Post: #1

Four months after they banned 9 of my books, Vox Day has the entire Kindle catalog of his publishing house wiped clean. Amazon won't even settle unpaid royalties.

Quote:You may have noticed that you can't find any Castalia House ebooks on Amazon right now. That's because Amazon shut down our KDP account on the basis of a wildly spurious claim of publishing material to which we do not have the necessary rights. We happen to have some VERY bad news for them on that subject....

The book in question? You guessed it. Corrosion: The Collapsing Empire again. This is the second attack on that book this month, as ten days ago, they pulled the book itself down for the sixth or seventh time due to claims that it was "misleading".

From: Amazon.com [[email protected]]
Sent: 21 January 2019 21:59
Subject: Notification from Amazon KDP

While reviewing the following books we found the title, cover image, descriptions and/or authors of the following book(s) are misleading to our customers:

Title: Corrosion (The Corroding Empire Book 1)
ASIN: B06XFQ24QC

As a result, the book(s) have been removed from sale from Amazon.

Not only have they shut down the account, but they sent us an email today declaring that they will not pay us any of the unpaid royalties, thereby screwing over each and every author we publish.

As last communicated in the message on January 21, 2019, we have identified the submission of content for which you did not have the necessary rights. Due to this and previous violations, we are terminating your account and your Agreement effective immediately.

As part of the termination process, we will close your KDP account and remove the books you have uploaded through our channels from sale on Amazon. Note that you are no longer eligible to receive unpaid royalties for sales that occurred prior to this termination.

Additionally, as per our Terms and Conditions, you are not permitted to open any new KDP accounts.

Of course, there were no previous violations that internal SJWs did not invent as we've been repeatedly cleared of the "misleading" charge for that book. Needless to say, we will not be taking this latest SJW attack lying down. I won't be surprised if the account is rapidly restored once we contact the manager who has been repeatedly dealing with this issue, especially since we were promised that it would never happen again after the last time.

Of course, this is precisely why we established the Arkhaven and Catalia Direct stores, because we knew better than to trust Amazon's assurances that it would keep its SJWs under control. If you want to show support for Castalia and its authors, you can either write to Amazon and complain about this unwarranted action or pick up a print, ebook, or audiobook from one of our direct stores.

This is precisely why it is so important to a) build your own platforms and b) support the alternative platforms. This isn't just about Castalia House because the same thing can be done overnight to any author or independent publisher who utilizes KDP. And if you're a Castalia House author, please don't panic, rest assured we are already in the process of taking care of things. But if you want to send an email to Amazon protesting their unwarranted removal of your books, please feel free to do so.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2019/01/amazo...house.html

   

   

Post: #2

Jesus fucking Christ.

Post: #3

The Great Stalinist Purge continues. Papa Stalin would be proud. We need to real- awwww look at the doggos guys. haha aren't dogs just the best? amirite? What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, so I saw this great show on Netflix last night...

Post: #4

Geeze, he has grounds to sue. Royalties are a touchy subject .

He can even get legal fees tacked on. Absolutely nuts.

Post: #5

Never heard of him but his books are on Amazon when I look

Post: #6

Never heard also.

Searching for it came:


When I saw "alt-right"...

Post: #7

Some background:

This issue dates back to 2017, when Day's publishing company Castalia House, came out with a booked called "The Corroding Empire" that had a title and cover that was very similar to John Scalzi's book "The Collapsing Empire."

Scalzi is a longtime nemesis of Day's. I assume Scalzi has filed complaints about this if not lawsuits.

Although I don't support bans of authors on Amazon and think they went too far here, this seems to me to be a different kettle of fish than them banning Roosh's book.

With Roosh, it seemed solely based on content and the reputation of the author. (Which sets a scary precedent because it can lead to the power company shutting off your electricity because you're "incorrect.")

But for Vox Day, there might have been some sort of plagiarism claims filed.
For background info, the book covers are below and here is a link to an article about it.

