Thanks for opening the discussion and allowing us to air our opinions. 🙂

As an author who is enrolled in KU (and gets lots of page reads that way), it’s not only wide authors the return policy affected. I had an uptick in returns in that period. It’s been speculated (and I think there’s some truth to it) that KU readers and non-KU readers (people who purchase) are two different types. I do get more KU reads than sales because my genre is KU heavy. But there are some people who don’t want to subscribe to KU for various reasons (the 9.99 monthly fee being one of them). KU does favor whale readers, true, but again, there might be other factors involved in an individual’s decision to participate.

But I will agree with your speculation that this might increase the number of people subscribing to KU if they can’t easily read and return. That would be great for KU authors (as we get paid for page reads). For wide authors, I’m not convinced it would hurt them. Maybe, maybe not. As mentioned in the article, other retailers have a much stricter return policy, so in actuality Amazon is simply aligning itself with the practices of the other retailers.

As far as the 10% and the Look Inside. Those are proportional to the books overall length. For shorter books it does not mean the whole darn book will be available. For example, if a book is 200 pages, 10% would be 20 pages. If a book is 100 pages, 10% would be 10 pages. So the only “advantage” to books which are longer is that the reader gets a little more material by which to judge.

There are ways to avoid your front matter from being shown first in the Look Inside. When the Look Inside is used on one of my books, it opens to Chapter 1. Also, a Kindle book, when opened, typically opens to Chapter 1. Some of this depends on how the book is formatted, so authors may have to be diligent about formatting their books properly.

I’m not sure anyone claimed to get thousands of returns a month–only that the proportion to their “normal” returns had increased. I know I did see a significant increase during that time period, then it died down again.

You may be right and this won’t make any difference. We can only wait and see. But I’m a little more hopeful than you are. Perhaps I’ll be disappointed. Luckily I make enough sales and page reads that even the uptick in returns doesn’t hurt me too much. But I do find the practice of reading the entire book and returning offensive.

I think perhaps in addition to certain authors who TikTok influencers may promote/follow, the practice of read and return could also be genre dependent. I write historical romance, and the readers are whale readers. So it’s no trouble for many of them to read a book a day, which is well within Amazon’s 7-day return period. So the new time limit would probably not deter those particular readers. Romance is also a genre that is heavily represented on TikTok (to my understanding).

Volume of an author’s sales is probably also a factor. If an author isn’t selling many books to begin with, proportionally there probably wouldn’t be a lot of returns (although that being said, any return would have a greater detrimental affect on the author).

I did notice a larger number of returns after the April Tiktok “challenge” (or whatever you could call it). I don’t think I had ever had a return for this particular series until then. Not only did I have returns on the first book in the series (which we could write off as this wasn’t their cuppa) but also the second book, and third. Now, that seemed strange to me. Not to say you can’t like one book of a series and not another, but typically, if you like a writer’s style enough to read one book in a series, and you purchase a second, you will most likely finish it. Again, no proof, but it did seem strange to me.

I do agree that 10% isn’t enough to determine if a book is to your liking. As you mentioned, you get that much in the “Look Inside” feature (although not everyone takes advantage of that feature). But 20% seems very reasonable to me. I would be completely on board with that.

Might we expect negative reviews as fallout from some readers who can no longer click a button? Maybe, but I suspect not. Time will tell on that. But I would hope those would be few and far between (I’m optimistic to say the least).

I think what bothers me the most about this whole thing is that readers don’t seem to understand that they are not hurting Amazon. They’re hurting authors. And if they’ve read a book all the way through–and the next–and the next, then return them, they’re punishing an author they may very well enjoy. And that’s simply wrong.

About who this affected, from what I see it was a small percentage of authors unless many just didn’t say anything. Almost every author I saw except maybe a few in two Facebook groups said they had an issue. Everyone else said they didn’t see a surge. I didn’t see a surge. I rarely get returns. The most I get is 1-2 returns and my backlist is huge. This seemed like it was hitting so many but I feel like it became a big deal because authors banded together but not because this was hitting everyone. If you got out of Facebook and off Twitter, you’d find authors who hadn’t even heard of this TikTok return thing. I was shocked at how many hadn’t heard it was going on and many readers hadn’t either. This reminds us that not everyone is glued to social media like people think. There is a life outside of Facebook, Twitter, etc., and just because something is being talked about on these sites, doesn’t mean this is what everyone is experiencing or knows about. I went to plenty of writing forums on Reddit and outside of Facebook/Twitter and many authors had no ideas about this and hadn’t experienced it.

Another thing, it seemed to only affect wide authors, which is understandable. Since you can borrow KU books, KU authors don’t get many returns if at all. And you get to keep reads regardless.

You made a good point about will this affect buying. If this return change actually works and Amazon implements it than yes, you will see some readers upset by it. I already have. Some think this will make it harder for legit readers to return and others say ebooks are too high so they are going into KU. I was speaking to some wide authors who said they were concerned that if Amazon is too strict that they will lose readers but I guess if some were just reading and returning anyway it shouldn’t make a difference. But some are worried that legit readers will be turned off from being wide books now. That was an interesting point. I’ve seen a few readers say that ebooks are too high and if they can’t return they will go into KU.

Me, I am still on the side of not believing this will do much but we’ll see.

As for 10%, this will affect books differently and unfairly because if a book is short, 10% might be the whole darn book. If a book is longer, it might help those authors but for short story authors this isn’t fair. They should implement the percentage based off length. Short stories should be maybe 3-5%. How is it fair to have this where short stories can still be so easily returned but longer ones benefit? If this is for all authors then it needs to be fair.

I also wonder if now authors will start stuffing their books with front matter to take up as much of the 10% as they can so readers can’t return easily. I am with you, readers should be able to have legit returns. I don’t believe there should be no ebook returns. I’ve bought ebooks and been screwed by the author’s misrepresentation (or lying) and the book wasn’t what was advertised or the author padded the book with junk making you think it was a novel when it was a short story with tons of other stories in the back. Or the formatting is so bad in some sections you can’t read the book. And yes, with 1-click, I’ve accidentally bought a book or two and had to return it. So there are legit readers. Nobody should be stuck with a book when they were gypped into reading it or something is wrong with it. That’s not fair to readers either and I am a customer as well as an author. I wanna be able to return if I need to. My feeling is this might punish legit readers more than the serial returners because the scammers always find a way to keep doing what they are doing. It’s always the good people who get punished especially if Amazon doesn’t do this well.

I won’t see any difference since I rarely get returns but for those claiming they were getting thousands a month, hope this helps them. Also, might be better to stay off TikTok if this is the kind of toxic, anti-author stuff that’s going on there.

Oh, and the Look Inside feature isn’t good for shorts. A short won’t show you anything but the front matter. That’s another thing Amazon should’ve figured out by length. Great post!

Thank you for an insightful look. And allowing me to respond.