not good. It sounds like if we don't agree we get nothing. Kinda not cool, tbh. I'd have liked some warning they were having issues, not just "take this or get nothing and we go bankrupt." 

Basically say they owe me $1000.00; and they'd want to pay $100.00.


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## SummerWynter (Dec 19, 2016)

I  know right? They just got done sending out emails about upcoming sales promotions too.

I feel completely blindsided


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Seeing as they are offering 10 cents on the dollar, not really seeing them mounting much of a legal offense. Besides, it's spreading like wildfire. 

I had only just started posting a book there, and I just logged in to deactivate just in CASE they get sold/stay open etc. I don't want my content included in any kind of deal.


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## SummerWynter (Dec 19, 2016)

Yea I guess I should do deactivate my stuff too. Totally didn't think about that.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

Frankly I'm not signing anything right now.


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2016)

HSh said:


> I'm seriously WTFing right now.
> 
> But you probably weren't supposed to post this on a public forum, tbh. You didn't include this part:


Those disclosures have no legal weight and mean nothing. A contract requires agreement between both parties. The only real issue would be if the original contract to distribute included a non-disclosure clause. But tacking on a unilateral demand and pretending it holds legal weight? Nah.

This is just slimy. Seriously. Accept only 10% of what we owe you or get nothing because we will file bankruptcy? Heck, at only 10%, MAKE THEM FILE BANKRUPTCY.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

This was my second best channel after Amazon.  I find it really hard to believe they're suddenly not turning a profit.  Just...wow.  

Disappointed about possibly not being paid but also about future earnings from what I *had* considered an amazing sales channel with a very loyal customer base!


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

I'm not surprised they're winding down. If I have it right, they used to sell direct from their website yes? With KU the biggest game in town, no one buys from the little guys anymore.


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## Lady Vine (Nov 11, 2012)

Wow, just wow! I must have had a sense about this, because a couple of months ago I removed all of my titles from this platform. Luckily, they have no money for me. Boy am I glad about that. 

So not only did they give a handful of days' notice that they were closing down (and not to everyone, either. I didn't get an email), they're only going to pay authors 10% of the money they earned. Despicable.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

I am so shocked. Always had a funny feeling about them, which is why I didn't give them my bank details. And my earnings had tapered off there, so they only owe me 7 bucks for this quarter. I feel awful for the people who expected to be getting big royalty payments!


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## DmGuay (Aug 17, 2016)

If they owe you money, you can always file a claim in the local small claims court. Yes, you'd probably have to go to Florida for a brief court appearance, yes, even if you win your judgment they might not pay. BUT a freelance photographer I know did this after a magazine we worked for closed, and she won AND got paid. So, it might be worth it.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Sorry to see them go.  On the one hand, this is better than disappearing like thieves in the night.  On the other, $.10 on the dollar?!  Unless they owed me next to nothing, no way would I be signing away my life for that.


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

We don't have any books listed there. I did have a couple on there a long time ago, but I took them off the platform. I can't even remember why.

Anyway, I'm confused about the threat of bankruptcy.

As far as I know, they are a store that sells ebooks. That's it. They do not have to buy or house inventory, except for online storage. I'm sure they pay a monthly fee for their website, but that can't be very much money.

So where are all the expenses that would cause a bankruptcy or inability to pay commissions? 

What am I missing here?


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## 60169 (May 18, 2012)

Lynn McNamee said:


> So where are all the expenses that would cause a bankruptcy or inability to pay commissions?
> 
> What am I missing here?


Salaries? Not a good answer, but a possible one.


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

I listed two of my books there back in 2012, but I don't think I sold a single copy. I haven't received any email from them, but I do see the disclaimer at the top of their website. I'm going to try taking down my books as well. The site is going very slow right now, so I assume a lot of people are doing the same thing.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

It seems weird that they are shutting down. As far as I knew they sold pretty well in the Paranormal and M/M Romance. Unless sales significantly slowed down there. Does anyone know if their other outlet OMNILIT is closing down too?


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

I received the same letter. I checked and all my books are inactive. When vendors pay you every three months, and take a nice chunk out of your sales I guess they can retire early.


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## RJ Crayton (Feb 6, 2014)

Sigh. I'm not able to log in at all to change anything or see what I'm owed. (I don't think it would be much, though) Their site is not responding.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Got a letter too. Of course its the customer letter, which is a tad different. And again, this is why I will not buy anywhere else but Amazon. That goes for stores or from author directly. After the 31st, nobody has access to the books they purchased anymore. They are giving folks barely 4 days. If you on a trip now and not checking your emails and haven't backed up your books, they will be all gone. Poof. 

Not the first store to close and not the first time customers lose all their access. I just don't have those worries when it comes to Amazon. 

I feel bad for those that liked buying from them. Many non US based readers did that. And they had a nice rebate program. 

I just think that they are not giving any time to anyone and that a crappy thing to do.


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2016)

Got the email just as I saw this thread.  Fortunately, any monies they owed me were already paid out and I've pulled my books (though the site is sluggish as heck due to everyone getting the email at the same time and presumably the site getting slammed).

I'd be seriously pissed about the 10 cents on a dollar part, especially those who were making good money.  Heck they don't owe me anything and I found it off-putting and disturbing.  I'm really hard-pressed to find an excuse for why they would offer such a settlement other than mismanagement of the funds.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

**************


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

PhoenixS said:


> Some authors were under contract for ARe-pubbed titles, and the term that ARe seems to want there is that the authors will have rights reverted. Period. Contract fulfilled. Not even 10 cents on the dollar.


They want to revert the rights and pay them NOTHING? That's low.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Shawn Inmon said:


> Salaries? Not a good answer, but a possible one.


Yeah, I bet that's it. Maybe ARE expanded while business was good and then didn't retrench quickly enough when KU2 cut way into their traffic. Someone just realized paying December salaries will only leave $5,000 in the bank ... or something like that.



Atunah said:


> Got a letter too. Of course its the customer letter, which is a tad different. And again, this is why I will not buy anywhere else but Amazon. That goes for stores or from author directly. After the 31st, nobody has access to the books they purchased anymore. They are giving folks barely 4 days. If you on a trip now and not checking your emails and haven't backed up your books, they will be all gone. Poof.


Aaaand that's the big downside with ebooks, isn't it? They're never owned. Given that situation, it's hard to trust a smaller outfit. That's why no one but Google and Apple really has the capacity to compete with Amazon.


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## meh (Apr 18, 2013)

TOS.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

Good point, Judy!


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

I don't have any books with them but I wouldn't accept the settlement because I'd want someone to take a look at their books and make sure the money wasn't siphoned off somehow.  I believe under bankruptcy that would be examined and maybe the funds could be clawed back if they were.


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

Good to know and thanks for the info. I was just thinking of looking these guys up.


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## Allyson J. (Nov 26, 2014)

I sell very little through ARe, but they just did a Boxing Day promo...I offered my catalog. Seems shady to do a big sale push only to close the doors, and offer 10 cents on the dollar for books sold DURING THE PROMO.  

Now I can't even log in to see my sales/earnings from said promo.


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## Annette_g (Nov 27, 2012)

I didn't get the email and the site is swamped so I can't deactivate the rest of my books. I sold well there a few years ago but my sales there have dwindled to almost nothing and I was thinking of pulling them anyway.

It's so annoying that the readers will lose a lot of their purchased content. I really hate the fact that you don't really 'own' ebooks, but are sort of renting them for as long as the shop lasts.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Well, the bright side is that the readers aren't going away. They'll move to Amazon and iTunes and Google Play. It's one less site with a clunky, legacy interface to have to publish through.

The downside is that November was my best month in ages and I am *pissed* at losing this paycheck.


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## Michele_Mills (Apr 8, 2015)

RWA statement on ARe closure:

https://www.rwa.org/p/bl/et/blogid=20&blogaid=1721


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

I would love to know the backstory to this. There seems to be something missing.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Michele_Mills said:


> RWA statement on ARe closure:
> 
> https://www.rwa.org/p/bl/et/blogid=20&blogaid=1721


"RWA finds it unconscionable for the owner of ARe to withhold information so long and to continue selling books through the end of the month when the company cannot pay commissions."

Yeah. How long ago did they decided to do this?


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

Wow! I've only got two books on there, and hadn't gotten much traction for sales. So, I hadn't really been uploading anymore. In fact, there was a time it said I owed money for overpayment several months ago. That's when I stopped doing promos and other things with them. I kept to just Amazon and for my wide books, distributed with Smashwords. 

I saw the Boxing Day promo, but have switched to doing my own. So, I by passed it. Glad I did. Wouldn't get any money, but with my own promo, getting KU read throughs. KU2 has problems, but it's things like this that might make you put up with some of the Zons ups and downs. 

Feeling like I dodged a bullet.  

Thanks for posting this! I didn't get the email. I'm gathering they may have sent it out to people that they owed money to. Since they don't really owe me, I'm guessing they didn't bother. 

I've got a release of my first novel, and I'm pretty happy to be releasing KU and exclusive to Amazon first. If I go wide, I'll only go with Smashwords distribution if it seems worthy. I hear with longer books, people do better with KU. So, I'll see. 

I can't even get on the ARe website to take my books down. Might try later after


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## Overrated (Mar 20, 2015)

I looked into them, but then didn't complete the uploading process. I don't remember why now. But this move on their part is shady as h*#^. 

I don't think I would accept this settlement.


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2016)

This is why:

Never go for quarterly payments. Insist on monthly payments, or move on.
We should fight for contracts, instead of having to accept Terms of Service that can be changed willy nilly.
And contracts should state that royalties are held IN TRUST for the author instead of being mingled with the publisher/retailer operating funds.

But we seem to be savvy cookies who can't learn the ways of the business world.
Actors learned and formed an actors guild.
Screenwriters learned and formed a screenwriters guild.
Some authors (real authors) learned and formed an authors guild.
But we seem to be savvy cookies who can't . . .


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## Melody Simmons (Jul 8, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> Well, the bright side is that the readers aren't going away. They'll move to Amazon and iTunes and Google Play. It's one less site with a clunky, legacy interface to have to publish through.


Yeah but it is another sign of the times - small businesses can't hold up against huge corporate bodies...99% of people are forced to become slaves in the mass 1%-controlled businesses. Nothing to rejoice about.


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

I'm sad. They were my second best channel after Amazon.

Being wide won't mean anything after there is no wide to be. What I made there wasn't close to what I make at Amazon, but I shudder to think what publishing terms at Amazon will be when there is no competition left.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Melody Simmons said:


> Yeah but it is another sign of the times - small businesses can't hold up against huge corporate bodies...99% of people are forced to become slaves in the mass 1%-controlled businesses. Nothing to rejoice about.


Depends on how you look at it. They were still using a clunky 10 year old UI. They hadn't made anything except cosmetic improvements since 2011. The experience for users wasn't that great, either. The big advantage small businesses are supposed to have is to be agile where big corporations aren't. ARe didn't do that. They stood still and got left behind until they were no longer competitive. They're not the first and they won't be the last.

The customers will move on to other platforms which are actually *better* like Amazon and iTunes and GP. The readers will still read our books, we'll just have one less clunky UI to deal with to get our books in their hands. And since they only paid 50% royalties, I'm not going to cry over them.

If ARe had been a top tier publishing and reading platform that paid 65-70% I'd feel differently about it.

Smashwords needs to pay attention.


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## Melody Simmons (Jul 8, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> Depends on how you look at it. They were still using a clunky 10 year old UI. They hadn't made anything except cosmetic improvements since 2011. The experience for users wasn't that great, either. The big advantage small businesses are supposed to have is to be agile where big corporations aren't. ARe didn't do that. They stood still and got left behind until they were no longer competitive. They're not the first and they won't be the last.
> 
> The customers will move on to other platforms which are actually *better* like Amazon and iTunes and GP. The readers will still read our books, we'll just have one less clunky UI to deal with to get our books in their hands. If ARe had been a top tier publishing and reading platform I'd feel differently about it.
> 
> Smashwords needs to pay attention.


I'm guessing it costs a huge amount of money to get and run the kind of website platform and system that the top competitors use, which is why once again the small businesses cannot hold up. Plus the big guys do Google ads for their sites every day of the year - which is very costly. Stuff like that...


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

Lynn McNamee said:


> We don't have any books listed there. I did have a couple on there a long time ago, but I took them off the platform. I can't even remember why.
> 
> Anyway, I'm confused about the threat of bankruptcy.
> 
> ...


A large website like that takes a lot more to maintain than you might and think and there are a LOT more expenses involved in running a retail site of any size. When your income starts decreasing rapidly, as has happened to a lot of places since KU, it can be very difficult to manage the decline because you have a lot of fixed expenses that were put in place when they higher volume demanded them.

For them to keep selling books once they have stated they can't pay royalties is inexcusable, though.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

I'm not primarily a romance author, but what romance titles I had (plus a couple of non-romance titles) did okay there. Plus, ARe's romance and erotica subcategories were much more detailed than anybody else's, including Amazon's. 

However, their site and their interface were serious clunky and outdated. I always uploaded new releases to ARe last, because it was such a hassle.

This rapid closure with only a few days' warning also smells very fishy (and I for one didn't even get the announcement mail), especially since I got a mail from them offering advertising for 2017 only a few days ago. And let's not even talk about the settlement offer. I'm not losing a whole lot of money to this (Q3 2016 would have been worse), but that's still no way to treat publishers/authors.

This isn't the first sales channel closing I experience. Remember Oyster, Libiro (who still owe my approx. 3 USD), txtr, Flipkart, YouHeartBooks? However, ARe was a bigger market than those, at least for me.


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## MarkCoker (Feb 15, 2009)

Whoa, sad day for romance authors. My condolences to everyone affected.    Whenever any business folds, there are usually multiple contributing factors.    I can't help but think that KU with its 1 million plus exclusive ebooks, all consumable for what feels like free, accounted for a couple hundred thousand of those factors.  When the world's most ravenous romance readers can read an unlimited number of books for what feels like free, it's difficult for readers to justify ever purchasing another single copy ebook at Amazon or anywhere else.  

When I look back at the rise of the indie author movement the last 10 years, romance authors and their readers have always led at the tip of the spear.  First to benefit, first to display the deleterious effects of exclusivity which sucks sales and customers from other retailers.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Blaming KU for the failures of the other ebook distributors is nothing but a cop out. All of them were losing ground to Amazon long before KU started. Amazon is at fault for a lot of things, but the other distributors have brought the exodus of authors to Select on themselves by not even making a token attempt to be competitive. 

None of them have tried to catch up to where Amazon was way back in 2011. Where are the keywords? Where are the author pages? Where are the fine-grained categories? B&N hasn't done any real updates since their transition from Pubit to Nook Press in 2012. Google Play and Kobo have hardly changed at all since their beta programs. Apple is still making people jump through hoops to publish on iTunes. Google locked indie authors out of their system completely so that you can't publish to GP without going through one of a small handful of obscure aggregators. If you do get in, Google shoves you behind the tradpub books in their browse and search results.

THAT is why Select has over a million books in it. The blame rests squarely on the other distributors - because compared to Amazon they *suck*.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

KelliWolfe said:


> Smashwords needs to pay attention.


IF you look down this thread, you'll see Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, commented on this thread. So, I think Smashwords has. ;-)


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## Charmaine (Jul 20, 2012)

Wow! I can't believe this is happening. I know a few authors who were making bank on ARe and made crickets on most other channels. It makes me think that ARe had an audience that was hungry for niche genres and not as price conscious as other channels. I wonder where they'll go? (My gut says they'll be dispersed around iTunes and Google).

ARe's business ethics are deplorable.
10 cents on the dollar?!
Not paying signed on authors and only reverting rights?!
Along with offering a paid promotion for books?
Sounds to me like they're recouping their loss on the authors' dimes.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> Blaming KU for the failures of the other ebook distributors is nothing but a cop out. All of them were losing ground to Amazon long before KU started. Amazon is at fault for a lot of things, but the other distributors have brought the exodus of authors to Select on themselves by not even making a token attempt to be competitive.
> 
> None of them have tried to catch up to where Amazon was way back in 2011. Where are the keywords? Where are the author pages? Where are the fine-grained categories? B&N hasn't done any real updates since their transition from Pubit to Nook Press in 2012. Google Play and Kobo have hardly changed at all since their beta programs. Apple is still making people jump through hoops to publish on iTunes. Google locked indie authors out of their system completely so that you can't publish to GP without going through one of a small handful of obscure aggregators. If you do get in, Google shoves you behind the tradpub books in their browse and search results.
> 
> THAT is why Select has over a million books in it. The blame rests squarely on the other distributors - because compared to Amazon they *suck*.


