# The free book list - 1 year later; spoiler: the scammers are still winning



## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

So it was Easter last year that I went on a rant on David Gaughran's blog regarding all the obviously botted books in the free list. 
https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/ku-scammers-attack-amazons-free-ebook-charts/

Over the next year, I watched. I reported. I verified and confirmed with others what certain publishers were doing. I stayed hopeful. Any day now, I kept thinking, Amazon would block the IPs of the blatant bot sites. If they can exclude BookBub's downloads and sales from the poplist algos simply because they want control of THAT customer experience, they can surely do the same on the bestseller side for obvious scammy, black hat tactics that mislead customers and make for a decidedly poor customer experience. Not to mention a poor author experience by taking up at least 20% of the highest-visibility, Top 100 chart spots every. single. day.

So, things have improved in the past year, right?

On the paid/borrows side, yes, some. There are still WAY too many scambooks getting through, and way too much turning a blind eye to certain authors, publishers and practices, but overall, yes, things have improved.

On the free front, though, I have seen zilch in the way of improvement. The SAME authors, the SAME publishers and obviously the SAME bot sites continue to operate with impunity. Really, Amazon? What's the secret to escaping the banhammer, because I'd like some of that immunity too.

So one year later, I took a scroll through the Top 100 Free (because yes, I have a personal bias today - one book is sitting at #113 and another at #114 as I write this, and this is far from the first time our catalog has been in this position), and I can easily pick out fully HALF of the Top 34 books as books that have been botted there (robo-clicked, paid-per-action - whatever the mechanism that isn't organic readers making uncompensated decisions to download free books). Of those 17 books, one author name has 7 books, ones which have seen the Top 20 quite a few times over the past year. Yet none of those books have any ad footprints whatsoever for any of their free runs.

And 50% is only the easily detectable number. I've certainly seen recognizable names who've obviously bought clicks to get to the top. And we here on KBoards have seen books that unless we were following their history closely we'd miss any clues of being bot-driven.

And this happens routinely now. Not occasionally. Not one-off. Every. Single. Day. Of. Every. Single. Week. Of. Every. Single. Month.

Think about it. Even if we put the number of bot-driven books at a conservative 10 per day in the Top 100, that's 3650 titles in the past year getting top visibility and shutting out books that legitimately belong there. Visibility = $$ in this game (whether from follow-on KU reads or cross-promo to other books in an author's catalog), and people scamming the system are not just figuratively but literally stealing from authors who aren't gaming their way to the top.

And the thing that sucks the most? Amazon is ENABLING this behavior. They have the means to shut it down the same way they clamped down on BookBub's influence in the poplists. That would shut it down at the IP level. They could also shut down the accounts of the authors/publishers engaging in this behavior over and over and over.

But they don't. Why? My speculation is that if this were happening on the paid side, where the Big 5 and Amazon's own imprints hang, it wouldn't last long. Sure, we see it happen (especially with bot-borrows and Facebook click-through groups), but not usually for as long or as blatantly as we see on the free side. Plus, the free side is more volatile. So many of the titles in the Top 100 are there at most for 5 days. Folk aren't watching those lists the same way they watch the paid ones. It's a more slippery list to pin down.

But pin down it can be, and those of us watching have been reporting to no avail. So, one year later, while we have seen improvement on the paid side, on the free side, it's still Scammers 1, Amazon 0.

Oh, and yes, there's at least one *same* suspect author today with books in the Top 30 list whose books were in the Top 20 list when I posted to David's blog 1 year ago. (And yes, I recognize that *I* too am running a campaign with 8 freebies almost exactly 1 year later with books in the Top 20 and with 3 just outside the Top 100 very reminiscent of last year. The difference is when our books hit in the Top 100 you can easily find their ad footprints and follow their trajectories -- and they don't all hit in a solid rank block at the same time. Lots of folk run several freebie ad campaigns per year. It's not when they're run or the frequency with which they're run, but HOW they're run that's at issue here.)

Some things just never change.

Grrr.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

That's too bad (understatement).

I've noticed the KU pot keeps getting bigger each month.


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## AlecHutson (Sep 26, 2016)

Gabriella West said:


> That's too bad (understatement).
> 
> I've noticed the KU pot keeps getting bigger each month.


. . . . and yet the payout is shrinking. Scammers are winning over on the paid side, too.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

Yes...


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## JNorth (Dec 6, 2016)

For those us who didn't know Kboards existed a year ago, could you elaborate on what you mean by Amazon blocks the Bookbub sales/downloads from the "poplist"?  Those sales don't count toward your book rank you mean? Or "also boughts"?  Does that only apply to Bookbub or all the similar (smaller) sites like ENT etc...?


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

On one hand this is depressing to read, and on the other kind of no surprise.

I came to the conclusion last year that some authors/publishers are teflon coated and it doesn't matter what they do, how hard they game the systems, or what unethical bot driven methods they employ, Amazon simply will not bring down the ban hammer. I have no idea if it's to do with their visibility, amount of money they bring to Amazon's pockets, or maybe they found the right incantation to mutter under the full moon.

Do I wish Amazon would deal with everybody the same and clean house? Yip. Can I do anything about it? Nope. Would I like to be able to do something about it? Yip. But until there's a viable option I'm going to put my head down and keep my eyes on my own business. Otherwise lamenting the unfairness of it will eat you up


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## MH Johnson (Jan 7, 2017)

AliceW said:


> On one hand this is depressing to read, and on the other kind of no surprise.
> 
> I came to the conclusion last year that some authors/publishers are teflon coated and it doesn't matter what they do, how hard they game the systems, or what unethical bot driven methods they employ, Amazon simply will not bring down the ban hammer. I have no idea if it's to do with their visibility, amount of money they bring to Amazon's pockets, or maybe they found the right incantation to mutter under the full moon.
> 
> Do I wish Amazon would deal with everybody the same and clean house? Yip. Can I do anything about it? Nope. Would I like to be able to do something about it? Yip. But until there's a viable option I'm going to put my head down and keep my eyes on my own business. Otherwise lamenting the unfairness of it will eat you up


Alice, you put it perfectly. It's frustrating, but the best thing we can do for our own peace of mind is to just focus on our business, enjoy our own entrepreneurial adventures, and know that even if the system isn't perfect, for a lot of us, this IS our chance to make it as authors where we might never have made it past the trad-pub gatekeepers just a decade ago. - That being said, in a perfect world, Amazon would level the playing field for all, and perhaps even recruit some Kboarders to at least point the flashlight at suspected botters, share the reasons behind their conclusions, and let a real live person at Amazon decide if bans or simply warnings are in order.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

I ran a FreeBooksy ad last week, hit #81 in the free store. When the book went back to paid, it had slipped from the 6,000-7,000 rank to 13,000. A week later, it's back to 6,800, but revenues haven't picked up, i.e. I'm not seeing a tail. I hadn't done any free stuff in almost a year, and this simply cements my attitude toward free. I'm done with giving books away.


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## doolittle03 (Feb 13, 2015)

Are the books Phoenix mentions permafree or in Select 5-day free thing? I could see Amazon cutting off permafree in future to solve the problem, and maybe the 5-day thing isn't enough of an issue to make them take action...?
Just thinking out loud here....


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

PhoenixS said:


> So it was Easter last year that I went on a rant on David Gaughran's blog regarding all the obviously botted books in the free list.
> https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/ku-scammers-attack-amazons-free-ebook-charts/
> 
> Over the next year, I watched. I reported. I verified and confirmed with others what certain publishers were doing. I stayed hopeful. Any day now, I kept thinking, Amazon would block the IPs of the blatant bot sites. If they can exclude BookBub's downloads and sales from the poplist algos simply because they want control of THAT customer experience, they can surely do the same on the bestseller side for obvious scammy, black hat tactics that mislead customers and make for a decidedly poor customer experience. Not to mention a poor author experience by taking up at least 20% of the highest-visibility, Top 100 chart spots every. single. day.
> ...


And this is why you are one of my most favorite people. I know it takes a lot of your time and skills to analyze and track what is going on, but I always look forward to hearing what you have to say, and you're always spot-on. As disheartening as this is to hear, we need to hear it. I'm not sure how to get Amazon to listen, but at least we know what we're up against and present it in a reasonable manner.

And now I'm off to compose an email to 'Zon rep


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

As I recall, Amazon started trying to clean up the paid review situation when major news outlets started giving big coverage to paid reviews. Amazon doesn't like embarrassing publicity. The press making a big fuss might get the company moving in the right direction. (Recall that in that case the ban hammer came down on someone who had sold over a million books.)

Since this kind of scamming does make for a poorer customer experience, I can't see any obvious motive for Amazon to let it continue. It's not as if Amazon is making money on fake free downloads. I'm inclined to think it's just a case of corporate inertia that one sometimes sees in other large organizations. Perhaps the people theoretically in charge of this kind of issue are busy putting out other fires and don't have enough incentive to move this problem to the top of the to-do list.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

doolittle03 said:


> Are the books Phoenix mentions permafree or in Select 5-day free thing? I could see Amazon cutting off permafree in future to solve the problem, and maybe the 5-day thing isn't enough of an issue to make them take action...?
> Just thinking out loud here....


These are KU books. Which is all part of the con. They're looking for borrows while free and the rank bump on the other side when the books return to paid that will give them more borrows.

Also, 16 suspect books are now ranking #5-20 on the Free list.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

************


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Phoenix, thanks so much for sharing the stats and giving us so much details. I find them very interesting.

My own theory is that Amazon doesn't like the free books. I understand the argument that free 1st in series help some authors to sell the rest, and so Amazon should understand that and want the frees too, to help them sell more books. But from what I've observed, Amazon actually does the opposite. They've separated the frees from the paid rankings and they hide the free list. They have never offered authors the option to sell books free. It is only a side effect of their price-match policy. If they wanted the Zon platform to sell free books, it's so easy for them to make that happen. The fact that they don't, and in effect actively discourages free books' visibility, speaks volumes.

While free helps to sell some major genres when the books are serialized, this is not all that important to Amazon in the big scheme of things. It just is not. It's only important to writers who need a free as a loss leader. Amazon sells too many things, unlike other ebook retailers that only sell books.

Free also messes up their algo probably. Readers who download a lot of frees dilute the way their algo can show books to targeted readers.

I think this is why Amazon can care less that scammers remain on the top free list. Maybe they even hope that this will further discourage real authors from offer free books. Who knows?

As for scammers getting the KU pot? I think Freebooksy's latest report is that the payout per page has consistently been $0.045? (Don't quote me, I'm shooting from memory but the point is that no matter the pot total, they've ensured the payout per page remained consistent.)  Maybe Amazon thinks that letting the scammers get a cut is a good investment for driving more writers away from free?

