If you are a writer of eBooks, you are familiar with Amazon's policy of allowing someone to keep an eBook one day short of a week and return it for full credit with no reasons needed other than you were dissatisfied. So basically the reader can read it, decide it wasn't one they'd want on their device and return it. Writer will then not get the money which doesn't cost writer anything as writer didn't have it anyway; but Amazon is out some money for those transactions.
Most of the time I haven't had that happen except in the UK system where I am pretty sure there are those who regularly buy the books, read and return them as a way of economizing. From what I had heard, they cannot do it forever as Amazon will cut them off if they begin to see a pattern. Not sure though how many they can get away with before that happens-- or do they just open a new account? I hope they aren't also the ones who have taken some of my books, copied them and then put them on a site that gives them away for free.
Obviously, some returns are just accidents where someone clicked a button, didn't mean to and immediately retracts it. That one makes the most sense as reading a book, then deciding you didn't like it, is cheating and the equivalent of going into a clothing store, buying a nice dress, tucking in the labels and wearing it to an affair, returning it the next day to get your money back. It's stealing whether someone wants to call it that or not. I've read a lot of books I hated or at least the part before I quit reading. I delete them from my device or throw them in the garbage. I wouldn't even think I had the right to ask for a refund since I did read it (most of it) and had chosen it.
There is another kind of return, which might reflect a deeper level of disdain. It's where someone buys a book, and then just before a week later, they return it. I had one of those last week and it's the kind where I wish writers were given the information on the reason given for the return-- not who but why. It could turn up on a vicious review but often in my experience, it hasn't. It just disappears from the list of sales leaving a mystery.
Were they gaming the system? Or did they get some kind of misleading feeling from the blurb, sample chapters and cover that led them to purchase it and then be actually angry at what it really was about. I can see how the recent book might've been the latter. It wasn't a book I had been promoting; so its sale had been a surprise when I saw it. Remember one thing about the author lists (if you aren't one) that refund shows up. Maybe the returner wants it that way as the ultimate insult.
Hidden Pearl is a story about cults. It involves a mystery of sorts but it's not a real fast moving, filled with adventure story-- more of a building to recognize what happened and then what can be done about it. It involves our own inner search. I suppose where it could mislead is using a term that is in the Bible because Jesus was giving a parable about how we should look for things of great value and not be duped by those of lesser. Saving me writing the essence behind it here, below is one of my dialogues on it.
I could imagine a fundamentalist or even someone in a cult might be offended by that book except it seems they'd have recognized what it was about before they ever bought it, let alone had it for days. Maybe it was just a scam that cost Amazon some money and left me scratching my head.