Addendum: Back in 1967, The Beatles did a similar thing to Frank Zappa. The cover for Zappa's album We're Only In It For The Money satirized Sgt. Pepper, so The Beatles' lawyers had the release of the Zappa album delayed into 1968 because they claimed the covers were too similar. When the Zappa LP was finally released, they had to turn it inside out and use the inner gatefold for the cover.

Post: #8

Quote:Never heard of him but his books are on Amazon when I look

It affects all the Kindle versions. Audible and paperback may still be there.

Vox uses a third-party distributor for paperback.

Post: #9

(01-31-2019 12:07 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  Some background:

This issue dates back to 2017, when Day's publishing company Castalia House, came out with a booked called "The Corroding Empire" that had a title and cover that was very similar to John Scalzi's book "The Collapsing Empire."

Scalzi is a longtime nemesis of Day's. I assume Scalzi has filed complaints about this if not lawsuits.

Although I don't support bans of authors on Amazon and think they went too far here, this seems to me to be a different kettle of fish than them banning Roosh's book.

With Roosh, it seemed solely based on content and the reputation of the author. (Which sets a scary precedent because it can lead to the power company shutting off your electricity because you're "incorrect.")

But for Vox Day, there might have been some sort of plagiarism claims filed.
For background info, the book covers are below and here is a link to an article about it.

This is definitely the spark that started this. However, as I understand it, there have been complaints about this exact thing multiple times, and each time, Vox fought it and Amazon accepted that the titles and covers are sufficiently different. All of these platforms are designed so any random SJW can make a complaint, and the platform first takes action against the target of the complaint, and then checks to see if there is any merit to the complaint.

The thing is, the low level employees that handle the complaint are usually SJWs, and they often take things into their own hands, even if they know they are not actually following company policy.

In this case, the letter to Vox refers to multiple prior violations, but all of the prior violations were previous complaints about the same thing, that were dismissed.

They took it to the next level this time, because they blocked the entire Castalia publishing house book line, and also blocked any unpaid royalties. Castalia has a decent list of authors they publish, and all of these authors are currently blocked from receiving the royalties from their recent sales.

Finally, they appear to have completely deleted Castalia's account and all records of their previous sales or royalties due.

It seems that in every sphere, the leftists and SJWs are pulling out all the stops to fight the current culture war. Vox has actually published a number of books about this very issue, and how to fight it, including "SJWs Always Lie". He has taken his own advice, and already has alternate online sales portals available.

Post: #10

(01-31-2019 11:59 AM)LINUX Wrote:  Never heard of him but his books are on Amazon when I look

I can also see the books. However, funnily enough last night I was actually thinking of buying Vox Day's Jordanetics for Kindle, but ultimately didn't. Now when I check it is only available in Paperback. So I am guessing they are selling the rest of their stock before deleting them from the platform altogether.

Pretty messed up that they'd be allowed to continue selling the books while then (from what it sounds like) also keep all the money for themselves. I bet they have all of this in their terms of service however, of which all authors would have to agree to before selling any of their books on Amazon. I don't think they'd keep any royalties unless they had legal rights to do so.

Post: #11

(01-31-2019 12:07 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  Some background:

This issue dates back to 2017, when Day's publishing company Castalia House, came out with a booked called "The Corroding Empire" that had a title and cover that was very similar to John Scalzi's book "The Collapsing Empire."

Scalzi is a longtime nemesis of Day's. I assume Scalzi has filed complaints about this if not lawsuits.

Although I don't support bans of authors on Amazon and think they went too far here, this seems to me to be a different kettle of fish than them banning Roosh's book.

With Roosh, it seemed solely based on content and the reputation of the author. (Which sets a scary precedent because it can lead to the power company shutting off your electricity because you're "incorrect.")

But for Vox Day, there might have been some sort of plagiarism claims filed.
For background info, the book covers are below and here is a link to an article about it.

Addendum: Back in 1967, The Beatles did a similar thing to Frank Zappa. The cover for Zappa's album We're Only In It For The Money satirized Sgt. Pepper, so The Beatles' lawyers had the release of the Zappa album delayed into 1968.

