This applies to a lot of sites running on a a freemium business plan (for those unfamiliar with the term, a freemium model is when a service offers basic access for free, and then tries to up-sell you on premium features).
Most people are probably familiar with the concept: some new site shows up. It’s pretty cool, it’s free. You start using it. As you do, it’s constantly reminding (or outright nagging) you that there are lots of extra bonus features that you could get if you just sign up for a monthly fee (and get two months free if you sign up for a year!).
In an ideal world, those extra features are compelling enough that lots of people sign up. The company starts making money, investors are pleased. But then growth starts to level off, and although those paid users keep the company afloat, investors aren’t there for just a good deal, they want growth. They want to push to an IPO so they can cash out!
What’s a company to do? Easy, tap that free user base. The way most do this is to start clawing back on what’s free. For example, the unlimited length video calls that you signed up for are limited to an hour. Then later 30 minutes. And then ten. That’s enshittification.
Some users grudgingly switch to the paid model, investors are satiated for the moment. But all those other users start looking around for an alternative, and growth stalls again. Now the service gets sold to some bigger enterprise, folded in, and the free service either gets more crippled or discontinued. Remember when Slack was cool? Yeah. That.
For me, most of the time the cost of a subscription is just not something I’m willing to pay. Usually that’s because I don’t use the service enough to justify the cost, and sometimes it’s just because I’m a tightwad, and sometimes the pricing is so ridiculously high that it’s laughable. “Get this insight that might be meaningless for only US$249/mo?” No thanks.
What’s ironic is that often I’d be more than happy to pay something that gives the company a decent margin on the free stuff, but that option is almost never present. What if I have absolutely no use for those freemium features but I value the service enough that I’d like to see the services I have stay in place, instead of being eroded in a thousand cuts?
I’m going to use The Story Graph here as an example. I need to stress that this is an example. I am not picking on a site that I am actually enjoying. If anything, I’m looking for a way to help that fits my needs. StoryGraph plans are far more reasonable than most freemium sites. Their “plus” plan isn’t that expensive, just US$5/mo, or $50 per year. For that I get:
Invest in a Goodreads alternative not owned by Amazon. Hey that sounds great! I can really get behind that, although the use of “invest” here is disingenuous. “Fund” is more like it, unless someone plans to send a share certificate.
Custom Charts. Nah, couldn’t care less.
Extra Stats Filters. Nope. Don’t give a damn about my reading stats, either. Just want to track some books and maybe get some recommendations that don’t suck.
Compare Stats. Still don’t care.
Exclusive Charts. Zero interest.
Shape the roadmap. Be an unpaid focus group. Nope.
Priority Support. I don’t know how to break it to them, but nothing about my reading is mission critical. Take a couple of days to get back to me. Whatever.
(Unspoken) Get rid of the constant prompts to upgrade. Well, maybe not rid of them, but less frequent would be nice.
So there it is. The only thing I want is to see this site keep doing what I’m getting on the free plan. To take a chip out of Amazon’s dominance of the bookselling space. But that’s only worth about $15 per year to me. Do I have that option? Nope.
Truly, the fact that there’s no “just help us stay afloat” option makes me think that enshittification or sale is inevitable, and because of that, I’m actually more hesitant to put too much of my time into it. Pervasive enshittification has made me cynical. This is also why I have donated to my Mastodon instance, FreeCAD, LibreOffice, novelWriter, PHP, and others: I want them to be sustainable.
Cleaning up from an ice storm is a more involved process that it might seem at first. That’s not a surprise, but the extent has been larger than expected. What I didn’t expect is that ineptitude in another country would add even more complications.
I’ll start with the reasonable part. That Ego chainsaw that I was waiting on a month ago took nearly four weeks to arrive. That’s no surprise. I’m certain that the demand for chainsaws of all types spiked the day after the storm passed. The saw finally arrived last week and with other stuff going on it took a couple of days to get through the instructions, because nobody wants to accidentally sever a femoral artery. Then it took a bit of time to get over the intimidation factor of using a tool that can do something like that in a second. A nice day arrived so I put chainsaw oil in the unit and donned protective chaps and got them adjusted, then safety glasses, a hard hat with a screen and ear protectors. Then I found some smaller downed branches to start applying my new knowledge of how to cut trees. Finding a little success there, I carried on with larger branches. For years, I’ve been using a bow saw to cut off tree branches and break stuff down, and much of what I’ve learned doing that (thankfully without serious injury) works just as well with a power tool. there are two huge differences between an electric chainsaw and a gas powered one. Most notably, ear protection isn’t really required. The amount of noise it makes is minimal. Then there’s the ease of starting it. No jerking on cords and tweaking chokes to get it running. No either leaving it running while moving things around or trying to restart it each time. Push a button, squeeze the trigger, it runs. Just another reminder that powering things through an engine that has to contain powerful explosions is silly.
