Scammers, Audible, Unlimited…Oh My!

I guess the good news is; I’m still standing.

I know it’s been a while since I checked in here, sorry about that. To be honest, my inspiration for posting here as greatly waned. Not that I don’t still need/want the cathartic release of posting here anymore, I do. I’m just sick of the scammers.

Yeah. They come here and read when I post….Hi, all you ‘Darrens’! I know you’re here.

Then they send me emails that mention some of the things I say over here. They think they’re cute and that they’re ‘forming a bond’. I think they’re stalkers. I’ve already had my fill of internet stalkers. No one else need apply.

One good thing is I stopped responding to them in email. My filters are chucking most of them right to the Spam Folder, which I do check just to make sure nothing important ended up there before I trash it all.

One bad thing is they started popping up ON my Facebook page. Yep. If they’re not posting something in response to something I posted ON my page…they’re replying to posts I’ve made/replied to in FB groups or a recent interview I did then they’re sending me DMs, often in the middle of the night. Some of them get pissy when I don’t respond at 2am.

It’s friggin’ horrible.

It’s really just making the whole process a joyless endeavor BUT at least they’re easy to spot I just have to be diligent about it.

Anyway, if you want to read that interview you can check it out a Cackle Craft. I think it came out rather well.

Let’s chat about Audible for a moment. I was going great guns giving away audiocodes that no one wanted for the last 7 years but suddenly Sister Christian is in demand. Great! Awesome! I got “Genesis” and “The Heart of War” into the All You Can Listen Program. “Sins of the Father” and “South of Eden” are in ‘editorial review’…still.

Ok. Fine. No problem.

I started giving away Audible codes for “Sins of the Father” because “Genesis” had become so popular, I always cringe at giving away any book in any series other than the first one because I don’t want people to start off ‘lost’. But a lot of people requested AND actually listened to AND actually reviewed “Genesis” that I thought; ok, let’s try.

I gave away several US codes. People requested UK codes and I noticed something odd. The UK codes ‘refreshed’ earlier this year, they all say July 2026. The US codes still say 2019. When people tried to redeem those US codes they were told the promo had expired.

What?

I looked at my codes again. ALL codes (US & UK) ‘refreshed earlier this year for “Genesis”. No one had any problems using those codes.

ALL codes for “Mysterious Ways” and “Prodigal Son” remained unchanged.

After many emails, because ACX/Audible does NOT offer live customer support, this situation still has not been resolved. I did discover that my “Exclusive Contract” with ACX/Audible for “Genesis”, “Sins of the Father” and “Mysterous Ways” all EXPIRED earlier this year and no one told me. I also discovered no one will. If you’re not careful the contract just automatically renews every year. Which is kinda fine, it’s a royal PITA to take audiobooks ‘wide’ just because of the nature of the files. They’re HUGE.

What I really want to know is what happened with the codes?

I was told the codes expired because my contract expired. I asked; why the refresh on the other codes?

They don’t know. They’re looking into it.

I asked; if I don’t want to stay exclusive with you, what next?

The first representative told me what the contract I signed…and had verified by 4 AIs before asking…already said; All rights revert back to me at the end of 7 years. Those books/files are mine now. I can take them where I like. I leave them on Audible and the narrator will still get his cut from sales made there but no where else.

The second representative (and you never get to keep going with the same customer service person which is really unhelpful!) told me that basically I was stuck with them forever and ever and ever and ever.

If it wasn’t such a royal PITA I would have downloaded every audio file and started uploading them to other sites right then and there. But it truly is a Royal Pain.

My last contact I sent to what passes as their Contract Department. It was very detailed. I was even thanked for being ‘so detailed’ in my email. That representative had never heard of this problem before. They were sending me ‘up the chain’ for ‘further investigation’.

Oh bother.

I’m still waiting for an answer. If they give me new codes I’ll stay. No problem. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to ‘go wide’ right now with the Sister Christian series anyway. Not when it’s doing so well…finally. Still, I would like the tiny ‘perk’ of new codes so I can keep the momentum going.