And while some of us can complain till we're red in the face about scammers unfairly stealing from authors in KU, the fact is, KU is doing too well and writers are not leaving KU en mass. We've seen that when long novel writers left en mass, it was enough to get Amazon's attention and they did something about it. But we as a group have not be united in pressing this issue. We have not left KU en mass because of scammers. So Amazon has no incentive to do anything about this.

Anyway, it seems to me that free is not really such a great option anymore on the retail platforms. Too many readers are saying they have 1k+ free books they'll never get to. And unless you're in the big selling genres where also-bots can recover quickly, doing a free promo can screw your also-bots and it can take months and months to recover -- it does more harm than good. In Nov I ran a free promo, I got no tail. Last month I ran a 99c promo, the tail lasted for 2-3 weeks. For a while there I thought I finally made it...but I guess not.  It was just a tail. I'm still happy though.

But Phoenix, I am sorry to hear all your frustrations. You're in much better position to devise sales strategies in light of this scammer problem, so I'm here to listen if you have any new words of wisdom to share.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

As I recall, this and the page count cut ar the reasons I pulled my books out of KU and went back wide. It's depressing when you think you're being cheated. I feel the same about returns, but there's nothing I can do about it. It's taken me a year to build back my momentum on the other booksellers, but it's a lot less aggravating now that I have.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

PhoenixS said:


> Here's an older primer post on what the poplist is and the difference between it and the bestseller list and what some of the observable drivers of the poplist are. In addition, borrows do not appear to weight in the poplist either, which further advantages the Big 5 pubs.


I'm curious. Do the trad publishers pay Amazon co-op money like they do bookstores?


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

I bet the central problem is that Amazon doesn't want to dedicate someone(s) to doing the kind of work Phoenix does: tracking all the major advertising sites (including discovering new ones as they appear), watching the way dozens of different books move up and down the free list (independently or in blocks), and cross-referencing those two groups of books; maintaining an ever-evolving list of targeted IP addresses; dealing with the annoyance of taking scammers' books off the site and their ensuing upset emails. Amazon's probably thinks in terms of maintaining a deterrent rather than really dealing with each and every scammer. So they've identified a few click-farms that aren't smart enough to swap out their IP addresses regularly, and people who use those particular farms get spanked while all the rest are ignored. The problem just isn't important to Amazon because it isn't keeping authors from enrolling their books in KU.

The above is 100% speculation, of course. It feels right to me ... which probably means it's wrong.  

Anyway, it sure is discouraging.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Meanwhile, at Amazon HQ...


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

Anarchist said:


> Meanwhile, at Amazon HQ...


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> I bet the central problem is that Amazon doesn't want to dedicate someone(s) to doing the kind of work Phoenix does: tracking all the major advertising sites (including discovering new ones as they appear), watching the way dozens of different books move up and down the free list (independently or in blocks), and cross-referencing those two groups of books; maintaining an ever-evolving list of targeted IP addresses; dealing with the annoyance of taking scammers' books off the site and their ensuing upset emails. Amazon's probably thinks in terms of maintaining a deterrent rather than really dealing with each and every scammer. So they've identified a few click-farms that aren't smart enough to swap out their IP addresses regularly, and people who use those particular farms get spanked while all the rest are ignored. The problem just isn't important to Amazon because it isn't keeping authors from enrolling their books in KU.
> 
> The above is 100% speculation, of course. It feels right to me ... which probably means it's wrong.
> 
> Anyway, it sure is discouraging.


Agree ^^. I can't see Amazon ever getting motivated enough to do something about the Free ranks and bot-driven free books.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

brkingsolver said:


> I'm curious. Do the trad publishers pay Amazon co-op money like they do bookstores?


Great question! I've wondered when I've seen trade short story collections that have "Novel" in the title to mislead. And my jaw literally dropped when I saw the colossal example of title stuffing in the following link. You have to see it to believe it. https://www.amazon.com/Second-Thought-Uplifting-Bestselling-Fiction-ebook/dp/B01G1FDJUU/


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Amazon only cares when *they* start losing money. They don't care about "customer experience" or they'd clean out half of the junk they've dumped into the product pages in the last year to try to sell other things than what the customer is actually TRYING to see, and they'd fix the miscategorization issues, and they'd put in a plagiarism detection system instead of sending out "we don't think you have the copyright for that" emails apparently at random.

Amazon cares about money and increasing marketshare. Period. They did NOTHING about the blatant issues with KU scamming via scamlets and fake books until it got so blatant that it was causing subscribers to turn away. They handed out All-Stars bonuses to some of them that they had to know were bogus when they did it.

When I think of Amazon's business practices, I just think of 



.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Amazon has a much larger fish to fry at the moment with the scam third-party seller scandal hitting the mainstream press.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Have you tried the [email protected] thing with info like this?


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

This thread reads like an instructional in how to build the perfect Amazon competitor. If only I had a billion dollars.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

brkingsolver said:


> Amazon has a much larger fish to fry at the moment with the scam third-party seller scandal hitting the mainstream press.


What scandal? Do you have a link?


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Martitalbott said:


> What scandal? Do you have a link?


https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/01/02/amazon-scams-on-the-rise-in-2017-as-fraudulent-sellers-run-amok-and-profit-big/#61cd84393ea6


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

brkingsolver said:


> Amazon has a much larger fish to fry at the moment with the scam third-party seller scandal hitting the mainstream press.


You know, if that's how big corporations worked, I might give Amazon a pass on this (even though there have been Amazon scamming stories in the news routinely over the past year). But KDP is responsible for KDP. And the ebooks division is responsible for KDP, the associated small-press programs, Amazon Imprints relationships, KU and the Big 5 relationships. Vendors trying to sell knockoff versions of shoes and purses, for instance, would be dealt with by Amazon's clothing and accessories division. Individuals attempting ebook scams would be dealt with by KDP and/or the ebooks division. I agree that direction and possibly more resources would come from Amazon HQ, but KDP has just their little part of the Amazon whole to be laser-focused on. I would hope divisions share best-practices for dealing with scammers, but even that might not necessarily be the case. So nope, no pass from me.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Good grief, that's really awful. You'd think they would want to prevent these problems before introducing something new. Apparently not.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

PhoenixS said:


> You know, if that's how big corporations worked, I might give Amazon a pass on this (even though there have been Amazon scamming stories in the news routinely over the past year). But KDP is responsible for KDP. And the ebooks division is responsible for KDP, the associated small-press programs, Amazon Imprints relationships, KU and the Big 5 relationships. Vendors trying to sell knockoff versions of shoes and purses, for instance, would be dealt with by Amazon's clothing and accessories division. Individuals attempting ebook scams would be dealt with by KDP and/or the ebooks division. I agree that direction and possibly more resources would come from Amazon HQ, but KDP has just their little part of the Amazon whole to be laser-focused on. I would hope divisions share best-practices for dealing with scammers, but even that might not necessarily be the case. So nope, no pass from me.


I'm not arguing with you, and as someone who makes the majority of my money from KU, I have skin in the game. As someone above noted, Zon tends to pay attention when they get bad press, and third-party is their bad press at the moment. If you have a way to elevate this to the press, then they may do something about it.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Amazon's entire store is becoming like a flea market, with half the products coming from shady chinese vendors. 

It's clear amazon doesn't care about quality control... just throw as much stuff up there as possible and hope people buy it.  Deal with products when customers complain, but otherwise, let it ride. 

It's a buyer beware market now.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Between newsletters and Instafreebie, I'm starting to see better results ROI-wise with Instafreebie. I take part in as many promos as I can, it seems to keep my email open rate high too.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

brkingsolver said:


> https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/01/02/amazon-scams-on-the-rise-in-2017-as-fraudulent-sellers-run-amok-and-profit-big/#61cd84393ea6


My arse! Now I understand. I bought computer parts a while ago which never arrived. Emailed the seller twice, no response. Emailed Amazon and had the money back on my bank account faster than light. No comment, no nothing. Just paid, without the usual request to wait for the seller's response.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

You know, at some point, Amazon is going to have to employ Real People (TM) to manually vet everyone who wants to sell anything on their site. You know, like Apple does *gasp*.

If they don't, it will be the death of them. Not immediately, but long-term.


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## A.R. Williams (Jan 9, 2011)

AlexaKang said:


> My own theory is that Amazon doesn't like the free books...[snip] ...But from what I've observed, Amazon actually does the opposite. They've separated the frees from the paid rankings and they hide the free list. They have never offered authors the option to sell books free. It is only a side effect of their price-match policy. If they wanted the Zon platform to sell free books, it's so easy for them to make that happen. The fact that they don't, and in effect actively discourages free books' visibility, speaks volumes...


_Exactly!!!_

*How do you get your books to be free on Amazon?*

Method 1: Join KU and then use the five free days that you're allotted.

Method 2: Do a little dance--(a) Set the price on Amazon (b) Set the price free on another site (c) Notify Amazon that your book is free on another site [d] Keep notifying Amazon that your book is free on another site until they listen and change your price.

(*note:* This is what the terms of service says about pricing you books on Amazon



> 4. Setting Your List Price
> 
> You must set your Digital Book's List Price (and change it from time-to-time if necessary) so that it is no higher than the list price in any sales channel for any digital or physical edition of the Digital Book.
> 
> ...


Method one is a legitimate way to make your book free on Amazon. Method two, is at best, highly questionable.

What are the rewards for using method one versus method two: If you use method one you get 5 free days in a three month period. If you use method two you get an unlimited amount of free days.

So what happens when writers who are not as astute as the writers on Kboards learn that there are people who get unlimited free days for skirting the terms of service, while they who follow the spirit and letter of the t.o.s., get five days in a three month period (while also giving up the ability to list their book elsewhere)?

Does Amazon know? Does Amazon care? Why does Amazon not do something about all of those writers who go around the t.o.s. in order to make their books free? Is it not important since it is Amazon who actually price-matches and makes the books free? Is Amazon turning a blind eye to this debacle?

But they know, don't they?

They have to know--because they are the ones who change the price on the books to make them free. Right? So they don't really care?

If they don't really care, why can't you make your book free from the dashboard then?

::shrugs::

"Maybe Amazon just likes watching people dance."


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

A.R. Williams said:


> Why does Amazon not do something about all of those writers who go around the t.o.s. in order to make their books free? Is it not important since it is Amazon who actually price-matches and makes the books free? Is Amazon turning a blind eye to this debacle?


If you continue reading to the T&C Pricing Page, you'll find this, where Amazon explicitly discusses price-matching freebies and makes them an exclusion. Permafree does NOT violate the T&Cs. A lower non-free price, however, does.