Two days later and we’ve got about ten piles of stuff broken down into pieces that are small enough to move.
Part of an apple tree downed by the storm, cut up.
Branches of a cedar tree
The plan is to break down much of this wood for use as kindling. We’re going to have a lot of it when we’re done, so it made sense to get a rack for that purpose, and here’s where we get into politics. We found a supplier of “outdoor stuff” and a rack that looked like it would meet our requirements. I placed the order. The next day we got a tracking number and a “guaranteed” delivery date. This highlights one of my common complaints about online stores: as soon as a shipping label is generated, the order goes into “shipped” status, but really it can take days before the order is actually prepared and shipped. Take the tracking number over to the shipping company’s website, and you get “we don’t have that package yet”.
But carriers aren’t perfect either. When the package didn’t show up and the carrier still didn’t have any information the day after the promised delivery date, I reached out to the vendor. As it turns out, the item was out of stock and I got a refund and profuse apologies. But I still need a rack, so I went to Plan B, returned to their site and discovered that almost everything they sell is now out of stock. Now why would that be? Because everything they sell is made in China and this company probably brought product into the US first, then shipped it up to their Canadian warehouse, and thanks to the current administration, China isn’t shipping anything to the US. My hope is that we’ll soon see the US cut out of this process, with direct shipments to Canada, but like anything else, that’s going to take some time.
On to plan C, where we find a supplier who still has stock and get some kindling racks on order. This is successful.
After hauling all suitably-sized branches up to the garage, I put the chainsaw and a log splitter to use to cut everything up into kindling-sized pieces.
Wood for kindling, some split, some not.
[That gas tank was to get a gas-powered generator running when the power was out. Naturally it wouldn’t start. Internal combustion engines suck.]
Split wood, ready to move
And finally I stacked them in our new “Plan C” rack:
Kindling on a rack.
By the time we’re done, I expect that rack to be filled to capacity, and we have a second one just like this one that we’ll use for smaller pieces.
Then we’ll be ready for Step Four, which will be call in the professionals to handle that Mulberry tree and several others. In turn that will require another round of long splitting and kindling-making. By the time fall arrives, we might even have the whole mess cleaned up!
I’m going to start this one with a disclaimer: much like the folks who write for Rebel Media, I’m not a journalist. I’m reacting to a single social media post and the full story might be completely different. In part what I’m hoping to accomplish here is to inspire an actual journalist with more skills and resources to delve into this, get more facts, and if that story is congruent with what I write here, make as many people as possible aware of it.
Here’s the post:
Sure enough if you head over to Krauss’ Amazon page, her bio mentions the Fatality series, and that series doesn’t show. Links to the series basically come up with a 404. Next let’s head on over to the publisher of the series Dream’s Edge Publishing (and ignore that it’s a god-awful Wix site). Every work on that site links to Amazon (US, CA, and UK) and they’re all just as dead.
I suppose there could be some other reasons for this. Amazon is chock full of byzantine rules, bogus DMCA claims, and a notable inability to connect to an actual person to resolve issues. But in light of the current political environment in the US, and Amazon’s dependence on AWS contracts with the US Government, it sure bears more investigation.
No matter what the reason, this event brings home the peril of relying on Amazon’s market domination to run a publishing business. Yes, it’s a ton of extra work to make sure your books are available on the dozens of other platforms out there, all for maybe 30% of the market. But at least get onto Kobo and do direct e-book sales or you could find yourself dead in the water in an instant.
Update:
Krauss has received an update from Dreamer’s Edge:
Dear Vanessa,
We have had some bad news about publishing on Amazon and they have terminated our KDP account because of “attempting to manipulate sales.” We have contacted them to protest and ask for further information and how we can best appeal this decision. They have now replied but not given any further information and stated “After reviewing your response, we have reevaluated your account and are upholding our previous decision to terminate your account and remove your books from sale on Amazon” This has been a shock to us, if we do continue to persevere with legal action to get our account reinstated this may take some time and even then, there is no guarantee Amazon will change their decision.