I agree, but I also think Amazon runs KU at a substantial loss. If all you sell is books, you don't have the luxury to sell/rent books at a loss and make up the money on TVs and dog food and baby strollers. This is the major problem dedicated booksellers face in competing with Amazon. Personally, I suspect it's impossible for them to compete. Only Google and Apple stand a chance, and they seem not to care.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Ahem, ARe had keywords and also more granular subcategories for romance and erotica than any other vendor, including Amazon. There were plenty of problems with the site due to the clunky interface and upload requirements no other vendor had. But the granular categories were actually one thing that was really good about their site.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

Another good thing was going live instantly.  Just saying.


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## Abalone (Jan 31, 2014)

My initial reaction was "Who?" but serves me right. Romance has no bearing on my writing. Does romance even sell a lot for it to matter? I thought it was the fourth best selling genre?


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Abalone said:


> My initial reaction was "Who?" but serves me right. Romance has no bearing on my writing. Does romance even sell a lot for it to matter? I thought it was the fourth best selling genre?


I think it's by far the best-selling, actually. That's my impression, anyway.


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

Becca Mills said:


> I agree, but I also think Amazon runs KU at a substantial loss. If all you sell is books, you don't have the luxury to sell/rent books at a loss and make up the money on TVs and dog food and baby strollers. This is the major problem dedicated booksellers face in competing with Amazon. Personally, I suspect it's impossible for them to compete. Only Google and Apple stand a chance, and they seem not to care.


This exactly. Amazon's MO for some time has been to take whatever loss necessary to gain market share. They play a long game and they have the deep pockets to do it.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

IreneP said:


> This exactly. Amazon's MO for some time has been to take whatever loss necessary to gain market share. They play a long game and they have the deep pockets to do it.


I'll have to get around to writing that dysutopian novel where Google, Apple, and Amazon have taken over the world. Think I'd be legally safe if I renamed them Poogle, Quapple, and Lamazon?


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> I agree, but I also think Amazon runs KU at a substantial loss. If all you sell is books, you don't have the luxury to sell/rent books at a loss and make up the money on TVs and dog food and baby strollers. This is the major problem dedicated booksellers face in competing with Amazon. Personally, I suspect it's impossible for them to compete. Only Google and Apple stand a chance, and they seem not to care.


What you say is true and I've made the same arguments myself, but the problems existed before KU came into being. And when you get right down to it, it doesn't matter. The fact is that none of the other distributors have really done much of anything in the last 5 years to give indies a way to improve our visibility on their sites. Unlike the tradpubs, we don't have external visibility through libraries and bookstores and displays in Walmart. If the readers don't already know about us and don't have any way to find us via keywords or fine-grained category browsing, then having our books on their sites is pretty pointless.

It's made worse when stores like Google Play and Kobo adjust their algorithms to push indie titles further back in the results than they should be in favor of tradpubbed titles.

The other distributors have no one to blame but themselves for the loss of authors and books to Select. Amazon is the only distributor who actively pursues indies and gives them the tools to put their books in front of readers. If the other sites would just implement keywords and stop sending us to the back of the bus when readers search, enough authors would make enough money wide that there would be a mass exodus from Select.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

HSh said:


> Another good thing was going live instantly. Just saying.


That, too. I also liked their periodic sales and rebate programs. So while ARe wasn't perfect by any means, there were things they did right.

Indeed, some of the smaller genre specific vendors (DriveThruFiction is another) did more than some of the big names like Apple and B&N.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> What you say is true and I've made the same arguments myself, but the problems existed before KU came into being. And when you get right down to it, it doesn't matter. The fact is that none of the other distributors have really done much of anything in the last 5 years to give indies a way to improve our visibility on their sites. Unlike the tradpubs, we don't have external visibility through libraries and bookstores and displays in Walmart. If the readers don't already know about us and don't have any way to find us via keywords or fine-grained category browsing, then having our books on their sites is pretty pointless.
> 
> It's made worse when stores like Google Play and Kobo adjust their algorithms to push indie titles further back in the results than they should be in favor of tradpubbed titles.
> 
> The other distributors have no one to blame but themselves for the loss of authors and books to Select. Amazon is the only distributor who actively pursues indies and gives them the tools to put their books in front of readers. If the other sites would just implement keywords and stop sending us to the back of the bus when readers search, enough authors would make enough money wide that there would be a mass exodus from Select.


And then Amazon would give authors in Select a 95% royalty ... 

In all seriousness, I share your frustration. I remember criticizing B&N along these lines a few years ago. But I think innovation is actually fairly expensive. Ideas are free, I know, but the people who have really good ideas are expensive. So are top IT people. And neither want to be associated with a losing enterprise. That puts small, books-only outfits at a big disadvantage.

Amazon will stop at nothing to overwhelm its competition, I really believe it. We're lucky they created an industry for us as a blip on the way to wherever they're going. Which is, you know, Mars and beyond.

It'd be nice if Apple and Google would step up. It's just not their thing, though. Google has never particularly cared about selling books, so far as I can tell, and Apple seems to have downsized its ambitions after its U.S. DOJ spanking.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Eh. Google Play has the resources to monitor the books in my catalog on other distributor sites so they know which books aren't on GP and which books aren't in Select, and they email me asking why those books aren't available on GP and if there's anything they can do to get me to publish them there. That's actually a fairly resource intensive program. It just doesn't help me sell books on their site.

Apple has real live human beings poking around their ebooks to pick free first-in-series books to run promotions on. Yet they can't manage to let me know that they're going to promote them so I could run sales or anything to maximize the benefits. By the time I know they've done it, the promo is over and it's too late.

B&N has the resources to rebuild Nook Press around their new pay-to-play POD platform that produces dead tree books that are only available for sale on B&N's own website.

And this is (for all practical purposes) 2017, and halfway decent search engines aren't really rocket science to program at this point.

Seems more like they're just not willing to spend money on the parts of the systems that might benefit *us*.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

> Seems more like they're just not willing to spend money on the parts of the systems that might benefit *us*.


Why should they? When we sell our books for 99c or even $3.99, they are making much less per sale than from a $14.99 tradepub title. Not only that, in order to get a bunch of well-selling self-published titles, they need to carry tons an tons of books that don't sell worth squat. Put yourself in their shoes and see why they have more incentive to push trad titles.

Also, what you say about in-store opportunities isn't true. Kobo has given us the promotions tab and allows us to advertise in store. I can't help that Kobo doesn't seem to be a big part of the US market, where a lot of you are, but Kobo is an important player in many non-US markets. Yet, even Kobo favours higher-priced books, and encourages us to price higher. Probably for the above reasons. Higher sale price = more profit and less cost per book for them.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> Why should they? When we sell our books for 99c or even $3.99, they are making much less per sale than from a $14.99 tradepub title. Not only that, in order to get a bunch of well-selling self-published titles, they need to carry tons an tons of books that don't sell worth squat. Put yourself in their shoes and see why they have more incentive to push trad titles.


So what? My 500 page billionaire romance weighs in at 1MB as an EPUB, and thats with 11 embedded cover images in the back matter. The metadata associated with it is a couple of kB. Multiply that by a million and I could still fit it all on the main hard drive of my desktop. Storage space is dirt cheap, and it takes a lot less bandwidth to download a stack of those EPUBs than it does to load their storefront's main page. It's an easy 30-40% profit margin, which is probably twice what they're getting from tradpubbed ebooks. And very few tradpubbed books are selling at $14.99. 


> Also, what you say about in-store opportunities isn't true. Kobo has given us the promotions tab and allows us to advertise in store. I can't help that Kobo doesn't seem to be a big part of the US market, where a lot of you are, but Kobo is an important player in many non-US markets. Yet, even Kobo favours higher-priced books, and encourages us to price higher. Probably for the above reasons. Higher sale price = more profit and less cost per book for them.


Maybe you have a promo tab, but I don't. And it's utterly ridiculous that the only way that a reader can find my book in their store is for me to advertise it there. They're a bookstore. Their job - their ONLY job - is to sell books, which means putting the books the reader wants in front of her. If they can't do that, then they're not doing their job properly. A working search engine and functional browse categories are the basis of every online retail system, and that's been the case since the mid-1990s. Kobo has *jack* for categories and their search engine is THE worst of all of the major and mid-tier distributors'. They make it literally impossible to find books in their store unless you already know the title and author because of the way their system is designed. And they've gone out of their way to make it worse over the last two years.

I can go to any retail store's website and type in keywords and get reasonable results. Why can't the ebook distributors manage it?

Edit: Look, I hate KU as much as Mark Coker does. I think it's a horrible system and I think it's bad for the industry as a whole. I've been wide since 2011 and I've encouraged other people to go that route because I really don't like Amazon's business practices and KU exemplifies the worst of those.

BUT... The fact is that none of the other distributors have stepped up. They're doing nothing to help us sell books in their stores, and in some cases they're actively impeding us. You can't blame that on KU, and you can't blame that on Amazon. Just because Amazon is the dominant player doesn't mean that other stores can't do well *if they are willing to do the work*. Walmart is the dominant player in retail, but that doesn't mean that every other brick and mortar retail store has closed shop. They've found ways to compete. The other ebook distributors aren't even trying, though. They're still sitting where they were in 2012.

So the people who try and fail to get any visibility on their sites because it's damned near impossible say "Screw it" and put their books in Select.

That's not an Amazon problem, and it's not a KU problem.


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## Tulonsae (Apr 12, 2015)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Tulonsae said:


> Their site (ARe) is not responding so I can't go look. But how is that the customers don't own the books? (This is an honest, curious question. Not sarcasm.)


What you're buying when you seem to be buying an ebook is actually a license to use the digital file. That license can be revoked. If the licensing entity ceases to exist, the license expires. That's my understanding, anyway.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

Tulonsae said:


> So I'm not sure how this (or other) sites work - do they have an app that you read through? Or can/could you only read online through their interface?


No, you download the format you prefer. Or however many are offered. Your choice. If stored off line somewhere, I see no difference between licensing and owning in this case. I have the books I bought there downloaded and saved (hope I didn't forget any of them... ), but yeah...if you download in time you'll keep them.


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## Tulonsae (Apr 12, 2015)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


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## Tulonsae (Apr 12, 2015)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

KelliWolfe said:


> So what? My 500 page billionaire romance weighs in at 1MB as an EPUB, and thats with 11 embedded cover images in the back matter. The metadata associated with it is a couple of kB. Multiply that by a million and I could still fit it all on the main hard drive of my desktop. Storage space is dirt cheap, and it takes a lot less bandwidth to download a stack of those EPUBs than it does to load their storefront's main page. It's an easy 30-40% profit margin, which is probably twice what they're getting from tradpubbed ebooks. And very few tradpubbed books are selling at $14.99.


You were arguing that retailers should do more for self-published writers, and I'm being the devil's advocate and wondering why.

Because cost per unit sold is MUCH higher for them for self-published titles, and I'm NOT talking about bandwidth or storage.

I'm talking about support staff, where Amazon appears to be cutting corners on all levels. If you have bazillions of (very small) publishers, the number of people who are clueless, who stuff things up and who need their hands held every step of the way increases exponentially. You need to employ staff to sort these people out and to help them, and to pay them and to sort out their millions of tax interviews, and their hundreds of thousands of foreign bank accounts, and their problems being paid, and lost cheques and all the problems with their books and quality control... and... and... I'm not even talking about pursuing scammers and spammers. But the vast support crew, that is where the cost per unit blows out a lot, when compared to trad titles.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Sorry to hear about ARe closing. I never managed to write a romance that could go there and didn't have a customer account, so I'm a little hazy on the customer licence, but if you want wide opportunities, especially from independent companies, to survive its best not to talk down their chances with incorrect legalese. It is not true that you never own an ebook. An ebook is a tradeable commodity sold to you under the licence the retailer chooses to sell it under and you retain it for life under those terms. You only get to buy the ebook from services that the producers (authors/publishers) are prepared to live with the licence under which their product will be sold. Just because Amazon tries a hardline on its only licencesd does not mean that all retailers operate in that way. To take Mark Coker's Smashwords, they do not own a hardware platform to use to deny your access to your own purchases and they have no facility for users to store books, but you can always download what you've purchased including all updates since the date of the purchase. They also do not sell books with DRM so you've bought it and downloaded it, you own it, even if Smashwords is crushed to a pulp by the KU train.

Amazon is not the world, however much is seems on kboards to US and UK based authors and customers. In many countries you cannot buy from Amazon, not even via the dot com store with a Whisper Sync tax. Apple, Google, and Kobo  are all closer to being global players, but leave vast tracts of the world unserviced. The most global service I know is Smashwords, although its reached is limited by whether PayPal operates in your country. There will always be room for innovation so long as producers do not starve the innovative retailers of product to sell and authors do not tell customers that they never own an ebook no matter who they buy it from.


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## ilamont (Jul 14, 2012)

Someone did some sleuthing about the company's operations:



> Interestingly, despite sending out those notices on December 28, the All-Romance E-Books, LLC website was not immediately taken down, providing us with a great deal of information on who is behind this latest e-publishing fiasco. CEO Lori James and Administrative Assistant to the CEO Maxwell James are the first two names listed on this privately held company that was founded in 2006. The company's Linked In profile cites 11-50 employees.
> 
> But the mailing address on the website (6252 Commercial Way #145 Weeki Wachee, FL 34613) is different from the one on Linked In (2519 McMullen Booth Road NorthSuite 510-199 Clearwater, FL34685). The website address is actually a virtual office, where for $99 a month anyone can set up a storefront that gives the appearance of an actual physical location. The Linked In address is a strip mall in Clearwater, with numerous restaurants, a Scientology outlet, and a UPS store . . . among other unrelated businesses. On the privacy page is yet another address: 303 Main Street #186 Safety Harbor, FL 34695 - which is the physical address of a United States Post Office.
> 
> ...


There's a lot more. Full post here.


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2016)

Becca Mills said:


> I agree, but I also think Amazon runs KU at a substantial loss.


People forget this. books are not Amazon's main income stream. Not by a longshot. Books are a "gateway drug" into the Amazon ecosystem. Select doesn't benefit Amazon because it sells a lot of books. Select benefits Amazon because it gets tens of thousands of authors to serve as Amazon's marketing team and direct customers to them. Select is a training tool to condition customers to go to Amazon first. It is a loss leader to get people in the door.

Other retailers do not have that luxury.



> I'm talking about support staff, where Amazon appears to be cutting corners on all levels. If you have bazillions of (very small) publishers, the number of people who are clueless, who stuff things up and who need their hands held every step of the way increases exponentially. You need to employ staff to sort these people out and to help them, and to pay them and to sort out their millions of tax interviews, and their hundreds of thousands of foreign bank accounts, and their problems being paid, and lost cheques and all the problems with their books and quality control... and... and... I'm not even talking about pursuing scammers and spammers. But the vast support crew, that is where the cost per unit blows out a lot, when compared to trad titles.


Patty brings up an incredibly important point here. Indies are very high maintenance compared to large publishers. You can say that all of the processes should be automated, but automation only works when people are capable of following instructions. Heck, I see this as a small press publisher. Something as stupid as using the tab key to indent can make converting a file to mobi or epub almost impossible. (sidebar: The tab key is of the devil) Every Quarter when I go to pay authors for the journal, I find at least two or three who either gave me the wrong email address for Paypal or who never set up their Paypal and DIDN'T INFORM ME (even though I explicitly ask if they need to be paid another way). At the very top of the submission guidelines page in *BOLD RED LETTERS* it says to never send submissions longer than 500 words in the body of an email.

Would you like to know how many of the three dozen submissions I got this week were over 500 words and sent in the body of the email?

I have the luxury of just hitting "reply" and rejecting the story. But retailers have to deal with these people uploading jpgs instead of Word docs and then wondering why the system won't accept the file.

