I have struggled to get my title out vs. the Amazon goliath. When I looked at Booksurge, they told me that I couldn’t do my book in full colour, being that it’s over 100 pages. My book is about colour and light adjustments – how could I not do it in colour?

Best of luck to you. I’d love to see you win this one.

The rot has gone further than you know.

I struggled to sort out my title rights for my new book when I migrated it from an affiliate to the Booklocker. I was already with the company when it became an affiliate and changed its price structure, also loading its shipping to authors to the point where I could not longer afford to continue processing my book.

The affiliate initially blocked the title migration by saying that it would ‘retire’ not ‘remove’ the title from its system.

Subsequently, I have been told by the affiliate that it would close my account, apparently also now a contested issue for writers. I was told that the company would ‘remove’ my existing title A Woman’s Book Of Allegory, not ‘retire’ it.

This means that the affiliate agreed to take the title out of its system. This means that the title should not appear either on the affiliate’s website or on Amazon.com.

May I suggest that you enter the title into your Amazon search. You will discover that while I have decided to no longer publish A Woman’s Book of Allegory just to retain my writer’s rights, Amazon is still advertising it as ‘out of stock’ and promises to notify readers when it is in stock. This means that interested readers are led to believe that the book is still in circulation when it is not.

The implications for writers wanting to migrate their high-end sales books to mainstream publishers are myriad. Readers associate content with titles and Amazon has first dibs on telling its customers that the title is out of stock even if it is being published elsewhere or is, in my case, off the market.

The underlying game plan is far wider and more dangerous to writers and the publishing industry than stated in the antitrust lawsuit.