The Corroding Empire was even published by authors "John Kalzi" and Vox Day.

I'd be pissed too if someone else created a knockoff like that.

Quote:You may have noticed that you can't find any Castalia House ebooks on Amazon right now. That's because Amazon shut down our KDP account on the basis of a wildly spurious claim of publishing material to which we do not have the necessary rights. We happen to have some VERY bad news for them on that subject....

The book in question? You guessed it. Corrosion: The Collapsing Empire again. This is the second attack on that book this month, as ten days ago, they pulled the book itself down for the sixth or seventh time due to claims that it was "misleading".

"misleading"...because there's nothing misleading about "The Corroding Empire" written by "John Kalzi".

Quote:While reviewing the following books we found the title, cover image, descriptions and/or authors of the following book(s) are misleading to our customers:

Title: Corrosion (The Corroding Empire Book 1)
ASIN: B06XFQ24QC

As a result, the book(s) have been removed from sale from Amazon.

I agree with this 100%. That book should've been removed a long time ago.

Quote:Not only have they shut down the account, but they sent us an email today declaring that they will not pay us any of the unpaid royalties, thereby screwing over each and every author we publish.

I'm not a fan of Amazon, and perhaps they would've blocked Castalia House anyway - but it's hard not to notice that Vox Day might've avoided all of this had he not gotten his gamma obsession with Scalzi mixed up with his publishing business.

Post: #12

I've been back in the States for a week and a half and I haven't seen one news story about Jeff Bezos' upcoming divorce raping.

That's just super convenient and not at all suspicious!

Post: #13

(01-31-2019 12:16 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:  [...]platform first takes action against the target of the complaint, and then checks to see if there is any merit to the complaint.

The thing is, the low level employees that handle the complaint are usually SJWs, and they often take things into their own hands, even if they know they are not actually following company policy.

Just to clarify here, as someone who has worked for Amazon. The majority of the "first wave responders" are actually Indians. They're not SJWs, they're just poorly trained. The turnover at the help centers is comparable to Dunkin Donuts, so many of those handling these issues have no idea about what Amazon's actual policy is. If you're in the know, you can simply quote Amazon ToS, provide relevant examples and ask for your issue to be escalated to the leadership team (Americans) and it'll get fixed 9 times out of 10.

Amazon employs a bot system to automatically remove things, and the guilty until proven innocent is meant to protect them from legal liabilities.

In this case, Vox probably was warned prior to stop with the copywrite shite, and didn't listen. There's a provision that states that Amazon can reserve the right to ban your account for multiple violations even if you successfully appeal each of them. As someone who personally loved the Collapsing Empire, this ban was well deserved.

Post: #14

No, in this case it's an old story. The SJWs at Amazon have done this to him a few times, and the last time some middle manager promised him it would never happen again.

Most likely that same middle manager will get involved again and this time maybe one of these purple-haired pukes gets fired.

Post: #15

Yet another reason why I've been supporting the Particl project's blockchain-based private marketplace. The world needs a free market that can't be stopped, can't be censored, and doesn't require buyers OR sellers to give up any personal information (not to mention much lower fees!).

Last I heard a working beta should be available sometime in the next few months...would be great to see red pill authors move their content to the platform once it's up and running.

Post: #16

One point that I think many following may be missing is that writing about SJWs is actually somewhat of a side gig for Vox Day. The vast vast majority of what Castalia House publishes is science fiction and fantasy that does not contain overt political messaging at all, but the authors of which do tend to be conservative/traditionalist authors- often outspoken- who the mainstream science fiction and fantasy publication houses simply will not publish. You can guess the reasons why. Science fiction and fantasy literature is a field that is overrun by individuals who are not merely SJWs but the most extreme of the extreme. Most magazines for example openly state on their submissions pages that they are seeking stories by authors of color/trans/gay or lesbian authors and many have put out long and heartfelt essays that the field is "too white."

