# Help! My KU page reads from last month have been retroactively halved.



## TM285 (Apr 3, 2017)

Today I checked my KU reads from last month and saw they had been cut to almost half of what they were before! They were reporting at almost double, but a week into this new month and the graph is showing half as many.

Has anyone experienced this? Can you guess why this might have happened? Please check your KU reads and see if the same happened to you last month.

NB My book does not do book stuffing or anything else that breaks the rules, if Kindle thinks we have, they are mistaken. It's like any other book.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Check the Excel file you download, rather than look at the graph, which is a rolling graph and isn't all that accurate as to true sales.

I have heard some speculation that involves the lawsuit as reported in another thread that says perhaps Amazon is removing sales and pages read from accounts where the reader has been caught doing naughty things (not the author, the consumer).

If you are concerned after checking your actual reports, then contact Amazon and ask them to look into it. For authors, go through the KDP dashboard, there's a Contact Us link somewhere. Don't call the customer service number, it gets you to people who deal with consumer issues, which this is not.


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## TM285 (Apr 3, 2017)

The difference is over 300,000 KENP reads, this is not a minor error or related to delayed reporting. The Excel report just mirrors what the graph says now, but it was different before...


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

she-la-ti-da said:


> Check the Excel file you download, rather than look at the graph, which is a rolling graph and isn't all that accurate as to true sales.
> 
> I have heard some speculation that involves the lawsuit as reported in another thread that says perhaps Amazon is removing sales and pages read from accounts where the reader has been caught doing naughty things (not the author, the consumer).
> 
> If you are concerned after checking your actual reports, then contact Amazon and ask them to look into it. For authors, go through the KDP dashboard, there's a Contact Us link somewhere. Don't call the customer service number, it gets you to people who deal with consumer issues, which this is not.


Contact US is a link all the way on the bottom of the KDP page (once you log in).


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## solo (Dec 19, 2017)

Aw, [crap]ake mushrooms! Now I have to check everything. To be honest, I just look at the total and forget about the figure after a few days (since one's mind on the present and the future). 300,000 reads lost is a huge amount. And no notice? No one-sentence email?

Writing is a hobby for me. It had become a serious one, true. But we have to watch for these incidents too? Bad enough when you see your work blatantly plagiarized/copied in a lot of bizarre book sites.

ADD - And when they compute royalties already, the raw data on reads and sales disappear 
And March was not a good month.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

This is the third case I've heard of where Amazon has done a massive retroactive page read reduction. In the first case, Amazon subsequently accused the author (who was totally innocent) or rank manipulation, in the same manner that it did to those it rank-stripped.

Good luck getting some clarity from Amazon.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

I've had one day change overnight, losing me about $200. I'm now writing them down at US days end, in case it happens again.

Amazon is doing something, and appear to be ignoring messages to them asking what happened to the reads lost. I've not contacted them myself, as i cant be sure it wasn't a memory glitch on my part. And mine happened 2 days before other people started reporting they could see the reads being removed from BR.

But something is happening. And its not just about bad review activity.



dgaughran said:


> This is the third case I've heard of where Amazon has done a massive retroactive page read reduction. In the first case, Amazon subsequently accused the author (who was totally innocent) or rank manipulation, in the same manner that it did to those it rank-stripped.
> 
> Good luck getting some clarity from Amazon.


I know 2 others , both of whom have had nothing from Amazon at all.

Maybe Amazon thought removing reads would slip past authors unnoticed?


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

TimothyEllis said:


> Maybe Amazon thought removing reads would slip past authors unnoticed?


That's certainly possible, but it's equally possible that Amazon has found some botted pages, or at least suspected some.

We know that bots will, under some circumstances, target legitimate books to make their activities harder to detect. Since Amazon is cracking down in some ways, it wouldn't surprise me.

The problem remains transparency. If Amazon disallows some pages, it should explain why--always. We shouldn't even have to ask.

As someone pointed out, reviews occasionally disappear, then reappear. This appears to be caused at least part of the time by the reviewer being suspected of something. The reviewer clears his or her name, and the review reappears. Perhaps that will be the same with page counts. I'll keep my fingers crossed.


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## LovetoWrite (Aug 12, 2014)

Another author had mentioned that she'd lost about $300 in page reads. ...I checked my account this morning, and they took close to $1k from me for March! I'm beyond shocked. My page reads had really shot up in March, but I attributed it to doing more ads and promoting better through my email list. I'm seriously sitting here stunned.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

LovetoWrite said:


> Another author had mentioned that she'd lost about $300 in page reads. ...I checked my account this morning, and they took close to $1k from me for March! I'm beyond shocked. My page reads had really shot up in March, but I attributed it to doing more ads and promoting better through my email list. I'm seriously sitting here stunned.


You need to to ask KDP why you lost them, and give them all the details of all your ads for the month (and the one before), so they can see you were advertising more than normal.

Do that now!


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> You need to to ask KDP why you lost them, and give them all the details of all your ads for the month (and the one before), so they can see you were advertising more than normal.
> 
> Do that now!


It's not the same thing, but when books were being rank stripped I had a book get 5,000 downloads in one day with no advertising. I called Amazon right away and told them that I believed a scammer had targeted my book for whatever reason (it was free, and not in KU so why?) They were really nice, had me speak to a special department, and took down a lot of details. I was never rank stripped.

TLR. Listen to Timothy and contact them right away.


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## eroticatorium (May 6, 2016)

Just to provide a counterpoint, I think I got page reads added for last month. Honestly I don't keep track closely enough to be sure, but those numbers look better now than they did at the end of March. I definitely didn't lose any. I don't do any advertising or bookbubs.


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## Avery342 (Aug 23, 2016)

I almost feel like giving up at this point. Last month I published the third book in my MM Gay Mystery Romance Series. To give it a boost, for the first week, I did a free run for book one, a Kindle Countdown deal for 99 cents on book two, and offered the new release at 99 cents. I kept a pretty decent track record of page reads and sales per book for the rest of the month. (Release mid-March)

For me, the strategy was a huge success--giving me true hope for the first time of being able to make this work by following all the rules and simply writing decent books. The only "promos" I did were BkNights and BookDoggy for the free run and a LGBT-Romance newsletter promo for the new release.

I closed March 2018 out at $675.51 per Book Report (at the first of April). I was thrilled!

Now? According to Book Report, I've lost $170 in March income. To someone just starting to gain traction, that's a heck of big hit! Especially on top of being reminded how extremely well the book stuffers are doing. Can an honest author just not win with Amazon anymore?

Am I just setting myself up for more heartbreak at this point?

And yes, after checking, that loss of income was all from page reads that seem to no longer exist.

And all this on the day I was to actually start writing book #4. Great motivation to write, that. Good job, Amazon.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

Off to check...


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Why are you guys complaining? Amazon is doing what they need to in order to keep KU going. Amazon enabled ebook publishing and everyone should be thankful to them, not complaining when they take $300 or $1000 or $10,000 of your money. If they didn't exist you wouldn't even have that money in the first place. 

Whatever zon wants to do, it's the right thing to do. 

Would you rather not have KU?


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## TM285 (Apr 3, 2017)

Looks like lots of people are experiencing this.

It's devastating.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/781495321956934/permalink/1379173772189083/


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

Seneca42 said:


> Why are you guys complaining? Amazon is doing what they need to in order to keep KU going. Amazon enabled ebook publishing and everyone should be thankful to them, not complaining when they take $300 or $1000 or $10,000 of your money. If they didn't exist you wouldn't even have that money in the first place.
> 
> Whatever zon wants to do, it's the right thing to do.
> 
> Would you rather not have KU?


