In case anyone remotely gives a damn, my website : fabianblackromance.com is set to, or already has gone offline.
I was relying on royalties from Q4 of my All Romance Ebooks sales to pay my site fees and domain fees for another year. However, Lori James, the CEO of ARe decided she deserved my money more than I did when she did a runner with everyone’s royalty payments in order to (allegedly) fund her luxury homes and rich lifestyle. One can only hope the despicable, thieving cow develops dry rot and woodworm, and in her houses too. So, to continue, in these hard times I had to make a choice as to whether I could afford to keep paying site and domain fees. I can't at this moment in time, it's an unacceptable luxury, so its bye-bye fabianblackromance.com
I'm not sure how it fully works when you stop paying, but you might be able to still access my site at a sub domain: http://fabianblackromance.synthasite.com/
I'm not sure how much of it Yola will delete. The info they gave was unclear. Time will tell.
It's been fun, and hopefully I'll still write and publish stuff at retail hosting venues such as Amazon and Smashwords (fingers crossed they don't double cross their author partners like dear old Lori and so many others have.) I’ll update with any relevant news here on blogger as and when.
UPDATE 05/05/17
My website can be accessed at subdomain: https://fabianblackromance.yolasite.com/
It seems it remains much the same for readers at this moment in time, but means I have a limited amount of file space to use in comparison to before and of course I've lost the 'prestige' of having my own domain. Also if any problems arise then I can basically fuck off as Yola won't help now I'm not paying them. Oh well. Never mind. On another subject, I am still in processs of writing Hope House as a complete entity rather than a serial, for reasons I stated in another post.
Showing posts with label lori james. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lori james. Show all posts
Wednesday, 19 April 2017
Monday, 2 January 2017
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
200x300.jpg)
