Happy Monday! It’s time for Did You Know.
Did you know Amazon is changing their Kindle book return policy?
It’s true.
The current Amazon Kindle book return policy allows someone to cancel an accidental book order within seven days. The problem is it doesn’t matter whether they have read the book or not. People have been buying and reading books, then “cancelling” the order, effectively returning it and getting a refund. This behavior has been encouraged by people on social media as a way to get free books, with TikTok content creators being labeled the primary source. But not only are the authors and publishers losing the sale and subsequent royalties, they are often charged a restocking fee and so are losing money. Whether or not people want to acknowledge it, this is theft.
According to the Authors Guild, who approached Amazon alongside the Society of Authors regarding this issue earlier this year, the new Amazon policy will place restrictions on returning a book when over 10% of it has been read. A customer who wants to return an ebook after reading more than 10% will have to send in a customer service request, which will be reviewed by a representative to ensure the return request is genuine and complies with Amazon’s policies against abuse.
We hope this new policy will be a deterrent against and protect authors from book return abuse going forward. We applaud Amazon for hearing the indie community and author organizations and making changes. The new policy is supposed to go into effect by the end of this year.
Stitched Smile Publications 