I fear someone who doesn't know you will miss the intended irony.


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## Ryan W. Mueller (Jul 14, 2017)

Mine appear to be untouched, but I don't get huge numbers of page reads.


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## TM285 (Apr 3, 2017)

I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars generating those reads. It's going to destroy my bottom line.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Bill Hiatt said:


> I fear someone who doesn't know you will miss the intended irony.


I know him quite well, and I don't see any irony. I see a very ugly comment mocking other people on this forum. On the other hand, it's about what I would expect.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> Why are you guys complaining? Amazon is doing what they need to in order to keep KU going. Amazon enabled ebook publishing and everyone should be thankful to them, not complaining when they take $300 or $1000 or $10,000 of your money. If they didn't exist you wouldn't even have that money in the first place.
> 
> Whatever zon wants to do, it's the right thing to do.
> 
> Would you rather not have KU?


You must be fun at funerals...

We all knew a true clean-up of KU would be messy and snare a lot of innocents. I'm confident those innocents will have their numbers restored (why feel otherwise at this point?) if they appeal. On the bright side, if Amazon is successful, zillions of KENP pages will be wiped from stuffer's and schemer's dashboards. Keeping the rose-tinted glasses on for a further moment -- that would have a dramatic positive effect on payouts.

Or something else could be up, possibly a glitch. I doubt it (weekend timing makes me feel otherwise), but it's not out of the question.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Bill Hiatt said:


> I fear someone who doesn't know you will miss the intended irony.





brkingsolver said:


> I know him quite well, and I don't see any irony. I see a very ugly comment mocking other people on this forum. On the other hand, it's about what I would expect.





Dpock said:


> You must be fun at funerals...


This.


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## Lu Kudzoza (Nov 1, 2015)

Bill Hiatt said:


> That's certainly possible, but it's equally possible that Amazon has found some botted pages, or at least suspected some.
> 
> We know that bots will, under some circumstances, target legitimate books to make their activities harder to detect. Since Amazon is cracking down in some ways, it wouldn't surprise me.
> 
> ...


I suspect this is the problem. Amazon is likely removing accounts they suspect botting page reads. Any page reads from the botting account will disappear.

If this is the case, then it should only happen to authors who get A LOT of page reads because I suspect the bots target the same books over and over again.


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

Not Lu said:


> I suspect this is the problem. Amazon is likely removing accounts they suspect botting page reads. Any page reads from the botting account will disappear.
> 
> If this is the case, then it should only happen to authors who get A LOT of page reads because I suspect the bots target the same books over and over again.


Possibly. My usual measly pages read haven't dropped at all.

If we're right, it's unfortunate that Amazon didn't address the issue a lot sooner. Waiting until millions of pages read were involved is certainly going to be hard on the legitimate authors whose books were used as camouflage for the true bad actors. Particularly for people dependent on their writing income, seeing sudden large drops like that is going to be hard to take.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Off to check my March figures on BookReport.

Back to say they remain the same huge amount of $4.39 earned over six books in page reads including 2 x 6 page reads and 1 x 3 page reads   

(Sometimes being a low earner is far less stressful. I can't imagine the stress of losing the huge amounts some writers have posted about  . I hope they get things sorted out)


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## joesmithx (Mar 21, 2018)

Seneca42 said:


> Why are you guys complaining? Amazon is doing what they need to in order to keep KU going. Amazon enabled ebook publishing and everyone should be thankful to them, not complaining when they take $300 or $1000 or $10,000 of your money. If they didn't exist you wouldn't even have that money in the first place.
> 
> Whatever zon wants to do, it's the right thing to do.
> 
> Would you rather not have KU?


Give everyone a break, dude. People are losing $100s of dollars. They don't need you to come in with your (only funny to you, apparently) snark and rub salt in the wound.


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

TM285 said:


> The difference is over 300,000 KENP reads, this is not a minor error or related to delayed reporting. The Excel report just mirrors what the graph says now, but it was different before...


I honestly can't remember if I have posted here before, although I have been a member for years. Eye and back and insomnia issues, so I restrict my computer time. But I wanted to let you know you're not alone. Last night, during Day 2 of free days on Title 3 for a pen name, I logged into KDP to see - in shock - that my KENP on Title 1 was stripped of over 197,000 reads for March to 5000 app. for March. 192,000 reads stripped. The $835 or so that BookReport said I'd earned just disappeared. I was actually in the midst of checking into BookReport when it happened. I got the paywall and wondered why, because I didn't realize BR goes in 30 day cycles. I thought it was March and then separate April. March was my first month using BR. Suddenly, BR was saying I made junk money in March. I went back to KDP and saw the damage of my suddenly axed KENPs.

I immediately went to KDP dash and emailed a "Dear Amazon, Help!" email. I have yet to hear back. Someone in an FB indie author group let me know to check here and that this might have happened to someone else in February.

I am just sick over this. Irony, it was free days on Title 2 from same pen name that started the reads climbing. And now during free days of Title 3 the reads have been stripped. The book with the reads was in a KCD during its 90-day period. I've been doing AMS and other KU promo. All reputable sites. I just canceled a promo date for next Sunday because I can't even think right now. I'm in the midst of free days, and Amazon has stripped my KENPs on title 1. Title 1 is a novel, titles 2 and 3 are shorts in a series. I also write as Cindy and am wide there. But I thought it would be handy to have all my Kate St. James stuff in KU and use the proceeds to help my wide expenses as Cindy. I have tried KU twice before on a Cindy book but not for at least a couple of years.

Just know you are not alone. I am compiling a list of all the promo I've done and the price changes that I can remember. I happened to be away visiting my elderly parents when the page reads started climbing during free days I had specifically coordinated to run on the last days of a Select period.

I am flummoxed and in a state of disbelief. Waiting to hear back from Amazon before taking next steps. Just going on the fly here.

Cindy


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> You need to to ask KDP why you lost them, and give them all the details of all your ads for the month (and the one before), so they can see you were advertising more than normal.
> 
> Do that now!


If I've already emailed KDP asking for help, should I wait to hear from them before sending a reply with my advertising and promos? Or compile and send again? I'm on pins and needles waiting for them to respond, but in reality it's been less than 24 hours since I emailed them. I'm compiling and hoping I don't miss something.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

AWritersLife said:


> Give everyone a break, dude. People are losing $100s of dollars. They don't need you to come in with your (only funny to you, apparently) snark and rub salt in the wound.


They aren't losing hundreds of dollars. If bots were reading their book you want them paid for that? Give me a break.

Unless you're implying amazon is removing legitimate page reads? If you are then that would be criminal on amazons part as it is literally stealing from authors.

If you're in KU then that means you have blind faith in Amazon. If you have blind faith in Amazon then why complain? If they are sorting out the data, then that's what they are doing and you'll get what you are supposed to get.

You aren't losing money, you merely thought you had more than you actually did. Either that, or Amazon is stealing from you. If it's the latter then why are you in KU?


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Seneca42 said:


> They aren't losing hundreds of dollars. If bots were reading their book you want them paid for that? Give me a break.
> 
> Unless you're implying amazon is removing legitimate page reads? If you are then that would be criminal on amazons part as it is literally stealing from authors.
> 
> ...


