Irish Independent reports that Irish writers are struck with horror following the announcement of Amazon's new payment system (scheduled to take effect on July 1), that pays the authors partaking the retailer colossus' Kindle Direct Publishing programme for every page customers read and not for every book purchased.

Eoin Colfer, the genius behind the bestselling series "Artemis Fowl," which is set to be Disney's next big screen adaptation, found the new system "terrible" and argues how unfair it is for novelists like him to get compensated based on the length of their works.

"You either buy the book or you don't. Apple were trying to do the same with music. It seems to be another way of doing an artist out of their royalties," the author from Wexford told Irish Independent, pertaining to the iPhone-maker's now-revised plans to stream music without paying the artists for three months.

"There has always been long books and short books. It has never been about quantity with books, it is about quality. Some authors like to write really long books, great. Some don't. But I don't think you could penalize either for that," the award-winning author continued.

Author Caroline Grace-Cassidy shares the same sentiment with Colfer. The Irish actress and author, whose book, "Already Taken," is set to hit shelves, also revolted on the corporate behemoth's new policy. Although she claimed that she, as well as other writes, saw this one coming.

"It is one of those things. There is no surprise among any of us authors in 2015; there is very little money to be made in the industry anymore," Grace-Cassidy said, as quoted by Irish Independent. "As far as I am concerned as a writer, it is despicable. It's disgraceful. It is a dying craft," she boldly remarked.

Ironically, in a press release of Amazon on its website, the company announced that the revision of the royalty policies was instigated by the "great feedback [they] received from authors who asked [them] to better align payout with the length of books and how much customers read."

Executive Director of the Writers' Union of Canada and Chairman of the International Authors Forum, John Degen, told National Post that this simply and ought to "scare the hell out of traditional authors" and went to describe the change as "terrifying."

Amazon's new royalty system will apply to customers registered to Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library beginning July.