Title says it all…
2 days ago Are added a banner saying their site would close on december 31, 2016 at midnight, and they did.
Thousands of authors and customers are pissed off. Why? Not because they closed. Shit like that unfortunately happens a lot lately. But because they did not give us time to react when they knew perfectly well that ARe was going south since 2014 (read the 2 articles in the bottom of this blog)
Customers were “invited” to save their ebooks NEW YEAR EVE…. one by freaking one…. manually, no ZIP, no one step to do it… took hours to do that depending if you were a long time customer. On top of it, everyone freaked out and the site was EXTREMELY SLOW and took forever to save each ebook…
I was a customer since 2009, so yeah I got few hundred menage ebooks there. Since I am freaking to loose all my menages, I of course save them different ways, so I have them all but then again since I am a freaking person, I saved them again the last 2 days and spent hours to do so.
Can you believe it that I used to praise ARe??? How naive I was…
The other direct impact on my blog is that thousands of links are now down, including most my covers. So it will take time to update them. When I could, I put all the buying links available but my old reviews may not have this. It will take a while before my blog has all the covers back. I am not so worried about ARe links since I shared other links.
I am proud of my blog. I am also a huge menage romances advocate. And one by one, publishers are closing… Ellora’s Cave (who stole so much money from the authors)… Samhain (who is more decent with the authors but still closing)… Are (many authors will not be paid from all the sells done the last quarter 2016 and many customers lost their ebooks in their library since the site is completely down)… and probably many other publishers I do not know.
Lori James does not know the meaning of those words…
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ARe aka author Lori James aka Samantha Sommersby aka SJ Harper stole thousands from authors and customers. Thousands of $$ in her pocket. It was not only long time planned but carefully done that it took everyone per surprise during a time when we should all celebrate and be happy to live in countries where censorship does not exist. Sadly, I know few people in the business who acted just like her. For me, what this person did is a con artist job and I hope she will not have a pass on this.
No wonder authors go indies. Indie means that an author has no publisher. I am saying this because what ARe did, a couple of other publishers did too. ARe was a gold place for indies. Where will we find them now? I used to check this site every day. every single day to check new menage romances, new authors too. It was a fantastic place to find both publishers and indies. what now?
Amazon… I hate this place on top of not offering a paypal option and if I could use a gift card, I am not just ready yet to buy from them. Barnes & Noble… I never bought anything from them, do they even accept paypal? Where else? Oh yes, directly from publishers. Manic readers is also a place to find new releases but not buy from them.
I am also upset for all those authors who lost much lately, so many doors are closing. They loose their trust, loose money, struggle to promote their work and at the end of the day, us, customers, are also losers…
Now what?
Of course it is not the end of the world that Are has shut down. There are way more dramatic issues around the world. It is only the cherry on top of a sour cake. I will still find my way to buy new menage romances. But at the end of the day, it sucks to be treated like shit, authors and customers, by ARe and such.
NO FREAKING Thank you ARe for hiding until the very last minute you were closing.
NO FREAKING Thank you ARe for waiting 2 days before the New Year Eve to tell your customers (authors and readers)
NO FREAKING Thank you for your lack of integrity and I hope Karma will pay you a visit… because NO FREAKING WAY it is/was the right thing to do!!
Mrs Lori James, I wish you bucket loads of karma your way!
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Dirty laundry is coming out… always. Guess who is going to BOYCOTT Lori James (pseudonym of Samantha Sommersby and urban fantasy as SJ Harper) as from this very minute?? How do you explain that ARe is in trouble for the last 2 years but they gave us a 3 days notice during the holidays? How do you call this practice? mmm? Read those articles and you will be as sick in your stomach as I am.
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Publisher All Romance Ebooks: Closing Hits New Low In Stealing From Authors
Court Documents Regarding All Romance E-Books’ Disturbing Business Practices Surface
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Note to Authors: Do not give up, please. The road will be probably more bumpy but you can rely on fans. We WILL spread the word on social medias and your work WILL BE known one way or another.
Mary's Ménages Reviews & Promos 
I am so mad but also sooo bummed and disappointed. I loved ARe and found so many new authors thru them because they carried so many different publishers and authors in one place. I loved that I could search for books using tags. I could search for just vampire books or menage, or even type of menage. If I was in the mood for MMF one day or MFM the next, it was so easy!
Luckily I had Xmas week off so as soon as I got the email from ARe I started downloading to my laptop. But I had a TON as I normally just sent to Kindle. With the slowness of their site, I pretty much spent almost an entire day downloading. UGH. Imagine customers who had to work or were away for for holidays! They ejther lost everything or were downloading into the wee hours. And of course, the poor authors. So unprofessional.
