And the third world slack-jaws they use as a customer service have no fucking idea how to fix it. What's worse is that Amazon keeps your audio rights on your books for 7 years.... So after these authors dump tens of thousands of dollars into producing audio versions of their books they can't even sell them elsewhere.

Anyway we got a petition up to get their accounts reinstated.

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/672/842/958/demand-amazon-reinstate-jason-cipriano-and-michael-scott-earle-immediately/

I saw this yesterday. MSE may publish a lot of books but they are generally pretty decent. Amazon made a big mistake in banning his books and I hope they correct it soon.

That's not quite the whole story of why it happened, but yes, Amazon has a nasty habit of banning authors without warning and without explanation.

Sell the audio book elsewhere. If amazon comes after you then claim those rights are contingent on them selling it for those 7 years.

I literally just finished Death Ship from MSE this morning.  What in the world are they doing?  I read his Tamer series, etc as well.

More information has come out recently. Basically so far Amazon has admitted that it was a false positive by some new algorithm they are using, and they will try to have his account up within 2 weeks.... for MSE that's an eternity. He lives off of his book royalties so it's basically like he was forced on a month long leave with no pay at this point, and he supports a family of 4.... So this is really fucked up.

The same false positive system hit me as well last month except I didn't get banned just fined. They pulled over $1000.00 dollars out of what will be my August paycheck and said I had illegitimate reads page reads. I don't have illegitimate reads.

If he ever gets reinstated check out his book "Monster Empire," it's the best book he has written since Lion's Quest.

Welp, looks like the story is going on the news.

MSE is doing some shady shit with copyright claims right now, so I am not as empathetic as I might otherwise be.

No he isn't. He is copyrighting his series titles (Like ALL tradionally published series do, literally every single one) and stopping people attempting to make copy-cat versions of his books.

You can read more about it here.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/781495321956934/permalink/1497039597069166/

Rough example here.

MSE has a book called Dragon Slayer with a plot EERILY similar to this one, almost identical typography (MSE's is yellower, that's the only difference), and the art is in the same fashion.

https://www.amazon.com/Warrior-Monster-Slayer-Monsterworld-Saga-ebook/dp/B07D38587Q/ref=sr_1_14?s=digital-text&;ie=UTF8&qid=1532130942&sr=1-14&keywords=dragon+slayer

No, if you read the actual copyright claim, it's much broader than that.  He's trying to trademark all covers that have silhouettes of men standing with an axe/tomahawk/hatchet in their hand.  It's ridiculous.

That copyright was cancelled 2 days ago, it was a misfiling from MSE's lawyer and the second MSE found out it was so vague he cancelled the filing and publicly apologized.

Okay, sorry, I hadn't heard about the cancelling of the filing.

From MSE

"Hey all.

I wanted to post a bit about the various Trade Mark stuff that is going on- mostly to address the trade dress TM that I filed, but also to talk a bit about my reputation and suspension.

Yesterday I received about 2,543 or so threatening PMs/emails about the trade dress TM. This is the one where I own the design of the cover.

At first, I replied to all of these with: "What is your problem? The TM application has all the specimens of my covers and fonts and such- I don't want my customers to be confused by other authors trying to copy my design titles, but it's not like I can sue every author in the world for having a dude on the cover with a weapon."

The response was "No, this is too broad. Also, I want you to die in a fire."

So I talked to my lawyer today. Ends up that he DID file it too broad. It isn't at all relegated to my specific fonts, etc... I asked him to pull that TM ASAP. Obviously, I don't want to go to war with the world- and authors should be able to have people with weapons on the cover. This thing would have never gone through the way it was. It was also an asshole move, I totally agree and it wasn't my intent. My intent was to protect my brand.

I am still filing TMs for my series names. These are profitable series that are part of my brand. I've heard the arguments of "these are common words, you can't TM them!" and "This is just a cash grab by a loser author!" Those arguments aren't very useful. My series make me money, and I'm TMing a SERIES NAME. Not a word. Not an individual book title. You might think it is unfair that I'd want to TM them, but do you also think it's unfair that Twilight Saga, Game of Thrones, and Hunger Games are Trade Marked? Why can't an independent author trademark their series names? I'm not saying you all should applaud me, but I kind of doubt a traditional publishing house would be getting the same avalanche of hate I am.

"But a certain other author has filed C&Ds to take books off Amazon with a certain word on it! You'll do the same!"

Again- I'm filing for a series name. NOT A WORD OR A NOVEL TITLE. Chris Fox has a Destroyer novel, so does Shannon Mayer. I can't use my SERIES TM to take down their books. That's not how this works. There is currently another series named "The Destroyer" written by Warren Murphy. My lawyer feels that I might not get that TM because of that older series, but even if I do, I can't take that series down (nor would I want to) because it's way older than mine and a completely different genre. From what my lawyer has told me, TMs can't really be used to take down existing stuff. They just block new imitations that could confuse customers.