Seneca, either dial your tone well back into the "compassionate" range, or leave the thread.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Becca Mills said:


> Seneca, either dial your tone well back into the "compassionate" range, or leave the thread.


I thought I was being compassionate. No one is being harmed here, they only think they are. Once they realize they aren't they'll feel a lot better.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Seneca42 said:


> I thought I was being compassionate. No one is being harmed here, they only think they are. Once they realize they aren't they'll feel a lot better.


Also known as choosing the prize behind door No. 2.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Seneca42 said:


> I thought I was being compassionate. No one is being harmed here, they only think they are. Once they realize they aren't they'll feel a lot better.


No, they do not, and your response disgusted me.

I'm not in KU and my reads are a flat line from month to month, but people base their ad spend on projected income, and when Amazon goes ha, ha, we were only joking and takes a sizeable chunk away, then you're well up the creek with FB ad spend (because you can't say to Facebook ha, ha, I never meant to spend that money so now give it back).

I'm no friend of KU or Amazon apologist, but they least they can do is provide content providers with a system that does not make financial promises and then takes them away without any communication whatsoever.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Let's move on, folks. Further posts from or responding to S42 will be removed.


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

I thought I'd pop back in with an update. I just heard back from Amazon.

They are being pleasant in tone. My email to them asked for their help, and I said I was horrified (as, like others, I thought my page reads were because of promos and advertising done since the book came out Dec. 29th). But so far I haven't received any compliance emails or the like. _I _emailed them.

The gist so far is, paraphrasing, 'Happy to help, sorry for frustration, can understand your worry, need time to look into it, have reached out to technical team. Will get back to you by end of day Monday April 9th.' 'And, btw, are you satisfied with my support?' (It's way too early in this process to answer that). I am still compiling all my advertising and promos regardless, in case they ask for them.

Meanwhile, there are a group of us in 20booksto50K that this has happened to. If anyone else here has heard back from Amazon, I would be interested in the response. I am just trying to remain calm and go about my to-do list, as per my usual weekend activity...

Cindy


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

cindypk said:


> I honestly can't remember if I have posted here before, although I have been a member for years. Eye and back and insomnia issues, so I restrict my computer time. But I wanted to let you know you're not alone. Last night, during Day 2 of free days on Title 3 for a pen name, I logged into KDP to see - in shock - that my KENP on Title 1 was stripped of over 197,000 reads for March to 5000 app. for March. 192,000 reads stripped. The $835 or so that BookReport said I'd earned just disappeared. I was actually in the midst of checking into BookReport when it happened. I got the paywall and wondered why, because I didn't realize BR goes in 30 day cycles. I thought it was March and then separate April. March was my first month using BR. Suddenly, BR was saying I made junk money in March. I went back to KDP and saw the damage of my suddenly axed KENPs.
> 
> I immediately went to KDP dash and emailed a "Dear Amazon, Help!" email. I have yet to hear back. Someone in an FB indie author group let me know to check here and that this might have happened to someone else in February.
> 
> ...


Cindy, assuming the US is your biggest market, then there are some possible oddities.

If Title 3 is on Day 2 of free, are you promoting it at all? Its free rank would indicate maybe 5 to 10 downloads only over the past couple of days.

Title 2 appears to have been free mid-March. It was not already in the Tracker database I use, so the rank history I can see there may not be accurate. But what I do see indicates no more than 5 or so downloads per each day it was free. Per current rank on the product page, it was not borrowed or sold in at least the last 3 or 4 weeks (meaning no sales or borrows from before it was free till now).

Title 1 looks like it was on Countdown Feb 20-26. Best rank seems to indicate 60-65 sales/borrows for the one day. 197,000 page reads, if we assume a 400 KNPC, would be 492 full reads. It seems to have slid very quickly in rank, and looks like it hasn't had a sale or borrow in maybe a week in either the US or the UK store.

So if Title 2 really didn't have many free downloads and no sales or borrows, why did Title 1 reads tick up 3 weeks after a modest Countdown run?

While I can't trust the rank for Title 1 that I can see because the data hasn't had a chance to populate in the tracking program I use, you can see what the rank for that book was via Author Central. That rank trend, coupled with the sales of the book, can give us a good idea of how many borrows the book actually had, and if 197,000 page reads (or around 500 borrows at a minimum) seems to be likely.

From what I can see, and the history you've provided, things don't add up. But right now, my view is limited.


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## TM285 (Apr 3, 2017)

No response yet. I shall remain hopeful they don't make some lame excuse because they can't be bothered to get to the bottom of the problem/take the time to fix it, knowing that I can't do ANYTHING about it.

Considering my AMS ad spend in March was almost $1000 and April ad spend barely $20 (I paused it, then tried to start it up again, big mistake, couldn't get it to spend), the fact that my KU reads now in April almost double those in March suggest something is deeply wrong. We also did a huge community blitz in March. Again, this means my March KU reads should be higher. 

My actual paid sales in March were coming in at five times the rate of April sales. One would assume that would mean significantly higher KU reads in March. And they were, until Amazon retroactively removed them. Now my April KU reads double my March reads. Unless my April KU reads are also full of these bots (who were supposedly removed permanently by your argument, Seneca42) then this is nothing to do with bots covering their tracks by reading books at random, and their reads being removed. 

These were genuine reads. They spiked after our sales spiked, they dropped as our sales dropped.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> They aren't losing hundreds of dollars. If bots were reading their book you want them paid for that? Give me a break.
> 
> Unless you're implying amazon is removing legitimate page reads? If you are then that would be criminal on amazons part as it is literally stealing from authors.


That's exactly what I'm saying. This is only partly about bots. It appears to be mostly about reviewers doing the wrong things, and it seems that with the removal of real live reviewers, their reads are being removed as well.

And that isn't fair to authors.

Frankly, Amazon has failed to deal with bots and other people doing the wrong things for so long, they should be wearing the cost of the cleanup, not authors.

Kick out the people doing the wrong thing, yes. But why punish innocent authors at the same time?

Reminds me of Avengers 1. They send in a nuke, when the team hasn't even lost yet, on the basis that killing millions is an acceptable loss.

Well Amazon is using a nuke as well, as it always does. And taking away reads from struggling authors is like nuking the roaches living in their garbage.

Amazon should just wear the read cost this month, complete their house cleaning, and we all start again fresh in May.

On the other hand, if the payout rate goes well above .005 because all the bot reads and scams are gone, maybe it wont hurt money so much. Have to wait and see. However, as always it'll be May 16 before we find out.


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## solo (Dec 19, 2017)

TM285 said:


> I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars generating those reads. It's going to destroy my bottom line.


Just curious - generated through ads? AMS? Bookbub? Other sites? Could be useful in future marketing efforts getting readers. Though I think the term should be "getting those reads"


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## Lucey Phillips (Aug 31, 2015)

It happened to me too. For about 20 days in March, my page reads for book one in the series spiked way higher than where they usually are. I thought something looked really weird because I wasn't doing any special advertising or marketing. I was also suspicious because my read-through to the next books in the series is usually quite high, maybe 80%. But for that time period, the page reads for books two and three stayed at their usual levels. At first I thought it was a mistake. Then when it continued for several weeks, I thought 'okay maybe Amazon promoted that book or a blogger liked me or something like that.' 

So when I checked my dashboard tonight, all those extra page reads -- maybe about $500 worth -- were gone. The page reads for March now look like they are on trend with other months. 