A few quick examples:

-John Joseph Adams, who is one of the biggest publishers working in science fiction and fantasy today, puts out yearly story collections that ONLY feature stories by women, gay people, and people of color. Straight white authors are literally not allowed to submit. If you Google search photos of John Joseph Adams, you will also find that his once-morbidly obese face now resembles a cancer patient's testicles, and that his wife is one of those confused women who wears her hair in a bright purple boy cut, probably to distract from the brutal angles of her facial bones that make her somewhat resemble a retarded velociraptor.

Another one: Patrick and Theresa Nielsen Hayden, the owners of Tor Books - by far the largest genre publishing house of SF&F - proclaimed it a "victory for diversity" last year when literally 90% of the Hugo Awards were given to female or transgender authors. Convenient!

And it makes sense. Kids who gravitate toward reading science fiction and fantasy books are almost always the misfit kids who get picked on. If you grow up getting punched in the face or ran down by bullies and getting called a queer and a faggot or whatever else, and your response to that moving forward into adulthood is not to better yourself physically and mentally but to retreat the OTHER way into the world of candy rainbow gumdrop bubbles and delusion, these are the kind of people you become.

Which brings us to 2015, and the watershed moment which began the sequence of events that led to Vox Day getting banned from Amazon: a bunch conservative athors including Vox Day all decided they'd had enough of the SJW infiltration of the Hugo Awards and decided to take action to make the genre's highest honor great again. Or, at least accessible to authors other than those writing sensitive stories about robots born with "the wrong parts," or Tolstoy-length fantasy epics about fat, woke black ladies who society savagely oppresses because their magic causes too many earthquakes (you think I'm kidding, but I'm not).


Our guys Larry Correia (the author of the Monster Hunter series) and Vox Day founded the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, respectively.The goals of these growing online movements were twofold: for the Sad Puppies, it was to bring awareness to the fact the Hugo Awards had become a giant, nepotistic SJW scam where the same small group of authors and publishers were passing awards around to pat each other on the back for how progressive they all were; for the Sad Puppies, the view was more pessimistic, being that if the people holding the keys to the awards didn't relent (as was expected), they would disrupt the entire process of the Hugo awards for a few years in an attempt to burn them to the ground.

It sounds like a tall order for a tiny group of butthurt sci fi authors to disrupt or dismantle an award ceremony that is voted on by thousands and has been around since the 1960s, that has recognized many legendary works of art. But the crazy thing is, Vox Day actually succeeded. Both the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies gained thousands of followers, almost overnight, and a resulting backlash from the SJWs caused a firestorm of woke articles and heated discussions in book forums across the world about how science fiction was changing and was no longer a "safe space" for straight, white men (yawn, fart). At the height of all this craziness, Vox and his Rabid Puppies put together a master plan to hack the Hugo voting system and somehow managed to get a joke book called Space Raptor Butt Invasion by a fake author named Chuck Tingle on the ballot, along with many other conservative authors and publishers who would've otherwise been snubbed by the SJW in-crowd.

The SJWs did what they do and acted like the world was ending because some conservatives wanted to organize and push back against the shit sluice. Despite the fact that neither did Beelzebub appear nor did fire spurt up from the ground, the SJWs took the Sad/Rabid Puppies' complaints as an act of war and began organizing, too. Yes, there are individuals in the science fiction and fantasy book community who have such non-existent sex lives that they can dedicate that much of their free time to documenting literally every comment and blog post made by politically opposite people who like different books. Involuntary celibacy is one helluva drug.

The escalating cold war between woke SJW authors and conservative (or just sane) ones came to head when the First of His Name, King of the Pizzas and the Tacos and the Feminist Green Chilis himself George R.R.MotherFucking Martin chimed in and personally went to battle with the Sad Puppies on his blog. He accurately assessed that the goal of Vox and his Rabid Puppies was not to make the Hugos better in any way but to expose them as a lost cause to conservatives and destroy them.

By now most of you are probably thinking, man, this is the gayest shit I ever read, who the fuck cares? Do any of these people have sexual intercourse? To which the answer is a big, resounding "NO," with the exception of maybe Vox and Larry. And me. I got laid this morning. For the record, I have also never voted in or been nominated for a Hugo Award, nor would I touch any of those books this day and age with a ten foot pole.