None of this, of course, justifying how All Romance eBooks is handling the closure. But when talking about the difficulties for small retailers in general, I think indies have to accept a lot of the responsibility for the success or failure of small competitors. Too many people only see other retailers as a means to price match to Amazon. They don't support other retail outlets. They don't promote them. They don't even link to them on their websites. But then they expect these small retailers, whom they do nothing to support, to jump through hoops and do things for them that even Amazon won't do.

For a healthy ebook marketplace to exist, we need to support a healthy ebook marketplace. We can't just look at all other retailers as price-match feeders for Amazon. That's why I've been spending so much time updating my site recently to include the Books2Read link on all of my books. If we want a partnership with other retailers, we have to act like partners, too.


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## Elizabeth S. (Oct 20, 2016)

ilamont said:


> Someone did some sleuthing about the company's operations:
> 
> There's a lot more. Full post here.


The quoted part doesn't seem that unusual to me. Many people choose to incorporate in states other than where they live. Or they have moved. My own company (not related to writing) is incorporated in Delaware and the address associated isn't my home address.

The hosting and maintenance costs were likely high, and getting into publishing is what probably did them in, IMO. There are fixed costs associated with that, such as advertising, cover art, and editing, etc, with no guarantee the books will earn out.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> BUT... The fact is that none of the other distributors have stepped up. They're doing nothing to help us sell books in their stores, and in some cases they're actively impeding us. You can't blame that on KU, and you can't blame that on Amazon. Just because Amazon is the dominant player doesn't mean that other stores can't do well *if they are willing to do the work*. Walmart is the dominant player in retail, but that doesn't mean that every other brick and mortar retail store has closed shop. They've found ways to compete. The other ebook distributors aren't even trying, though. They're still sitting where they were in 2012.
> 
> So the people who try and fail to get any visibility on their sites because it's damned near impossible say "Screw it" and put their books in Select.
> 
> That's not an Amazon problem, and it's not a KU problem.


That's exactly my experience on Amazon. Zero visibility unless I bring my readers there. The search system that is terrible because it doesn't matter what keyword I use, wrong stuff will show up, and now there are even ads to drive the readers searching for my name to someone else's book. The categories are a mess and almost nothing is ever in the right category, not to mention I can't reach most of them because the keywords thing rarely works. And I'm liking less and less the type of consumers KU has created. I don't have any of those problems on other retailers. Even with so little advertising options, readers can still find me there without any trouble. Amazon readers sometimes contact me saying they can't find my books, and I'm not surprised. Amazon is a huge mess and now I even have to click other books in the search results to get to freebies because they aren't always showing up when I search an author's name. And I don't know why some authors are surprised that they aren't selling on other vendors when all they're doing is promote Amazon and write books that cater to Amazon's customers' tastes.

It's sad about All Romance, but their site always looked unappealing to me. I think they could've dealt with this in a better way.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> People forget this. books are not Amazon's main income stream. Not by a longshot. Books are a "gateway drug" into the Amazon ecosystem. Select doesn't benefit Amazon because it sells a lot of books. Select benefits Amazon because it gets tens of thousands of authors to serve as Amazon's marketing team and direct customers to them. Select is a training tool to condition customers to go to Amazon first. It is a loss leader to get people in the door.


As authors, we provided Amazon a valuable free service -- Marketing. Think of all those Facebook ads authors buy to point traffic to Amazon. That's our intrinsic value to Amazon. We are a source of free advertising of the best kind - word of mouth. The other booksellers cannot afford to take that kind of loss leader - because the only thing they sell is books.

Meanwhile, Amazon uses it's amazing search engine AI to figure out what products (not just books) to show to visitors. That's why their search engine is so good. They aren't in the book business, they are in the data science business. Apple & B&N can't compete right now. Google has the best chance IMHO - but doesn't seem interested.

So now that ARE/Omnilit has imploded that's one less outlet for indies to sell on. At this point, I've decided to give in and declare Amazon victorious. KU is king right now and there's no getting around it. The playing field is rapidly shrinking when B&N finally falls under everyone will have no choice but to join KU.


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## BonnieVane (May 12, 2016)

I've been on the road, so I just heard about the website closing. But when I checked my email, I had received a solicitation for 2017 advertising on December 23 that included the following statement: "Most of our 2017 Sidebar Ads have sold out. We do have a few slots remaining in Zone 3. These ads will appear in a 10% Share of Voice rotation on all pages of AllRomance.com, OmniLit.com, and AReCafe.com. You can purchase multiple slots to increase your SOV. Reserve your spot now!"

Here is the site with their ad rates:

https://www.allromanceebooks.com/reservations/

which include the following:

Zone 1 Premium**$2000.00/monthSold Out
Zone 2 Premium**$2000.00/monthSold Out
Zone 3 Rotating Premium 20% SOV**$360.00/monthSold Out
Zone 3 Rotating Premium 10% SOV 1 of 3**$180.00/monthSold Out
Zone 3 Rotating Premium 10% SOV 1 of 5**$180.00/monthSearch availability
Zone 4 Rotating Premium 50% SOV$900.00/monthSold Out
Zone 4 Rotating Premium 20% SOV 1 of 2**$360.00/monthSold Out
Zone 4 Rotating Premium 10% SOC**$180.00/monthSold Out
Zone 5 Rotating Standard 1 of 8**$150.00/monthSold Out
Zone 6 Rotating Standard 1 of 8**$150.00/monthSold Out
Zone 7 Rotating Standard 1 of 8**$150.00/monthSold Out
Zone 8 Rotating Standard 1 of 8**$150.00/monthSold Out

They include several slots in all of the above categories, so it's hard to calculate how much monthly income they would have received from this, but it's not chump change. Plus, they sold various other advertising categories. Just an FYI to add to the financial mystery of the situation.


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## Allyson J. (Nov 26, 2014)

Lynn is a pseud--uh said:


> So is anyone actually taking the settlement? Because I've done a cost benefit analysis and I'm just not seeing it to be worth suing at my income level.
> 
> They owe me just under $800 for the quarter. Seems like I'll just be throwing $80 away if I hold out.


Personally, I'd rather lose what little they owe me than take that insulting settlement. I do know of some authors pubbed by them who are choosing to settle just to get their rights back ASAP, though. It all comes down to doing what's best for you & your business.

I'm worried that this could become commonplace behavior...or an example of the kind of compensation indies will accept.


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## Nate Hoffelder (Jun 9, 2014)

What a load of crap.

They had to have known they were going under, and they cheated people into buying adverts.

What a bunch of bleeps (edited).


BonnieVane said:


> I've been on the road, so I just heard about the website closing. But when I checked my email, I had received a solicitation for 2017 advertising on December 23 that included the following statement: "Most of our 2017 Sidebar Ads have sold out. We do have a few slots remaining in Zone 3. These ads will appear in a 10% Share of Voice rotation on all pages of AllRomance.com, OmniLit.com, and AReCafe.com. You can purchase multiple slots to increase your SOV. Reserve your spot now!"
> 
> Here is the site with their ad rates:
> 
> ...


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

I'm not taking the settlement. Who has a right to hold your money and then tell you if you don't settle they will have to go into bankruptcy? You may never see that ten cents on the dollar anyway. 
Furthermore, I will write the Attorney General of Florida and complain, and the US Attorney General. If that company gets away with this, it will only invite others to develop a bigger scheme to take our money. It's enough we're writing content, paying for editors, paying for cover artist, paying for advertisement, uploading the content, and these individuals are releasing our money when or if they feel the need.
We don't even know if we sold more books. It's possible they may have been doing creative bookkeeping for years. It's likely this was all planned from the beginning.


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2016)

Lynn is a pseud--uh said:


> This is the road to bankruptcy and they know it and we know it. They're just trying to get as many of us out of the way as possible before the big dogs go after them--or they're cutting deals with the biggest dogs to keep them out of the fight and are hoping none of us little dogs will find the expense worth it. (I haven't heard anything that indicates this so it's just a supposition.)


It is a solid supposition because this is EXACTLY how it normally works. Large publishers who were able to negotiate separate distribution agreements with them have leverage because they would have had clauses in the agreement to protect them. But for everyone else: you are considered UNSECURED DEBT. That means in bankruptcy court, you are at the bottom of the list after all of the secure debt is negotiated and paid. In bankruptcy court there are three types of debt considered: Secure debt (those debts backed by an asset, like car loans and mortgages. In business, this includes leases and other loans involving tangible assets. Priority debts (such as tax liens, child support, payroll taxes and sales tax, and other government-required payments). From there, the largest unsecured debtors are negotiated first.

Of course, if they can convince ENOUGH authors to take the deal, they can probably avoid bankruptcy and negotiate with the larger debtors separately, preserving their credit and leaving them free to reopen at a later date.


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

Lynn is a pseud--uh said:


> On the other hand, that makes it all look pretty nasty. They're paying out $1,000 and keeping $9,000 of every $10,000 authors made off their own books _after _paying ARe their commission. Assuming the numbers are bigger (and who knows, I certainly wasn't a big seller and they owe me about $800), that's $10,000 for us and $90,000 for them for every $100,000 in accounts payable to authors.


I have a slight problem with this logic. Unless anyone has evidence otherwise, we don't actually think they are walking with this money, do we? My assumption is their business is failing. They have more expenses than income and they are trying to pay as much as what they owe as possible. Julie just laid out the progression if they go into bankruptcy and it ain't encouraging for us authors.

Am I happy about this? No way. But I'm not going to assume they set out to screw everyone, either. I'd be interested to know if anyone has any concrete information. At least they aren't pulling an EC and continuing to sell our books indefinitely while making excuses about why our royalties haven't shown up. At least they put their cards on the table BEFORE the first missed royalty payments.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

KelliWolfe said:


> Eh. Google Play has the resources to monitor the books in my catalog on other distributor sites so they know which books aren't on GP and which books aren't in Select, and they email me asking why those books aren't available on GP and if there's anything they can do to get me to publish them there. That's actually a fairly resource intensive program. It just doesn't help me sell books on their site.
> 
> Apple has real live human beings poking around their ebooks to pick free first-in-series books to run promotions on. Yet they can't manage to let me know that they're going to promote them so I could run sales or anything to maximize the benefits. By the time I know they've done it, the promo is over and it's too late.
> 
> ...


I completely agree with this. I would LOVE it if Apple and GP would get their a$$es in gear and make their platforms more user and author friendly. Sadly, I don't see any signs of it. Apple promotions are GREAT don't get me wrong. When they have promo'd my first in series, I've done stupendously well. But it's wholly a curated thing. I didn't even know they had done it.

I had the same thing happen with GP. I got an email asking why Books x, y, and z weren't on GP. They WERE on GP but didn't sell, so it was worth my time to pull them and put them in KU. Believe me, I hated doing so but there is just no traction on the other retailers without regular Bookbub promos, at least in my experience.

How I would LOVE it if the other retailers would step up and compete big league. Sadly, I don't see it happening. Those of us who don't like being exclusive are pretty much on our own when it comes to promoting our books to get any kind of visibility on the other channels. While in KU at least, we get a boost and Amazon always seems to be able to sell my books better than any other channel.

I hate it but there you have it. Amazon is king for a reason. They compete better.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Gentleman Zombie said:


> As authors, we provided Amazon a valuable free service -- Marketing. Think of all those Facebook ads authors buy to point traffic to Amazon. That's our intrinsic value to Amazon. We are a source of free advertising of the best kind - word of mouth. The other booksellers cannot afford to take that kind of loss leader - because the only thing they sell is books.
> 
> Meanwhile, Amazon uses it's amazing search engine AI to figure out what products (not just books) to show to visitors. That's why their search engine is so good. They aren't in the book business, they are in the data science business. Apple & B&N can't compete right now. Google has the best chance IMHO - but doesn't seem interested.
> 
> So now that ARE/Omnilit has imploded that's one less outlet for indies to sell on. At this point, I've decided to give in and declare Amazon victorious. KU is king right now and there's no getting around it. The playing field is rapidly shrinking when B&N finally falls under everyone will have no choice but to join KU.


This is also an important point. Books are the loss leader that gets Amazon customers in the store. Don't I know it! I now buy so much stuff from Amazon because of Amazon Prime. Whenever my kids need anything or I need anything, I always search on Amazon first to see if I can find it there on Prime and thus get that lovely 2 day shipping. So not only do I buy books on Amazon, I also buy everything else I can there if it is in prime, and even some stuff that is not on Prime.

Amazon is not only a bookstore. It's a retail store. It's a search engine retail store with the goal of selling everything to everyone. Books are a small part of that.

Still, they sell books better than everyone else or customers would not keep coming back and suppliers (indie authors / trad publishers) would not keep coming back.

I hate KU. I dislike the model, even though my KENP works out to pretty much a sale when I get a full read through. I dislike the whole notion of paying an author for only the pages "read" -- the part of the product that is consumed. I despise exclusivity. But right now, I am all in with my books until they are eligible for more Bookbub promos. Then, I'll go wide because I have found that without ongoing Bookbub promotions, sales on the other retailers fall so low, it is not worth keeping my books wide for 90 days when I could be exclusive for 90 and get a boost of visibility in KU.

I hate it but it's the reality in which we all must compete. Each of us has to maneuver our own way through this jungle.


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2016)

Lynn is a pseud--uh said:


> That's business. I don't like it, and I would personally put myself into massive debt to keep from screwing over other people, but that's not how most people in the business world believe. It's also why I'm not in big business, because I know I'd be dangerous to myself.


You don't have to put yourself in debt to avoid screwing people. You just have to know how to manage money and create a business plan that is sustainable. I can't speak specifically to this company, but I see this all the time with new publishers. They don't actually have a plan for sustainability and they make a lot of pie-in-the-sky promises to authors. They have no comprehension of their actual expenses and potential revenue streams.

Pay your people first, your bills second, and yourself last. Too often, people do this in the reverse and that is why their businesses fail.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

sela said:


> This is also an important point. Books are the loss leader that gets Amazon customers in the store. Don't I know it! I now buy so much stuff from Amazon because of Amazon Prime. Whenever my kids need anything or I need anything, I always search on Amazon first to see if I can find it there on Prime and thus get that lovely 2 day shipping. So not only do I buy books on Amazon, I also buy everything else I can there if it is in prime, and even some stuff that is not on Prime.
> 
> Amazon is not only a bookstore. It's a retail store. It's a search engine retail store with the goal of selling everything to everyone. Books are a small part of that.
> 
> ...


Interesting. Sela, did your income increase drastically when you went all in KU? 
I'm seeing a rather disappointing trend on other retailers. On B&N pretty much nothing except Bookbubs move copies, but I'm no longer willing to discount my books so often, and Apple does terrific when the team hand-picks a title and pushes it but then the visibility is in the toilet. . .


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

I just sent my complaint to Florida's attorney general, and when I can figure out the form to use for the DOJ, then I'll send that as well. It may not get much attention, but I don't care. I didn't go quiet because the next individual who gets the notion to do this may think twice. 
The owners of this company had to have planned something because they were sending emails asking that we take out ads from $2000 on down. For the last two months they were discounting our books with claims they would pay the amount of the discount. It appears this was done to sell more books knowing they wouldn't pay us.


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## 555aaa (Jan 28, 2014)

I'm sorry to hear this but a little surprised that they didn't just try to sell the business. 

It makes me wonder if this type of business model isn't better served as an author's co-op, with a board of directors and all that. It is much more transparent. REI (the Seattle sporting goods company) is an example of a member-owned business; you can find their articles of incorporation on the company website.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

RomanceAuthor said:


> Interesting. Sela, did your income increase drastically when you went all in KU?
> I'm seeing a rather disappointing trend on other retailers. On B&N pretty much nothing except Bookbubs move copies, but I'm no longer willing to discount my books so often, and Apple does terrific when the team hand-picks a title and pushes it but then the visibility is in the toilet. . .


I just went all in this week, after a last Bookbub that means I won't have another until March due to Bookbub's 6-month limit. I figure being all-in might boost visibility on Amazon just enough to make up for the falling revenues on the other retailers, which tend to diminish 30 days after a Bookbub. I have books coming out at the end of January and if my books stop getting Bookbubs, I will keep them all in. It seems the only thing besides Apple curating my first in series that seems to work on the other retailers. Kobo did have the promo tab but I wasn't earning enough there to make it worth the falling revenues on B&N and Apple once my boost from my Bookbub wanes.

