Toby Radford claims he has fallen victim to a royalties scam over his cricket coaching e-book

A leading international cricket coach has been shortchanged by Amazon and his publisher in what he says is a royalty scam.

Toby Radford, a former head coach of Middlesex and Glamorgan who has been appointed batting coach for Afghanistan by Jonathan Trott for this year’s World Cup, claims he had an agreement with New Generation to receive £2 for every coaching manual e-book sale, To work. But instead of paying him £8,840 for more than 4,000 sales, the publishers only coughed up £106 for the e-books, just 0.002 pence per sale.

‘I was amazed when the royalty payment came in, totaling £500 [including printed copies] instead of the £9,000 that was agreed,” Radford told Mail Sport.

‘The total for e-books was only £106. I checked with the publisher, who explained the discrepancy by saying that the royalties for e-books were not actual sales, but free pages for subscribers to Amazon, which the authors only pay 0.002 pence. It’s an obvious scam. I am sure that many other authors will have fallen short in a similar way.’

Radford agreed a deal with New Generation Publishing’s contract manager last July that would see the former West Indies batting coach collect £2 for every e-book sale.

Radford has a dispute with Amazon and its publisher over royalties for his coaching manual

Radford has been named Afghanistan’s batting coach by Jonathan Trott, second from left

An email from New Generation to Radford, seen by Mail Sport, states: ‘The suggested retail price of the printed copy [of Getting to Grips] is set up to ensure you receive a minimum of £1.00 per sale. E-books normally sell for £4.99 across a variety of formats/distributors (Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Apple Books, etc) which will typically set you back just over £2.00 per sale.”

Radford claims he then signed up for Amazon’s free page reading program without being consulted, in violation of the online giant’s terms and conditions. Amazon’s terms and conditions clearly state that it is up to the author to enroll his or her book in the unrestricted scheme.

“Neither Amazon nor the publisher asked me, and I never gave them the authority to give my book away in this ‘free’ way,” Radford said. My contract with the publisher says they will ‘maximize sales and royalties’, but if they place the book on the Kindle schedule without my permission, I will receive a royalty payment of 0.002 pence per ‘page read’ instead of £ 2 per ebook sale. This arrangement between the publisher and Amazon is costing me thousands of pounds.”

New Generation Publishing told Mail Sport that everything was done correctly in accordance with Radford’s contract. An Amazon spokesperson said they could not comment on arrangements between account holders and their authors.