"From time to time your book may be made available through other sales channels as part of a free promotion. It is important that Digital Books made available through the Program have promotions that are on par with free promotions of the same book in another sales channel. Therefore, if your Digital Book is available through another sales channel for free, we may also make it available for free. If we match a free promotion of your Digital Book somewhere else, your Royalty during that promotion will be zero. (Unlike under the 70% Royalty Option, if we match a price for your Digital Book that is above zero, it won't change the calculation of your Royalties indicated in B above.)"
https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/A29FL26OKE7R7B
_Section D_


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

If Amazon really didn't want freebies, they would have axed them a few years back instead of splitting out the paid/free pricing and giving free their own top lists. Amazon knows how to sell things, and they're quite well aware that free books help sell more books. And ebooks are small enough that the storage and download costs to them are negligible. There's more data and bandwidth used every time you load up your product page than when someone downloads your free book from them.


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## PermaStudent (Apr 21, 2015)

Nic said:


> My arse! Now I understand. I bought computer parts a while ago which never arrived. Emailed the seller twice, no response. Emailed Amazon and had the money back on my bank account faster than light. No comment, no nothing. Just paid, without the usual request to wait for the seller's response.


I stumbled into this when I had a problem with something under warranty bought from Amazon. I contacted the company responsible per instructions on the seller's page, and the company claimed that because the product was bought on Amazon, they couldn't confirm if it was counterfeit and refused to honor the warranty. I emailed Amazon with this response, and they gave a full refund with a canned apology and no additional comment. I started googling to see if anyone else had a problem with that specific company/warranty, but no, it's Amazon...

Returning to the thread topic, yes, bad press seems to be the response trigger for Amazon. It would be nice to see some proactive handling of these situations, but they seem to prefer cleaning up the messes rather than preventing them. They *know* it's going on, and they *know* it hurts the legit sellers (and writers), but if they're making money and the customers aren't complaining, they let it slide. However, they seem to be knowingly making a lot of money off of suspected counterfeits lately. I'm waiting for the lawsuit.


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## SC (Jan 6, 2017)

When buying from Amazon, I always first try to get sold and shipped by Amazon. When that's not available, I look for "fulfilled by Amazon". If that's not available, I generally don't buy the product. And if I need to return something, I just return it through Amazon's site. I don't like to deal with third party sellers directly because so many are bad sellers and it's not worth the bother to me.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

PermaStudent said:


> I stumbled into this when I had a problem with something under warranty bought from Amazon. I contacted the company responsible per instructions on the seller's page, and the company claimed that because the product was bought on Amazon, they couldn't confirm if it was counterfeit and refused to honor the warranty. I emailed Amazon with this response, and they gave a full refund with a canned apology and no additional comment. I started googling to see if anyone else had a problem with that specific company/warranty, but no, it's Amazon...


This actually is true and Amazon vendors selling products are quite upset about this. I just read somewhere else (maybe Reddit, can't remember). What happens is, Amazon warehouses the same product from all Amazon sellers together. But when Amazon ships the product to your (generic your) customer, they don't distinguish between your inventory and all the other sellers. So for example, if you are a legitimate distributor of Pantene shampoos, all your shampoo inventory is lumped with all other sellers of Pantene shampoos. Among them might be counterfeiters' products. When your customer places an order, they might not be getting it from your stock, but you will get paid.

Apparently some vendors are getting customer complaints but Amazon's stated policy is that all same products are stocked together and they don't have to send from your inventory as long as you get paid.

It is also true that a lot of Chinese counterfeit goods are finding their ways into Amazon stores. I recently lived in China for years as an expat and the problem is actually very serious. Not serious as in, oh darn, it's a fake watch. But serious as in deadly and dangerous food and body care products. Even apparently innocuous things like Legos, might contain harmful paint. I'm always wondering when this bombshell will drop on Amazon and they'll have a PR crisis on hand.


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## SC (Jan 6, 2017)

AlexaKang said:


> This actually is true and Amazon vendors selling products are quite upset about this. I just read somewhere else (maybe Reddit, can't remember). What happens is, Amazon warehouses the same product from all Amazon sellers together. But when Amazon ships the product to your (generic your) customer, they don't distinguish between your inventory and all the other sellers. So for example, if you are a legitimate distributor of Pantene shampoos, all your shampoo inventory is lumped with all other sellers of Pantene shampoos. Among them might be counterfeiters' products. When your customer places an order, they might not be getting it from your stock, but you will get paid.
> 
> Apparently some vendors are getting customer complaints but Amazon's stated policy is that all same products are stocked together and they don't have to send from your inventory as long as you get paid.
> 
> It is also true that a lot of Chinese counterfeit goods are finding their ways into Amazon stores. I recently lived in China for years as an expat and the problem is actually very serious. Not serious as in, oh darn, it's a fake watch. But serious as in deadly and dangerous food and body care products. Even apparently innocuous things like Legos, might contain harmful paint. I'm always wondering when this bombshell will drop on Amazon and they'll have a PR crisis on hand.


Holy crap, that's ... awful. Wow. Thanks for sharing all that. I'll definitely keep it in mind when buying certain things on Amazon now (or when deciding whether or not to do so).


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

brkingsolver said:


> https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/01/02/amazon-scams-on-the-rise-in-2017-as-fraudulent-sellers-run-amok-and-profit-big/#61cd84393ea6


Phoenix, maybe you should drop a line to Wade Shepard, who wrote the above Forbes article, and see if he'd be interested in covering this other form of Amazon scamming. Generating mainstream publicity is probably the only way to get Amazon to take this seriously.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

Becca Mills said:


> Phoenix, maybe you should drop a line to Wade Shepard, who wrote the above Forbes article, and see if he'd be interested in covering this other form of Amazon scamming. Generating mainstream publicity is probably the only way to get Amazon to take this seriously.


This is a fantastic idea.

As an aside, this thread is convincing me that I need to go wide with my next series - and perhaps everything going forward.

Question for everyone: Do you think the day will come when KDP may no longer be the biggest market for most indie authors? Do you think it might ever shut down entirely?

Interesting times we're living in...


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

The sad part is... whatever Amazon does about freebie scammers is likely to heavily impact legit users of freebies. Every change they make to combat people gaming the system or scamming generally ends up hurting legit authors. (Like what happened with multi-author KU bundles, for example...)


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> I've come to accept Amazon KDP is a train wreck in slow motion. The escalating list of problems are too numerous to list anymore, no doubt compounded by budgetary issues behind the scenes.


I'll be honest. I blame 95% of this on the authors for supporting KU. Don't get me wrong, I don't blame people for going in KU if it increases their money, but KU is what is driving the scammers.

The old saying "cutting off your nose to spite your face" is in full effect here. The more authors bend over for bezos, the less amazon is going to make any effort to satisfy their content suppliers.

This, btw, has been a trend since 2000 in all industries and is a function of the dot.com boom... where traditional middlemen (who used to take a small margin as their cut and competed with each other for that business) suddenly held all the control... they seized control over the demand and supply ends of the market. Walmart did it in the B&M space, and Amazon is doing it in the online space.

Authors who go into KU (and I admit, I was in KU for a year), in my opinion, are no different than anyone in the real world who buy goods made in china. It's fine to do, but then you can't complain that all the manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas.

Similarly, if you support the very thing that enables the botters and scammers AND pushes down your unit prices...you really can't blame Amazon for "screwing you".

Amazon can only do what it's doing because the content providers enable them to do so.

Unfortunately, I don't see that trend changing, so yep, the train wreck is only going to get worse.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> Phoenix, maybe you should drop a line to Wade Shepard, who wrote the above Forbes article, and see if he'd be interested in covering this other form of Amazon scamming. Generating mainstream publicity is probably the only way to get Amazon to take this seriously.


The problem is that it's not a "general interest" story. The only people really impacted are self-published authors. The counterfeiting has potential to hit anyone who buys anything from Amazon, which is millions and millions of people, with potentially hazardous effects. No one out there really cares about a few thousand indie authors who might not be hitting the top 100 lists because of scammers.



dn8791 said:


> Question for everyone: Do you think the day will come when KDP may no longer be the biggest market for most indie authors? Do you think it might ever shut down entirely?


Amazon isn't going to shut down KDP. The money it brings in is a fraction of their digital media sales, which is a fraction of their overall sales. It isn't about the money. It's about getting people through the door so they buy more stuff. That's why they like KU so much. They've openly stated in a press release that KU subscribers spend MORE on other purchases while they're in the store than regular book customers who buy. They're not worried about making money on books, which I'm guessing is why they devote as few resources to the book sales and KDP as they possibly can. It's just a means to an end for them, not an end in and of itself.

As for them not being the biggest market? There are probably a couple of dozen people here on kboards with the technical capability and solid enough understanding of how the system works to build a better storefront for selling books. It isn't about that. It's about everything ELSE that Amazon sells, and the convenience of doing all of your shopping through them. Even when people go to other sites to find books because Amazon's search/browse has gotten so messed up, they go BACK to Amazon to actually make the purchase. That's what you'd be competing against, and you'd be doing it against a company that is willing and able to run its entire book division at a loss for the sole purpose of attracting customers to their other goods. This is why Google Play and iTunes have never made more than a dent in Amazon's sales.


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## PermaStudent (Apr 21, 2015)

KelliWolfe said:


> The problem is that it's not a "general interest" story. The only people really impacted are self-published authors. The counterfeiting has potential to hit anyone who buys anything from Amazon, which is millions and millions of people, with potentially hazardous effects. No one out there really cares about a few thousand indie authors who might not be hitting the top 100 lists because of scammers.


Rank manipulation happens outside of ebooks, too (according to Google--I won't give links to promote these shenanigans, but it's out there). If an article is written about how scammers (in general) are using tactics to steer customers to counterfeits by artificially inflating rank, and Amazon isn't doing much about it, people might care. And these effects can be most readily observed in the lists for free books, where pulling it off is easy. If Amazon has to fix it for everyone, that includes publishers, too.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> Do I blame the authors? Not really. People will always take what looks like the path of least resistance. If in the final analysis they get burned they usually cast the blame somewhere else. It's human nature so there's no point arguing with it. I'm only accountable and responsible for my path, not anyone else's. Providing I keep my head on straight I'll make the right decisions to limit our exposure and that's all I really care about. The bigger picture isn't my sandpit so I watch what others are doing, shrug and move on.


Oh i agree. It's like buying products made in China... I don't blame people for doing it. I mean, if your budget is tight and the Chinese product is 50% less...you do what you gotta do. But at the same time, you should also acknowledge that the very thing that is saving you money may also be the thing that ultimately takes your job 

So I don't blame authors for bending over for bezos because most think they have no choice in the matter. But then, they should at least not be surprised or whine about scammers and bots ... because those things exist because they capitulated.

Just as a fun thought experiment. If every author pulled out of KU tomorrow, I guarantee you the bot issue would be fixed in 48 hours. Page read royalties would be doubled. And whoever is in charge of KU would be canned and Amazon would sincerely apologize to everyone for how they behaved in the past.

But, that's never going to happen. 

