Dispute Assistance for Authors: Get Help with Publishers, Amazon, and Other Online Platforms

The Authors Guild legal team advises members on disputes with publishers and online platforms for authors and may even be able to intervene if necessary. Through our dispute assistance service, we have helped authors recoup tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid royalties, remove pirate and copycat copies of their books, and much more.

What We Help With

Publishers

Publisher issues we help with include:

• Payment problems
• Reversion of rights disputes
• Publication delays

Online Platforms

We also have dedicated channels with Amazon (Amazon KDP), Audible (ACX), Apple Books, Spotify, and Barnes & Noble to escalate and resolve issues and complaints that Authors Guild members could not successfully resolve using the platforms’ customer service and dispute mechanisms.

Platform issues we help with include:

• Third-party sellers owning the “Buy Box” on Amazon
• The sale of unlawful and infringing copies
• Removing editions of books and audiobooks after rights reversion (except first sale copies)
• Takedown notices against pirate sellers and unethical publishers
• Wrongful account terminations and suspensions
• Customer review violations
• Content guideline violations
• Policy clarifications
• Royalty questions

Getting Help

Our dispute assistance service is aimed at resolving issues that authors have not been able to resolve their own. As such, we ask authors to first try resolving issues directly with the platform using regular customer service channels. When sending in an escalation please include any correspondence you’ve had with the platform.

Please note that our dispute assistance is intended for professional writers. We cannot escalate issues on behalf of publishers or other sellers, though in rare cases where an author is also a publisher and the issue impacts both the author’s work and published works, we may be able to assist.

While we are regularly engaged with the platforms in improving policies and terms for the benefit of authors, the dispute assistance service is not intended to change existing policies. Platform policy decisions are final.

The dispute assistance service is only available to Authors Guild members.

Members: Log in to submit a request to our legal department.