Therefore, we are giving you back the publishing rights forthwith, of all your work.
Take this message as a legal right of transfer of publishing rights back to you the copyright holder.
It appears that Dreamer’s Edge has tripped over one of those byzantine rules where some algorithm has flagged the account. I’ve experienced an issue like this with one of the other behemoths in the web space, and the only thing that saved my butt is that I was actively advertising on the platform at the time. It was only when I said I was “saddened by the decision and regrettably had to cancel my ads in response” that the decision got changed from a ban to a warning. At least back then they’d tell you which rule you tripped over. Now it’s just “you broke it, bye forever.”
I suspect that Dreamer’s Edge assessment that legal action might be unsuccessful is correct. There’s no harm in sending a lawyer’s letter by registered mail, possibly going so far as Small Claims Court, but in all probability they’re dead in the water. Kudos to them for doing the right thing in this circumstance and returning the publishing rights.
I’m going to dive into a specific case of a “beta reader” here, but the principles are the same for just about anything related to the process of getting a book published.
First, a reminder of the general rule: If an organization is pretending to be a legitimate traditional publisher and they ask you for money, then they’re not. They’re one of a vanity publisher, a hybrid publisher, or a scam. Of those three, the only time you’re likely to see value for your money is if they’re hybrid, and even then check references, then see if you can check authors who have used them but aren’t on the reference list.
This morning, someone posted this on a writer’s group:
My name is Karen [redacted] I’m a Beta Reader who helps authors improve their work with clear, thoughtful feedback. If you’re preparing to publish, I’d love to support you—with both feedback and professional formatting to get your book ready for readers.
I was going to post the rest of the pitch, but the post was been removed, either by the group admin (or by the poster after my response to asking for references). “Karen” offered to be a beta reader, to provide feedback, and to help with book formatting because “she” just loves to help authors.
UPDATE: Now “she” is commenting on posts, so I got the full text again, now above.
The first two flags are right there in the pitch. There’s no mention of genre. It’s not often that someone is an avid reader of any genre, and even if they are, how much genre-specific feedback could they offer? Suspicious. Second is the mention of “book formatting”. That sounds like something one might be charging money for. My first thought is that this is a lead in to an outright scam, where “Karen” loves your book so much that “she” wants to hook you up with a friend in the [scam] publishing business. For only US$1,500 you can be $5,000 poorer! (Seriously, that’s how it works, once you send money, they know they have a mark and they keep asking for more money for printing, marketing, etc. etc. until you either clue in or run out of money).
There’s another possible risk here, and it’s huge: you send your nearly-finished manuscript to someone you don’t know, next thing you know, your book is up on Amazon under another name, and since they “published” first, getting it taken down is borderline impossible. I can’t think of a worse scenario.
Here’s a general process to go through when checking anything like this out: go to the user’s profile and take a look at their personal posts, where they claim to be from, and their friends list. Reverse image search their profile picture with TinEye.
This is what I got for “Karen”:
“Karen’s” surname is a common given name, not a surname. Okay, maybe they’re using two given names for privacy reasons but… suspect nonetheless.
The profile image was just some stock shot of a pen on paper. That’s not even worth searching. But if they have a head shot, then TinEye is great. These days there’s fewer hits because the scammers are using AI to create new people each time, but if they’re lazy it’s not uncommon to find the image listed on scam tracking sites. Still, a pen and paper is pretty weird for a personal page. Flag number three.
There were no posts to this account before December 4, 2024, roughly five months ago. That’s suspect. Flag number four.
“Karen” claimed to be born and raised in New York City. Let’s take a look at the 400+ friends associated with the account. Almost all of them are based in India, and nearby Asian countries. In the first 200 or so, not one in New York, and only two in the US[LN]A. Flag number five.
The post feed is all news-y, current posts feature the current president doing various things, then back in December they’re Biden doing various things. Not a single personal or reading-related post. Flags six and seven.
Now we do a web search, there’s no indication of this person on any of the reading-related sites (Goodreads, The Story Graph, etc.) Flag eight.
Head over to Linkedin (if you can stomach it), search the name there. Not a single profile with that name. Flag nine.