So ya, Amazon is *creating* the system, but authors are *enabling* the system.

And I agree. The herd is gonna do what it is gonna do.


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## A.R. Williams (Jan 9, 2011)

PhoenixS said:


> If you continue reading to the T&C Pricing Page, you'll find this, where Amazon explicitly discusses price-matching freebies and makes them an exclusion. Permafree does NOT violate the T&Cs. A lower non-free price, however, does.
> 
> "From time to time your book may be made available through other sales channels as part of a free promotion. It is important that Digital Books made available through the Program have promotions that are on par with free promotions of the same book in another sales channel. Therefore, if your Digital Book is available through another sales channel for free, we may also make it available for free. If we match a free promotion of your Digital Book somewhere else, your Royalty during that promotion will be zero. (Unlike under the 70% Royalty Option, if we match a price for your Digital Book that is above zero, it won't change the calculation of your Royalties indicated in B above.)"
> https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/A29FL26OKE7R7B
> _Section D_


Thank you for the link.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Patty Jansen said:


> You know, at some point, Amazon is going to have to employ Real People (TM) to manually vet everyone who wants to sell anything on their site. You know, like Apple does *gasp*.
> 
> If they don't, it will be the death of them. Not immediately, but long-term.


I've been saying for a long time that Amazon needs to put people on these issues. It wouldn't be that expensive, and they could actually hire people in America to do it. It's not like people are turning their noses up at decent jobs these days. Bots are good for some things, but you need a real person who knows what they're looking at to stop the scammers.

I'm not holding my nose waiting for it, though. And yeah, I'm taking advantage of KU. I've even been burned by Amazon for it, but prawns do what they must to sell books. I put some of that on the other retailers, who claim to sell books but don't really help me do that.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

she-la-ti-da said:


> I'm not holding my nose waiting for it, though. And yeah, I'm taking advantage of KU. I've even been burned by Amazon for it, but prawns do what they must to sell books. I put some of that on the other retailers, who claim to sell books but don't really help me do that.


I can easily make more money in a month on one 100-odd page novella in KU than I can with my entire catalog on B&N or iTunes or Kobo because it's next to impossible to get any real visibility on those sites. GP is better than those, but not by much. When you're in this to make a living, you go where you can make the most money. I don't like KU on principle, but principles don't pay the rent.


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## SC (Jan 6, 2017)

KelliWolfe said:


> I can easily make more money in a month on one 100-odd page novella in KU than I can with my entire catalog on B&N or iTunes or Kobo because it's next to impossible to get any real visibility on those sites. GP is better than those, but not by much. When you're in this to make a living, you go where you can make the most money. I don't like KU on principle, but principles don't pay the rent.


The thing is, you have to look at it long term. If enough people go exclusive to Amazon so that self-pubbing anywhere else becomes non-viable (the stores shut down, the stores stop letting people self-pub, whatever), then Amazon gets a monopoly. And once they do, the percentage of money you get to keep from each sale tanks, they stop letting you set your own prices, and any number of other things that would make having control over your publishing and even having enough income to make a living things that don't happen anymore. Don't believe that will happen? Just look at how Amazon handles ACX, where they basically do have a monopoly on self-pubbing audiobooks.

You've got to look at the long game. It's not all about can you make more money there next month. It's also, if you're a career author, about will you be able to have a viable career (and not need a second job) in five or ten or twenty years if Amazon becomes the only way to get your books to readers.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

You want to know long term? Here's long term. After 6 years on iTunes and despite quadrupling the size of my catalog, I'm making roughly the same there as I was in 2012. The needle hasn't moved for me on B&N in the last 2 years. It fluctuates roughly within a couple of hundred dollars every month. My earnings on Kobo peaked in 2013 and are running roughly 50% of what I was making there before their algo changes that killed the value of permafrees. I'm making LESS than half of what I was making on Google back in 2013/2014 because their algo changes in favor of tradpubbed books over indie titles.

That's the long term. I'd love to put my faith in wide, but I did that from 2011 - 2016 and got screwed even harder by the other distributors than Amazon, with even less to show for it. At least Amazon can freakin' sell my books, which none of the others seem to be particularly interested in doing. In Google and Kobo's cases they're actively working against me.

KU sucks for authors, especially in the long term. I've said that here quite loudly since the day they announced the program, and I was one of the first to anticipate exactly how the scammers were going to poke eighty different kind of holes in KU 1.0 because of the way it was set up.  But if it's a choice between going into KU and making enough money to keep from going back to my day job or staying wide and watching my income dwindle month to month because of the deliberate changes by the other vendors to prevent me from selling my books, I'll hold my nose and go with KU.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Shawna Canon said:


> The thing is, you have to look at it long term. If enough people go exclusive to Amazon so that self-pubbing anywhere else becomes non-viable (the stores shut down, the stores stop letting people self-pub, whatever), then Amazon gets a monopoly. And once they do, the percentage of money you get to keep from each sale tanks, they stop letting you set your own prices, and any number of other things that would make having control over your publishing and even having enough income to make a living things that don't happen anymore. Don't believe that will happen? Just look at how Amazon handles ACX, where they basically do have a monopoly on self-pubbing audiobooks.
> 
> You've got to look at the long game. It's not all about can you make more money there next month. It's also, if you're a career author, about will you be able to have a viable career (and not need a second job) in five or ten or twenty years if Amazon becomes the only way to get your books to readers.


I'm no fan of monopolies, either, but I question some of your analysis.

In order for self-publishing to crumble everywhere else, Amazon would have to do a lot of things it doesn't seem inclined to do, like fix KU page counting processes. I make about 50% of my money from the system, but the general lack of accountability and glitches are a turn-off for many people--and that's really about all Amazon offers for exclusivity these days. I known people who did pretty well with KU but dumped it anyway because they didn't like the way it was run. Sure, there's a fresh supply of newbies every day, but it's the people with real fan bases who bring in most of the self-publishing money, and many of them are committed to going wide, either because of the KU flakiness or because they do well wide. I don't see either of those situations changing. The other outlets will keep up their self-publishing programs as long as they make more money than they have to spend to maintain them.

As for the other outlets closing, some may. Barnes and Noble has been shaky for a long time. But if it closes, it won't be because of lost revenue from self-publishing. Amazon has always been the outlet that had the bulk of self-publishing revenue--by a wide margin. What's different now is that Amazon is now captured more of those trad-publishing sales, at least in the US market. Even the bulk of the paperback rebound is taking place on Amazon, not in the brick-and-mortar stores, Barnes and Noble or otherwise. However, regardless of what percentage of the market Amazon grabs, Barnes and Noble is likely to be the only major player that folds. Amazon isn't going to drive Google out of business, or Apple, or Kobo (owned by Rakuten, a big multinational). Nor will they stop selling books unless it costs them more to maintain that division than they make.

Yes, Amazon won't let people set their own prices on ACX, but I suspect that has more to do with the number of people involved in royalty splits than anything else. If authors could set prices themselves, they could drop them without considering the royalty-partner narrator, with the result that narrators might be tempted to drop out of the system. Sure, that shouldn't affect authors not involved in royalty splits, but that's just Amazon being Amazon. It's easier to set one pricing structure than to have two separate ones. I don't see the same motivation existing on the ebook side.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> I'll be honest. I blame 95% of this on the authors for supporting KU. Don't get me wrong, I don't blame people for going in KU if it increases their money, but KU is what is driving the scammers.


So you blame 95% of it on authors who support KU, but you _don't_ blame authors who support KU if it makes them more money, so you're only blaming the authors who support KU but don't see their money increase?

That's the only _logical_ conclusion from your statement.


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## raminar_dixon (Aug 26, 2013)

I don't blame authors. They were only going to the money. Can't blame someone for needing to pay their rent or make a better life for themselves.

I don't even really blame Amazon for the end result and shift that KU created, _even though they created KU_. That would be like blaming McDonald's for childhood obesity. Amazon came up with an idea to improve their business and make more money, because that's what businesses do. And if they hadn't done it, someone else would surely have. KU was and still is a resounding success for Amazon. It was and still is a resounding success for many authors. That might change in the future, but my crystal ball isn't plugged in right now.

The truth is, the monopoly (or near monopoly) that has developed in this segment wouldn't have happened if there was more and better competition.

So _that's_ who I blame. All of Amazon's competition...or lack thereof. They had every opportunity to innovate, to improve, to give authors more choices. And they failed or never even tried.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

raminar_dixon said:


> I don't blame authors. They were only going to the money. Can't blame someone for needing to pay their rent or make a better life for themselves.
> 
> I don't even really blame Amazon for the end result and shift that KU created, _even though they created KU_. That would be like blaming McDonald's for childhood obesity. Amazon came up with an idea to improve their business and make more money, because that's what businesses do. And if they hadn't done it, someone else would surely have. KU was and still is a resounding success for Amazon. It was and still is a resounding success for many authors. That might change in the future, but my crystal ball isn't plugged in right now.
> 
> ...


wow just wow. Do people live in some alternate reality where facts don't matter?

For 20 years amazon didn't make a single dime. In fact they LOST money. They aren't a monopoly because they are the best, they are a monopoly because they were supported by wall street investors for 20 years. No other business gets such a luxury to run in the red for 20 years.

It's only the past couple years that they've actually been profitable.

So ya, give Kobo billions of debt, not worry about making a profit for 23 years, and they too could probably build a monopoly.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Have you guys listened to the latest episode of the Sell More Books podcast? They got some inside scoop directly from Amazon about KU and page flip, and apparently a Amazon rep conveyed through their guest on the show was that KU problems are, while fixable, inconsequential to Amazon. You better listen to it for yourself as I'm rephrasing stuff so don't want to be sending a wrong message. But that's what I got out of it.

As for free, I've stopped doing free. I'm aware free works for authors depending on the genre and I'd never venture to claim I know more than Phoenix, but I've found free to be a dead promo option for me. Totally useless. In that respect, what happens to free doesn't affect me. I suspect that might be the case for some of you too so would suggest you look at how your business performed lately. Just because it works for others doesn't mean it works for you. I don't use my KU free days anymore except for rare occasions, and the occasions are not promos. I just don't promote free. If you're able to do that, and if Amazon continues to pay at their chosen .045 per KENP rate, then the scammers won't affect me. So not playing the free game may be a way to avoid all that headaches, if that is a business strategy that works for you.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> wow just wow. Do people live in some alternate reality where facts don't matter?
> 
> For 20 years amazon didn't make a single dime. In fact they LOST money. They aren't a monopoly because they are the best, they are a monopoly because they were supported by wall street investors for 20 years. No other business gets such a luxury to run in the black for 20 years.
> 
> ...