The only explanation that makes sense is that my book was targeted by bots and Amazon fixed the problem. It's a mild disappointment, but I'm glad the system is being fixed.

tl:dr I had a ton of extra page reads, they never look legit, now the extra page reads are gone and things are back to normal.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

I have to say that all the hoopla in the last week of March seems to be doing a part 2. 
As suspected, something is going on with the Zon and KU. 
If it is clean-up of reviewers, okay. Or whether it was bots from scammers trying to make themselves look legit?
Geez. The KU drama is getting to be too much for me.

I've already started pulling my full catalog out after almost 3 years. I understand how you have to spend so much or write monthly to get noticed on the Zon these days. But to be honest, to have a retailer have that much power over my career and not caring about any fallout that affects me reminds me too much of my old day job before the heart attack. (Trying to avoid any more of those, trust me.)

I've watched KU1, KU2, and whatever this will be called. Maybe KU3? The way things are cleaned up or fixed tends to just snag TOO MANY legit authors just trying to earn their rightful buck. But I guess, everyone has to decide whether something still works for their business plan. This all has been grounds to stay in the program or not. I decided to leave and go wide. And so, I gather, other authors may make the same decision. Whether this affects the Zon or not? I guess that depends on the number of authors that stay with KU or leave. Either way, I'm guessing, The Zon figures it will win.

But who's bottom line really counts. Yours or The Zons? Because what will be the next cleaning step? And how will it affect us? That's not a good way to do business for anyone. We shouldn't be in fear of what will happen next when all you're doing is just writing books.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

I wonder if all this drama is also happening to trad published books, and if so, what the publishers are doing about it.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

lyndabelle said:


> Maybe KU3?


Been KU3 since last August.

As far as pulling out is concerned, remember you can ask KDP to pull all of them at once, on the basis of reader satisfaction, or lack of it when the books come out in the wrong order, leaving them stranded in the middle of a series.

I also suggest you write and tell them exactly why you're pulling out.

Good luck with it anyway.


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## Can neither confirm nor deny that I am W.R. Ginge (Oct 12, 2014)

Lucey Phillips said:


> tl:dr I had a ton of extra page reads, they never look legit, now the extra page reads are gone and things are back to normal.


This


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## Guest (Apr 8, 2018)

Dpock said:


> We all knew a true clean-up of KU would be messy and snare a lot of innocents. I'm confident those innocents will have their numbers restored (why feel otherwise at this point?) if they appeal. On the bright side, if Amazon is successful, zillions of KENP pages will be wiped from stuffer's and schemer's dashboards. Keeping the rose-tinted glasses on for a further moment -- that would have a dramatic positive effect on payouts.


If this is a clean up of "book stuffers" and scammers - well... all I can say is I hope it was worth hurting the incomes of a huge number of authors in order to grab a group of 10 or 20 or maybe 30 bookstuffers/scammers. Seeing how many of my friends have been devastated by this, I can honestly say it wasn't worth it to me.


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## EllieDee (May 28, 2017)

Although I'm pretty deeply angry about how Amazon is handling this entire thing...



> On the other hand, if the payout rate goes well above .005 because all the bot reads and scams are gone, maybe it wont hurt money so much. Have to wait and see. However, as always it'll be May 16 before we find out.


I think this is a possibility. Will wiping all these accounts make enough of a difference in the payout to offset what authors have lost? No idea. I'm in a pessimistic mood this morning so I doubt it, but we really won't know until the numbers hit. I predict ... drumroll... some kind of small, token rise to offset some of the negative responses, but not nearly enough to compensate writers for what they've lost.

Also, this:



> If you (general you, an author) have been getting extra pages read because of bots, that's not your money.


Scammers piss me off. Screw them and let them lose their ill-gotten money.

But what the honest authors who are getting punished for others' bad behavior, are being ignored by Amazon, and if history repeats itself the little guys (and bigger guys who are also honest players) will never, ever see that money again. It will fall down the black pit of Amazon's soul and help buy the CEO another yacht.

It really sends my blood pressure up. Especially for smaller authors who have no real clout to defend themselves. It's like a full grown man going into a kindergarten playground and slapping the kids around for their lunch money.


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## Guest (Apr 8, 2018)

EllieDee said:


> Although I'm pretty deeply angry about how Amazon is handling this entire thing...
> 
> I think this is a possibility. Will wiping all these accounts make enough of a difference in the payout to offset what authors have lost? No idea. I'm in a pessimistic mood this morning so I doubt it, but we really won't know until the numbers hit. I predict ... drumroll... some kind of small, token rise to offset some of the negative responses, but not nearly enough to compensate writers for what they've lost.
> 
> ...


Two things.

1) The KU global fund is based on how many page reads total there are, and what Amazon thinks we will tolerate being paid. So if there's less pages being calculated, that doesn't mean the page rate will go up. It could just as well stay the same since we've all shown we're more than fine accepting less than .005 per page in payment. Why would Amazon pay us MORE? They don't have to.

2) You're always going to have someone cheating the system. That's life. You can try to fix it, and close up those loop holes, but if it just ends up costing a bunch of innocents and hurting EVERYONE, then it's not worth stopping the scammers. At least, not to me. I have seen so many people, friends, acquaintances, losing up to 50% of their page reads. A scammer or stuffer can afford a drop in page reads. Some of these people, making $10 a month, $500 a month, can't afford that drop.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

mawnster said:


> If this is a clean up of "book stuffers" and scammers - well... all I can say is I hope it was worth hurting the incomes of a huge number of authors in order to grab a group of 10 or 20 or maybe 30 bookstuffers/scammers. Seeing how many of my friends have been devastated by this, I can honestly say it wasn't worth it to me.


The number being talked about is 1000's of people being ejected, not 20-30. Completely different scale.


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## Guest (Apr 8, 2018)

TimothyEllis said:


> The number being talked about is 1000's of people being ejected, not 20-30. Completely different scale.


Those 1000's refers to customers who are shopping and reading books, not the people engaged in "book stuffing" or possible scamming/botting with scraped content books.

Considering that being around the 1500 rank in overall authors nets you about $630 a day, there's only 1499 authors at that point making more than you at that rank. How many of those 1499 authors are "book stuffing" or "scammers"? 10? 20? 30? It's very likely a small number, especially when you see the top earning authors list and many of them are verifiable people who open presences both here and with their fans.

Is it worth it, to catch a small number of people skimming from the pot, to see all these bystander authors have their earnings slashed in half? I don't think so.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

mawnster said:


> Those 1000's refers to customers who are shopping and reading books, not the people engaged in "book stuffing" or possible scamming/botting with scraped content books.
> 
> Considering that being around the 1500 rank in overall authors nets you about $630 a day, there's only 1499 authors at that point making more than you at that rank. How many of those 1499 authors are "book stuffing" or "scammers"? 10? 20? 30? It's very likely a small number, especially when you see the top earning authors list and many of them are verifiable people who open presences both here and with their fans.
> 
> Is it worth it, to catch a small number of people skimming from the pot, to see all these bystander authors have their earnings slashed in half? I don't think so.


Smart scammers (and most of them are smart) don't bot their books up that high. That makes them too visible. We're talking about a lot more than 20 or 30. Also since it's about the accounts, each of those scammers may have 1000's of Amazon reader accounts.


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## Guest (Apr 8, 2018)

Patty Jansen said:


> Smart scammers (and most of them are smart) don't bot their books up that high. That makes them too visible. We're talking about a lot more than 20 or 30. Also since it's about the accounts, each of those scammers may have 1000's of Amazon reader accounts.


