A friend of mine pointed this story out to me: All Romance E-books closing down and ripping off its authors
The gist of the story is this: the website, All Romance E-books (ARe) is closing down as of 12/31/2016. That would be bad news no matter what – I love the way that ebooks and self-publishing have given us such a range of authors and genres and new titles. Anything that takes away those avenues both for readers and authors, is a bad thing. But the way they are going about it is particularly egregious:
- They are not paying authors the royalties they are due, and are offering them a settlement of 10 cents on the dollar;
- Authors who have used their publishing service can either be paid their royalties or regain their intellectual property rights, not both;
- Readers who bought books and stored their libraries on the ARe website will lose it all if they have not downloaded their libraries by the end of the year.
Even worse, ARe is continuing to sell books! They have said that they are not going to pay their authors, but they are still selling books and collecting money from customers. Unconscionable.
I hope that the authors involved get legal assistance – something like this can’t be legal!