Thank you. I think we sometimes get caught up in the Amazon is so amazing mantra that we don't see what's behind it. The other eBook retailers are not Amazon. They don't sell other products and use books as loss leaders. With the exception of Apple's iBooks, they are primarily book stores. It's like expecting a gourmet bread shop to compete with Walmart that imports most of its products from massive producers, often offshore, for dirt-cheap wages and production costs. Amazon is a unique animal and can't really be compared to Kobo or Barnes & Noble. Even iBooks, computer hardware business, only does music and books as side hustles. Amazon is Amazon and it is unique in its approach to business, to profit, and growth.

It will mow down its competition leaving nothing in its wake. Some of us are making decent money in wide distribution for a variety of reasons. Last month, of my $28,000 in revenues, half were from iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. So I earned $14,000 off those other retailers. Of course, I had a Bookbub and a new release, so that accounts for how well I did on those other retailers. If I didn't have a Bookbub and new release, I expect I would have made half that amount, and 80% would have been on Amazon. Amazon rules. If you want to sell on the other retailers, you have to do the heavy lifting with promotions, etc. Heck, you pretty much have to do that now on Amazon because it's becoming more of a pay to play venue than it ever was before now that KU and AMS are almost requirements for visibility...


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

As a newbie, I definitely struggled with the KU or not question. But I had to do what was best for me and being a no-name, I went KU. My goal is to build a back list and eventually go wide. However, I think a lot of this depends on an individual author's particular audience. For example, I'll be releasing into the fantasy romance sub-genre in the summer. These books are mostly wide from what I can tell vs the historical romances my competition has in KU. I watch closely what these authors do and where they place their books because that's where my audience likely is. 

Do I worry about my future if I stick with KU? Heck yes. I don't think it's safe to have all my eggs in one basket. Also, I'm not strapped for money. At the time, our family is doing fine and I had the luxury of saving some $$ before quitting my day job (due to injury, not because of my books ha). The way I see it, one audience is in KU while the other is not. And what bugs me about the free list is that everything is so confusing and jumbled in there. The scammers will always be there. Just like the haters in life, there will always be someone gaming the system and screwing the rest of us over. It's life and we all have to live with it and do what is best for our business.


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## SC (Jan 6, 2017)

You guys make some good points about KU vs. wide. So now I'm wondering, does anyone have experience going with KU at first and then going wide (not switching back and forth multiple times, but just starting in KU as an author and then moving everything wide)? 

I'm curious how well it might work for a new author to do KU to gain some traction, then move everything wide after they've built up a bit of a backlist.


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## Alan Petersen (May 20, 2011)

Lynn is a pseud--uh said:


> Just finished returning my 3rd product in a row -- all over $50. Yeah. I'm done with the marketplace. It sucks.


Yeah, I no longer buy from the marketplace. You don't know if it's a scam or counterfeit item. If it's not direct Amazon or fulfilled by Amazon, fuggedaboutit. Even if the price is much lower, which is how the scammers get you.

Phoenix, Becca brought up a great point, perhaps that Forbes reporter would be interested in yet another way scammers are thriving on Amazon.


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## Some Random Guy (Jan 16, 2016)

Shawna Canon said:


> You guys make some good points about KU vs. wide. So now I'm wondering, does anyone have experience going with KU at first and then going wide (not switching back and forth multiple times, but just starting in KU as an author and then moving everything wide)?
> 
> I'm curious how well it might work for a new author to do KU to gain some traction, then move everything wide after they've built up a bit of a backlist.


I pulled out of KU1.0 when I had only two books - the first of two series - and didn't do squat wide. When KU2.0 came out, I put both back in and made a mint. Ditto for the next five books I published in either series, until KU revenues started seriously petering off last fall. I pulled one three book series out of KU starting January of this year and applied for a US & International BookBub the moment the first installment was up on iTunes, Kobo, Nook, etc. I got the Bookbub in February, probably in no small part because it was wide. It launched me in stores other than Amazon to such an extent that I pulled my other four book series out of KU at the end of February and applied for a Bookbub for the first in that series, getting an International one in March. At this point, none of my seven novels are in KU. Since the February Bookbub tailed off, the non-Amazon sales channels are responsible for a steady 2/3 of my sales and Amazon the other third. I'm putting out book 4 in the first series at the end of next week and it's going straight to wide, without a 90 period in KU. We'll see what happens.

Would I have been able to establish myself that well in the other sales channels without the Bookbub? Unlikely. This is where luck came into play...(yes, I've been following the discussion re: luck in the Failed Novelist thread)... But I prefer to define luck as preparation meeting opportunity.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

raminar_dixon said:


> I don't even really blame Amazon for the end result and shift that KU created, _even though they created KU_. That would be like blaming McDonald's for childhood obesity. Amazon came up with an idea to improve their business and make more money, because that's what businesses do. And if they hadn't done it, someone else would surely have. KU was and still is a resounding success for Amazon. It was and still is a resounding success for many authors. That might change in the future, but my crystal ball isn't plugged in right now.


Except that the others that tried the subscription model like this were heavily reliant on venture capital startup money and failed as soon as that money started to dry up. It is not a sustainable business model for books at any price level that offers any reasonable compensation for authors. The companies like Oyster and Scribd that have done it were heavily reliant on venture capital to make it work. As soon as that money dried up Oyster went kaput and Scribd had to axe the categories that people read the most in and curtail the number of borrows per month.

As for KU being successful, we really have no idea. The bookstore revenues are all lumped in with their digital division, which is much bigger than the bookstore. All of the numbers we see are Wild Ass Guesses thrown around by people outside of Amazon. But we have heard Amazon say that a) the bookstore - including KU - is essentially a funnel to get people inside the store to buy _other_ goods, b) that KU subscribers spend more on those other goods than regular book buyers do, and c) that the scamming problems don't make any difference to them at all.

So it sounds very much like they'd be propping up the program regardless of whether it ever made them a dime in and of itself because it brings more customers to the general store. And by playing with the algorithms to favor KU books and by treating borrows as (or better than) sales for ranking purposes, Bezos is gutting payments to a whole lot of authors who were doing far better when sales were sales and you didn't have to compete with Amazon in their own freakin' store. It's a heads I win, tails you lose situation for all of us in the long run.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Shawna Canon said:


> You guys make some good points about KU vs. wide. So now I'm wondering, does anyone have experience going with KU at first and then going wide (not switching back and forth multiple times, but just starting in KU as an author and then moving everything wide)?
> 
> I'm curious how well it might work for a new author to do KU to gain some traction, then move everything wide after they've built up a bit of a backlist.


* Dec 2015 - Dec 2016 I was KU (revenues 40% direct sales, 60% KU sales). scifi Trilogy + 1 stand alone (released during that year)
* Jan 2017 went wide - with all books, plus launched 5th book
* Revenues since then: January 2017 equaled Dec 2016 (so no hit going wide). February month-over-month 50% increase. March m-o-m 100% increase. April m-o-m 75% increase at this point (i've doubled my units sold in April compared to January and the month isn't over). 
* Since January (so 3.5 months) revenues have risen 250-300%.

Now, that's not all due to going wide. I spent about $200 in promos in those months, whereas previously I hadn't spent anything in my first year of publishing. Also, going permafree helped sales a LOT (I've since stopped that, but it was helpful for the period when I used it).

So it's hard to compare apples to apples because it's all tied to different strategies you are using. But at least now, when I implement a strategy it results in a *full priced sale* ($4.99) not some crappy $2.40 from KU (that's if KU even records the pages read).

In terms of my sales now:

* 50% from Amazon, 40% from kobo, 10% from itunes, 0% from B&N.
* This can fluctuate, some months Kobo beats Amazon, this month Amazon is kicking Kobos butt though with about 60% of my sales.

I have no way of knowing how much KU brought in fans who now read me through direct purchases. I know there are a few.

Generally though, I don't think KU bleeds into direct. The KU readers seem to be a segment unto themselves generally speaking. So building presence there I honestly don't think helps much on the direct side of your selling efforts.

And for whatever the reason, I find KU readers are utterly atrocious at leaving reviews (they simply hardly ever do). Whereas direct buyers, for whatever the reason, are far more apt to do so (or at least I find).

All to say, for all the stories of going wide being a disaster, I definitely haven't found that to be the case. But who knows, maybe that will change in time and the other stores will dry up for me at some point.


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## raminar_dixon (Aug 26, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> wow just wow. Do people live in some alternate reality where facts don't matter?
> 
> For 20 years amazon didn't make a single dime. In fact they LOST money. They aren't a monopoly because they are the best, they are a monopoly because they were supported by wall street investors for 20 years. No other business gets such a luxury to run in the red for 20 years.
> 
> ...


Whichever way you dice it, they beat the competition. They didn't have first-mover advantage with a subscription model for ebooks (that was either Oyster or Scribd) No, Amazon had financial advantage. That advantage didn't fall from the sky, and as far as I know, they didn't do anything illegal to obtain it, either. So, despite what you say, they were *the best* at surviving and securing investments and undercutting prices at the competition (much like Walmart did) until the thing we have now was formed.

I never said they were the best because they created KU. I'm certainly not over here throwing a celebration for them either, in case anyone here is thinking that. Believe me, I have plenty of my own problems with how Amazon has treated my fellow authors and associates. I daresay I've felt their sword and been cut more times than most. Also, I was pretty vocal about not going along with KU before nearly everyone jumped on the "gravy train." No one really listened though, not even me, because in the end the money was too good and standing on principles doesn't pay the rent. I WISH other companies would have provided more competition. Some couldn't, but undoubtedly others could (Google or iTunes, for example).

And when you're the one standing there looking at the other retailers and all they have for you is _less_...well, how the one that's willing to pay you _more_ is able to do that isn't so important anymore, is it, as long as the actions that got them there are at least meeting your own moral standard.



KelliWolfe said:


> It is not a sustainable business model for books at any price level that offers any reasonable compensation for authors.


Oh yeah, I agree with you there, as I've stated above. Never said otherwise.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Mari Oliver said:


> As a newbie, I definitely struggled with the KU or not question. But I had to do what was best for me and being a no-name, I went KU. My goal is to build a back list and eventually go wide.


Yep and nothing wrong with that. Just want to clarify in case people think I'm bashing KU without reservation (as one earlier poster seemed to think I was doing). I myself was in Ku for a year, i get the need to be there for many.

We can both say that KU is a necessity for some and at the same time also say that KU is bad. Similarly we can both say that authors are enabling KU and hence are to blame, and that they are also not to blame (because they are stuck between a rock and a hard place).

This is what happens to markets when they get monopolized. Everyone must bend to the will of the monopolist.  Some will benefit (for a while)... but one thing we all know about monopolies, in the end only the big companies wins.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

raminar_dixon said:


> And when you're the one standing there looking at the other retailers and all they have for you is _less_...well, how the one that's willing to pay you _more_ is able to do that isn't so important anymore, is it, as long as the actions that got them there are at least meeting your own moral standard.


Hence the entire point being made is "cutting off your nose to spite your face."