SO:

Go all in to KU, write a lot and release a lot in a hot genre but you're definitely on that fast churn treadmill.

OR:

Go wide, but use Bookbub to get sales on the other retailers, and Facebook ads, Google Ads etc. to drive traffic to Amazon to overcome the drop in visibility on Amazon when you aren't in KU.

That seems the only two workable options at this point.

I looked at AR in 2016 and was going to put my books there, but never got around to it. I feel bad for everyone who is affected by this latest small retailer failure. Amazon just had a monumental holiday season for sales. It's a behemoth that all of us -- suppliers and competitors alike -- have to contend and find our way to survive in its huge shadow.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

sela said:


> I just went all in this week, after a last Bookbub that means I won't have another until March due to Bookbub's 6-month limit. I figure being all-in might boost visibility on Amazon just enough to make up for the falling revenues on the other retailers, which tend to diminish 30 days after a Bookbub. I have books coming out at the end of January and if my books stop getting Bookbubs, I will keep them all in. It seems the only thing besides Apple curating my first in series that seems to work on the other retailers. Kobo did have the promo tab but I wasn't earning enough there to make it worth the falling revenues on B&N and Apple once my boost from my Bookbub wanes.
> 
> SO:
> 
> ...


I dunno. I don't release a lot, I definitely don't write in any kind of hot genres (other than that it's romance), and I'm all-in with KU. I've found the borrows actually keep my income more stable.

I've had 4 BookBub ads in 2016 while in Select, but I agree, it's tougher now if you're exclusive to Amazon (or maybe just tougher in general).

I don't advertise or boost on Facebook, Twitter, Google Ads etc. I just do occasional free promos or Countdowns with as many mailing-list-type ads as my assistant can manage. That's still my best spend. I also do some AMS advertising--that's my only pay per click advertising, because people are right there on Amazon looking to buy books.

During my 6-month wide experience a couple years ago, I put my books on the AR site, but I hardly sold any. I think they were mainly about super-steamy manchest stuff. Sorry about this happening to folks, but in my business-background opinion, I'd take the $$. Stinks but only real option.


----------



## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Rosalind J said:


> I dunno. I don't release a lot, I definitely don't write in any kind of hot genres (other than that it's romance), and I'm all-in with KU. I've found the borrows actually keep my income more stable.
> 
> I've had 4 BookBub ads in 2016 while in Select, but I agree, it's tougher now if you're exclusive to Amazon (or maybe just tougher in general).
> 
> ...


Rosalind, I always expect you to offer a counter narrative to mine, so you didn't disappoint. 

I have released 3 - 4 books a year every year for the past four years and I think that's fast! I only released two books this year and saw my revenues fall by 29%. From what I hear, in certain genres and categories, many authors feel pressure to produce a book a month -- or more -- in order to maintain visibility. That's CRAY!!!

As to you not really promoting, or not very much, that's really great, but I don't think it's the experience of many, if not most, authors who are not exclusive to Amazon. _When my books are NOT exclusive to Amazon_, I have to drive traffic there because I lose visibility by not being in KU since Amazon gives KU books that nice boost for every borrow even if a page is not read. That's visibility that a wide book does not get and so to boost visibility, external advertising / promotion seems necessary.

You are the exception to every rule (and by rule, I don't mean hard and fast rule, but rule of thumb). You write exactly what you want, you publish longer books at a slower pace, and you don't do much promotion.

We should all be so blessed.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

sela said:


> Rosalind, I always expect you to offer a counter narrative to mine, so you didn't disappoint.
> 
> I have released 3 - 4 books a year every year for the past four years and I think that's fast! I only released two books this year and saw my revenues fall by 29%. From what I hear, in certain genres and categories, many authors feel pressure to produce a book a month -- or more -- in order to maintain visibility. That's CRAY!!!
> 
> ...


Aw geez, I'm sorry if I was dismissive. I think FB ads work better when you do write things with more genre-obvious covers and so forth. I just write kinda odd and cover ditto, so the FB ads have never really worked.

I know what you mean about speed. I write 600K publishable words a year, which I think is pretty fair, but it's nothing like what the Really Big Girls do. I have a main book release about 4-5 times/year (the books are long). And it's true that the churn keeps getting faster. I've definitely seen that.

I have a Montlake series, but it doesn't sell nearly as well as I'd hoped. Getting an APub series isn't necessarily a sure bet despite the extra marketing. Wrote it too weird I think. I like the books a lot, but they're sure as heck not to market. Still matters even with a lot of Amazon push. All they can do is put the books in front of readers--they can't make 'em buy.

German and audiobooks have also been good income sources for me.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Earlier someone was talking about backing up the books and if its just licenses. Over on SBTB there is a thread where readers are chiming in and its really bad. I can't type the website name on KB. Its one of the big romance blogs starting with Smart... 
Some say the DRM'd books they had have disappeared from their shelves so they can't download them, or some downloaded but the license was invalid for the app they used. And some are confused now as they used the ARe app to read and don't know what to do to get their books. I think, just guessing here that as the books are taken off the site, they disappear from customers shelves also. Some are scrambling to use up some of their rebates they earned but books on their wishlists are going poof. 

Its one thing to back up non drm books, which they also sold. But even that is something not everyone knows how to do. But the drm books, one has to know how to do that. But some can't even download them at all to even get to them at this point. They are not giving anyone any time to figure stuff out. 

I only ever got mobi books from them, which are not drm'd so they can easily be stored somewhere. Since I only read on e-ink, I could never buy the adobe digital ones or epub versions as I wouldn't know what to do with those. I barely figured out how to "free" amazon books for backup. 

No wonder KU is so enticing to readers. At least we wont have to worry about where to store the books, how to backup the books, how to read the books and worry if they going to go poof if we pay for them. We know up front we are renting them, just like stuff rented on netflix. There are no worries involved. Just read and go. Makes all this digital confusion much more tolerable. 

Another nice thing is that a few of the smaller publishers that had books up are offering to fulfill the preorders customers have placed on ARe as they took that pre-order money also.


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## Pizzazz (Dec 14, 2016)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> I'm not surprised they're winding down. If I have it right, they used to sell direct from their website yes? With KU the biggest game in town, no one buys from the little guys anymore.


The little guys lose out to Amazon, Apple . . .


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## Pizzazz (Dec 14, 2016)

Rosalind J said:


> I think FB ads work better when you do write things with more genre-obvious covers and so forth. I just write kinda odd and cover ditto, so the FB ads have never really worked.


With a fastly increasing mailing list (thanks InstaFreebie) and participation in newsletter swaps on a regular basis, I haven't had to rely on paid promotion, incuding FB ads, lately.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

The debate about taking the payout should include this little tidbit. This is the quote from the email that shows the date that the 10% is to be paid out by:

"Upon receipt of the signed agreement, I will authorize payment of the settlement amount in full by 28 February 2016 via the method stipulated in your publisher account."

SO, apparently by that date, the payments have been made. Not sure if it is a typo saying "2016" when it should be saying 2017, but who is to trust you would get your 10% now with an error like that.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

sela said:


> Rosalind, I always expect you to offer a counter narrative to mine, so you didn't disappoint.
> 
> I have released 3 - 4 books a year every year for the past four years and I think that's fast! I only released two books this year and saw my revenues fall by 29%. From what I hear, in certain genres and categories, many authors feel pressure to produce a book a month -- or more -- in order to maintain visibility. That's CRAY!!!
> 
> ...


While allowing for things like genre differences, years publishing, definition of 'success' (in terms of $) and so on, I found greater success wide than in KU on a pure dollars-earned perspective, even though the sales on the other platforms have been meager.

I appreciate that in saying this I'm effectively hijacking a hijacking of the main thesis of this thread, but I just wanted to point out that sometimes going wide is an economic decision too, even though it's often framed as a philosophical decision or a concern over a hypothetical future state (the 'eggs in one basket' argument). I'm both more comfortable with being wide, and, making more money being wide.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

GeneDoucette said:


> While allowing for things like genre differences, years publishing, definition of 'success' (in terms of $) and so on, I found greater success wide than in KU on a pure dollars-earned perspective, even though the sales on the other platforms have been meager.
> 
> I appreciate that in saying this I'm effectively hijacking a hijacking of the main thesis of this thread, but I just wanted to point out that sometimes going wide is an economic decision too, even though it's often framed as a philosophical decision or a concern over a hypothetical future state (the 'eggs in one basket' argument). I'm both more comfortable with being wide, and, making more money being wide.


I'm all about the money in the end so whatever works is ok by me. I don't like KU and exclusivity but if it works for authors then use it. We each have to decide what works best. I don't believe authors should harm their own business for some abstract ideal - as long as they aren't scamming or cheating.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

sela said:


> I'm all about the money in the end so whatever works is ok by me. I don't like KU and exclusivity but if it works for authors then use it. We each have to decide what works best. I don't believe authors should harm their own business for some abstract ideal - as long as they aren't scamming or cheating.


yes, I agree...


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Seeing mention on Twitter that amounts owed to folks are changing on their dashboards so if you're owed something from them take a snapshot now.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

sela said:


> I'm all about the money in the end so whatever works is ok by me. I don't like KU and exclusivity but if it works for authors then use it. We each have to decide what works best. I don't believe authors should harm their own business for some abstract ideal - as long as they aren't scamming or cheating.


Yep. And even in the same genre, even with ostensibly the same type/subgenre of books, authors will find different paths more lucrative. People really have to see for themselves, esp. since nobody else is gonna pay our mortgages!


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## kathrynoh (Oct 17, 2012)

Has anyone tried to log in to their ARe account today? I never sell much on there, maybe a few bucks a quarter, but figured I should log in and check things out. I can't log in and then the pages error out!

Condolences to everyone losing serious money over this. It must a huge blow.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

kathrynoh said:


> Has anyone tried to log in to their ARe account today? I never sell much on there, maybe a few bucks a quarter, but figured I should log in and check things out. I can't log in and then the pages error out!
> 
> Condolences to everyone losing serious money over this. It must a huge blow.


I was able to log in just now and checked my sales reports. It was a little laggy, but not bad.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

For anyone who is interested, I emailed ARe earlier today asking if they were willing to sell the business and what they were planning to do for authors who did not accept the 10 cents on the dollar offer. Here is their response:

Yes, we are entertaining offers for assets. 

What happens with those who don’t settle will likely depend on a number of factors.

Lori


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

KMatthew said:


> Yes, we are entertaining offers for assets.
> 
> What happens with those who don't settle will likely depend on a number of factors.
> 
> Lori


If you're published through them, maybe you're an "asset" but if you just listed your books through the site that's [bullcrap].

-

Also I know this is a great philosophical discussion for some of you guys, but the rest of us might appreciate not having it dissected in front of us whether it's Amazon's "fault" or author's "fault" for not supporting other outlets enough.

This is literally ARe's fault. They did not have to walk away with the money. They did not have to sell advertisements they would never fulfill.

They stole author money. Period. It was not Amazon's fault, and guess what, lots of authors did support this site, and did do well through it.

"I repeat again, they spent MY money (and others as well, all author money), as it wasn't ringfenced. This story is getting old." This is what RJ Scott had to say about it on her blog.

This is what wikipedia says:



> Ringfencing or Ring-fencing occurs when a portion of a company's assets or profits are financially separated without necessarily being operated as a separate entity. This might be for: regulatory reasons, creating asset protection schemes with respect to financing arrangement, or segregating into separate income streams for taxation purposes.


It's just really not that hard to not scam people if you're actually trying. You pay what you owe and don't keep it or spend it for other purposes.


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## KevinH (Jun 29, 2013)

I had some stuff on ARe under a pen name a while back, but nothing in quite some time. My sympathies to those who will suffer losses from their closure, but looking at this from an objective point of view, there's a business lesson to be learned here.  

They admittedly operated at a profit every year since 2006, and then one bad year apparently derailed their entire business.  I certainly don't know all the details of their operation, but I'm surprised that after a decade in the black they didn't have enough reserves to see them through one bad year (or the ability to obtain sufficient credit to keep the ship afloat).  That's not to say that something unusual didn't happen (e.g., maybe the company got sued and had a huge judgment against them).  Typically, however, you can make all kinds of mistakes in business, but only one of them is fatal: running out of cash.  And even if they're out of cash, they clearly have assets with value. How much is a mail list of nearly 200K romance readers worth? Quite a lot, I'd wager.

Long story short, this is a reminder - at both the business and personal level - to have something set aside for a rainy day.


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## The Fussy Librarian (May 3, 2011)

Vinny OHare said:


> I would love to know the backstory to this. There seems to be something missing.


There definitely is more going on here. As a business owner I look at my bank accounts constantly because I'm always depositing money from PayPal or paying bills. To do this on four days notice is unforgivable. Moreover, that royalty money should have been put in an account separate from the one used to pay bills and salaries and never, ever touched.


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## Allyson J. (Nov 26, 2014)

I filed a complaint with the FL Attorney General, and joined the Facebook page for P*ssed Off Authors. Folks are rallying over there. The discussion is...very interesting...

The online form to file a complaint was pretty simple and straightforward. It took maybe three minutes of my time.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

4 days notice is not that unusual in a business failure. Sometimes workers turn up to work to find a notice on the door that their employer no longer exists. Nor is it unusual to keep drumming up business until the end as a late surge in income might persuade a lender to extend a line of credit. This is how business failures operate because announcing the failure far in advance guarantees that the failure will happen.


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

Allyson J. said:


> I filed a complaint with the FL Attorney General, and joined the Facebook page for P*ssed Off Authors. Folks are rallying over there. The discussion is...very interesting...
> 
> The online form to file a complaint was pretty simple and straightforward. It took maybe three minutes of my time.


Thanks Allyson for the info on Facebook. I filed a complaint yesterday, but I was too emotional to give any information. It does indeed take a few minutes to complete the form. Google Florida's attorney general and the information is there.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

Hopefully Pam Bondi is not still the Florida attorney general...


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## Cactus Lady (Jun 4, 2014)

My books are there. I deactivated them the other day but didn't delete the files to let readers have a chance to download them. Went back to do it today, and the delete option is gone. I joined the Facebook group and it looks like no one is being allowed to delete their files any more. They only owe me something like $5, but now I'm worried about what's going to happen to my book files.


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## Cactus Lady (Jun 4, 2014)

Lynn is a pseud--uh said:


> I inactivated the books but left the files. I'm hoping it will allow readers to download the books they've already bought if they hadn't already downloaded them.


That's why I left mine up. But now my worry is, what is All Romance going to do with all those book files they aren't allowing authors to delete? Are they going to be considered assets in a bankruptcy? Start another store and sell them without permission from the authors?


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## Allyson J. (Nov 26, 2014)

I deactivated mine the other day, but after seeing what other authors have been posting l elsewhere online, I went back and deleted all mine. I fear they might be considered as assets in the event of a sale or something.


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## jchance (Oct 15, 2016)

Kyra Halland said:


> That's why I left mine up. But now my worry is, what is All Romance going to do with all those book files they aren't allowing authors to delete? Are they going to be considered assets in a bankruptcy? Start another store and sell them without permission from the authors?


They can't be considered assets unless you were published _by_ ARe's publishing arm. If you just listed your books there, ARe holds no legal claim to them.


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

Pam Bondi is the attorney general. I had the same reaction when I saw her name. Nevertheless, no one can say we didn't try, or when someone catches on to what went on at All Romance EBooks, they can't say that we as authors never complained.
Somehow I was able to delete all my book files, and I have loads of books there. I started early this morning.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

Kyra Halland said:


> That's why I left mine up. But now my worry is, what is All Romance going to do with all those book files they aren't allowing authors to delete? Are they going to be considered assets in a bankruptcy? Start another store and sell them without permission from the authors?


Good question. I'm wondering myself. I deactivated mine, but can't delete my files now either. I mean, they have their ISBNs on there etc, so they are protected by copyright. But the comment above saying Lori was talking about "Assets" worries me. What does she exactly mean by that? Will they just take the files, open another store under a different name, and start over using our book files? My mind is full of questions.


