What’s this trend? Well, people on the platform are telling others to buy books, quickly read them before the refund period is over, and refund them. Yes, people are truly that low. This, as you can imagine, does not sit well with the authors who write those books. They spend months or over a year writing these books. You’d expect people who are willing to read their books would be willing to buy them (you know, basic human decency.) However, people are basically stealing these books.
— 𝕂. 𝔹𝕣𝕠𝕞𝕓𝕖𝕣𝕘 (@KBrombergDriven) June 3, 2022 What makes matters worse is the fact that when you return a book, the author actually pays a fee to Kindle. Now, because of this TikTok trend, some authors’ fees are skyrocketing. Again, they’re spending a lot of time and effort writing these books. Not only are they being cheated, but they’re paying for it. And this is by supposed fans of their works.
Because of this trend, Kindle is changing its refund policy
As a response, Kindle had to make some changes. Now, when you buy a book on Kindle, you’ll notice a change to its refund policy. If you buy a book, can’t refund it if you read at least 10% of it. It’s a good way to squash this trend. If you’re trying to quickly read a book, you’ll find that once you get 10% of the way through, your transaction will be final. It’s a shame that the company has to bring a policy like this into effect, but this isn’t the only upset caused by a TikTok trend.
