Posted on 01/31/2019 9:42:03 AM PST by grey_whiskers
See the link. All references to the Kindle Books have been removed; the notice from Amazon to the publisher is interesting too. Someone at Amazon *appears* to,have wiped the publisher clean off their databases.
*PING*
any chance for context for those of us who don’t follow the politics of the publishing industry?
More info for the vast number of people who have no idea what you’re posting about:
You may have noticed that you can’t find any Castalia House ebooks on Amazon right now. That’s because Amazon shut down our KDP account on the basis of a wildly spurious claim of publishing material to which we do not have the necessary rights. We happen to have some VERY bad news for them on that subject….
The book in question? You guessed it. Corrosion: The Collapsing Empire again. This is the second attack on that book this month, as ten days ago, they pulled the book itself down for the sixth or seventh time due to claims that it was “misleading”.
From: Amazon.com [kdp-quality-assurance@amazon.com]
Sent: 21 January 2019 21:59
Subject: Notification from Amazon KDP
While reviewing the following books we found the title, cover image, descriptions and/or authors of the following book(s) are misleading to our customers:
Title: Corrosion (The Corroding Empire Book 1)
ASIN: B06XFQ24QC
As a result, the book(s) have been removed from sale from Amazon.
Not only have they shut down the account, but they sent us an email today declaring that they will not pay us any of the unpaid royalties, thereby screwing over each and every author we publish.
As last communicated in the message on January 21, 2019, we have identified the submission of content for which you did not have the necessary rights. Due to this and previous violations, we are terminating your account and your Agreement effective immediately.
As part of the termination process, we will close your KDP account and remove the books you have uploaded through our channels from sale on Amazon. Note that you are no longer eligible to receive unpaid royalties for sales that occurred prior to this termination.
Additionally, as per our Terms and Conditions, you are not permitted to open any new KDP accounts.
Of course, there were no previous violations that internal SJWs did not invent as we’ve been repeatedly cleared of the “misleading” charge for that book. Needless to say, we will not be taking this latest attack lying down. I won’t be surprised if the account is rapidly restored once we contact the manager who has been repeatedly dealing with this issue, especially since we were promised that it would never happen again after the last time.
Of course, this is precisely why we established the Arkhaven and Catalia Direct stores, because we knew better than to trust Amazon’s assurances that it would keep its SJWs under control. If you want to show support for Castalia and its authors, you can either write to Amazon and complain about this unwarranted action or pick up a print, ebook, or audiobook from one of our direct stores.
This is precisely why it is so important to a) build your own platforms and b) support the alternative platforms. This isn’t just about Castalia House because the same thing can be done overnight to any author or independent publisher who utilizes KDP. And if you’re a Castalia House author, please don’t panic, rest assured we are already in the process of taking care of things. But if you want to send an email to Amazon protesting their unwarranted removal of your books, please feel free to do so.
UPDATE: Amazon can’t even find the account information. It looks like whoever was responsible actually wiped all the data.
About Castalia House
http://www.castaliahouse.com/ch-page/
direct bookstore
https://www.aerbook.com/store/castalia/Castalia_Fiction/6072
Why did I publish through Castalia House?
Bayou Renaissance Man
Monday, May 23, 2016
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2016/05/why-did-i-publish-through-castalia-house.html
“any chance for context for those of us who don’t follow the politics of the publishing industry?”
YARP!!!
Is this the Castalia House, Finnish publishing house, or real estate in Castalia, Ohio.....
Nope, did not go to the article.
Cheers
KYPD
actually in the old days of the net, there were sites and web pages, and most people who were on the web had their own page. Thinking of getting my own page again and email to match.
Too complicated, but here’s a stab:
From: Amazon.com [kdp-quality-assurance@amazon.com]
Sent: 21 January 2019 21:59
Subject: Notification from Amazon KDP
While reviewing the following books we found the title, cover image, descriptions and/or authors of the following book(s) are misleading to our customers:
Title: Corrosion (The Corroding Empire Book 1)
ASIN: B06XFQ24QC
As a result, the book(s) have been removed from sale from Amazon.
Not only have they shut down the account, but they sent us an email today declaring that they will not pay us any of the unpaid royalties, thereby screwing over each and every author we publish.
As last communicated in the message on January 21, 2019, we have identified the submission of content for which you did not have the necessary rights. Due to this and previous violations, we are terminating your account and your Agreement effective immediately.
As part of the termination process, we will close your KDP account and remove the books you have uploaded through our channels from sale on Amazon. Note that you are no longer eligible to receive unpaid royalties for sales that occurred prior to this termination.
Additionally, as per our Terms and Conditions, you are not permitted to open any new KDP accounts.
Of course, there were no previous violations that internal SJWs did not invent as we’ve been repeatedly cleared of the “misleading” charge for that book. Needless to say, we will not be taking this latest SJW attack lying down. I won’t be surprised if the account is rapidly restored once we contact the manager who has been repeatedly dealing with this issue, especially since we were promised that it would never happen again after the last time.
Too complicated? That’s a damned corporate letter that tells us nothing. Are they stopping publication of something conservative?
Or is this a copyright thing? Or something else?
https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-pulls-castalia-house-book-for-ripping-off-john-s-1793533638
Here’s a good explanation. Sounds legit to me.
One more day to go, but I thought the same thing .... the SJW embedded in the internet highway.
Castalia House publised, more or less a parody of a John Scalzi sci-go novel, with a different title & author.
Apparently, if I read the description, an SJW within Amazon flagged Castalia House (a small but legit publisher) for “misleading customers” and banned them.
But Castalia House went over their head to a manager and got unbanned.
This time, it seems like the SJW has removed any record of Castalia House, from the company databases altogether, AND is refusing to pay royalties. That makes it breach of contract I guess, plus if the database was wiped, that has IRS implications for taxes.
Castalia House publishes non-converged fiction and non-fiction. SJWs within Amazon have gone after them in the past over a book called Corrosion. Corrosion is a shot at a little gamma author John Scalzi’s Collapsing Empire book. Scalzi got a fat contract for essentially copying Heinlein’s style (iirc), and spends more time spurging than writing.
It is another attempt to deplatform the Right. Something Amazon had been relatively good at avoiding. Hopefully this incident is just another “lone wolf” SJW.
Nope. It was done by a lone SJW and overruled by their managers.
Kindle doesn’t give out employee last names, but Castalia House has emails of the kerfuffle last time, which was in early 2017 IIRC.
That’s from 2 years ago, and isn’t legit.
Sure does, even the names of the authors are eerily similar......obvious rip off
Now the biggest bookseller is deciding what we should read or not read. Along with the search engines and the social media, I can declare that freedom of thought is being eliminated and is almost gone.
Not a bit. Stop talking out of your ass.
They’ve published Moira Grayland’s *The Last Closet*, an autobiographical expose of child sexualthe abuse by the daughter of Marion Zimmer Bradley...they’ve made a LOT of enemies.
I just checked and Amazon is selling the obvious and deceptive Transformers rip off “Transmorphers” still so their rationale for nuking this publisher seems a bit fishy. Then I saw that these guys were on the right side of the “Sad Puppies” thing and it all became clear: the lefties targetted them in revenge. Most SciFi is unreadable SJW nonsense now so I haven’t followed it closely but I do know about the Sad puppies stuff and yeah, now it makes sense.
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