The Great All Romance Ebook Heist

JANUARY 2017

The Hope House stories are currently unavailable to buy in serial form. They were distributed almost exclusively via All Romance Ebooks. As of 31/12/16 the All Romance Ebook store is no more. The site closed. It’s owner, Lori James, has left authors, publishers and customers in the lurch. She is refusing to pay out thousands of dollars in owed commission for the last quarter of 2016. She has also refused to allow authors and publishers to pull their files from the site and did not give customers time to download their purchased ebooks or spend their credits. Who knows what she intends to do with the IP that does not belong to her. She’s a thoroughly dishonest woman. I hope the law brings her to account, but I won’t hold my breath.

I’m sad and disheartened by the loss of yet another outlet for indie authors, and under another ugly cloud of deceit and theft. Lori James isn’t the first to betray the trust placed in her. It makes me wonder about my future as an indie writer. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find places to sell my work. Not everyone likes buying from Smashwords, which leaves Amazon, not my favourite outlet to be honest. Amazon claims to champion indie authors, but in the end I think it will prove to be the enemy of independent authors such as myself. It wants us to virtually give our work away and seems intent on inventing ways to pay less and less commission. I’m a bit tired of being forced to offer my work for a pittance and also tired of the way Amazon allows customers to read and return ebooks for a full refund, thus leaving authors out of pocket.

The indie self-publishing revolution brought enormous diversity to the book market making available an incredible range of genres, including GLBT fiction among others. Where will all the gay lovers, vampires and shape shifters go now? What will happen to romance kinkster fiction? I fear that soon we will be in a situation where once again we can only read what the ‘big publishers’ want us to read, and that’s sad.

People like Lori James seemed to offer indie authors and publishers a wonderful platform to get our work out there and selling. The reality is very different. She, and others before her, simply saw an opportunity to fleece the writers who placed trust in them. At the moment it looks like Smashwords owner, Mark Coker, is the only one still flying a flag of honour for independent writers.

I think 2017 will see many independent writers question whether it is worth carrying on writing. I think a lot will decide to give up.


For those interested in the ARe scandal you can read more here:
BLOGCRITICS

Update to 'Authors Have Feelings Too.'

Thank you to all who posted comments on my ‘Authors Have Feelings Too’ post. I appreciate the kind words of support. I feel I owe you an update.

Last year was a tough year for me on several fronts. My confidence did take a serious knock and hasn’t yet fully recovered. To add to my demoralisation sales of my books have slowed to the point of inertia, as I haven’t produced anything new and in order to stay ahead you have to keep churning out the goods.  I have never been able to handle the conveyor belt method of production.

More and more people have now jumped aboard the indie self-publishing bandwagon, including mainstream publishers who at first scorned it and declared it to be a passing fad. It is now very difficult to get yourself noticed so to speak, especially if you don’t have a big advertising budget. Some of the ebook retail sites, not satisfied with taking a meaty chunk of commission from every single sale, have gotten a wee bit greedy IMHO and have shoved their ad rates through the roof and beyond the pockets of mere indie mortals such as myself.

It seems to me that the day of the true indie author may already be in decline. It was a short-lived reign. Things will go back as they once were with agents and big publishers cornering and controlling the market and calling the shots on what, and who, will be published. I’d love to be wrong. Indie self-publishers have been unfairly castigated and condemned as bringing low quality porn into the marketplace. They have also brought more diversity than has ever been seen and introduced entire new genres to scores of readers.

Anyway, leaving aside publishing politics, to cap it all I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in November last year and am still struggling to cope with the repercussions on both my physical and mental health. Visits to the hospital to see various consultants seem to take up a good deal of time.

Let’s take a moment to be upbeat, instead of a bloody moaning old misery, and say that I am trying to get back into the writing zone. I want to finish The Postcard series and pen other stories too. I’m trying to discard the notion that high sales are the only mark of success and that reviews (aka personal opinions) somehow matter in the great scheme of things. I’ve accepted that I will never be able to make a living from writing as such, and that’s okay. Writing is about the joy of words, the pleasure of creating characters and taking them on a journey.

So, in between hospital visits and chronic fatigue I hope the muse will be able to pencil in a date to visit and inspire me once again. It would be nice to have the words flowing out again instead of having them crawling like a geriatric slug. Fingers crossed! :-) Take care everyone. 

Fabian Black

Submissive Sharks and Sexy Peaches

 DD Week

Read my interview with wonderful BDSM romance author J.A.Rock.