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## Guest (Dec 30, 2016)

Ringfencing (ring-fencing) is another term for funds Held In Trust.

See my earlier comments. It is very important that royalties are Held In Trust (it's the author's money) instead of being co-mingled with the publisher/retailer operating funds.
In other words, did your royalties help pay for the office party, or the coffee maker?
And now, all that is left is 10 cents on your dollar?

Without an indie authors guild, we will continue to operate under Terms of Service (TOS).
And no company is too big to go out of business.
I'm old enough to remember big TWA airlines, big Pan Am Airlines, etc., and super big Penn Central railroad which closed its business in one day.

Ringfencing (ring-fencing) or Funds Held in Trust?
Read the TOS and dream on.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

jchance said:


> They can't be considered assets unless you were published _by_ ARe's publishing arm. If you just listed your books there, ARe holds no legal claim to them.


I think we were posting at the same time. But thank you. I was thinking since I am the publisher, and listed them only, they are only a retailer in this sense. It just stinks that they still have the file.


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## Annette_g (Nov 27, 2012)

Okey Dokey said:


> Ringfencing (ring-fencing) is another term for funds Held In Trust.
> 
> See my earlier comments. It is very important that royalties are Held In Trust (it's the author's money) instead of being co-mingled with the publisher/retailer operating funds.
> In other words, did your royalties help pay for the office party, or the coffee maker?
> ...


So, say sometime in the future there is no Amazon or KDP. What happens to all the ebooks we've bought?

I know you can download them and side-load them to your Kindle, which I have done, but it always asks you which Kindle do you want to put the file on.

So if KDP and/or Amazon ceases to exist, but I still have my ebook files on PC or the cloud, wherever, will I still be able to sideload them or not? I have bought a lot of ebooks!


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

Allyson J. said:


> I filed a complaint with the FL Attorney General, and joined the Facebook page for P*ssed Off Authors. Folks are rallying over there. The discussion is...very interesting...
> 
> The online form to file a complaint was pretty simple and straightforward. It took maybe three minutes of my time.


Thanks for putting this up. I joined the FB group. Still pending to be added.

Even though I didn't have a lot of money owed to me, it's the whole principle of losing royalties that has to be stood up for. If one retailer decides to screw over publishers, authors and readers like this, more may follow. From other comments on other boards and blogs, readers are losing faith in indie retailers because of this, esp. with preorders. So, it could affect buying trends esp. for Indie authors.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Annette_g said:


> So, say sometime in the future there is no Amazon or KDP. What happens to all the ebooks we've bought?
> 
> I know you can download them and side-load them to your Kindle, which I have done, but it always asks you which Kindle do you want to put the file on.
> 
> So if KDP and/or Amazon ceases to exist, but I still have my ebook files on PC or the cloud, wherever, will I still be able to sideload them or not? I have bought a lot of ebooks!


If the ebooks have drm, then its not really useful in the long run to just download. As for kindle books the license is tied to the device they were downloaded to. If that kindle dies, those books cannot be read on anything else.

We can't talk about that here, but many of us remove drm for storage. Its all I use those for, backup. I still download all my books from amazon. But in case my account gets hacked or for some other reason I get locked out, I feel better having them. There are similar things one has to do with secure epubs as they have the adobe thingie on them.

So if your purchases books have no drm on them, you can store them, convert them to the format you need and be good. Otherwise you have to do something one is apparently not suppose to do. 

I hate drm for that reason.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

Annette_g said:


> So, say sometime in the future there is no Amazon or KDP. What happens to all the ebooks we've bought?
> 
> I know you can download them and side-load them to your Kindle, which I have done, but it always asks you which Kindle do you want to put the file on.
> 
> So if KDP and/or Amazon ceases to exist, but I still have my ebook files on PC or the cloud, wherever, will I still be able to sideload them or not? I have bought a lot of ebooks!


I've seen a lot of the readers that had libraries talking about this very problem. A lot are stuck trying to get the right kind of file, and where they will be able to buy epub format books now.

I know when my Kindle was stolen during the summer, Amazon has my purchased books stored in my library. I can find my books in a listing through the computer or even on my new Kindle, I hit the book and it comes up. So, most retailers have to have some kind of storage for that reason.

Of course, Kobo or Amazon could go under. Just like with Borders and Waldenbooks. I'm guessing they might say the same thing if that happened, download your library before we go dark.

But then, really, do you really need a book after you've read it? I mean, the only thing that sucked when my Kindle was stolen was getting the books that I was in the middle of reading or was going to read. Plus, I had all my KU reading list already there and ready to go.

Considering Sears just got hundreds of millions of dollars to continue, good businesses will stay in business. That faith that is built with a customer is important. I've seen a lot of the romance publishers that got hit hard by this posting on other boards and on blogs that for preorders of their books, they'll still honor them through their own website store with a copy of receipt. So, it is amazing to watch some of the romance community coming together in this and trying to make it less painful for the readers. I think they are the ones getting really hit by this big, and really, they are the back bone of the industry. Readers didn't deserve this either. It's going to be important to win them over again and build their trust in Indie retailers. I don't know if they'll trust them now over the big ebook names.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

Atunah said:


> If the ebooks have drm, then its not really useful in the long run to just download. As for kindle books the license is tied to the device they were downloaded to. If that kindle dies, those books cannot be read on anything else.
> 
> We can't talk about that here, but many of us remove drm for storage. Its all I use those for, backup. I still download all my books from amazon. But in case my account gets hacked or for some other reason I get locked out, I feel better having them. There are similar things one has to do with secure epubs as they have the adobe thingie on them.
> 
> ...


This reminds me back in the day when everyone used to record their records onto tapes. Same principle really. It just makes me nervous having a non-DRM copy out there. Pirates do exist and it's hard for Indie authors to go after them, esp. in other countries.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

MarilynVix said:


> This reminds me back in the day when everyone used to record their records onto tapes. Same principle really. It just makes me nervous having a non-DRM copy out there. Pirates do exist and it's hard for Indie authors to go after them, esp. in other countries.


DRM isn't going to stop pirates. It literally takes 1 seconds to remove if one knows how to do it. And if I could figure it out, anyone can, trust me. 

It only hurts actual customers like this situation shows now. Some can't figure out now how to get their books and they are probably going to lose anything that was secure epub. Those that don't know how to un-secure them that is.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Atunah said:


> If the ebooks have drm, then its not really useful in the long run to just download. As for kindle books the license is tied to the device they were downloaded to. If that kindle dies, those books cannot be read on anything else.
> 
> We can't talk about that here, but many of us remove drm for storage. Its all I use those for, backup. I still download all my books from amazon. But in case my account gets hacked or for some other reason I get locked out, I feel better having them. There are similar things one has to do with secure epubs as they have the adobe thingie on them.
> 
> ...


I can read all the books I purchased on any Kindle, no matter when the books were purchased. I started on the very first Kindle and am like four deep now and can re-download books I purchased on the first Kindle on the fourth Kindle. I just did it the other day.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I can read all the books I purchased on any Kindle, no matter when the books were purchased. I started on the very first Kindle and am like four deep now and can re-download books I purchased on the first Kindle on the fourth Kindle. I just did it the other day.


I can too. Its about when you download one to the computer, you can't just transfer the file from that to any of the devices, you have to use amazon to send it to a device or pull it from a device. So if you lose your account for any reason, you can't access those books anymore on any of the kindles. Unless one has non drm backup somewhere. For as long as the kindles are alive and if you have the books actually are on the device, that its ok for that time. If that kindles dies, those books are gone then. Again, only a case if anything happens to the account or amazon. Otherwise they are always stored.

But as we see here with this store closing, it can cause issues for customers in the long run.


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## Elizabeth S. (Oct 20, 2016)

Atunah said:


> I can too. Its about when you download one to the computer, you can't just transfer the file from that to any of the devices, you have to use amazon to send it to a device or pull it from a device. So if you lose your account for any reason, you can't access those books anymore on any of the kindles. Unless one has non drm backup somewhere. For as long as the kindles are alive and if you have the books actually are on the device, that its ok for that time. If that kindles dies, those books are gone then. Again, only a case if anything happens to the account or amazon. Otherwise they are always stored.
> 
> But as we see here with this store closing, it can cause issues for customers in the long run.


Hook your Kindle to your computer with a USB cord. Use Calibre or similar software to download/upload whatever you want, to backup your books.

Problem solved.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Unless those books have DRM.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

KelliWolfe said:


> Unless those books have DRM.


Exactly. That is the point I keep trying to make, apparently very badly.


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## Romancefantasy (Oct 14, 2016)

Atunah said:


> Got a letter too. Of course its the customer letter, which is a tad different. And again, this is why I will not buy anywhere else but Amazon. That goes for stores or from author directly. After the 31st, nobody has access to the books they purchased anymore. They are giving folks barely 4 days. If you on a trip now and not checking your emails and haven't backed up your books, they will be all gone. Poof.
> 
> Not the first store to close and not the first time customers lose all their access. I just don't have those worries when it comes to Amazon.
> 
> ...


I have been reading ebooks since the early 2000's and have lived through a few ebook publishers closing suddenly. No ebook platform is safe forever even Amazon. I used to have Microsoft reader ebooks and adobe ebooks with Amazon back in the day and they did the same thing; closed shop and your ebooks were gone for ever. It is less likely to happen to Amazon right now but who knows what the future holds with technology changing so fast? Here today gone tomorrow. I always download my ebooks and back them up when I can. Peanutpress/ereader.com and Fictionwise taught me well; they transferred "some" of my books to Barnes and noble but not all. The ebooks from dorchester publishing were missing. Heck even Barnes and Noble is backing off of the Nook. This is still shocking though how quickly it all went down.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

For those who haven't seen it yet, here is a Google Doc survey about how much ARe owes various indie authors and publishers.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Pardon if these were posted already.

http://blogcritics.org/publisher-all-romance-ebooks-closing-hits-new-low-in-stealing-from-authors/

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2016/12/publisher-all-romance-ebooks-closing-hits-new-low-in-stealing-from-authors/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThePassiveVoice+%28The+Passive+Voice%29


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

I encourage everyone to fill out the brief Google docs survey ... and view the responses! 91% say they're not accepting the settlement.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Based on the Passive Voice commentary, it sounds like it's quite possible that even if you decided to settle for the 10% it could be clawed back by a bankruptcy court. And it will be a miracle if ARe doesn't end up there the way this is playing out.


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## Elizabeth S. (Oct 20, 2016)

KelliWolfe said:


> Unless those books have DRM.


You can remove the DRM with one click. It's not difficult.

You can also convert file types with maybe two clicks in Calibre, so you can read the books wherever/however you want, on whatever device you want.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

*YOU* can remove the DRM with one click. The vast majority of readers out there have absolutely no clue how to do that, or even that it can or should be done at all. Most of them don't know what DRM is, as so many ARe customers suddenly discovered when their DRM'd books suddenly disappeared on the 28th.

99.5% of our readers don't know what Calibre is and wouldn't use it even if they did know because they're not tech gurus. They use the hardware or app from their store of choice because it makes life easy on them - it keeps everything in one place and they know how to use it. If you want to tilt at windmills you can try to change this behavior in your readers. But you're going to lose unless you're in some tiny little niche where the readers are far more technologically inclined than in the general population.


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## Kate. (Oct 7, 2014)

Would someone who has filled out the survey be kind enough to share the results? I never worked with ARe and don't want to corrupt the survey with fake answers, but I'm also painfully curious to know the statistics.


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Cassie Leigh said:


> Seeing mention on Twitter that amounts owed to folks are changing on their dashboards so if you're owed something from them take a snapshot now.


Most of the people I have talked to have not been able to log in.


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## Elizabeth S. (Oct 20, 2016)

KelliWolfe said:


> *YOU* can remove the DRM with one click. The vast majority of readers out there have absolutely no clue how to do that, or even that it can or should be done at all. Most of them don't know what DRM is, as so many ARe customers suddenly discovered when their DRM'd books suddenly disappeared on the 28th.
> 
> 99.5% of our readers don't know what Calibre is and wouldn't use it even if they did know because they're not tech gurus. They use the hardware or app from their store of choice because it makes life easy on them - it keeps everything in one place and they know how to use it. If you want to tilt at windmills you can try to change this behavior in your readers. But you're going to lose unless you're in some tiny little niche where the readers are far more technologically inclined than in the general population.


I don't think you give readers enough credit. Or maybe I've just been around the romance genre for a long time, in which ebooks have been popular back since the Rocket eBook and Palm Pilots in the late 90s, and the readers--a large number of them--absolutely ARE tech savvy and know what Calibre is. It was on a romance blog (SBTB or Dear Author, probably) that I first learned about Calibre, probably around a decade ago. That is hardly a tiny little niche.

And my point is that there are very simple solutions already in place that you do not have to be a "tech guru" to use. The earlier statement that there is no way to read your Kindle books if something happens to Amazon is simply _not true_.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Re: Amazon/DRM/backup files.

When you buy a kindle book from Amazon, you agree to their terms of service which says you can't copy/resell the book. If there's DRM, you basically agree that you won't remove it. For any reason. MANY people feel that's an unreasonable clause and have no moral problem doing so when their intention is to use it on their own devices and they will NOT be sharing it with others or trying to re-sell it or anything else.

The clause in the ToS is in there because big publishers seem to feel that, without it, the books will be pirated and they'll lose money. The flaw in the logic is that it's easy to remove the DRM and pirate the books if one so chooses. So it's not really solving the problem they think they have. I don't think it hugely inconveniences most customers either, mind you; I just think it's not really necessary.

So . . . again, many people go ahead and make a DRM free copy of every book they buy on Amazon. That's their choice, and if Amazon goes belly up, they will for sure still have access to all their books.

I'd go so far as to say that even a DRM'd back up is sufficient. For now, you can still re-download to new devices directly from Amazon. If Amazon fails, then any agreement you had with Amazon about NOT removing DRM, it seems to me, would be null and void. So if you have one copy of the book for Kindle A, _at such time as Amazon is no longer operating_ you'd have a right to remove DRM from it to read it freely on devices B, C, D etc. And I'd not have a moral problem with that either.

For me, I don't worry about it with Amazon purchases. For one thing, there are very few books I would be likely to re-read; I spent what I spent and I got the enjoyment out of it. With paper books I didn't re-read either and most years donated several boxes to charities.  Secondly, I think the chances of Amazon being gone any time soon is essentially zero. That's my opinion and anyone may choose to disagree. Or agree but take precautions anyway. 

I do, however, take the news discussed in this thread as cautionary. If I were inclined to buy from other vendors, ones not as large as amazon, it seems clear that the possibility of them closing nearly without warning is absolutely significant. It may even be probable. So I'd for sure make back up copies in the event that happened and, again, would have no qualms about removing DRM as necessary to still have access to them.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Elizabeth S. said:


> I don't think you give readers enough credit. Or maybe I've just been around the romance genre for a long time, in which ebooks have been popular back since the Rocket eBook and Palm Pilots in the late 90s, and the readers--a large number of them--absolutely ARE tech savvy and know what Calibre is. It was on a romance blog (SBTB or Dear Author, probably) that I first learned about Calibre, probably around a decade ago. That is hardly a tiny little niche.
> 
> And my point is that there are very simple solutions already in place that you do not have to be a "tech guru" to use. The earlier statement that there is no way to read your Kindle books if something happens to Amazon is simply _not true_.


Again, it's certainly *possible*, but most people have no idea how to do it. The vast majority of people treat tech more or less like magic. They don't know how it works and they don't care, because they don't have to until something goes sideways. The panic and anger among the ARe customers who have lost all their books is a perfect example - and they're romance readers that you claim are a tech savvy bunch.

The vast majority of our readers - hundreds of millions of them - don't hang out on book forums or blogs. We only see the fraction who do and tend to think that they're representative of the whole. They're not. Anyone here who has ever done tech support work can attest to that. For fun, try explaining to a few dozen random readers how to get a free copy of one of your books using their @kindle.com address. That's about as easy as it gets, and even after two emails that gave step by step instructions it still took me two days to get everyone straightened out.

While the solutions to the problem may be simple, it still often takes a lot of hand holding to get people through them. And most of them don't realize that there's a problem in the first place. It's magic. It just works. Until it doesn't.