Bezos pays you more for a reason, to destroy the competition. Which you clearly don't care about, but should. I'm not saying it's anything you can do something about. It's perfectly fine to say "ya, but i need my money so I have no choice." That's a perfectly sound statement to make.

But to say they are the best and the others suck. Give me a break. You need to do some reading on Amazon's history. They are a creation of wall street. And if you want to say "so? if they can get access to money others can't, good for them." then at least realize you are arguing FOR giant monopolies. Because that's how monopolies get created... by being able to issue and support bonds in the market that other companies can't (because wall street refuses to buy those bonds).

Anyway, it is what it is. It's the exact same phenomena as offshoring.... "Why should I pay $20 for this shirt when the chinese one is the same and costs $10?". People cutting their own throats without even realizing it.


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## SC (Jan 6, 2017)

Thanks for sharing, Eric and Seneca. So interesting to see how different strategies have worked out for people.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> Anyway, it is what it is. It's the exact same phenomena as offshoring.... "Why should I pay $20 for this shirt when the chinese one is the same and costs $10?". People cutting their own throats without even realizing it.


Oh, we realize it. Believe me that we realize it. It's just that the other ebook sellers haven't left us any choice. They've refused to innovate, they've refused to improve their storefronts, they've refused to do it anything to make it any easier for people to find the books they want, and they've deliberately made changes to their stores to make it more difficult for us to sell there by reducing our visibility and taking away the tools that we know help make sales in favor of tradpub books.

I can always buy another shirt. I can't find another ebook retailer who is able to successfully sell my books. And frankly, none of them are even trying. I know my books will sell on the other sites because I've done it. I blew past 4 figures a month on both GP and Kobo within a few months of setting up my accounts. But then they decided they were more interested in selling tradpub books over indie titles and pulled the rug out. iTunes seems to be more evenhanded and I've gotten some really nice sales when they've promoted my free-first-in-series, but it's very, very difficult to get any traction there because of their limited browse and search functionality. If you don't already know what you're looking for when you go in, odds are you're not going to find it. B&N? *sigh* I don't even know where to begin with them. They had so much potential and they just threw it away.


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## raminar_dixon (Aug 26, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> I'm not saying it's anything you can do something about. It's perfectly fine to say "ya, but i need my money so I have no choice." That's a perfectly sound statement to make.
> 
> But to say they are the best and the others suck. Give me a break.


Erm, I never said the competition sucked...I said they _failed_. Failed to provide meaningful enough competition. Failed to create any sort of reasonable alternative. Nothing came even close, not for authors. Some of the largest retailers with the deepest pockets probably could have too, but they didn't.



> They are a creation of wall street. And if you want to say "so? if they can get access to money others can't, good for them." then at least realize you are arguing FOR giant monopolies. Because that's how monopolies get created... by being able to issue and support bonds in the market that other companies can't (because wall street refuses to buy those bonds).


I'm not saying that, either. I'm saying that I wish the other companies with the capital or "wall street" investors to support them had given authors a reasonable alternative to KU. I definitely never said it was right or even OK or "so?", nor am I arguing for giant monopolies.

So many words, placed in my mouth. Where's the Listerine??



> Anyway, it is what it is. It's the exact same phenomena as offshoring.... "Why should I pay $20 for this shirt when the chinese one is the same and costs $10?". People cutting their own throats without even realizing it.


I think in this case, many DO realize it, at least by now. But most who are aware of this probably feel that it's too late to get off the train and none of those retailers really ever offered anything close so why should they hold out hope that they will now? If I were still pubbing full-time I certainly wouldn't be counting on any of the other retailers to bring an alternative to market now. Not after what they've shown me so far. I'd likely be all-in with KU on every new release and ride that money train till it was no longer worth it for me. If Amazon wants my stuff after that, they can pay me appropriately for it. Amazon has no choice but to to pay authors enough or they will bail and Chinese ghostwritten ebooks aren't likely to entice people enough to keep KU viable. They need us if they want to keep using ebooks and ereaders as loss leaders for the rest of their store.

Then again, I've made well over a million dollars self-publishing so what the heck do I know about anything?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

raminar_dixon said:


> Then again, I've made well over a million dollars self-publishing so what the heck do I know about anything?


Only a million? I'm at a billion. So I guess I'm right now.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

Any chance that Amazon will wind up in a major anti-trust case in Washington at some point down the road? In that case, would a potential competitor smell blood in the water at that point? And if so, would the end result be a boon to indie authors, of a kind not currently seen?

Is the indie ebook business even self-sustainable? Would most full-time indies even be full-time if it weren't for everything else Amazon sells? Are washers, dryers, TVs etc basically paying the full-time self-pubber's rent?

Not editorializing, these are honest questions I'd be interested in hearing opinions on. This thread has been educational.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

dn8791 said:


> Any chance that Amazon will wind up in a major anti-trust case in Washington at some point down the road? In that case, would a potential competitor smell blood in the water at that point? And if so, would the end result be a boon to indie authors, of a kind not currently seen?


Is anti-trust ever enforced anymore? It's more of a joke at this point (what does it even mean in a global economy? How big is "too" big in a global market?). Maybe in 3.5 years from now it might be relevant and someone will bust up amazon (along with 40-to-80 or so other monopolistic companies) but I'm not holding my breath.

The more likely scenario in my mind is Amazon will get bigger to the point that one of its competitors (or someone that fears it will come after them next) will throw down and fight them with everything they have (not just ebooks, but across all offerings). My money is on Walmart.

People often think this idea is silly, that Amazon is too far out front. But in business it's very common to let a competitor go first and get out in front, assess what they've done right and wrong (let them burn through the cash to figure out how to make a business work) then play catch up. If you have a strong enough brand, you can catch up for much cheaper.

Kobo is just now launching a subscription service for example.

I mean, simple thought experiment. Walmart acquires Rakuten (which would include Kobo). Microsoft jumps in and partners with Walmart to sell tablets. Boom...Amazon is crapping its pants instantly when it comes to the ebook/book market as their US market becomes seriously threatened.

If such a challenge is mounted, yes, it will be *very* good for authors.

The only reason amazon gives authors 70% right now is because it had to compete with traditional publishing. When there's competition, content-providers win. When there isn't (as there is starting not to be) they lose.

Which kind of sums up why it's net-net a bad thing when people go exclusive to amazon. I get it, it has to be done for many, but it's still bad in terms of a trend and effect on the market in the future.

If I had to guess, I think a lot of potential players in the market are waiting to see just how big the ebook market gets. At a certain point someone will mount a challenge, it's a guarantee.


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## Annalise Clark (Apr 4, 2017)

PhoenixS said:


> Here's an older primer post on what the poplist is and the difference between it and the bestseller list and what some of the observable drivers of the poplist are. In addition, borrows do not appear to weight in the poplist either, which further advantages the Big 5 pubs. It also disadvantages the Amazon imprints if borrows don't weight with them, BUT I personally haven't done much work in the past couple of years around Amazon imprints and whether borrows are excluded from those titles or not. Since borrows are paid and credited separately, those borrows MAY count. Also, totally clueless about the Amazon Prime Reads and how those borrows may or may not factor in.
> 
> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,211276.msg2955503.html#msg2955503


Thank you for this! I was coming into this convo late and was a little confused about the original post.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> It's on the table and I hope they do. Trump is none too enamoured with Amazon and he has the power to set the dogs running.


Wapo was ruthless on Trump and I'm sure he blames Bezos for that.

Also, one of the first people Trump met with was the CEO of Alibaba.

That said, I don't see him enforcing antitrust during his presidency. It conflicts with too many other monopolists he supports.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

Thank you for humoring my questions, Twisted and Seneca. Interesting discussion.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> But to say they are the best and the others suck. Give me a break. You need to do some reading on Amazon's history. They are a creation of wall street. And if you want to say "so? if they can get access to money others can't, good for them." then at least realize you are arguing FOR giant monopolies. Because that's how monopolies get created... by being able to issue and support bonds in the market that other companies can't (because wall street refuses to buy those bonds).


So you're suggesting Wall Street refuses to fund Apple and Google?


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

crow.bar.beer said:


> So you're suggesting Wall Street refuses to fund Apple and Google?


<snicker>


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

crow.bar.beer said:


> So you're suggesting Wall Street refuses to fund Apple and Google?


Really? Why not just say "Exxon is loaded, so they could compete on ebooks if they really wanted to."

1) Both google and msft operate as traditional companies. They don't leverage up using wall street because they aren't all-or-nothing companies that care to court total disaster.

2) If one company decides to go nuts and outspend (via debt) it's competitors, there's nothing anyone can do other than engage in a fight of mutually assured destruction.

3) Monopolies generally try to stay out of each others backyards. Amazon doesn't challenge Google on search, Google doesn't challenge on ebooks (not seriously anyway).

4) this is also how wall streets determines winners and losers. Even if MSFT wanted to blow itself up with debt to compete, if wall street says no, then they can't. Wall Street determines who gets to load up with debt and crush their competition, and who doesn't.

But amazon's success has been built on the ability to carry its business on huge debt for 23 years, others could not do (or no sane company would do... other than the big telcos like Sprint mind you).

The desire to not want to believe basic facts is astonishing. Create whatever bubble reality you want where Amazon is simply the best company out there and that's why they succeeded, fill your boots.

I can appreciate what Amazon has done for ebooks while at the same time acknowledging that monopolies are not good for authors long-term and KU is toxic.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> Really? Why not just say "Exxon is loaded, so they could compete on ebooks if they really wanted to."


I wouldn't say that because Exxon isn't retailing e-books, but both Google and Apple are. 

You argued Amazon's competitors stood no chance because "Amazon is a creation of Wall Street" and that "Amazon can get access to money others can't".

Yet obviously both Google and Apple are huge on Wall Street and amongst the largest and most profitable corporations on the planet. Any failure of theirs when it comes to competing in the e-book market can't be attributed to their "not being a creation of Wall Street" or "not having access to money like Amazon", because these things aren't true in their case. 

You point to apparent differences in how they conduct their business, yet it's not in evidence Google and Apple are prohibited from competing on the same level because of these differences.

If anything it appears they're simply not as _interested_ in competing, not that they *can't*.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

crow.bar.beer said:


> If anything it appears they're simply not as _interested_ in competing, not that they *can't*.


So I would disagree. Big monopolies can't both go after a cohort cornering a market... it sets off a war where both sides lose.

But that aside, let's say I agree with you.

It's irrelevant to the greater point. You're arguing that amazon isn't a monopolistic entity because OTHER monopolistic entities could, potentially, challenge it.

And that's fine, I'll give you that. But monopolists don't behave that way and don't challenge each other. And I'd argue that wall street acts to define those boundaries. Sometimes they eventually do challenge each other out of necessity, which is when someone usually dies (which I predict eventually walmart is going to have to do with Amazon).