"So if you own the TM, no one can ever write a Dragon Slayer series? That's horrible."

No one can write a Twilight Saga, Game of Thrones, or Hunger Games series either. Look, despite a certain website you might have seen with a landscape of cleverly photo shopped "Dragon Slayer" covers intended to outrage you, I don't know of a single SERIES of books named Dragon Slayer that has ever been written. There might have been one back in the day, but I couldn't find a SERIES named that.

My books almost always hit sub 50 in the store when they are released. I'm one of the most successful independent authors in the world, and if no one has written a "Dragon Slayer" series in the last 70+ years, why would they want to write one now? Is there a chance they might want to coattail on my success? Confuse my customers and get extra sales? Has something like that ever happened before in the history of business? Yeah, these are common words in the fantasy genre, but they aren't that common- or there would have been dozens of Dragon Slayer series out there.

"But you're account is suspended right now. You are a slime ball and have been cheating the system."

I can understand this mentality. When something bad happens to someone in the same peer group, people tend to look for reasons why that person was a villain and "not doing the right thing" so that they feel safer about their own position and can sleep at night.

Here is the thing:
- I wasn't stuffing. A good chunk of you have read my books, and you know I wasn't.
- I wasn't click farming. I have an organic NL of 20,000 people and a massive FB fan group. Someone could have pulled a hit out on me and hired one of these companies to do it, but I have never cared about fake rank. I want to build a real business providing great entertainment to my fans.
- I had spaces in my ebook formatting and space between paragraphs, but so do/did most major authors. Michael Anderle swore by putting the spaces in because his readers loved it. As far as a bunch of people have tested, extra spaces don't change page count.

So I got the letter from Amazon Monday saying I was "involved in the manipulation of our KDP services including Kindle Unlimited" Then my books were gone 5 minutes after.

I still have no idea why, and I was the 53rd best selling author in Amazon's entire store.

Maybe you think I'm an asshole (and I'll admit that I am pretty salty sometimes), but I got no phone call warning, I got no email saying "Hey, you are one of our top producers. We see something weird on your account. Let's work together to fix it", I got nothing but this and the possible end of my career. They haven't answered my emails, or my phone calls.

I have a fan that works in Amazon corporate, and he's asked around- apparently my latest book was flagged for copyright infringement, and they apparently have a new system that is scanning books and making all sorts of false positives. He thinks my account might be up in a week, but that might not be true, he might not be talking to the right people, and I'm trying not to get my hopes up.

I don't know what happened. If I did something wrong, I don't know what I did, and I wasn't given a chance to fix it. Could this happen to you? I don't know. It happened to me, and my career might be over because of it. You all can feel I did something to deserve this, but I don't think I did, and it would have been real nice to get a warning phone call from someone at Amazon before they decided to gut me.

A bunch of authors have gotten suspended/banned in the last few weeks. Were they all doing something wrong? I don't know, but the situation is terrible, and the whole "they all deserved it" mentality is not helping the community a lot of people have been accusing me of trying to destroy.

Anyway- share this in other groups if you want to. Thanks for reading."

Just read on Facebook that MSE received his permanent ban notice from Amazon. No reason given. Just "Because we can."

Yeah I read that too.  I wonder if he goes through a third-party like an indie small press if he can get back in.  He's big enough that he could start one, put a relative or friend in charge and then have them distribute his books to Amazon.

Not sure why Amazon thinks using a middle man publishing company would be better than self published but it looks like they do pay attention when twenty thousand fans start complaining, cancelling subscriptions and contacting reporters.

Michael-Scott Earle
Admin · 3 hrs
Great news guys.

Amazon is allowing me to go with another publisher. I've been talking with a few on the side, so I'll figure out which one I'm going to go with either tomorrow or early next week. It will probably take a few days to get all the lawyering done, rights transferred, books re-uploaded, reviews moved over, series stuff added, etc... I'm thinking Death Ship 4 will be out the 12ish and Tamer the week after. Might be an additional week depending on all the paperwork.
Thank you all so much for all the love and support. It's been a tough two weeks, but the words have encouragement have helped my wife and I get through this. I'm going to call Luke and Nick to get the audio books started again.

Feel like a 300 pound weight is off my chest.

Thanks again. Time to get back to the stories.

EDIT- I dunno if the books are going to be in KU or not. I have to talk to which every publisher I'm working with.

At a guess, because someone else would theoretically be responsible for marketing and formatting.

The news story just went live.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-self-published-authors-books-banned-no-reason-134606120.html

Making it hot for you:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-self-published-authors-books-banned-no-reason-134606120.html

Today should be the second and final day of Arbitration for Michael-Scott Earle with Amazon. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

MSE just posted an update. The second day of Arbitration went well, but now there is a four week wait for a decision to be made.

Amazon like Google and other book sites uses algorithms to direct you best sellers.  They also use algorithms to adjust the popularity of books.