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## Lou Harpr (Nov 5, 2014)

RBN said:


> Here's part 2 of the saga (which is actually a prequel).
> 
> http://blogcritics.org/court-documents-regarding-all-romance-e-books-disturbing-business-practices-surface/
> 
> In summary, the former co-owner of ARe filed suit in 2014 after Lori James wrongfully declared her incompetent, seized control of the company, and started paying herself an "excessive" salary.


Yeah, there's strong indication that Lori James has been stealing from the company for the last two years. She really needs to be sued and prosecuted.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Which is probably why she wants to avoid filing for bankruptcy. If she's been fudging the books and using ARe as her personal piggy bank, a bankruptcy court's accountants are going to figure it out pretty fast.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Elizabeth S. said:


> I don't think you give readers enough credit. Or maybe I've just been around the romance genre for a long time, in which ebooks have been popular back since the Rocket eBook and Palm Pilots in the late 90s, and the readers--a large number of them--absolutely ARE tech savvy and know what Calibre is. It was on a romance blog (SBTB or Dear Author, probably) that I first learned about Calibre, probably around a decade ago. That is hardly a tiny little niche.
> 
> And my point is that there are very simple solutions already in place that you do not have to be a "tech guru" to use. The earlier statement that there is no way to read your Kindle books if something happens to Amazon is simply _not true_.


i don't know how to do this stuff. I've lost access to 3/4 of my Audible books because computers have died etc over the past 15 years and so forth. I think I'm pretty typical. I'm a smart person but I tend to hate tech.

My assistant has hand-held people through, for example, figuring out how to use NetGalley. Lots of readers are worse than me. It's one reason I have all Apple devices: excellent tech support. And one reason so many readers buy from Amazon: trust and customer service.


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

Thanks RBN for that article. After reading that article today, I felt justified to be mad as *ell, and I will lose less sleep now since I reported this injustice to Florida's attorney general. Because of my anger of not receiving my money and all the work that's required to place your book on their site, and not knowing whether you sold one or a thousand books, and the nerve to tell me that she would pay ten cents on a dollar where I have to sign a paper to get it, I lost it, and I discovered the form for a complaint to the DOJ. Among all their forms listed I found the one I needed under Computer Hacking and Fraud. 
However, you have to look around for the other steps. I didn't include them here because I'm not sure of the policies concerning that type of information. But if you are mad as *ell you'll find it.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> While the solutions to the problem may be simple, it still often takes a lot of hand holding to get people through them. And most of them don't realize that there's a problem in the first place. It's magic. It just works. Until it doesn't.


Yes, and in my experience, it's more likely to be this way the younger you are. People in my generation grew up alongside the development of personal computing devices, and many of us (though certainly not a majority) have a general sense of what's inside them and how they work. But if you're a young person, someone just placed a smart phone in your hands when you were a child or a teen. When that's how you first start using tech, it as well be magic. You know how it works if you were motivated to find out, but a vast majority of people don't seem interested in the _how _of their devices. Some of my students seem not to know how to save to the hard drives of their laptops, for instance, or understand that an option other than cloud storage is available.


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## Abalone (Jan 31, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> I think it's by far the best-selling, actually. That's my impression, anyway.


Really? I didn't think romance was that hot of an item.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Abalone said:


> Really? I didn't think romance was that hot of an item.


Is that a joke? Approximately 50% of all fiction sold is in the romance genre.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

I don't need to know how Calibre works to use it. I don't fully understand how much of anything works, yet I'm capable of getting things done. All I need is simple instructions. Go here. Click that. Select this option. It took me less time to learn how to remove DRM (and why I should) and then download the software to do it than it took for my sparkly new Kindle to charge up.

ARe has treated it's customers and providers disgracefully. If I had a dog in this fight, I'd make sure they went through bankruptcy court, and hard. Make them spend any funds they have in order to fight it. Authors may not get paid, but you're hardly getting anything as it is, some are getting basically nothing beyond their rights back, and it might serve as a harsh object lesson to others planning on doing this.


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

she-la-ti-da said:


> I don't need to know how Calibre works to use it. I don't fully understand how much of anything works, yet I'm capable of getting things done. All I need is simple instructions. Go here. Click that. Select this option. It took me less time to learn how to remove DRM (and why I should) and then download the software to do it than it took for my sparkly new Kindle to charge up.
> 
> ARe has treated it's customers and providers disgracefully. If I had a dog in this fight, I'd make sure they went through bankruptcy court, and hard. Make them spend any funds they have in order to fight it. Authors may not get paid, but you're hardly getting anything as it is, some are getting basically nothing beyond their rights back, and it might serve as a harsh object lesson to others planning on doing this.


Thanks for your opinion on ARe. I do have a dog in this fight, and it's not how big the dog is, but how much fight is in the dog.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

I feel bad for Barbara Ulmer, who has probably been muzzled by the terms of the settlement. The whole thing is like a gothic novel!


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Folks . . . reminder that this thread is not about Romance per se, and whether or not it's a popular genre. 

It IS about this particular site and the recent news about it's imminent demise.

It's also not about the character or supposed motivations of the owners of the site . . . . 

And, please let moderators be moderators . . . . . if you find a comment out of line, please report it, and we'll review it. Posting in the thread as well just further derails discussion.

Some posts have been edited/deleted and more may be when we've had a chance to chat.


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## passerby (Oct 18, 2015)

RBN said:


> Here's part 2 of the saga (which is actually a prequel).
> 
> http://blogcritics.org/court-documents-regarding-all-romance-e-books-disturbing-business-practices-surface/
> 
> In summary, the former co-owner of ARe filed suit in 2014 after Lori James wrongfully declared her incompetent, seized control of the company, and started paying herself an "excessive" salary.


Just clicked on the link and read the article. Here is my reaction:


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Folks . . . reminder that this thread is not about Romance per se, and whether or not it's a popular genre.
> 
> It IS about this particular site and the recent news about it's imminent demise.
> 
> It's also not about the character or supposed motivations of the owners of the site . . . .


May I ask why not? Because from where I sit

continuing to collect money for advertising in December and into 2017 when you already know you're shutting the site down
continuing to collect money from book sales for days after the "cutoff date" you've told authors/publishers they won't be paid for
making this announcement on the 28th of December - the day _after_ said cutoff date - when a large portion of the publishers/authors and customers are least likely to be checking email or be available to deal with this kind of crisis
 seems to open the door for legitimate speculation into the motives for shutting the business down this way.

Not being paid sucks, but that's not the problem. Businesses go under all the time and vendors get shafted because there's no money to pay them. That's just a business risk you take. And while we've lost the money from the sales at least we're not also out the cost of goods, which vendors who get stiffed under these circumstances usually have to contend with. The problem is that ARe continued accepting money from people for services that they knew they were not going to provide, and to sell books that they had no intention of ever paying us for, while at the same time sending out emails offering 10 cents on the dollar for all sales from the quarter. THAT speaks volumes and leaves the door wide open for a discussion of motives. If you deliberately cheat people - like selling them $2000 ad slots when you know you won't be in business to run the ads - it seems to me that you invite people to question your conduct.

I *still* haven't gotten an email notification from All Romance, by the way. I wouldn't know about this at all if it hadn't come up on kboards. I wonder how many other people are in that same boat?


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Rosalind J said:


> i don't know how to do this stuff. I've lost access to 3/4 of my Audible books because computers have died etc over the past 15 years and so forth.


I don't think that's possible Ros. Just like Kindle, your Audible purchases are forever in your library linked to your Amazon login


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

I would treat those court documents with a cellar of salt. According to Writer Beware they are initial claims for a case that was cancelled because the case was never proceeded with, which leaves them as no more reliable than if the claims had been made in a blog post as they were untested in court.


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## Lou Harpr (Nov 5, 2014)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> I don't think that's possible Ros. Just like Kindle, your Audible purchases are forever in your library linked to your Amazon login


I have Audible books on my iTunes I can't listen to. When I try I'm told I must authorize my computer first, but I bought them back when Audible and Amazon were separate entities, so my current login doesn't work, and hell if I can remember the old one.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Lou Harpr said:


> I have Audible books on my iTunes I can't listen to. When I try I'm told I must authorize my computer first, but I bought them back when Audible and Amazon were separate entities, so my current login doesn't work, and hell if I can remember the old one.


Yeah, that's me. And then there are the ones I bought in AU & NZ, which are another story. It's all pretty frustrating, as I've bought hundreds of audio titles.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Have you contacted Audible to see if they can help?

Betsy


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

CoraBuhlert said:


> For those who haven't seen it yet, here is a Google Doc survey about how much ARe owes various indie authors and publishers.


Just did an add up of the money owed from the Q4 2106 so far on the survey: It adds up to $97,178.13. So, if they'd pay back the 10%, what did they do with the other $90,000 dollars?


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

MarilynVix said:


> Just did an add up of the money owed from the Q4 2106 so far on the survey: It adds up to $97,178.13. So, if they'd pay back the 10%, what did they do with the other $90,000 dollars?


Lawyer on retainer?


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## AmpersandBookInteriors (Feb 10, 2012)

Gabriella West said:


> Lawyer on retainer?


Or trying to end their status as debtors and avoid bankruptcy.


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

Hey guys, this is about the most sane post I've seen on this.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/business-musings-7624150

There is some REALLY good advice here. The amount ARe owed me is small enough I'm not much affected. But even for people who lost more, my advice would be the same. Cut your losses. Be glad it was only one quarter. Be glad you found out now, and not when your payments failed to show. Don't spend any money pursuing this. Spend as little emotional energy on it as possible. Anything you expend on this is probably wasted time.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

Jay Northcote is using Payhip to (hopefully) replace ARe income:

https://jaynorthcote.com/2017/01/01/30-off-all-my-payhip-titles-this-week/

I don't know if that's going to work for me but it's definitely a good idea and worth looking into. If readers are willing to buy direct from authors it would be a good thing.

(I was researching this sort of thing a few months ago but never got very far tbh.)


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## Lou Harpr (Nov 5, 2014)

The situation getting worse:

http://www.sarahmadisonfiction.com/2017/01/authors-be-warned-the-ongoing-impact-of-the-all-romance-ebooks-debacle/


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

I don't see how that has anything to do with All Romance, unless this was a book that was published under ARe's own imprint. This kind of thing unfortunately happens all the time, and is usually either another author trying to sabotage a competitor or a scammer in a foreign country trying to get a paycheck in exchange for dropping the bogus copyright claim.

If it was a book published under ARe's imprint, then ARe still owns the publishing rights and she can't legally republish the book until the rights revert.

I'm far more concerned that Amazon is refusing to disclose the identity of the third party who is claiming to hold the copyright.


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

Lou Harpr said:


> The situation getting worse:
> 
> http://www.sarahmadisonfiction.com/2017/01/authors-be-warned-the-ongoing-impact-of-the-all-romance-ebooks-debacle/


I'm sorry, I don't place any faith in this post

Where is this "holding the copyrights" language coming from? There is no context. As a distributor, I don't think they hold my copyright, they hold the right to distribute maybe. And they possibly have the right to maintain the file in order to provide it to customers who previously purchased (although they don't seem to be doing that).

Also, remember we have seen multiple people face this same sort of situation here on kboards and the cause was never anything like this. Once I think it turned out to be a story that had also been published on wattpad, and the author had to prove they were the same person?


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> I don't see how that has anything to do with All Romance, unless this was a book that was published under ARe's own imprint. This kind of thing unfortunately happens all the time, and is usually either another author trying to sabotage a competitor or a scammer in a foreign country trying to get a paycheck in exchange for dropping the bogus copyright claim.
> 
> If it was a book published under ARe's imprint, then ARe still owns the publishing rights and she can't legally republish the book until the rights revert.
> 
> I'm far more concerned that Amazon is refusing to disclose the identity of the third party who is claiming to hold the copyright.


Yeah, it seems very unlikely to me that ARE filed the copyright notification with Amazon. They have enough on their plate, I suspect; why worry about getting some random book taken down? It's not like they'd be able to publish it themselves, since Madison can use the same DMCA process to get other copies of the story taken down. Fraudulent copyright notifications could be notified by malice or desires to blackmail, but they're not a good way to actually steal work and get income from that material.

Kelli, you're absolutely right that the major concern here is Amazon's refusal to provide contact info for the notifier to the author. If Amazon's position is 1) we take down any material that's notified against; 2) the notifier and the author must work the situation out between them and both give us written permission before we'll republish the material; 3) we will not tell the author who the notifier is ... well, that's pretty much Kafkaesque perfection, isn't it?


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

Just noticed the publisher/author portal is still up if people didn't get a chance to download reports and information. If you didn't get a chance to deactivate your books too, looks like you can still do that. I ran a couple reports, and it still works. 
So, not all of the ARe site is completely down. Looks like just the main selling portions.

https://www.allromanceebooks.com/publishers.html


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

The reports don't work and the book files are no longer available to delete. You can deactivate your books, but since the main storefront is gone it really doesn't accomplish anything.


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> The reports don't work and the book files are no longer available to delete. You can deactivate your books, but since the main storefront is gone it really doesn't accomplish anything.


My reports are still working. I had downloaded them before the main site went down, but if anyone hasn't you can still do so.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Whoops! My bad. I didn't realize they had locked the end date so the range was invalid when I ran it.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

I'd definitely download reports for Q4, while you still can. I don't know exactly how it works in the US, but I'm handing in mine as well as the ARe e-mail to the tax authority as a loss of income.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Wow -- I feel awful for all the authors and readers involved in this! It seems incredibly odd that they're unable to pay full commission on sales. I know many of us did well there (and I was planning on listing my books soon, too), so this is seriously devastating to many. Hugs to all involved.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Rachel E. Rice said:


> Thanks for your opinion on ARe. I do have a dog in this fight, and it's not how big the dog is, but how much fight is in the dog.


This is a forum, and you're going to get responses of all sorts, many of which you won't like. Not sure why you picked mine out, since I didn't say anything many others haven't said. It is my opinion. Ignore anything you don't like.

Of course, you can do as you wish in regards to the ARe situation. Never said any different. Carry on.


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## Bookread (Mar 8, 2016)

It's sad to see another giant fall. Hopefully another will rise.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> Kelli, you're absolutely right that the major concern here is Amazon's refusal to provide contact info for the notifier to the author. If Amazon's position is 1) we take down any material that's notified against; 2) the notifier and the author must work the situation out between them and both give us written permission before we'll republish the material; 3) we will not tell the author who the notifier is ... well, that's pretty much Kafkaesque perfection, isn't it?


Yes, that's the concern with this fiasco. Becca, you've been down that road, I know you're very well-informed on this topic. Isn't Amazon required to provide the info of the party who filed the notice? How else could an author possibly dispute it, since they want the parties to work it out between themselves?


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

***********


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

ebbrown said:


> Yes, that's the concern with this fiasco. Becca, you've been down that road, I know you're very well-informed on this topic. Isn't Amazon required to provide the info of the party who filed the notice? How else could an author possibly dispute it, since they want the parties to work it out between themselves?


I don't think it's legally required, no. See below for details.



PhoenixS said:


> At BN, we had 27 titles recently republished. The versions repubbed belonged to the publisher who had rights to them 5 years ago and who 1) took them down when rights reverted to Steel Magnolia in 2012 and 2) sold the company 2 years ago. The ex-publisher in this case is also a highly respected NY agent who's been around a loooong time.
> 
> Those titles are in Select, and I only knew about them spontaneously reappearing on the BN site when Amazon sent a (very) nastygram. I filed a DMCA with BN on Dec 26 and the titles came down on Dec 30.
> 
> ...


Sounds like their stance is the same as Amazon's. 

Unfortunately, the DMCA seems not to have been designed with the idea that copyright scamming might be a thing, one day. So, while the law does require a notifier be sent the full identifying info of a counternotifier, as happened to you, Phoenix, it does not require the notifier's info be sent to the poster of the material. All the platform has to do is let the poster of the material know it's been taken down. The relevant passages:

An internet service provider (or, in our course, a retail platform) avoids liability if it "takes reasonable steps promptly to notify the subscriber [poster of material] that it has removed or disabled access to the material." See, there's nothing here about sending any identifying info about the notifier. Technically, I think the service provider doesn't even need to say a DMCA notification was received.