I just cannot reiterate this enough... it's pure craziness to me that people cannot see that Amazon succeeded because of access to liquidity pools that no one else had (with the exceptions you are listing, for which there are very clear reasons those companies didn't decide to throw down and fight to the death over ebooks).

Amazon was ceded the ebook market, I'd argue, in large part because they had near-unlimited access to debt markets that others simply could not access nor sustain.

But feel free to believe otherwise if you'd like.


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

crow.bar.beer said:


> ...
> Yet obviously both Google and Apple are huge on Wall Street and amongst the largest and most profitable corporations on the planet.


Because they ARE profitable, they would be crazy to try to rival a corporation that 'competes' by undercutting the competition even at the cost of profitability.



> If anything it appears they're simply not as _interested_ in competing, not that they *can't*.


Right. Of course they're not interested. Nobody sane is interested in getting into a price war. Especially over a market that is peripheral to their business.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> You're arguing that amazon isn't a monopolistic entity because OTHER monopolistic entities could, potentially, challenge it.


Nope. I presented no judgment on whether Amazon is monopolistic, nor whether Google or Apple are.

I challenged the reasoning behind your suggestion it wasn't Apple or Google's fault that they couldn't compete in the e-book market.



> And that's fine, I'll give you that. But monopolists don't behave that way and don't challenge each other.


Both Apple and Google retail e-books.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

Sarah Shaw said:


> Right. Of course they're not interested. Nobody sane is interested in getting into a price war. Especially over a market that is peripheral to their business.


Books on Apple and Google aren't priced any differently than they are on Amazon. Why isn't there already a price war?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

crow.bar.beer said:


> Nope. I presented no judgment on whether Amazon is monopolistic, nor whether Google or Apple are.
> 
> I challenged the reasoning behind your suggestion it wasn't Apple or Google's fault that they couldn't compete in the e-book market.
> 
> Both Apple and Google retail e-books.


Congratulations sir. Got a couple replies out of me 

_Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> Congratulations sir. Got a couple replies out of me
> 
> _Edited. - Becca_


If you no longer wish to participate in the debate on whether or not Amazon's competition is to blame for failing to compete better in the e-book market, just say so without the name-calling and allegations as to _my_ motivations for participating. 

_Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Shawna Canon said:


> You guys make some good points about KU vs. wide. So now I'm wondering, does anyone have experience going with KU at first and then going wide (not switching back and forth multiple times, but just starting in KU as an author and then moving everything wide)?
> 
> I'm curious how well it might work for a new author to do KU to gain some traction, then move everything wide after they've built up a bit of a backlist.


This is essentially what I have done. I was Amazon-only. I dipped everything into KU at the end of the scamphlet age when Zon switched to page reads. After sitting in that for somewhere near a year, I pulled everything out of KU.

A pause to look at my sales around that time: monthly royalties between $400 and $2100. Dipping into KU evened out the fluctuations, but did not increase the upper maximum. However, I do believe I gained readership as my low points rose. At the time I pulled everything from KU, I was averaging $1400 per month in royalties.

I went wide using Draft2Digital. First month, nothing. Second month, nothing. Third month, sixty cents. Fourth month, ten bucks. This month, $30+ so far. Not stellar by any measure, but gaining traction. Consequently, my paperback sales jumped from 1-2 per month to 30-40.

*Going wide has been slow.* An author must have the patience to suffer the valley in between pulling from KU and getting traction wide. I was making approx $400 per month in KU reads so pulling out was something scary. I am only now beginning to recover my previous level of royalties.

Is it viable to start in Amazon and KU and gain some readership before going wide? *Absolutely.*


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> I've a suspicion there are a growing group of readers who think 99% of books with the KU badge are cr*p and actively avoid buying those books. I can't prove it, but my sales are telling me something.


My editor cancelled her KU sub for exactly that reason; she couldn't find anything worth reading in her genres. The offerings were horrid.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Laran Mithras said:


> My editor cancelled her KU sub for exactly that reason; she couldn't find anything worth reading in her genres. The offerings were horrid.


Wow, I'm speechless. That just about insulted more than half the members on this forum.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Laran Mithras said:


> My editor cancelled her KU sub for exactly that reason; she couldn't find anything worth reading in her genres. The offerings were horrid.


Anecdotes may be interesting but they aren't good to use for larger conclusions. You need a bigger data set than 1 anecdote for that. My sister loves her KU subscription and reads a book a day every day unless she's unconscious. So that's my one anecdote.

Amazon is 83% of the US eBook market. Isn't KU about 12.8% of the US eBook market? It's bigger than all the other retailers singly, including Apple, B&N, Kobo and GP. You can read the recent Author Earnings report to see that. So, KU is almost equal to Apple and Barnes & Noble combined. It's hard for an indie to turn down KDP Select and KU because of algorithm changes that give KU books a boost in rank for borrows, even if not a single page is read.

I would suggest that a new author needs KU to get an audience. Once they have one, if it is big enough, going wide can net you an even bigger audience. BUT you need the reviews and you need to have a big wallet or the ability to get a Bookbub. Going into KU for a couple of cycles to see if your books have legs, can get reviews and maybe a Bookbub is wise.

Traction on the other retailers is difficult without a big push to start you out. Bookbub is the vehicle that helped me get traction wide. Without Bookbub, I was earning a fraction of what I earned on Amazon when I went wide the first time. That's reality. You have to deal with reality when you are a business person. That means you have to be clear about your goals and be willing to use the most appropriate tactics to achieve your goals.

I don't like Amazon's power in the marketplace, even if it might be good to help a new author get a foothold. I don't like to see the other retailers falter and fail to compete. BUT that's the reality. You have to find the hill you want to die on because business is a battle.

The other retailers can't compete with Amazon head to head. There are real and good reasons why and Seneca has discussed a few.

Amazon was started as a search engine for books and an eRetailer for books. That was used to create the infrastructure for the Everything Store, which was Amazon's end game. It was able to convince its Wall Street backers to let it run in the red for years, investing everything back into growth rather than dividends to shareholders. Amazon was profitable, but it chose growth over taking profit and its shareholders agreed because they shared Amazon's vision for becoming the Everything Store.

The other retailers don't have that vision and hence don't do the same thing. Google could, but only if it decided to become a retailer instead of just a search engine with a side hustle selling books and music. Walmart might be able to do it, but they have a lot of Brick and Mortar stores that they would be undercutting by selling more and more online. That may be the way Walmart goes as well -- closing down stores and growing their online business. Apple is really a tech hardware store. Even though it is one of the most profitable corps in the world with a huge amount of cash on hand, they really do seem focused on hardware. Music and books / online retail business, seems like a side hustle and as such, they aren't focused in on really competing with Amazon nor can they head to head. Two different business models and realities. The real completion may be from Alibaba if they could get their sh*t together enough to compete in the Western market.

So, long winded as usual, but Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla. You want to sell books and make a living doing so? You have to find a way to sleep with that gorilla without getting crushed when it turns over in the middle of the night.


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## LadyG (Sep 3, 2015)

Laran Mithras said:


> My editor cancelled her KU sub for exactly that reason; she couldn't find anything worth reading in her genres. The offerings were horrid.


Trying hard not to be offended over here . . .


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

sela said:


> ... Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla. You want to sell books and make a living doing so? You have to find a way to sleep with that gorilla without getting crushed when it turns over in the middle of the night.


My favorite quote today.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

TwistedTales said:


> You can't trust the AMS ads because they're not even vetted by investment. In the past, advertising was expensive, but the slot machine version lets anyone advertise anything for very little cost.


I'm not too familiar with AMS, but doesn't the amount of the bid determine the placement? If so I'd guess they are being vetted by investment to at least some degree...


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## PatriciaDreas (Mar 30, 2017)

TwistedTales said:


> I can see why readers will look for differentiators that make it easy to eliminate half of the books.


I've never once browsed Amazon looking for something good to read. As a consumer, I only go the Amazon based on reviews I've read elsewhere. I have no idea what profile fits the average Amazon KU customer, or how discriminating they might be when it comes to books.

In Literary Fiction, 41 of the top 100 books are in KU compared to 93/100 in New Adult. In Romantic Comedy, the ratio is 77/100 and the same in Science Fiction (77/100). In the overall Top 100, the ratio is 60/100, and most of those KU titles are the ones ranking well in the various Romance categories and Science Fiction. You can interpret those ratios anyway you want to.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> And then add in tactics like 99c books, which is a fave trick for KU to blast a book up the ranks. Now the reader can't use rank, assuming they knew what that meant in the first place. And then there's the ridiculous review system - readers are getting very cynical about reviews and quite rightly so. Nothing Amazon has done to date has improved that quagmire. Oh, and let's not forget the category abuse. I can't even search by keyword without being confronted by books that just don't belong under it.


How I imagine Amazon would respond to all this if they ever did.

https://youtu.be/pdFl__NlOpA


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## PatriciaDreas (Mar 30, 2017)

TwistedTales said:


> How many are read in full is questionable.


To get an unreliable clue on that aspect I look at the author's back-catalog. If they have a title ranking at #85, but their previous titles are ranking in the 000,000s after even just a month, I'm guessing they may be getting a lot of initial downloads due to promotions but not a lot of pages read. If their back catalog titles are ranking between 5 and 20k I'm guessing they've got a sticky readership.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

I thought I made it pretty clear: _*in her genres*_. This is in response to those perplexed or "offended" by my editor dumping KU due to shoddy authors.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> I actually suspect there are people in Amazon who wouldn't disagree, but I gather it's a bit of an "off with their heads" culture. In other words, they toe the line and prattle the corporate speak, which is standard in most companies.


I little off topic but business closures are hitting a record this year (just a quarter into the year and there have been more closures ytd than during the 2008 crash... and twice as many as last year). I wouldn't be surprised if a big reason Amazon can't / doesn't correct a lot of this stuff is that it's seeing a bad year ahead and is battening down the hatches rather than worrying about polishing out all the flaws in its delivery platform.

"It's good enough" tends to rule the day when times are tough.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> I little off topic but business closures are hitting a record this year (just a quarter into the year and there have been more closures than in all of 2008 during the crash... and twice as many as last year). I wouldn't be surprised if a big reason Amazon can't / doesn't correct a lot of this stuff is that it's seeing a bad year ahead and is battening down the hatches rather than worrying about polishing out all the flaws in its delivery platform.
> 
> "It's good enough" tends to rule the day when times are tough.


Survival of the fittest.

However, times like these provide an opportunity for competitors to rise above the destruction.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> I think the little budget they have to play with is probably being redirected to expanding or shoring up the international market.


And not fixing existing problems.