It’s just sucks all around. For me, I think I’ll miss out on a lot of good books and authors going forward. Amazon’s search features suck. Glad I have this site and I other publisher sites but this is a real blow.
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Agree 100%.
Many were/are on holidays. I also spent a day to upload all the books there because lately I was a bit lazy to do it and sort it out. I was #1 fan and became in a matter of 48h the reverse. That they closed is one thing that sadly a lot of publishers do. Nobody can fault them for that but the COMPLETE NONO is to give us notice during the holidays and so little time to react…. on top of just send a notice to all those authors that will not get paid their last quarter 2016.
MORONS DOUBLED WITH ANTI-PROFESSIONALS
PS: thanks for checking my blog 🙂
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Also, per this article, looks like some sordid stuff was going on behind the scenes. I think I’ll be boycotting Samantha Sommersby books (aka Lori James/former owner of
AEe.
http://blogcritics.org/court-documents-regarding-all-romance-e-books-disturbing-business-practices-surface/
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thank you for sharing. I added an ETA in my blog.
ugly does not even describe what Lorelei James did….
and to be honest… I think I am in the same situation as the readers with missing ebooks over the years. I bought expensive rare books there. But when it came to save them 3 days ago, I found myself thinking that I had way more than that since I am a menage compulsive buyer… I’ll never really know but I’ll always have a doubt.
😦
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This is awful! It’s bad enough to be closing, but to do it during the holidays? I think they didn’t want you to get your books or they could’ve given you 30 days to do it! I didn’t have much there but I know some that did! I guess you need to look at Totally Bound and Smashwords for those indies you crave!
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There is not much menages on smashwords listed (less than 150) and totally bound, I know this publisher who deliver great menages but they are not generalist and it is their own releases.
Lorelei James (owner of ARe) is stealing $$$ from authors right now. She said she will not pay the authors their last quarter 2016 but 10c per book if they do not pursue her on court. This company is in trouble since 2014 but then she decided to give us all a 3 days notice during the holidays. very very carefully thought and planned.
she is a con. plain and simple.
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Is the Lori James of ARe definitely the same person as Lorelei James, author? I would hate to find out I’d been inadvertently maligning an innocent person, and I can’t seem to find any data that ties them together, apart from having very similar names. Thanks.
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no it is not. I rectified the name.
LORI JAMES is not Lorelei James.
not the same author, not the same person.
my mistake.
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I lost all my purchased ebooks because I got notice while on holiday with no way to download my ebooks! I was very disappointed
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we all lost something in the process.
There is no way she could not prepare it and find a way to keep the customers accessing their account for more than 3 days and definitely not during the holidays when most of us were not checking mails or access a computer.
What Lori James did is disgusting.
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Hi Mary, this deal with ARe hurts in so many ways. The fact that she stole not only from authors but from customers too is down right evil. 😦 Some folks are starting to point to Smashwords as the alternative. They do have paypal as well.
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The good part is that an alternative will soon show up because there is a HUGE DEMAND to offer the equivalent.
At one point, I think I had way more ebooks in my library too. I joined in 2009 and I am a compulsive menage customer. I will never have proof but I remember well buying expensive books when they offered the 50% rebate because it was the only time I could afford ebooks over 10$ each. Somehow I have this nagging feeling that 200+ ebooks disappeared from my library and I do not see the reason why. Why would she steal books from library when she could have access anytime to everyone’s book? I wonder if some of us (including me) are just paranoiac.
However, I am definitely pissed off along thousands of authors and customers and I just cannot believe (still) that a person could do such thing. She must have planned this for a long long time. For me this is definitely a con artist work
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Oh no! I was afraid something like that would happen. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if books were missing from your account. The whole mess sucks!
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I had enough time to do a receipt audit against the books in my ARe library and I was missing multiple books from Eve Langlais and Mercy Celeste – I don’t know if they went missing before or if it was from them pulling them since I think they’re both self-published. Luckily or unluckily I’d learned to download immediately after Fictionwise closed and I was only missing one downloaded book and was able to download it before the closure. Since Eve writes mfm menages, if you’re missing those, maybe you can contact her?
If you sent them directly to your ereader, you should be able to find them and back them up, plug in a USB to your computer & reader and look at your ‘My Documents’ folder? Sad all around, even though ARe wasn’t the most user-friendly website, it was still much better than Smashwords.
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