Why I removed my ebook from the Internet

During my attempts to get my ebook version online I have, for the first time, glimpsed into the world of online publishing including – of course – amazon.

While amazon had not had the option to transfer “book prices” to Banks located in Egypt as well as too many complicated (at least for me) settings and information to fill; I have decided to go for another online publisher. At least one that supports payments to Egypt.

After trying several platforms, I selected one that seemed to have potential (will not mention its name here). You fill in details about your life, book, payments...etc. I created a paypal account and included it after having specified my location / country.

Guidelines of over a 100 pages were available on how to proceed with formatting the document. In addition, I received a few emails requesting me to adjust my details and complete certain information, which I did.

As for the formatting, the website proposed an alternate solution, which is to send the document to a list of free lancers posted on their page. Which I did and successfully paid the free lancer via paypal.

The book was uploaded and sales had started before mid-March 2020. At the due date for payment (every 40 days); I received an email from the publisher specifying that they are unable to process payments to Egypt via paypal!

My discontent with this message is due to a number of – possibly obvious - reasons:

1-     The publisher had all the information since the beginning and proceeded with review and testing. The time lost is a loss of opportunity and damage caused is due to their lack of diligence, even where it would have been the fault of the third party: “paypal”.

2-     The e-mail’s proposed solutions did not include a refund of my sale cut, but rather one of two options: Make the book for free OR “Wait until your royalties owed are at least $500 USD after US taxes are taken out, then we can send payment to your Payoneer account”.

3-     Knowing that my primary target for displaying the book is not lucrative, my concern is with the lack of commitment and fairness of these terms. Recourse is not available and of course you have “agreed to the Terms & Conditions”. This stands against principles I precisely tried to highlight throughout the same book.

4-     “All unclaimed royalties will be surrendered to the State Controller's Office Unclaimed Property Division of California as unclaimed property”.

To make a long story short, Internet Services are still widely left to self-regulations and there is still a long way to go to reshape this incomplete revolution. I will proceed with distribution through “relatively” independent medium and/or private dispatch outside of Egypt.