A few questions: * What genre? * By "hanging" do you mean just a cliffhanger where there's no full resolution of the conflict, or like the book ends abruptly

A few questions: * What genre? * By "hanging" do you mean just a cliffhanger where there's no full resolution of the conflict, or like the book ends abruptly with no semblance of a climax or conclusion? * Are these self-published books? How many other books do the authors have? Things that come to mind: Cliffhangers are more acceptable in some genres than others. Aside from a genuine cliffhanger, self-published authors often rush through the ending, where they just want to get the book done, and the conclusion ends up being very unsatisfying because they're just not very good at finishing that arc in a way that hits the expected beats for the genre (I've done this, unfortunately). Having said that it HAS been an issue that authors' books are pirated and republished under a different name, with different covers, and identical contents. I have heard of instances of these scammers taking a long full length book and splitting it into two, republishing the pirated copy as multiple installments. I sort of doubt this is what happened here since I don't know why they'd have book two on preorder in that case (vs just publishing it for someone to buy right away), but who knows.