Two things of note from the past week I thought I would post about.

I always like to start with the bad news, so let’s get that over with, shall we?

John Van Stry did a two-part post on his substack with the entirety of the contract which has been sweeping through the writing community. For all the wrong reasons! You can read it there, because I think it’s no longer available on the sub-Reddit where I originally read it following a link from a fellow writer, and anyway I hate to link to Reddit unless I must.

it’s not just bad, it’s horrible. Sadly a fair number of people who either didn’t read it, didn’t understand it, and did not get legal advice, signed it.

All of whom are pretty much F’d for life now.

How did this happen? Well there’s a lot of finger pointing going on about ‘discord and community hosts’ allegedly promoting these people and perhaps shutting down anyone who tried to point out the abusive nature of the contract (and allegedly getting scammed by these people as well.) But honestly, the problem is with the people who signed it, for not reading it and understanding it, and getting legal advice.

—Read the whole thing at John’s Substack

In his following post, he hammers home the importance of getting a lawyer, and how it can save your life’s work. He is correct, and while you might be able to get away without one for a short story, the second you aren’t certain you fully understand the contract… you need one.

Anybody who won’t let you ask questions, consult a lawyer, talk to friends, show your contract offer around to get advice, any of those people are not people you want to do business with. Walk Away. This industry is rife with scammers and predators. They are out there everywhere. There are a lot of legitimate places out there, who are not hard to find. Just ask around. Look at their contracts, or ask to see one.

And again, don’t be afraid to shell out a couple hundred bucks to talk to a lawyer who deals with IP rights.

—Read the rest at John Van Stry’s Substack

And in the Happy New Year! part of this post, Amazon is walking back a change they made to how consumers can handle their ebook libraries.

Hello,

Starting January 20, 2026, Amazon will make it easier for readers to enjoy content they have purchased from the Kindle store across a wider range of devices and applications by allowing new titles published without Digital Rights Management (DRM) to be downloaded in EPUB and PDF format. If you take no action, the DRM-status of your previously published titles will not change but the EPUB and PDF downloads will not be enabled for existing DRM-free titles. If you want to allow reader downloads for these titles, follow the directions below on or after December 9, and select the option not to apply DRM.

To check or change the DRM status of an eBook at any time:

Log in to the KDP author portal and navigate to the “Kindle eBook Content” page
In the “Manuscript” section, review the “Digital Rights Management (DRM)” selection to see your book’s current DRM status.
If you want to make your book available DRM-free and allow readers to download it as an EPUB or PDF:
Select “No, do not apply Digital Rights Management”
Then check the box that confirms: “I understand that by not applying DRM, customers who buy and have already bought this book will be able to download it as a PDF or EPUB file. My DRM selection applies to all previous and future purchases of this book.”
If you do not want your book to be available DRM-free and you want to prevent readers from downloading it as an EPUB or PDF:
Select “Yes, apply Digital Rights Management”
Select “Save and Continue”. This takes you to the Pricing Page
Select “Publish Your Kindle eBook” at the bottom of the Pricing page. Changes may take up to 72 hours to be live on Amazon.
This email address (kdp-no-reply@amazon.com) is not monitored. For additional information, please visit our Help Page.

The Kindle Direct Publishing Team

This is great, as it now allows readers to download and backup the books they buy again. Yes, I hear the naysaying about piracy. My dear child! Piracy isn’t about reading books. It’s about collecting them and bragging about how many they have in their database. And then, evidently, losing them to Anthropic, which I for one find darkly humorous. But that’s a digression. Pirates are going to pirate. A true reader will seek you out and make sure you get paid. You, my author friends, want your readers who love reading to be able to have their books and hold them, too. Which might mean that they buy them in paper, but that’s less likely. I’m very happy that Amazon walked back this. Also, they are giving authors choices. I have always set my books to DRM-free and always will. I want my readers to be able to enjoy reading my ebooks on whatever device they like, and I want them to be able to do wild things like printing them out and hand-binding them, or backing them up offline in case of the Alpaca Lips, or some such craziness. Freedom to do what they want with what they have bought is no bad thing.