Okay so are we talking about scraped-content book botters? Or people who put bonus books in the back of their top 100 romance novels? Because 95% of the complaints I see from people like David Gaughran is "this list of bad boy romance authors is book stuffing and scamming!"

And those bad boy romance authors are definitely not skirting the line of invisibility. They're charting high, since DG frequently refers to being able to look at the top 100 of romance books to "find the book stuffers and scammers".


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

mawnster said:


> Is it worth it, to catch a small number of people skimming from the pot, to see all these bystander authors have their earnings slashed in half? I don't think so.


Yes, it's the fault of people asking Amazon to crack down on scammers, definitely not on Amazon or the scammers, LOL.


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## Guest (Apr 8, 2018)

dgaughran said:


> Yes, it's the fault of people asking Amazon to crack down on scammers, definitely not on Amazon or the scammers, LOL.


So, was it worth it?
_
Edit to remove names. Evenstar, Moderator_


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## Can neither confirm nor deny that I am W.R. Ginge (Oct 12, 2014)

I'm unsure why this thread is developing into a personal attack on David, who as far as I can see has always been on hand to help Indies. Especially by Anon posters who only came onto KBoards and only commented on the 2 threads talking about scammer and stuffers.

Perhaps time to get back onto topic instead of trying to eviscerate our own?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

mawnster said:


> Okay so are we talking about scraped-content book botters? Or people who put bonus books in the back of their top 100 romance novels? Because 95% of the complaints I see from people like David Gaughran is "this list of bad boy romance authors is book stuffing and scamming!"
> 
> And those bad boy romance authors are definitely not skirting the line of invisibility. They're charting high, since DG frequently refers to being able to look at the top 100 of romance books to "find the book stuffers and scammers".


I think there are two things being confuddled here.

The court case that David refers to deals with a single book stuffer.

The disappearing reads appear closely related to Amazon's nixing of thousands of accounts with their associated reads, that may or (as Amazon does these things) may not have been fake. Fake accounts are used by botters of all stripes (presumably including a subset of stuffers because some people don't stop at one shady tactic) to inflate page reads. They can (and do) this at all ranking levels, and I suspect there are quite a few more than 20 or 30.


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## Can neither confirm nor deny that I am W.R. Ginge (Oct 12, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> I think there are two things being confuddled here.
> 
> The court case that David refers to deals with a single book stuffer.
> 
> The disappearing reads appear closely related to Amazon's nixing of thousands of accounts with their associated reads, that may or (as Amazon does these things) may not have been fake. Fake accounts are used by botters of all stripes (presumably including a subset of stuffers because some people don't stop at one shady tactic) to inflate page reads. They can (and do) this at all ranking levels, and I suspect there are quite a few more than 20 or 30.


I do agree that they're two different cases, but I think it's no coincidence that they're both happening at once. And what I mean by that is that Amazon seems to be trying to crack down on scammers of all kinds at last; and although they're doing it in their usual heavy-handed way, at least they're doing it.

And yeah, from what I understand, there are quite a few more than 20 or 30. Enough to upset the ecosystem, so to speak, and enough to at last make Amazon realise they're losing money.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> I wonder if all this drama is also happening to trad published books, and if so, what the publishers are doing about it.


Trad pub books in KU don't get paid by page-reads. They get a flat per-book-borrowed.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

GeneDoucette said:


> Trad pub books in KU don't get paid by page-reads. They get a flat per-book-borrowed.


Be interesting to see if their borrows suddenly disappear


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

mawnster said:


> Considering that being around the 1500 rank in overall authors nets you about $630 a day, there's only 1499 authors at that point making more than you at that rank. How many of those 1499 authors are "book stuffing" or "scammers"? 10? 20? 30? It's very likely a small number, especially when you see the top earning authors list and many of them are verifiable people who open presences both here and with their fans.
> 
> Is it worth it, to catch a small number of people skimming from the pot, to see all these bystander authors have their earnings slashed in half? I don't think so.





mawnster said:


> 1) The KU global fund is based on how many page reads total there are, and what Amazon thinks we will tolerate being paid. So if there's less pages being calculated, that doesn't mean the page rate will go up. It could just as well stay the same since we've all shown we're more than fine accepting less than .005 per page in payment. Why would Amazon pay us MORE? They don't have to.
> 
> 2) You're always going to have someone cheating the system. That's life. You can try to fix it, and close up those loop holes, but if it just ends up costing a bunch of innocents and hurting EVERYONE, then it's not worth stopping the scammers. At least, not to me. I have seen so many people, friends, acquaintances, losing up to 50% of their page reads. A scammer or stuffer can afford a drop in page reads. Some of these people, making $10 a month, $500 a month, can't afford that drop.


Methinks thou protest too much. For someone who is afraid to show your face or your books, you sure seem to know a lot about Amazon. I am also reminded of the old adage that 76% of all statistics are made up. Since you have some issues with the truth, let me explain a few things. Number one, having had a book hit much higher than 1500 in the overall store in the past 30 days, I can testify that $630 is laughable. I never hit $250 in a day and I hit 886.

Also, the pot isn't contingent on how much people read, but on how many subscribers there are. And do I think that funding your yacht is worth it so that all us little people don't get hurt occasionally? No. That is the most specious and disgusting argument I've heard on this entire thread.

As to attacks on David, it sounds as though he's gored your ox. Good for him.

Now, on to the issues at hand. I have been reading and talking to people here and on facebook and Twitter, as well as what's in the press. Here is what I think is happening. Something of a perfect storm.

Amazon cracked down on the scammers and the bots. They have removed page reads for those scammers and bots they've identified. Those were revenues the authors were never entitled to. Some legit authors got caught because they were being used for camouflage.

Second thing that happened is Amazon cracked down on fake and paid reviews and deleted a lot of user accounts. The wailing and gnashing of teeth on Twitter sounds like people cut off from a revenue stream, not those upset because they have to find another source of shoestrings and dog food.

It's this second occurrence that screwed the pooch. The whole KU system is incredibly fragile. Trying to collect data from millions of different devices all over the world is one hell of a programming feat. I think that when they closed all those accounts, they unintentionally wiped out the page reads of those accounts. Since they probably didn't consider testing what happens when you close the account of someone who got paid to review a lawn mower, and they never deleted tens of thousands of accounts all at once before, they had no idea what the consequences would be off in that little corner of the Amazon empire known as Kindle Unlimited.

If this is the case, I would also surmise that they have no way of recovering those page reads. So, some authors have a sudden windfall removed and are upset. I understand why. A lot more authors are hurt due to a glitch in Amazon's glitchy system, and for those people I am truly sorry.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

mawnster said:


> So, was it worth it?


Wow, it must be cool to be David and have Amazon finally crack down on botters, stuffers, and review-incentivizers just because you say so! I'll bet he's stroking his enormous beard (or perhaps his white Persian cat) right now and chuckling evilly. "Yes, yes, the game's afoot, my pretties."

If David, Phoenix, and all the rest of us who told our reps, "This is unacceptable" actually had any kind of impact--color me surprised. I do think KU lost some authors they really, really wanted to keep, though. I suspect that may have made an impact.

_Edit of quoted post. Evenstar_


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

I'm sure it doesn't get said often enough, but thanks to everyone on the forum who's working to understand what's going on and explain it to everybody else.