From Michael Scott-Earle's Facebook page:

Summary:
- I lost the court case. Amazon has a rock solid contract that is at will, and the judge decided to rule in their favor.

- I still feel good about the court stuff. I had a chance to talk and I felt like the judge listened to me. End of the day, it's Amazon's playground and they can kick anyone out for any reason.

- I'm going to be selling my books directly on my website. You'll be able to buy them and read them on your Kindle. I'll also make more money off of each sale than I would have on Amazon.

- Future books will be financed through Kickstarter.com . This will help determine which series I can/should work on and help get new fans because of Kickstarter's viral capabilities. I'm starting with Tamer 6.

- I'm going to have another thread asking for you guys to help me out with Kickstarter tier ideas. I'm really going to need your help setting it up and spreading the word.

- I should be able to do audio books through cdbaby.com This is also much more lucrative for me than through Amazon. I'll have tiers in the Kickstarter so we can fund the recordings.

- I'll probably have to use new narrators, but I'll pick great ones, and re-record earlier books so you can get used to their voices.

- There will be chances to buy paper and hard back copies of the books, and there will be chances to buy them singed through the kickstarter.

- I'll let you all know when the website and Kickstarter are set up. It's been a year of not working, and I'm anxious to get you guys some books again.

None of this makes sense to me.  There are other markets out there besides Amazon and if this guy really has the fan base to sell books off his website, why doesn't he just bring them over to Kobo instead?  True, it's not as big of a market as Amazon, but it's bigger than his fucking website.  He could put his books on Kobo, B&N, Google Play and Apple iBooks and advertise them there and if he really has this huge audience that's going to follow him to his website, they'd follow him to one of those sites, too.  Plus he'd draw in other customers from those markets.
Also, his audio books are still available on Amazon so why does he have to use different narrators?

He has 20,000 subscribers on his email list. 8000 members on closed Facebook group. Over 800 on Facebook live session last night discussing court ruling.

If he sells direct on his website, he gets almost 100% of the purchase price. The other online ebook sellers take a cut and don't add much value.

He's talking about re-recording the audio books to use more than one narrator, male and female, rather than a single male narrator like he used in the past. Also, the narrators he used are closely associated with Amazon, very expensive, and have a large backlog that doesn't work for the volume of new books he publishes.

Hope it works out for him. Having Amazon in near complete control of ebook publishing is not a good thing.

The thing is, he could still sell his books on those other platforms AND on his website.  Kobo, B&N et al do not make any demands of exclusivity.  By not offering them on other platforms, he's robbing himself of an audience.

His loyal fans will buy off his website.  What the other markets do is give him the opportunity to make NEW fans, which selling only off of his website does NOT do.

MSE is using Kick Starter to judge the interest in his new books to know whether it is worth his time to write the books and as a source of advertising for new readers. So far he has raised over $10,000 in pledges in less than an hour for his first book on Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/michaelscottearle/tamer-king-of-dinosaurs-book-6-ebook-print-and-audio?ref=project_build

The more I see what he's doing, the less I believe his side of the story, honestly.   If I were somehow unfairly and unjustly kicked off Amazon, I would two thing immediately: one, see if my publisher wanted to re-release some of my indie stuff under their company and two, immediately put it all on Kobo, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, etc.. so it could keep making me money.

He raised $25,000 in pledges from fans today in the first three hours on Kickstarter
for his next book. He is a good writer with many fans. I really don't think he would have
wasted a year and $60,000 in legal fees going through arbitration with Amazon if he was really cheating the system. I don't think his fans would have waited over a year for him to start publishing again if he wasn't a legitimate author with strong demand from his readers.

None of that addresses why he didn't immediately take steps to publish his work elsewhere.  If he's losing all that money, if he's paying that much in lawyer's fees, you'd think it would be even MORE important to publish his work elsewhere and get some money coming in.

Not saying you would know the why of it, just saying the fact he didn't makes it seem more suspicious.  Because if your fans are that fanatic to give you that much money, you'd think they'd be willing to follow you to another epub medium.  It costs a lot less to buy a cheap tablet and install a Kobo reader on it than to give the guy $25,000.  Why not get your work back out there earning money immediately if you earned all that money honestly from fans that devoted?

I think MSE is just trying to figure out what he should do next now that Amazon is not an option. He has said that the other existing ebook distributors offer very little market reach compared to Amazon and they take a significant percentage of the profits from each book sold.  His kickstarter fundraiser for the next book has received over $50,000 in pledges in just four days.

Is he still trying to trademark the "Tamer" title?

MSE's kickstarter just passed the $60,000 mark in pledges for his next book, which will be the first new book since his work was banned on Amazon a year ago.

Link to Kickstarter

Michael-Scott Earle's first kickstarter just ended last night and he received $79,664 in pledges for his next Tamer novel. It's nice to see an underdog win after Amazon tried to destroy his career. I hope he has great success in the future.