Let’s chat about Unlimited for a moment. The program authors love to hate and hate to love. Friggin’ Bezos. Ever since Kindle Unlimited became a thing I have been in and out of it dozens of times over the last….oh gods…almost two decades! LOL. I don’t like being ‘exclusve’. If everyone loved Bezos, thought he was a great guy, and he wasn’t a cheap MFer, I wouldn’t mind so much. But that’s not him. He’s a ‘Darren’ of the Highest Order.

I used to not shop at Walmart too, ok? They cleaned up their act…somewhat…I had to put my money where my mouth was and give Walmart another shot. I don’t go often, that place is a madhouse! And it’s just on the cusp of my very narrow Driving Comfort Zone…which is small.

For months I’ve been planning to put “Christmas Eve on Olympus” along The Doc Series into Kindle Unlimited. When I redid The Doc series I made sure not to upload it anywhere else, then I promptly forgot about putting it into Unlimited for the next two months. Touch of part-timers over here. My brain came back, I remembered. I took “Christmas Eve on Olympus” off the only other channel I’d uploaded it to during the rebrand, Apple Books because they are my second biggest seller. I got The Doc into Unlimited, it’s there permanently, a little offering to Unlimited folks to check me out. Not that it’s my best work but, well, I still like it.

I kept staring at “The Heart of War”. I want that in Unlimited but I do not want it to be unavailable everywhere else. It was a pickle.

I recently put together a Special Collector’s Hardcover Illustrated edition of “The Heart of War”….oooooo….it looks NICE! Yeah, baby! When I got my copy I actually did one of those ‘unboxing’ videos for TikTok. I should post the outtakes. Ok, I didn’t do it FOR TikTok…well I did but I didn’t…mostly I just wanted to capture my own reaction to opening it for posterity. The outtakes of me muttering under my breath as I set up everything are pretty funy.

I kept looking at Special Collector’s Hardcover and wondering, as my mind so terribly often does; What if we……

I kept going back to the wording in KDP for books in Unlimited and wondering how far into the gray I could go with it. I always enjoy testing limits and I’m not getting any younger.

So, I put together the Special Kindle Unlimited Edition of “The Heart of War”. It has 7 illustrations, some that are not in the hardcover collector edition, an Introduction and and Afterword by Yours Truly. This edition is not available anywhere else. It is exclusively for Kindle. The illustrations, Introduction, and Afterword make it unique.

I uploaded it, after futzing with the images several times.

KDP finally published it. It took days and that almost never happens to me anymore.

I clicked; Enroll in Unlimited.

It’s there!

At the moment, I’m having my cake and eating it too. If Bezos doesn’t like that I will simply look him right in that Frank Perdue face of his and say; I had a good teacher.

I went from 0 books in Unlimited to 5 books in Unlimited over the last….two weeks? I do plan to leave all of them there permanently. I guess we’ll just see how it goes. Whether or not it pays off, so to speak. Unlimited pays, well, shit wages to be perfectly blunt about it. People do make money off it but most of them seem to have an ungodly number of books.

72 books? WTF? You just publish everything?

If I had to place a bet I’d say that IF any of these produce a decent profit it will be The Doc Series simply because it’s hot and short. Short…the shorter the better…seems to be the Order of the Day for the Reader of 2026. Nothing too long, complex, time consuming, or hard to understand. Doc fits that perfectly.

It may make a nice introduction to the rest of my catalog, a good lead-in to “Heart” which they will see is in Unlimited. People may not know what to do with “Christmas Eve on Olympus”, not exactly a true introduction to the For the LOVE of WAR series. Nope. It’s not. Hopefully it will serve as a nice little amuse bouche. But….well…we’ll see.

Anyway, I’m still here, still standing, and still following Babe Ruth’s advice; “You can’t hit the ball if you don’t swing.”

Still aiming for the fences.