This New TikTok Trend Is Damaging Your Favorite Authors

PSA: Think before you return

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash

My pen name’s Instagram page has exploded with posts about Tik Tok’s new trend of readers returning books on Amazon.

A recent post said, “Support Indie Authors & Don’t Be a D*ck. DO BETTER.”

Amazon readers are reading books all the way through & then returning them.

I think, for the most part, this is not to intentionally hurt authors.

But the truth is that this does hurt authors. Especially indie authors.

First, let’s start with how much money is made on a single Amazon ebook.

Depending on how much an author charges, they either receive 35% or 75% royalty on that book. The 70% royalty is available for books priced between $2.99 and $9.99.

So, if a reader buys a $3.99 ebook, reads it, then returns it, you are essentially stealing $2.79 from that author.

Now, that may not seem like a big deal. But what if this happens more than once?

An author that I follow reported that she had 150 ebook returns on one of her full-length novels…