The GoFundMe launched after Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki reported Amazon KDP shut down his account and took his royalties raised $5,568 in one day. In the meantime, his author page and books have since been restored on Amazon.com.
Jason Sanford, who organized the fundraiser said in an update:
Thanks again to everyone who donated to support Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki! We have wrapped up the fundraising campaign. The science fiction and fantasy genre has some amazing people in our fandom, as proved by this campaign funding in less than 24 hours.
Because the campaign was successful, Ekpeki will soon release both the Kindle edition of the Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology and the Bridging Worlds anthology for free download. He’ll also be sharing more info on his dealings with Amazon during all this.
As Amazon proved in their horrible dealings with Ekpeki, it is far too easy for companies to cut the access authors, editors and SF/F fans around the world need to fully take part in our genre. No company should have a monopoly on who can be a SF/F lover and fan!
Sanford’s comments are also available in a Twitter thread here.
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki says he received a phone call from someone at Amazon who saw his social media campaign and that this is the explanation he was given about the shutdown:
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Well, isn’t that something.
Now instead multiple accounts, or his account being associated with some mysterious, unnamed, “suspect account,” Ekpeki had errors in his banking details.
Except that there’s no way for him to verify that, or fix any such errors, except by deleting his current banking information (without seeing it) and entering it again.
And the reinstatement email doesn’t mention banking errors or multiple accounts mischievously associating with suspect accounts. Just another dire warning about their Content Guidelines and Terms & conditions.
I’m off to buy an audiobook from Libro.fm, rather than Amazon.
Yeah, Amazon is definitely covering their ass because of the blowback.
Which means, of course, that other people without the connections and social media bullhorns just lose their money/accounts and have no chance of getting them back again. 🤬
Someone noted that not having your full banking info available even to you without some other confirmation is arguably a protection against hacking…. but there should be enough to see and confirm it’s correct, and while talking to him in person they should be able to give him numbers and FIX it, not just explain.
In this case, as stated, the fact that it doesn’t in any way match their previous claims why it was shut down makes it highly suspicious even so.
Paypal is being sued for freezing accounts and taking the money from them.
I forwarded the link to this to someone I know (a former SFC and Algol subscriber) who reports on Amazon for a major mainstream newspaper.
If the bank details are invalid, obviously that would prevent Amazon from transferring his earnings into his bank account, but otherwise it should not be a problem. Amazon should have notified him that they failed to transfer his earnings and asked him to correct his bank details. Then Amazon should have transferred his earnings to him.
The idea that invalid bank details can somehow make his entire account invalid is essentially the principle of magical contagion, or sympathetic magic. It is ironic that this happened to a speculative fiction editor. But one of the hallmarks of privilege is being able to engage in magical thinking, and only other people suffer the consequences.
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