Anywho. The "controversy" yawnfest went on for two years before the SJWS panicked and finally changed the Hugo Awards voting rules to prevent the kinds of voting slates the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies had used to fuck up their shit. In the years since those changes, a landslide of Woke Wahmen and tranny authors have swept the Hugo Awards. No surprises, please.

But it doesn't matter to the SJWs that they ultimately won and kept their precious awards. Not one bit. You know what they say about elephants: they never forget.

Ever since the Sad/Rabid Puppies controversy Vox Day, Castalia House, and its entire network of authors and fans have been on a black list. You do not speak of them in science fiction and fantasy circles unless it is in abject condemnation. You do not sympathize with or so much as dog whistle their complaints that mainstream sci fi and fantasy has become an echo chamber for increasingly extremist leftist viewpoints. You definitely do not call out or engage said leftist viewpoints in any kind of attempted rational debate, lest you be marked as a "Puppy" and your entire identity as an author, fan, or internet denizen made fair game to be destroyed by the Stalinist purge-mob.

Even though it probably went unnoticed by many of you, this shit made the New York Times , and was to books what GamerGate was to video game culture. It was big, and the ripples are still striking. I 100% guarantee that whoever made the decision to shut down Vox Day and Castalia House has been looking for a way to stick it to Vox since he dared to put Space Raptor Butt Invasion on their precious ballot.

Post: #17

Those covers are nearly identical. It’s hard for me to say “teh Global cabal is behind this!”

Post: #18

^^^^^^

Some troll keeps spamming the forum with the above post that has that woman's photo. I've seen it in other threads. Time for the ban hammer -- for the poster and the IP address.

Post: #19

Latest from Vox Day :


Reinstated
From Amazon:

Quote:Thank you for your email concerning the status of your account.

The most recent message we sent to you regarding ASIN B06XFQ24QC was incorrect.

Based on your appeal, we are reinstating your account and you will receive any applicable royalties.

Thank you all for your support. I'll be discussing this on the Darkstream.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2019/01/reinstated.html


When you rely on third parties.
You're reliant on their mercy... if they have any...

Post: #20

Quote:Reinstated

How about... my books?

Post: #21

(01-31-2019 12:07 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

While I'm inclined to believe that Vox was targeted for political/SJW reasons, these supposedly non-plagiarized covers are truly some first-class bullshit.

Post: #22

(01-31-2019 08:36 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

(01-31-2019 12:07 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

While I'm inclined to believe that Vox was targeted for political/SJW reasons, these supposedly non-plagiarized covers are truly some first-class bullshit.

Vox made the cover similar since he mocking Scalzi. Vox has been doing the good fight with Rabid Puppies, Infogalactic, and Castilia House as he provides alternative to SJW infested spaces and projects.

Post: #23

Looking forward to Roosh V guest appearance on the Darkstream to discuss big tech censorship (and room cleaning)!

Post: #24

(01-31-2019 08:36 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

(01-31-2019 12:07 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

While I'm inclined to believe that Vox was targeted for political/SJW reasons, these supposedly non-plagiarized covers are truly some first-class bullshit.

It's dumb, really.

It's giving them a easy & legitimate pretext to target him for non-SJW reasons. Is making fun of Scalzi the hill he wants to die on?

Post: #25

(01-31-2019 10:19 PM)dasher Wrote:  Is making fun of Scalzi the hill he wants to die on?

Probably. Vox Day and John Scalzi have been feuding for such a long time, it's a lifestyle-choice at this point. From what I could find, they've been feuding since 2005.

Buddydowrongright2 has a good write-up of Vox Day's war against SJWs in the sci-fi/fantasy realm, of which Scalzi is one. But he starts the history in 2015 with the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies campaigns and their involvement with the Hugo Awards. You can look back even further to 2013 when Vox Day unsuccessfully ran for president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (to succeed none other than John Scalzi) - an event that culminated in Vox Day being expelled from the organization entirely.