Authors are far down the list of concerns because we are not customers.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> Other companies are actively taking control of access to the readers by setting up their own databases of authors and books. That means many readers will go through them to buy their books. It changes who has control of the buyer. In the future, once they're big enough, they can use the authors to actively promote one platform over another. If Amazon have annoyed the authors enough then they will promote other platforms. Those companies already provide links to ALL platforms for that author's books. Bit by bit they are breaking up who has access to the readers, effectively diluting Amazon's power.


That's what I'm hoping for. Some smart entrepreneur will come along and offer a better service. It always happens. The big names of the past are dust now. Sears? Thrifty's? K-Mart?

At some point, courage and determination by a businessperson will introduce something not just competitive to Amazon, but better.

Really, all it takes is someone who wants to begin with a large book offering. The only way to accomplish attracting authors is to make them a better deal - treat them as if they are the kings/queens of success for this new business.

It will happen. Someday.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

TwistedTales said:


> While they treat me like trash, other competitive forces are busy winning my money and support. It's because Amazon have been so hostile that I am now wide and use other advertisers to make my books visible. Amazon drove me into the arms of competitive forces that are slowly eroding their stranglehold on the market. That's what happens when a company thinks they're a monopoly and lose track of the definition of customer. The readers are only one customer. I'm the other one. Amazon think losing the reader is a problem, but actually losing the scummy supplier is also a problem, one I don't they understand yet.


I assume you're only talking about your own experience, because, what are these benevolent competitive forces you're talking about?

From where I stand, it is all the other retailers who have given indie writers no support. Google pretty much tossed us to the wind. Bookbub is doing the same, except they have to tolerate Romance and thriller writers due to the voracious reader bases. B&N is married and tied to the hips with TP. Kobo I heard is better but lately all I see are threads here saying authors haven't been paid. Seriously, I find Amazon to be the only retailer that even gives a crap about indies, despite that they're not without their issues.

Pronoun is owned by TP so I actually mistrust them even more than Amazon. And Bookbub supportive? Tell that to the majority of the authors who'd only ever received rejection notices. In contrast, Amazon is the one place that gave me visibility over the last 6 months.

Sorry I just can't join in the Amazon hate, when I feel like all the other retailers are the ones that let many of us down and don't give a crap about us.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

AlexaKang said:


> Sorry I just can't join in the Amazon hate, when I feel like all the other retailers are the ones that let many of us down and don't give a crap about us.


People are reading this discussion wrong I think. It's not about hate; it's just business fundamentals.

There's no need to hate amazon to recognize it has, and is, building a monopolistic position in the market. And to acknowledge that will not end well for 99% of the authors out there (it's already not ending well with page reads being total inaccurate).

And the crux of the issue is whether Amazon holds that monopolistic position because they simply built a better mousetrap, or whether they were able to operate under completely different market forces than the competition. I'd strongly suggest it is the latter.

And feckless antitrust laws (in conjunction with Wall Street) are ultimately to blame for that.

Lastly, here's the great irony in your statement / position. The other vendors "treat you like crap" because they can't compete with Amazon financially. Nor can they raise the funds to do so. What capital pool would buy the bonds of say Kobo to challenge Amazon, knowing that Amazon has infinite access to debt markets to destroy anyone who tries to challenge them? For Kobo to take such a run would be an all-or-nothing effect resulting them in them going bankrupt within a year.

I laugh that the very thing you hate was also most likely created by Amazon. Without Amazon dominating the market (again through unfair competitive practices), all the ebook vendors could easily raise capital and you'd have a thriving competitive landscape with everyone jockeying to serve the customer.

Ultimately we'll all be on the same page on this as the stronger Amazon gets, the more authors will get squeezed.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> The feckless antitrust laws (in conjunction with Wall Street) are ultimately to blame for that.
> 
> Lastly, here's the great irony in your statement / position. The other vendors "treat you like crap" because they can't compete with Amazon financially. Nor can they raise the funds to do so. What capital pool would buy the bonds of say Kobo to challenge Amazon, knowing that Amazon has infinite access to debt markets to destroy anyone who tries to challenge them? For Kobo to take such a run would be an all-or-nothing effect resulting them in them going bankrupt within a year.
> 
> ...


Generally monopolies are never good. But there are exceptions. Some of us still remember the days of AT&T monoply. Ever since that break up, phone services had only gone downhill to the toilet and services provided by so-called competitions had been crap.We no get many choices of this garbage set of customer services or that garbage set of customer services, with ridiculous contracts and horrible coverage. I'm not saying an Amazon monopoly is a good thing. I'm saying one can't assume that the crop of competitions that might rise up will be any better. Might actually be the beginning of the end, if it goes the way of phone services.

And I just don't buy the argument that no one has the financials to compete with Amazon. Apple and Google certainly can, if they wanted. Even Facebook. But as others already pointed out, it's just not in their interest and they got other fish to fry -- IOW, they don't care about indie authors to even give a crap.

And the guys on Sell More Books podcast had made this great suggestion time and again: if Kobo and B&N get into a partnership together, they can give Amazon a run for their money. But I don't see that hapenning -- too many internal business aspects to overcome.

It's just not fair to say it's the authors who are driving everything to the way of an Amazon monopoly. Indie authors especially, don't really have that much power. We'll go where they'll give us the best sales. But it's the businesses that have objectives they deem more important than us, or their managements can't overcome themselves to do what might enable them to pursue and grow their market share.

If Amazon shuts the door on all indies tomorrow, I don't think the other retailers will pick up the ball and roll out the red carpet for us overnight. Amazon caters to us because we funnel customers to them to buy bigger more expensive stuff. Even if Amazon shuts down its book retail business tomorrow, I don't see Apple or Google suddenly bothering to improve their stores for us. Book sales is not important to their overall business objectives. Book sales alone is not not even important to Amazon's business objectives. Can't look to B&N either. If that happens, their TP clients would be more than happy to shut us down. Kobo is Canadian focused. What's left? Bookbub? Bookbub these days wag their tails at trad pub and are slowly divesting away from indies. If we have nowhere else to go, it doesn't mean they'll welcome us with open arms.

Amazon dominates the market because other retailers really don't value indie book sellers all that much regardless, or they value other things more than book sales, not be cause they can't compete with Amazon.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

AlexaKang said:


> It's just not fair to say it's the authors who are driving everything to the way of an Amazon monopoly. Indie authors especially, don't really have that much power.


They aren't creating the monopoly (wall street did that) they are enabling the monopoly  And yes, Indie authors have power. If not for indies KU wouldn't exist in my opinion. And KU is what is empowering Amazon to behave as it is in the ebook world.

There's a reason Amazon requires exclusivity and Kobo does not. Amazon wants to OWN the market. Their competitors (at least kobo) are trying to benefit authors to lure people in, but there's only so much they can do at their size.

And the other companies you mention are monopolies themselves... and as stated, monopolies tend not to attack each other (if they did, they wouldn't be monopolies anymore).

Read this article if you have time, it's made the round for people who follow this stuff. Came out recently and mentions AT&T:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/opinion/sunday/is-it-time-to-break-up-google.html?_r=0

I think people vastly underestimate the power of monopoly in the market and how it works... no one wins in the end other than the company that owns everything.

The "But amazon treats me better than others" is a very simplified view of what is unfolding (and one that will only be true for the immediate future...they won't treat content providers well forever).


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

I certainly don't "hate" Amazon. I rather like them. However, I feel they aren't giving authors their due - and certainly not their customer service.

I'll look into Bookbub. Pronoun I had a nice email conversation with over PayPal: I won't use PayPal and the CS at Pronoun told me to keep my eyes on them for direct deposit in the future. I certainly will. On the Bookbub matter, I thought they were only advertisers. Being primarily an erotica author, I haven't bothered with them: total dismissal. I'll have to check them out.

Indie authors can certainly whet the appetite of an ambitious competitor (none of the existing, I think) to offer a service superior to Amazon. What brilliant entrepreneur will understand that offering a 90% royalty on an ebook will almost instantly build what might become the largest ebook/author databse in existence? It could happen. Ebooks are just electronis transfers - almost no cost. What indie author would dismiss 90%? That kind of offering could shift the entire dynamics of the ebook business within a year.

So in that aspect of "wide," we carry some power. If we were all Amazon-only, I think a prospective ebook seller might be shy on getting a foot in sledgewise against Amazon.

We have created an environment filled with opportunity. Just need an entrepreneur to step up - someone hungry for success. It's only a matter of time.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

AlexaKang said:


> And I just don't buy the argument that no one has the financials to compete with Amazon. Apple and Google certainly can, if they wanted.


Exactly, they have the financial means. And Apple and Google already compete with Amazon in the e-book market. That Amazon has a long track record of reinvesting its revenue into growth instead of holding it up as profit doesn't change either of those facts.

Apple and Google come into this with different priorities, but the e-book market is a place where all three companies' interests intersect. If they weren't competing, they wouldn't be in the market. Blaming Amazon's reinvestment of its revenue into growth for Apple and Google not competing better than they already do doesn't make sense, especially when some of the greatest flaws independent publishers have seen in both Apple and Google's platforms have far less to do with how much money they invest and much more to do with their _execution_ of what they already do.


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

LFGabel said:


> Is there a indie writers union? Solidarity could have a substantial effect on the scamming that's happening in KU.


I doubt it, because ultimate authors are suppliers to Amazon, not employees or customers (which many seem to forget or fail to understand). If you don't like their terms and conditions you can take your product elsewhere. The other hurdle is the sheer number of authors, how many would you need to join such an association to have any teeth - 10,000, 100,000, a million?



LFGabel said:


> Or are book sales such a small blip on Amazon's bottom line now, that it wouldn't matter?


KU is a loss producing funnel for Amazon. They use it to turn readers into customers of other (more profitable) goods and services. Amazon has no financial incentive to "fix" what authors perceive as a problem. While authors like to come up with all sorts of solutions they expect Amazon to implement (like staff to review every single book submission) they all cost Amazon money and don't produce any return.

Again, authors are a supplier to Amazon. Don't like KU? Take your books wide.


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

LFGabel said:


> Is there a indie writers union? Solidarity could have a substantial effect on the scamming that's happening in KU. Plus it might help getting Amazon to take action when future issues like this arise. I remember another writer mentioned this idea (Seneca?), but if all legitimate authors left KU, leaving scam books for the legitimate KU subscribers, I'd expect a large drop in subscribers, which would mean a large drop in payout revenue. IOt would have to be all or nothing to work (a KU writer strike), and I know many authors rely on KU to survive.


There's ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Authors https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org which seems like a pretty good organization. But I'm not sure that they're much use in dealing with Amazon. The one note of hope for me is that the scammers using KU are costing Amazon money and quite possibly annoying customers, which may make them inclined to act eventually.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

One obstacle to any form of collective action would be that many authors refuse to participate in KDPS/KU as it is. Also, many of those who _do_ participate are relying on that income. They'd need a lot of support to even consider such a move.


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