A counternotification must contain "The subscriber's name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriber's address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person."

In order to avoid liability, upon receiving a counternotification, the platform must "promptly provide[] the person who provided the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) with a copy of the counternotification, and informs that person that it will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to it in 10 business days." The notifier needs the counternotifier's info because filing suit is the next step.

Despite what the DMCA says, retail platforms don't actually have to restore the counternotified-against material because of (legal-stuff-I-don't-totally-grasp) reasons.

So, the way it's supposed to work is this:

1. Bob posts _Writing_ on Service Provider's servers.
2. Frank notices _Writing _and thinks it's actually something he holds the copyright on.
3. Frank sends a DMCA notification to Service Provider asserting under penalty of perjury that he holds the copyright for _Writing_.
4. Service Provider immediately makes _Writing _inaccessible to the public and lets Bob know _Writing _is offline.
5. So long as Service Provider has acted quickly, Frank cannot sue Service Provider successfully for copyright violation.
6. But Bob thinks he really does hold the copyright to _Writing_, so he submits a DMCA counternotification to Service Provider.
7. Service Provider can now make _Writing _publicly accessible again without risk of liability because Bob has taken the liability upon himself as part of the counternotification process.
8. Service Provider forwards Bob's counternotification to Frank.
9. Either Frank still thinks he's the copyright holder and seeks a subpoena to keep Service Provider from restoring public access to _Writing_, ...
10. ... or Frank realizes he's not the copyright holder and does nothing, and Service Provider must restore _Writing _to public access within ten days.

On the face of it, this seems like a reasonable system. Nothing is going to be perfect, but it at least attempts to spread the power between the poster and the notifier in as equal a way as possible while protecting sites from legal liability for hosting violating material.

Unfortunately, since Step 10 turns out to be optional, counternotifications can legally be ignored, and the whole thing breaks down, throwing all the power into the hands of the notifier. That's what opens the door for copyright fraud. If B&N and Amazon strengthen the hand of the notifier even further by refusing to provide the poster with the notifier's info, they risk making their sites into uncontrollable hunting grounds for would-be fraudsters. IMO.

ETA: If you're in a self-flagellating mood, here's the DMCA's text. For the sake of lawyers, I hope not all legal writing is this tortuous.


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## Lou Harpr (Nov 5, 2014)

The Guardian published an article. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/04/allromancecoms-sudden-closure-hits-authors-hard No new information but a summation of the closing. I can't stop wondering what the truth is behind this debacle. How much money went where? So much of an author-publisher relationship is based on trust, and there have been too many examples of publishers big and small breaking that trust. The last thing authors need is to add distributors to the list. And it's not just the authors. Many readers who shopped at ARe did so to support the "little guy" against Amazon. What a kick in the teeth.

If what Lori James said is true, the right thing would've been to make an announcement of closure at the beginning of the quarter and gradually winding down business by the end of the year. There would've been much sympathy and support. Instead, ARe went on full steam, with one sale after another, in one instance assuring authors that they'd get full share for discounted books. Many authors are still haven't received refunds for what they spent for 2017 advertising. Dishonest and possibly only the tip of the iceberg.


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## Alexleo (Jan 4, 2017)

I was an eager reader of books published on ARe and I had still many books in my library, that I had purchased but not downloaded, yet. Does any one know what readers may do to have access to their books? I personally never received any email at the end of December warning me of the intended closure.



SummerWynter said:


> Just got this
> 
> ALL ROMANCE EBOOKS, LLC
> 6252 Commercial Way #145, Weeki Wachee, FL 34613
> ...


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## Lou Harpr (Nov 5, 2014)

Alexleo said:


> I was an eager reader of books published on ARe and I had still many books in my library, that I had purchased but not downloaded, yet. Does any one know what readers may do to have access to their books? I personally never received any email at the end of December warning me of the intended closure.


Many authors and publishers have offered to fulfill ARe's failed obligation. You should contact them with your purchase records.


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## Cactus Lady (Jun 4, 2014)

Alexleo said:


> I was an eager reader of books published on ARe and I had still many books in my library, that I had purchased but not downloaded, yet. Does any one know what readers may do to have access to their books? I personally never received any email at the end of December warning me of the intended closure.


I know that a lot of authors are offering free replacement copies to readers who bought books on ARe. If you still have email receipts from the purchases (I never actually bought anything from ARe, only sold there, so I don't know what if anything they send out after you buy something), look up the authors and publishers online, see if they're making that offer. If they are, you can send them a request with a copy of your proof of purchase.

Or, as Lou Harpr was saying while I was typing this


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Alexleo said:


> I was an eager reader of books published on ARe and I had still many books in my library, that I had purchased but not downloaded, yet. Does any one know what readers may do to have access to their books? I personally never received any email at the end of December warning me of the intended closure.


Oh no, they closed it all up on the 31st. You can't download them anymore. There are quite a few readers that lost all of their books. Some have shopped there for years and years. 
So sorry . What a crappy thing to do and only giving 4 days notice. Not sure why many didn't get the email. I wonder if one had to be subscribed to the newsletter to get it. I was and I got it. Thankfully I only had a handful of books there.


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

Lou Harpr said:


> If what Lori James said is true, the right thing would've been to make an announcement of closure at the beginning of the quarter and gradually winding down business by the end of the year. There would've been much sympathy and support. Instead, ARe went on full steam, with one sale after another, in one instance assuring authors that they'd get full share for discounted books. Many authors are still haven't received refunds for what they spent for 2017 advertising. Dishonest and possibly only the tip of the iceberg.


I understand your attitude on this, totally. But, be honest. We've all seen so many closures. Would you have left your books up? I think readers and publishers alike would have abandoned ship and the result would have been the same, just sooner.

Most businesses will fight like hell to stay alive before they will take a drastic step like this. My guess is that ARe lost many, many readers and authors to Amazon and KU. Remember, if you are in KU, you can't sell on other channels, which means that other stores are losing some top-selling authors and their readers are following them. It makes me nervous what will happen after Amazon herds us all into the fold.

I'm really annoyed about some of the ways this has been handled - for example, not leaving the site up long enough for readers to download books they had already purchased. But from a practical standpoint, I'm glad we found out about this when we did instead of when we failed to receive payments down the road. We all could have been in a much worse position if they had strung us along for several more months instead of admitting at the end of the quarter that they couldn't meet their obligations.

I also hear this "how dare they do this to authors" - which, yeah. I get it. I lost money and I'm not happy either. But there seems to be some sense that our money should have been separate and prioritized. What makes our income more important than the other people who probably aren't getting paid? Should we have gotten more at the expense of ARe employees? Whoever kept their website running? Heck, the electric company? Business failures are nasty for all involved. I have no idea what the true situation is. Everyone one wants Lori James to be tarred and feathered. She may well deserve to be. But she may also be losing just as much or more than the rest of us. We're not talking about a massive corporation here. My husband and I have owned several businesses and if they go down we lose everything. It is very likely that her personal assets are on the line, even those she might have had before starting the company. None of us really know.

I know take on things is going to be pretty unpopular and I'm not denying anyone their right to be angry and upset. Maybe she made out like a bandit and is now leaving us holding the bag. But_ I don't know_. So for now I'm mourning my (small) loss of income and trying to remain neutral.


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## Lou Harpr (Nov 5, 2014)

IreneP said:


> I know take on things is going to be pretty unpopular and I'm not denying anyone their right to be angry and upset. Maybe she made out like a bandit and is now leaving us holding the bag. But_ I don't know_. So for now I'm mourning my (small) loss of income and trying to remain neutral.


And without a forensic accountant going through the books we'll never know. And that's where the lawsuit comes in. All the previous debacles have been enforcing the message that they can make out like bandits and get away with it. No accountability. The last time I looked at that informal info gathering site, even with only a fragment of authors reporting the amount of pilfered money was close to a hundred grand. If you consider all the publishers big and small and individual authors, we are talking about a big chunk of money. I'm not willing to simply take Lori's word that it's just gone and no foul play.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

So, I got a request from Al Jazeera International News this morning for an opportunity to be interviewed. Unfortunately, I happened to wake up late and I'm on the West Coast three hours behind New York. So, they interviewed another author. But it was still exciting to see a reporter request for info on ARe closure and interest in interviewing an author affected by the ARe closure. It has made my day.  

Just wanted to give you all a heads up that this is going international too. I mean, we're all connected by the internet. I really enjoy having people all over the world able to buy my book. So, something like a big third party retailer closing is affecting people worldwide. It's kind of incredible. 

And also, blog what you experience as a writer. You never know who may be interested. I wasn't sure if ARe closing was a big deal, but I knew that writers and some readers would be interested to hear what was going on. Plus, it seemed like Lori James was trying to be secretive in not letting the publisher/authors know what was happening to them to the rest of the world. I really didn't like the fact she was trying to hush it all up so we could at least get some money. 10% isn't worth that. 

And to look at an outcome of all this, diversifying always a good idea. I still have Amazon and distributed through Smashwords to fall back on. So, if one thing goes under, you got other streams of income. I know there is the worry of putting all your eggs into the Amazon basket. IF the Zon went under, that would be such a HUGE fail for most of us. But then the bottom line is to do what is the best for you. I think that is what made it easier for me to dodge a bullet and not lose as much as some others. Not to say I don't feel for them. I do. Because ARe was really working for some. But going with my gut and seeing some red flags helped me avoid some serious trouble now. So, sometimes instincts in business work.


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

Becca Mills said:


> Unfortunately, the DMCA seems not to have been designed with the idea that copyright scamming might be a thing, one day.


No, the DMCA was pretty much _designed_ for copyright scamming. It was pushed by Big Media so they could force websites to pull down anything at any time with no repercussions for them.

That this could be used by scammers was a clear problem, and pointed out at the time.


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

Okay, y'all I'm going to try and bow out because the one thing I'm trying to NOT do is expend a lot of angst over this.

I'm not trying to say they should get away with anything. I'm in total sympathy with the authors. I'm one myself.

What I am saying is this.

As far as I know, it's not illegal to fail at business. So as far as legal and financial accountability, if you are going to put money/time into pursuing this:

1) They had to have done something wrong. For all I know they did, but right now we don't know that. Everything is speculation.
2) You have to PROVE they've done something wrong- and this might be difficult and expensive.
3) Assuming you can do #2, you have to be able to collect the money at some point.

And that last one is really the kicker. I've been in several situations where our lawyer told us straight up that yes, we had a case. But... it would cost tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars to pursue. It could take years to resolve, at the end of the day we might wind up on the hook for that expense _even if we won_.

So, for any authors looking to pursue legal action, I would urge you to think about who is going to pay for these lawyers and accountants. Even if you win, the money might be irretrievable. Everyone is assuming ARe is sitting on a pile of cash somewhere. But I think they would have to be really stupid to close in this manner if they had the money. I think there is a good possibility it is gone. If it went into Lori James pocket, there is a small chance you might see some of it - after the lawyers and accountants take their cut. If the business was in trouble, and looking at the industry, I have no reason to think it wasn't - it might not exist. It's already been spent to pay last quarter's royalties and other expenses. No matter how many lawyers you hire, you can not materialize money that doesn't exist. In general, the lawyers and accountants will still want to be paid.

It's a crap situation for us authors no matter which way it goes. I'm just saying that sometimes you are better off cutting your loses than throwing good money after bad.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

I always did have a bad feeling about them. I opened an account last year and had trouble figuring out their interface,because you know, it's like something out of 1990, so I emailed CS and asked a few questions. They got kind of snarky. I almost felt like they were suggesting I was too stupid to publish with them, so I never uploaded anything. I'm so glad now. It looks like my instincts were right and they're jerks. There's no reason they couldn't pay royalites on what was earned. They made the money, they just don't want to let go of it since they won't be around to listen to authors complain about it.


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## J.D. Fournier (Oct 20, 2014)

Lady Vine said:


> Wow, just wow! I must have had a sense about this, because a couple of months ago I removed all of my titles from this platform. Luckily, they have no money for me. Boy am I glad about that.
> 
> So not only did they give a handful of days' notice that they were closing down (and not to everyone, either. I didn't get an email), they're only going to pay authors 10% of the money they earned. Despicable.


That is how all businesses work. No matter the industry. You can't say you are having problems and might go out of business soon. That would guarantee the end of your business as all suppliers and customers would pull out. You have to continue operating full speed ahead like nothing is wrong, giving it your best shot to succeed, until you just can't anymore.

Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Edward M. Grant said:


> No, the DMCA was pretty much _designed_ for copyright scamming. It was pushed by Big Media so they could force websites to pull down anything at any time with no repercussions for them.
> 
> That this could be used by scammers was a clear problem, and pointed out at the time.


Interesting, Edward. I wasn't tuned in to these issues the mid-'90s, so I wasn't aware the scamming potential had been pointed out. I do know the law is abused all the time by large entities defending their perceived interests. It's a major problem on YouTube, as I understand it.


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## 555aaa (Jan 28, 2014)

RBN said:


> ARe wasn't selling books out of the goodness of their hearts. They got a royalty split and advertising money on top of that. All of their expenses (employees, web management, utilities) should have come out of _their_ split. If their overhead got too high for their budget, they should have made cuts, like everyone else must when income doesn't meet expenses, not stolen money contractually allocated to the publishers who gave them something to sell. That was not their money to spend.


I doubt that the ARe contract said that they would hold authors' royalties in escrow, just like the KDP contract and the Audible contract and all the other contracts don't say that. There probably also wasn't wording in the contract that says that in case of bankruptcy, author royalties are senior to any other debts incurred by the company and authors go to the head of the line. What should happen now is that ARe should file for bankruptcy and then the bankruptcy court will (if I understand correctly) divvy up the assets among the creditors. The offer of 10% if they are not in bankruptcy is crap IMHO and they should file if they haven't.


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## Malicia Paine (Dec 1, 2016)

This is all very weird. Here's something even more inexplicable&#8230;I just got the following e-mail TODAY:

-----
Subj: All Wrapped-up for Christmas is a Bestseller!
From: Allromance.com [email protected] Attachments 12:10 PM (7 hours ago)
To: maliciapaine

Congratulations!

All Wrapped-up for Christmas by Malicia Paine has just hit the Allromance.com Bestseller List!
We've attached our ARe Bestseller graphic for your use. Please feel free to link it to the book's detail page: /product-allwrappedupforchristmas-2197072-354.html.

You can check out all of the Allromance.com Bestsellers here: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/bestsellers.html.

Sincerely,

Lori James
CEO
All Romance eBooks, LLC
-----

At first, I thought that can't be right, not because the website is gone (I didn't know that yet,) but because this never happens. Not to me. So I got excited, and enjoyed that for a moment. Then I clicked through to see the bestseller list. No website. Just an ominous "We are sorry, this site has been taken off-line."

I smelled a rat, so I googled it, and this thread was the first result.

I spent the next while reading the previous posts in this thread and clicking through the links y'all posted. The whole situation is a bit sketchy. And after all I've read, I still haven't heard of anyone else getting creepy ghost e-mails like mine. I'm baffled that I'm being sent something like this, apparently from beyond the grave.

It's weird, because I was never notified the way y'all were back at the year's end when they offered the 10% F-U money. (I'd probably have politely told them about two flaps they could kiss.) Alas I've been blissfully ignorant the last two weeks, despite having actually logged in and posted a book as recently as December 30th. So I'm not really sure how I missed all this. I also have NO IDEA when I'm owed.

LOL-I guess my book must be really impressive if it made the best-sellers list in the afterlife, huh?

Anyway, anyone else receive weird ghost e-mails like this?


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Malicia Paine said:


> This is all very weird. Here's something even more inexplicable&#8230;I just got the following e-mail TODAY:
> 
> -----
> Subj: All Wrapped-up for Christmas is a Bestseller!
> ...


It's probably just an automated email that they forgot to turn off.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

That is just bizarre, Malicia. Like the site still exists in an alternate universe


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

What set off warning bells to me about their emails and their behaviour in the closing is their threats to authors that if hey didn't accept a fairly outrageous settlement (within days which did not allow time for consideration or consulting attorneys) that ARe would declare bankruptcy. But bankruptcy was exactly the appropriate thing to do if they had bills they couldn't pay so that funds were fairly distributed and that no funds were hidden. When they used it as a threat, it frankly made me question their honesty.