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## Lu Kudzoza (Nov 1, 2015)

brkingsolver said:


> It's this second occurrence that screwed the pooch. The whole KU system is incredibly fragile. Trying to collect data from millions of different devices all over the world is one hell of a programming feat. I think that when they closed all those accounts, they unintentionally wiped out the page reads of those accounts. Since they probably didn't consider testing what happens when you close the account of someone who got paid to review a lawn mower, and they never deleted tens of thousands of accounts all at once before, they had no idea what the consequences would be off in that little corner of the Amazon empire known as Kindle Unlimited.
> 
> If this is the case, I would also surmise that they have no way of recovering those page reads. So, some authors have a sudden windfall removed and are upset. I understand why. A lot more authors are hurt due to a glitch in Amazon's glitchy system, and for those people I am truly sorry.


Amazon uses a transaction based system so they have the data in raw form (individual page count download) for each KU account. If they find that they've deleted legitimate accounts and associated page reads they can restore the reads by simply loading the transactions again. We'll have to wait and see if they believe they've got it right or if they need to restore some of the reads.

On the larger issue, I think it would be helpful to know if the issue was caused by a removal of review accounts or the removal of bot accounts (or both). If you've lost page reads due to bots they probably won't be restored. If you've lost page reads due to review accounts then there's a little bit of hope that Amazon will decide that the reads should be restored (although they could consider them "bought" pages from paid for reviews and not restore them).


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Usedtoposthere said:


> Wow, it must be cool to be David and have Amazon finally crack down on botters, stuffers, and review-incentivizers just because you say so! I'll bet he's stroking his enormous beard (or perhaps his white Persian cat) right now and chuckling evilly. "Yes, yes, the game's afoot, my pretties."


Life has been pretty sweet since I got that red phone installed on Jeff's desk.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

TwistedTales said:


> The problem with assuming they're reads from now banned accounts is that wouldn't account for the uptick in page reads people saw in March. Assuming those accounts were "bad actors", then you would have the usual page reads and then a reduction when their pages reads were removed.
> 
> The unusual uptick for March suggests there was a significant increase in bot/scammer activity, which might have been genuine scammers taking advantage of the temporary deranking of erotica books. If I were a scammer (and I'm not) I might view that deranking as a convenient smoke screen to download and bot read more books.


I'm currently assuming both. In conversations with authors who were hit, I'm seeing some themes. A number had new releases, a number had new or increased advertising/promotion campaigns. Often they had both. If you see a spike in reads at the same time you start a new campaign, the instinct is to double down on the ads that are working. As a result, not all of the damage shows up on the KDP dashboard.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Around the same time that a dozen or so authors were incorrectly rank stripped by Amazon last September/October (when I first blogged about it), another author contacted me saying she had a huge number of pages reads - hundreds of thousands - retroactively removed by Amazon. They didn't notify her or explain it until she emailed them. Then they accused her of rank manipulation using the same form letter that those authors received.

She never got it resolved. It was the only case of its kind that I'd heard of until last month, when an author told me he had a large number of page reads removed too. Now that there are a few cases, I'll try and raise it with Amazon via the same channels as it appears to be a growing issue.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

TwistedTales said:


> To analyze it you are better off taking the percentage increase from authors who had no new releases or increased marketing that also have 2 years sales numbers, otherwise it's probably too difficult to unpick the numbers.
> 
> If anyone wants to make sense of this, then authors who fit the above criteria could post the percentage variation of page reads from previous to current for March. That'll give you a real assessment of the percentage that's been lost and if it's even across the board.
> 
> I still believe the reasons are not relevant in that Amazon have once again done something destructive to author's earning without any warning. How many times will an author let Amazon randomly rip up their pay check before they decide it's not a tenable way to live?


I don't think most authors are seeing issues. Not that I've heard. For the record, I haven't. I don't track page reads, but looking at my graph, it looks like about where it was. I do have a fair number of page reads, though. If I'd lost 5,000 a day, I wouldn't really notice. But I haven't heard that there's anything truly widespread. (Which doesn't mean it doesn't stink for people who did nothing wrong.)

I suspect that this is tied to the customers who've lost their accounts for participating in incentivized reviews, receiving gifted books in exchange for reviews or click-throughs, whatever. Even if that customer didn't do those things on a legit author's book, Amazon is probably yanking all their reads. In certain subgenres of romance where the bad actors are clustered, that could be a lot of legit reads as well as the incentivized ones.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

TwistedTales said:


> To analyze it you are better off taking the percentage increase from authors who had no new releases or increased marketing that also have 2 years sales numbers, otherwise it's probably too difficult to unpick the numbers.


I agree. However, I'm not hearing from authors who fit the profile you mention. If there are authors who fit that profile, I would love to hear from them.

As to those who are not in KU using this problem as a pulpit to tell us all how Amazon is the devil and they are smarter than those using KU, I hope you realize that your single-topic rants get rather old after awhile and most people just tune you out.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

TwistedTales said:


> Everybody is entitled to their opinion and you and the entire world may ignore mine if you wish. I don't feel put out or harmed by that. I don't tell you what you can and can't say, so why do you feel the need to tell me. This is a forum and all opinions have a right to be expressed, because no single person or group should control the narrative, other than the perhaps the site owners, who have never spoken to me directly as to what I can or cannot post.


I didn't tell you what to say or not. I simply expressed an opinion. I thought that was what the forum was for.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

brkingsolver said:


> Amazon cracked down on the scammers and the bots. They have removed page reads for those scammers and bots they've identified. Those were revenues the authors were never entitled to. Some legit authors got caught because they were being used for camouflage.
> 
> Second thing that happened is Amazon cracked down on fake and paid reviews and deleted a lot of user accounts. The wailing and gnashing of teeth on Twitter sounds like people cut off from a revenue stream, not those upset because they have to find another source of shoestrings and dog food.
> 
> ...


I believe that more or less nails it, but I do think innocents used for camouflage will get their legitimate reads back.


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## steffmetal (May 8, 2014)

I'll throw up my info, for what it's worth.

I had a new release on March 14th. First book in a new series and my only book in KU apart from some old erotica shorts.

I don't have exact numbers. I don't track them because I expected that Amazon and the other platforms are honest. Silly me.

I had at least 300k page reads yesterday morning. I'm positive it was closer to 350,000. I definitely had $1000 showing on Book Report that has now disappeared, and I'm down to 150,000 pages read for this book.

Gutted doesn't even begin to describe how I feel.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

steffmetal said:


> I'll throw up my info, for what it's worth.
> 
> I had a new release on March 14th. First book in a new series and my only book in KU apart from some old erotica shorts.
> 
> ...


I'm seeing a lot of stories like this on facebook. At the very least, this has hurt the morale and confidence of a lot of authors. I hope someone at Zon is paying attention instead of just worrying about damage control.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Several posts have been removed, pursuant to this. Carry on.

ETA: Several more removed later in the day.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Authors on facebook are starting to report receiving an email from Amazon saying they " have detected reading or borrowing activity for your books from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services." It goes on to say that this might be a result of third-party marketing services. 

The email content isn't new as we've seen it before with other authors. I just don't think we've seen it this widespread.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

brkingsolver said:


> Authors on facebook are starting to report receiving an email from Amazon saying they " have detected reading or borrowing activity for your books from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services." It goes on to say that this might be a result of third-party marketing services.
> 
> The email content isn't new as we've seen it before with other authors. I just don't think we've seen it this widespread.


Are you referring to authors who had page reads retroactively reduced, or authors more generally?


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

dgaughran said:


> Are you referring to authors who had page reads retroactively reduced, or authors more generally?


