Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

In response to pressure from the Author's Guild and others, Amazon is tightening up its return policy for ebooks. It had been that books could be returned for a full refund in 14 days; now refunds will apparently be given only in cases where no more than 10% of the book has been read.
Personally, I have never returned a book. I can't imagine reading a book - taking advantage of full access of what I'd paid for - and then trying to get my money back. Of course, I also can't imaging taking 2 whole weeks to read a book.

You can't imagine taking two weeks to read a book? Really? Who has that kind of spare time?

Interesting to hear about this. I would imagine the old returns policy for e-books might be a great way for piracy to occur... There have been a number of times when I've stopped reading a book because I discovered it simply didn't interest me after I'd read some of it. But I'd never have thought of returning the book. e-Books are mostly cheap enough that I wouldn't even bother.

It's a great step, but it will be interesting to see how it is implemented and if it reduces the problem. Returns are an issue for authors whose books are on all retailers, as opposed to exclusive to Amazon and in the KU programme. Some readers with KU subscriptions will buy, read & return books not in KU (and others are taught how to do it in reader groups and in viral TikTok videos). From looking at my sales reports, I can see the pattern of sales and returns as customers read/return their way through an entire series.

Returns were even worse on Audible, who for years actively encouraged listeners to "exchange" an audio book to reuse their credit. That resulted in royalties being deducted from the author. While due to legal pressure Audible have reduced the return window, listeners are still abusing returns to reuse their monthly credit multiple times and authors are penalised.

I have only "returned" an ebook if I accidentally ordered the wrong one, and immediately reverse the purchase.

The whole process seems really unfair. It just makes me more determined to go wide.