ETA And no, as someone who has seen this kind of thing quite a number of times, authors are not given priority. That is tough on authors certainly.


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## Lou Harpr (Nov 5, 2014)

Malicia, that's an automated message, and you're not the only one who has received it.

The cherry on the top of this shameful mess is that even the 10 cents on the dollar offer was only for books sold by December 27. However, ARe was open for three more days. Three days during which panicked readers rushed to cash in Christmas gift certificates.

In the real world a business can't just close with three days warning and tell their creditors, suppliers, and employees "Sorry, we can't pay you. I hope you don't mind. Oh, and please don't sue us; we don't want bankruptcy on our record."

Yes, businesses go out of business. But if you can't cover your obligations you declare bankruptcy and the courts go through your books and assets and find what can be salvaged for your creditors. It's called *accountability*. ARe's conduct was the very minimum unethical, and quite possibly fraudulent. Maybe they only went for a last quarter money-grab, but there are indications they might have been cooking the books for the last two years. I'd like to know the truth.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

If I had to guess, they're desperately trying to avoid bankruptcy to avoid having their personal credit being clobbered as a result.


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## Guest (Jan 8, 2017)

KelliWolfe said:


> If I had to guess, they're desperately trying to avoid bankruptcy to avoid having their personal credit being clobbered as a result.


They named themselves as an LLC. Presuming they are legitimately registered as such, most likely a bankruptcy won't do anything to her personal credit unless they signed a personal guarantee to get the business credit, signed their name instead of their business name to contracts, or used their personal credit cards to pay for things. Or, if her creditors can show she didn't maintain a clear line of separation between the two and there fore was not a true LLC. Otherwise, she's fine credit wise and her personal assets are safe from claiming.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

I had also shopped there occasionally for years and received no email as a customer. I knew about it from all the talk amongst authors and downloaded anything that might want in the future but the short notice was outrageous to everyone involved. That is one of the reasons I feel like there was something fishy in the whole episode.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Anma Natsu said:


> They named themselves as an LLC. Presuming they are legitimately registered as such, most likely a bankruptcy won't do anything to her personal credit unless they signed a personal guarantee to get the business credit, signed their name instead of their business name to contracts, or used their personal credit cards to pay for things. Or, if her creditors can show she didn't maintain a clear line of separation between the two and there fore was not a true LLC. Otherwise, she's fine credit wise and her personal assets are safe from claiming.


As small as ARe is, what are the odds that Lori had to personally guarantee the company credit cards? And what are the odds that those cards all got maxed out when they got into financial trouble and couldn't cover their bills? It does provide a plausible reason for wanting to avoid bankruptcy. A bankruptcy court would require treating unsecured creditors equally, rather than fully paying off the credit card companies at the expense of the other creditors.


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## Guest (Jan 9, 2017)

KelliWolfe said:


> As small as ARe is, what are the odds that Lori had to personally guarantee the company credit cards? And what are the odds that those cards all got maxed out when they got into financial trouble and couldn't cover their bills? It does provide a plausible reason for wanting to avoid bankruptcy. A bankruptcy court would require treating unsecured creditors equally, rather than fully paying off the credit card companies at the expense of the other creditors.


Originally the company had two owners though...which makes me wonder if there is a guarantee and if so, who is actually on it. She took over the company from her partner, but did she update those things? And, being around for 11 years, they may have gotten past the point of needing that guarantor for any new credit lines. Lots of unknowns, unfortunately.


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## Cactus Lady (Jun 4, 2014)

I do have to say, financial issues aside (and I feel terrible for everyone who's losing money here), I've been updating a bunch of books and publishing a new book, and not dealing with ARe's stupid clunky interface is making my life so much easier. So there's that, I guess.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

Some may be interested: http://kriswrites.com/2017/01/11/business-musings-all-romance-ebooks-visions-of-the-future-part-two/ I'm not sure if I agree, but I'll definitely think about these things.


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## Nate Hoffelder (Jun 9, 2014)

A class action lawsuit has been filed;
http://the-digital-reader.com/2017/01/15/class-action-suit-filed-romance-ebooks/


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2017)

Please re-read the post by 555aaa
Then read it again

Under "terms of service" we virtually have no rights.
What we need are "contracts" negotiated by both sides.
But that is something "we" would have to fight for. Which "we" are not willing to do.
Are collective backbones are as strong as the pros who fought for a screenwriters guild, an actors guild, an authors guild.

Without a contract with a clause stating that our royalties are "Held In Trust" and not considered part of the retailer/publisher operating funds, then we are wasting our time crying when a company goes belly up with a lot of debt.
If Amazon refuses to pay us for books (already sold) because of some NEW TOS rule, then we can't cry and stamp our feet.
Ditto PayPal and other services which can close our accounts in a heartbeat although we are owed money.

We just don't have any collective backbone.

555aaa has hit the nail on the head,


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## Rachel E. Rice (Jan 4, 2014)

It doesn't matter whether we have a leg to stand on. That doesn't mean we have to go quiet into the night. 
I wrote everyone I could, where I complained about ARe's larceny and misbehavior. I received a letter from the attorney generals' office in Florida three days ago. I knew they weren't going to do anything but inform me of whom I could contact, but nonetheless, I took the time to do it. It may not benefit me or the ones who lost money, but it may prevent someone else from doing this again to other authors. Or at least take the time to think about their reputations. 
It's like everything in life, you might not think you need something, someone, or money now when you have plenty, but you never know when you may need those things later. And because of a bad decision or reputation it may make it impossible to get.


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## SnickersBabe (Jan 9, 2017)

Maybe the reason they implemented a big sales push right before closing their doors was to: 

1. Raise extra cash to pay authors, or
2. To pad their pockets. 

A bankruptcy court would be able to get to the bottom of that.


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## Alan Petersen (May 20, 2011)

Rachel E. Rice said:


> It doesn't matter whether we have a leg to stand on. That doesn't mean we have to go quiet into the night.
> I wrote everyone I could, where I complained about ARe's larceny and misbehavior. I received a letter from the attorney generals' office in Florida three days ago. I knew they weren't going to do anything but inform me of whom I could contact, but nonetheless, I took the time to do it. It may not benefit me or the ones who lost money, but it may prevent someone else from doing this again to other authors. Or at least take the time to think about their reputations.
> It's like everything in life, you might not think you need something, someone, or money now when you have plenty, but you never know when you may need those things later. And because of a bad decision or reputation it may make it impossible to get.


I think what you did (getting the word out, writing the AG) is a better option than spending money on lawyers. Unless those authors can afford it or the lawyers agree to take on the case on a contingency-only fee basis (not usually an option in these types of cases) it's throwing good money after bad.


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## Phil J (Dec 28, 2016)

It depends on Florida's state laws. 

I know in PA, when I looked at LLCs, if I were a single owner LLC or if it could be proved that the other owners had no say in what was done and I violated the LLC, it came back to me and PA allows the offended party to go after personal assets.  LLCs do not protect individuals in PA.  It would revert to individuals and the individual could be sued as well as the entire business examined by regulators.  It would be pulled apart.  In these cases the LLC would act as a sole proprietor and my personal assets attached to pay bills that the LLC contracted.  The main advantage of the LLC would be for loans in PA if you are a single owner.

That being said, the money is never going to show up for this.  If it does, be pleasantly surprised.  But I would try to break the LLC esp if there is a group action so that she would get nailed with her behavior and the record follows her.  I think that might be one of the reasons they were saying "Please don't sue us because..."  The books would have to be taken apart if you sued or they went into bankruptcy which depending on what they did might lead to criminal charges..


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Alan Petersen said:


> I think what you did (getting the word out, writing the AG) is a better option than spending money on lawyers. Unless those authors can afford it or the lawyers agree to take on the case on a contingency-only fee basis (not usually an option in these types of cases) it's throwing good money after bad.


Well someone thinks it is worth taking them on. Good for them is my reaction. ARe screwed over readers, authors and advertisers in an absolutely unconscionable way.

From Writer Beware: "UPDATE 1/14/17: A class action lawsuit on behalf of writers and publishers has been filed in the Circuit Court in Pinellas County, Florida, against All Romance eBooks and its owner, Lori James, by the law firm of Byrd Campbell P.A. The press release is below."

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2016/12/all-romance-ebooks-sudden-closing-many.html


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Bravo. It's clear from earlier court filings that this was not a mere case of bad management.


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## 5ngela (Sep 7, 2015)

I hope they get to the bottom of this. What's wrong with the company and why it's happen. Still I doubt the authors and publishers would get any money.


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## Elizabeth S. (Oct 20, 2016)

Rachel E. Rice said:


> I wrote everyone I could, where I complained about ARe's larceny and misbehavior. I received a letter from the attorney generals' office in Florida three days ago. I knew they weren't going to do anything but inform me of whom I could contact, but nonetheless, I took the time to do it.


The AG's office will generally only get involved in consumer issues. If the people who bought and lost books complained, the AG might be more likely to at least look into the situation.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

Just got an email update.  Anybody else?  I'm still confused about the tax implications of this; sounds like they're including the pay I DIDN'T RECEIVE in the 1099s but I can't tell from teh wording.  

Anyone?


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## mdrake (Jul 14, 2016)

HSh said:


> Just got an email update. Anybody else? I'm still confused about the tax implications of this; sounds like they're including the pay I DIDN'T RECEIVE in the 1099s but I can't tell from teh wording.
> 
> Anyone?


Yeah... as far as I know (I'm not a CPA nor lawyer) 1099s are only supposed to list the amounts you were actually paid.

Your income is their deduction. A company claiming they paid you more than they actually did could be an honest mistake (eg, there is an outstanding invoice in their system got marked as "paid" but has not actually cleared because someone in accounting didn't actually mail the check before leaving for the winter holidays). It could also be shenanigans.

You need to march yourself down a tax CPA right away to figure out if it's an error, some bizarre twist of accounting, or possible shenanigans. You do NOT want to pay taxes on income you did not receive!


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

HSh said:


> Just got an email update. Anybody else? I'm still confused about the tax implications of this; sounds like they're including the pay I DIDN'T RECEIVE in the 1099s but I can't tell from teh wording.
> 
> Anyone?


are you referencing this: Finally, those who are due to receive a 1099 for the 2016 tax year will be receiving them via the post.

If you received any payments (eg 4th quarter 2015, and 1st, 2d, & 3d 2016) payments from them in 2016, they owe you a 1099 by law. This should only include amounts paid to you. Now, since they are apparently some level of shady, if they try to report more than they paid (to reduce their tax burden) and hope no one catches it, there's a line on the tax form for amounts reported but not paid (this is a deduction on your tax return). So just QA your deposits as I imagine it will be difficult AF to get a corrected form from them.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

I just got the email myself. I had more questions now than before. 
I mean, she talks about paying all the preorders back and refunding all the advertising costs. Then, goes on to say that almost everyone that excepted the 10% on the dollar "Deal" is going to be paid by Feb. 28. She seems to talk about that you need to update the info in your publishers file in order to receive your tax forms, since the 1042 forms will be emailed. At least the 1099s are going to be mailed out by the post.

I don't know whether to believe her or not. I know we've heard on the board some readers got preorder refunds and some didn't. I know that some authors got advertising refunds. But still, this whole thing just stinks. I don't trust her with any of my information.

I posted another post on my blog about this with the full email, and questions it has got me pondering. 
https://marilynvix.com/2017/01/31/all-romance-ebooks-closure-drama-continues/


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## Lyra Brooks (Feb 1, 2017)

I'm super frustrated by this for many reasons. Mostly because I made the bulk of my money at ARE. I know the erotica market isn't booming like when I started back in 2012 but ARE was a place where folks were willing to pay good money for gay billionaire gangbangs and that was a niche that needed filling. So despite the fact that I did receive emails regarding their seasonal promotions, I NEVER got the email saying they were closing. And I haven't gotten the most recent email about the tax situation. I never had a chance to take the $0.10 on the dollar offer from them. I'm also concerned that my 1099 isn't coming since they didn't even freaking email me. Luckily I didn't have time to publish much at the end of the year but I'd still like to see that $75.

I guess I have some questions...
1. How can I join this class action lawsuit? I want in. I never took the settlement. 
2. If I never get my 1099 and I didn't take the settlement, that means I report $0.00 in profits from the last quarter, right? Like others have mentioned, they better not suggest they paid me for the last quarter when they didn't. And since this payment would usually go out middle of Feb anyway, I'm counting all of it on my 2017 taxes anyway.


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## 555aaa (Jan 28, 2014)

Lyra Brooks said:


> <snip>
> 2. If I never get my 1099 and I didn't take the settlement, that means I report $0.00 in profits from the last quarter, right? Like others have mentioned, they better not suggest they paid me for the last quarter when they didn't. And since this payment would usually go out middle of Feb anyway, I'm counting all of it on my 2017 taxes anyway.


You report based on what you actually received. If you get a 1099 that has more on it than you received, request that the payor send you a corrected 1099. If you didn't get a 1099, you still file your own tax based on what you did get.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

Lyra Brooks said:


> I'm super frustrated by this for many reasons. Mostly because I made the bulk of my money at ARE. I know the erotica market isn't booming like when I started back in 2012 but ARE was a place where folks were willing to pay good money for gay billionaire gangbangs and that was a niche that needed filling. So despite the fact that I did receive emails regarding their seasonal promotions, I NEVER got the email saying they were closing. And I haven't gotten the most recent email about the tax situation. I never had a chance to take the $0.10 on the dollar offer from them. I'm also concerned that my 1099 isn't coming since they didn't even freaking email me. Luckily I didn't have time to publish much at the end of the year but I'd still like to see that $75.
> 
> I guess I have some questions...
> 1. How can I join this class action lawsuit? I want in. I never took the settlement.
> 2. If I never get my 1099 and I didn't take the settlement, that means I report $0.00 in profits from the last quarter, right? Like others have mentioned, they better not suggest they paid me for the last quarter when they didn't. And since this payment would usually go out middle of Feb anyway, I'm counting all of it on my 2017 taxes anyway.


I've been doing posts about the whole thing since it started back on Dec. 28 last year. Here's the basic link to the starting post. A few later posts also give updates. I've got links to the Facebook group that is keeping track of the law suit in Florida, and a lot of other links you mind find useful. I'm amazed how some people are still not getting the notices, and still just finding out.

So, try this link. It should have some answers or the start of some for you:
https://marilynvix.com/2016/12/29/all-romance-ebooks-are-closes-site/


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## Guest (Feb 2, 2017)

Everyone impacted by this should also talk to their tax professional. In some cases, monies not paid to you can be written off as bad debt. There are a lot of qualifiers, but since some folks have been substantially impacted by this, it may be an avenue worth pursuing.


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## Lyra Brooks (Feb 1, 2017)

I spoke with the woman starting the class action lawsuit and I did get my ARE 1099 today (though they sent it to my very very old address for some reason?). So that answers my questions, basically. I'll see how it goes with the lawsuit but I'm basically expecting to stop including ARE in my taxes this year, like this will be the last year I have any profit from them. According to the lady with the suit, the lawyer will eventually get to the point in the investigation where he's able to access ARE's records and then would be the point we went forward with the class action part. I feel like he'd either contact us directly or we'd see more press briefs about the lawsuit. Here's hoping I ever see my $75.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

Lyra Brooks said:


> I spoke with the woman starting the class action lawsuit and I did get my ARE 1099 today (though they sent it to my very very old address for some reason?). So that answers my questions, basically. I'll see how it goes with the lawsuit but I'm basically expecting to stop including ARE in my taxes this year, like this will be the last year I have any profit from them. According to the lady with the suit, the lawyer will eventually get to the point in the investigation where he's able to access ARE's records and then would be the point we went forward with the class action part. I feel like he'd either contact us directly or we'd see more press briefs about the lawsuit. Here's hoping I ever see my $75.


Hey, $75 is $75. I think a lot of us are still pursuing for the principal so it isn't done to Indies in the future. This has really sent shock waves through the romance and Indie community. And $75 is a lot to authors when we put our blood, sweat and tears into our books. We can't live off of freebies. So, it's important, no matter what the amount.


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

I received my 1099 from them today. Haven't sat down to verify it, though. Mailed from Florida.


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