Those with page read reductions. The email seems to have hit a lot of authors in the last hour or so. It specifically states they will not be paid for pages accrued due to illicit activities.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

brkingsolver said:


> Those with page read reductions. The email seems to have hit a lot of authors in the last hour or so. It specifically states they will not be paid for pages accrued due to illicit activities.


Sounds like the same as the case from October last year. If that's any guide, they are going to have a tough time getting straight answers from Amazon.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

dgaughran said:


> Sounds like the same as the case from October last year. If that's any guide, they are going to have a tough time getting straight answers from Amazon.


I never saw one of the letters from October, but it sounds exactly the same. Warning that it is up to the author to ensure everything they partake in is above board and that further incidents could be cause for account deletion.

Everyone who I have heard from maintains that their only ads and promotions were through AMS. That isn't what some said earlier.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

W.R. Gingell said:


> I'm unsure why this thread is developing into a personal attack on David, who as far as I can see has always been on hand to help Indies. Especially by Anon posters who only came onto KBoards and only commented on the 2 threads talking about scammer and stuffers.
> 
> Perhaps time to get back onto topic instead of trying to eviscerate our own?


There are always people who would rather shoot the messenger or fire the whistleblower. Some are misguided, but most do it out of fear of their boat being rocked in some way--fear that they will lose out. Some fear is legitimate, because Amazon's instruments are blunt. Some fear is misplaced, blaming the person who prompts the action rather than clumsy Amazon.

Some is just naked, blatant, fear that their misbehavior is finally being found out.


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## Avery342 (Aug 23, 2016)

Yep, I just got the email. I used three tiny promos. BkNights from Fiverr, BookDoggy, and LGBT-Romance newsletter. All of which came highly recommended as above board and legitimate.

I knew I'd never see those reads again. But to now have my account threatened as well? What is getting me is that I haven't seen any indication that this hit the big name stuffers--those you know, actually manipulating page reads--at all. 

Just when I started having hope, Amazon took it all away. And seriously, there were absolutely no huge spikes of reads that would suggest I'd been botted. I just don't understand this at all. 

How on earth do we, as authors, control those who read or borrow our books? Guess we figure it out or kicked out of KDP, huh? With my luck, I'll be the first picked to be made an 'example' out of.

I'd be okay with that--if I'd done anything at all to warrant it. I'm thinking it might be time to step away from the keyboard. The really sad thing? This writing career that was just gaining momentum and giving me hope? It was about the only hope I had in life.

And for those who are wondering--no, I don't blame David or the others out there fighting the good fight. I back them one hundred percent. This is all on Amazon. I just wish that when they decided to finally take action, they would have gone after the ones who were really doing the manipulation.

But I guess by hitting us newer authors, well, they can always say they've done something, now can't they?


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

mawnster said:


> David spearheaded a campaign that has now hurt probably thousands of authors.
> 
> It's fine. I got the answer I expected to get.


Those dang investigative journalists. If they wouldn't get the FBI all stirred up and chasing criminals, we could just keep doing business with the Mafia as usual and everything would be fine.


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## 60169 (May 18, 2012)

.


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## 77820 (Jun 19, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> Those with page read reductions. The email seems to have hit a lot of authors in the last hour or so. It specifically states they will not be paid for pages accrued due to illicit activities.


We just got one of those letters. The loss of page reads (~13,000 for March) is bothersome, but I take umbrage at the threat of account termination and the insinuation that my wife and I did something underhanded. We have never used any paid marketing service of any kind. The only marketing we use is AMS ads. My wife is livid. We came to the realization that even if this blows over, there is absolutely no way for us to prevent it from occurring again short of getting completely out of the Kindle Select program. Think about it: I can prove I did something, but I cannot prove I didn't do something, and there lies the rub. There is no recourse. If someone has an idea how to solve this problem, then I am all ears.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Shawn Inmon said:


> I can't be the only one who keeps going back and checking their page reads for March, can I?


Nope. I had recorded mine in my income tracking sheet, so I know what my number was as of April 2nd, and have checked it a few times now.

For tracking purposes: no change for me, romance titles usually ranked in the 30K-50K range, 50K page reads for March, only AMS Sponsored Product ads.


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## 77820 (Jun 19, 2014)

Shawn Inmon said:


> I can't be the only one who keeps going back and checking their page reads for March, can I?


Count me in. Not only March (loss of about ~13,000 page reads) but February and January as well. My wife and I are seriously considering ending our writing efforts. We can't take the stress of worrying about this happening again. We thought we were safe since we don't use any type advertising (paid or otherwise) except for AMS. I guess we were wrong.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

I had no loss of page reads detectable, but all of my stuff is out of Select and wide, except for my German translations.

At what point does the "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice" (or three, or nineteen times), "shame on me" principle apply?

At what point does it behoove those engaging in the apparently risky behavior of putting everything in Select to pull out and protect themselves?

At the very least, everyone needs to frankly acknowledge the risk of putting all the eggs into one basket. I don't blame people for doing so if they're doing well thereby, but it's wise to not only plan for, but to actually expect this type of thing and figure it into their calculations, so to speak.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Interesting article coming at things from the other side, i.e. the customer accounts being cut off. A damning swipe at too much automation and not enough human oversight.

https://www.inc.com/erik-sherman/amazon-case-of-mysterious-account-killers.html


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

If the email people are receiving is the end of the story, it's a most disheartening outcome. Maybe innocent victims will get their page reads back. I hope so. I hope they fight. I haven't checked my stats in the last five minutes. Maybe I'll have to join them.

Clearly, book stuffing has nothing to do with this. Book stuffers are still sitting pretty at the top their categories.

To those who are itching to do so, it's probably not the best time to weigh-in on the KU versus wide debate. It would also be irrelevant. KU still pays, and for many will continue to be a source of meaningful income. 

If you're not in KU and wide or otherwise not affected by recent actions, you should be just as upset as the victims on this thread. It's the same company that pays you that is withholding money from them.

I do agree going wide is a prudent measure once one gets established, but not due to KU. It's just good business practice to spread things around. It's clear now any one of us, no matter how well established, whether customer or vendor, could wake up tomorrow to a closed account.

I still have confidence Amazon will sort this all out, but it's not as high as it was yesterday.


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## adsmith20181 (Apr 9, 2018)

Hi everyone,

I recently received an email from KDP saying "We have detected reading or borrowing activity for your books originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services. These accounts might be related to a third-party marketing service you may have used"

They haven't told me which book it was, but I have an idea. And i have only promoted this book on a facebook group related to the genre, where I simply posted the blurb and a link to it on Amazon, and to my mailchimp list.

Book Report now shows that over 25% of my earnings from March have gone. The only promotion services I have ever used for other books are 1 Freebooksy promotion, and a Facebook ad for 1 book. I don't believe that the earnings taken away were from this particular book, as it didn't generate much income in the first place.

Has anyone else had this happen to them? I could take the loss of earnings and move on, but it's the threat to my amazon account that worries me. It's frustrating beyond belief because I'm so paranoid about losing my account that I make sure to stick to every single KU term and condition!


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## 9 Diamonds (Oct 4, 2016)

Check out the discussion so far:

https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,262378.0.html


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## solo (Dec 19, 2017)

I've got my eyes on my March counts  (low enough as it is). A behavior strange and unfamiliar  to me.   Hope this gets resolved soon. It's affecting the mindset of a lot of writers.