There’s no blog/website/presence at all under that name, save for this Facebook profile. Flag ten.
Ding! Ding! We have a loser!
Five flags is more than enough to call this a scam, but I thought I’d go through the whole process to illustrate what the first steps should be to avoid getting ripped off. Even when someone passes these checks, you’re back to the general rule above: obtain and check references. The number of people out there looking to take advantage of authors who are desperate to get their work out there is off the charts.
A few weeks back, we got hit with a heavy ice storm, and the damage to our grounds was pretty extensive. Our house, garage, gardens, and fences were spared, although there were a few close calls. We’re waiting for our “tree guys”, Saunders Tree Service, to take care of customers with more urgent damage before they come in and clean up “the big stuff”. Meanwhile I’m waiting on an electric chainsaw from Ego to arrive. I’ve got all the safety gear, I just need something a little more capable than the bow saw I usually use for branches and small trees. Sawing is a great workout, but if I were to stick with a manual approach I’d be at it until the fall, at least.
Meanwhile, we’ve got firewood-length logs hanging about, the result of taking out some dead Ash trees and so-called Manitoba Maples in previous years.
About 1/4 of the logs left to split
We’ve got an electric “5 ton” log splitter, but it’s just not up to this job. It’s time to dust off the traditional tools, namely a splitting axe and a sledgehammer. Splitting wood makes sawing branches seem like a jog in the park. It’s tough work. Bashing away at these logs brought back memories of being a child, going to Christmas dinner at my step-grandfather’s place. In hindsight, I realize that “Old Man Wood” as he was known (then in his 90’s so the moniker was well-earned) ran an estate that was the closest thing to a Lord’s manor that we’ve ever seen in Canada. The main house had something like 17 bedrooms in a wing that was never used and not in the best repair. A dance hall with four organs, one in each corner (also not in great repair, only two still worked), two greenhouses, two dining rooms, with a partition between them that would get opened for big holiday dinners, and two parlours, one with a grand piano. The kitchen featured an ancient wood stove, possibly two. The estate had three houses for “the families”, which I just now realized were probably much like the farmers in Downton Abbey, despite this being the 1960’s! Last time I dropped in, curious to see how it had fared, his descendants had fixed the place up and were running it as a B&B.
What reminded me of dinners there was the memory of the young farm hands in a woodshed attached to the kitchen, splitting logs to feed the stove that would in turn cook a feast for about 30 people. My recent efforts at splitting logs made it clear why it was a job given to those with younger, stronger bodies. My current capacity for a session of log splitting is merely one dolly load.
Just a little less wood than I can manage to split in one session.
This particular load is a little less than I could manage on a day dedicated to splitting. It’s a little less because we also need a place to store the wood. Thus the first part of the day was turning a box full of parts into this storage rack:
A newly assembled firewood storage rack.
The assembly instructions for this thing score about 3.5 on the accuracy and readability scale (for a reference IKEA instructions tend to score an 8). Notably, the absence of some detail for parts orientation led to a little disassembly and reassembly. In one case the wrong bolt was specified, but thankfully the kit supplied the correct amount. They could have also changed the order of assembly and both avoided the ambiguity that led to work done twice, as well as eased assembly (I often use my height and very long arms to successfully ignore “needs two people to assemble” instructions, a slight change in order would have made the process even easier).
The image above shows the results of two days splitting wood, although the first day also involved excavating the space for the rack and dropping in some old and very heavy patio tiles, and the second assembling the rack. I may be ambitious here, but I’ll be aiming for two dolly loads per day. If I can manage that, this rack should be nearly full in about four or five days.
The latest update on the chainsaw is either Thursday this week or the week after, and we have another smaller rack on the way that will be dedicated to kindling-sized wood. That’s step two, and I expect we’ll have enough kindling to last more than a year, maybe two if we ration it.
At some point, cleanup steps will become sufficiently mixed with ongoing maintenance and peripheral storm-related damage that the distinction will be lost, but that seems a long way off at the moment.
![Vanessa Krauss on Mastodon. Post content: "So not only did my first LGBT series got[sic] banned from Amazon along with the entire press who helped me get published, and few people care. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if someone was rejoicing this. I know I'm not well liked...but the entire press fell to Bezos. "We have LGBT, neurodivergent, and disabled authors mostly...this hurts."](https://ambitonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Strauss.jpg)
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