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2018)

Whelp. People are getting their accounts suspended, and by and large the ones that have are not even romance authors.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

mawnster said:


> Whelp. People are getting their accounts suspended, and by and large the ones that have are not even romance authors.


Proof. Numbers. Genre. Preferably confirmation from the authors themselves. Get *them* to post here. Preferably with their name and books attached. Otherwise this is just needless fearmongering in the realm of "I have a Facebook friend who said that the mother of a friend of theirs had their account suspended." And yeah maybe they did, but there is no accountability as to what actually happened.


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2018)

Patty Jansen said:


> Proof. Numbers. Genre. Preferably confirmation from the authors themselves. Get *them* to post here. Preferably with their name and books attached. Otherwise this is just needless fearmongering in the realm of "I have a Facebook friend who said that the mother of a friend of theirs had their account suspended." And yeah maybe they did, but there is no accountability as to what actually happened.


Go hang out on the 20books50k group on Facebook. It's all there. Suspensions being laid out, this one specifically to a guy who only ever used AMS ads. He's gotta come up with a statement for Amazon saying he's reviewed his marketing methods and told his 3rd party marketing company to not use clickfarms... that's kinda gonna be hard when his "3rd party marketing company" was Amazon.


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## Avery342 (Aug 23, 2016)

Unfortunately, he seems to be right. A LitRPG author on the 20 books Facebook group just posted a screenshot of his email from Amazon. According to him, this is happening to others in the LitRPG genre as well. 

However, this does appear to be different from the mess I was caught up in with disappearing reads. They got their warning letters from Amazon about ten days ago, before our 'event' started. Also, I don't recall them mentioning missing reads, though that could have happened too.


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2018)

Avery342 said:


> Unfortunately, he seems to be right. A LitRPG author on the 20 books Facebook group just posted a screenshot of his email from Amazon. According to him, this is happening to others in the LitRPG genre as well.
> 
> However, this does appear to be different from the mess I was caught up in with disappearing reads. They got their warning letters from Amazon about ten days ago, before our 'event' started. Also, I don't recall them mentioning missing reads, though that could have happened too.


It sucks to be right in this case.

Especially with LitRPG, that's not really book-stuffing territory. They close in on 500+ pages per title on their own due to the nature of how the books are written and the content within it.

Looks like a circle of RH authors were smacked with page reads being slashed. Almost every author I know from that arena got hit, and again, they tend to not be book-stuffers. There might be a few titles that do, but RH tends to be series so there's no point in stuffing cause the reader just goes on to read the next book in the serial.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

mawnster said:


> Go hang out on the 20books50k group on Facebook.


I have to echo that.

Those getting hurt are over there, not here.

That group is far more vibrant with posts than this forum. It has more than 19,000 members now.

The discussion there is about what people do, having received the dreaded threat-mail, not the endless discussions of us vs them, and who's right or wrong, which happen here.


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## Cavan6 (Apr 9, 2018)

Hi All -- Thanks for all the advice and discussion you're sharing here.  I've had the same experience.  My book came out in October and in December I enrolled it in KDP Select.  I set up an AMS campaign at the same time and saw modest sales.  Since then, I've done a few blog tours to get the word out about the book and starting in February, I started to see growth of E-book sales and higher KU/KROLL page numbers.  I got an email from Amazon last night saying they'd detected use by accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle and when I logged into my account, I found that they'd cut my KENP page reads by over half and cut several hundred dollars from royalty payments for March and April! The thing is, I've ONLY ever used AMS to market the book.  The blog tours are postings on bloggers individual sites, nothing to do with Amazon.  But here's where it gets really interesting:  When I first started my AMS campaign, I was spending A LOT of money per click to get the book in front of people.  Since it's started to take off on its own and the sales are better now, I've reduced the amount of money I was paying per click for the AMS campaign.  So, less than a week after I reduced the amount of money I was spending with AMS, I got this email saying I was being penalized for manipulating Kindle.  Coincidence?  I don't think so. 

How can they get away with taking back our earnings without giving us proof of the manipulation they're claiming justifies it?


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## Mollie (Apr 9, 2018)

This is my first post here - so thank you to everyone on this forum who has shared their experiences of having page reads retrospectively stripped. I discovered this had happened to me when I checked my KU dashboard this morning. After emailing Amazon to ask why, I then started searching more generally, in case I wasn't the only one - and that's why I'm here.

So, here's my experience for anyone who's interested. I'm simply putting it out here since writing it down might help me to understand things better.

I have 20 historical romance titles, half of which are in KU. My sales are modest and I try to get a new release out every three months. As I didn't in March, I breathed new life into a 4-month-old book with an EReaderNewsToday free promo - which I do every few months with good results - combining it with a promo through my newsletter of 5,500 subscribers and various other promo channels through KD ROI. As a result, I got 20 times the usual sales for this book, and 20 times the usual page reads on that one book, meaning I had 150K page reads on that one book. I was thrilled as I'd been scaling up my AMS ads and my Bookbub ads in conjunction with my social media and newsletter promo.

Thinking that my advertising efforts were paying off, I tripled my ad spend and was due to make US$850 for March, which would be $300 more than the previous month. It made sense to me, due to the fives times as many reviews on Goodreads for this particular book in addition to the number of sales it had made, though most of my March revenue came from KU. (I'd enrolled this particular title into KU the previous month as it had been wide for the four months since it was released.)

Then, this morning, I discovered my page reads for March had been slashed retrospectively by Amazon from 200K to 29K, which meant that my earnings for March only just covered my advertising costs on AMS and BB and ENT. Instead of having my best month after inching towards the $1000 mark, I've just had my worst in 6 months due to Amazon's downgrading - with no explanation as to how they've estimated or come up with the final figure I'm to be paid.

When I found this thread this morning, I realised a whole lot of authors had had their page reads removed. A few hours later - coming back from my day job - I received an email from Amazon that was really upsetting. I thought it was in response to my query of this morning but it was vaguely threatening in tone, saying they'd "detected reading or borrowing activity for [my] books originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services" and that I was responsible for "ensuring that no tactics used to promote [my] books manipulate the Kindle publishing service and/or Kindle programs otherwise "future violations of our policies could result in account-level actions, up to and including termination of your KDP account." Amazon's email went on to say they "cannot offer details of our investigations or advice on marketing services."

So, I'm wondering, how am I supposed to monitor third-parties if Amazon can't offer details on their investigations or show me evidence that the page reads for my book were fraudulent - or even IF they were fraudulent? How can I advertise on AMS if I don't know until several weeks later if Amazon deems the revenue was not earned legitimately?

That's all I have to say. It's simply my experience over the past 16 hours. I'm sorry for anyone else who has had their page reads stripped and is wondering why.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Cavan6 said:


> How can they get away with taking back our earnings without giving us proof of the manipulation they're claiming justifies it?


2 things.

Giving proof would reveal a lot of information Amazon want to keep secret.

They dont need to. The KU agreement allows them to do anything they want.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Cavan, Mollie, I think the email is [email protected]

Use it. He'll have heard this 100 times already, but add to the giant pile-on.

I was once locked out of my account (completely unrelated reason). Escalating works well. It seems Amazon almost expects you to do this. They wield the sledgehammer. The onus is on the affected to get really angry and kick up a stink.


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2018)

TwistedTales said:


> I've long suspected there are jerk circles of KU readers. By that I mean they're readers who do "downloads only" or "downloads+reads" for kick backs of some sort. It wouldn't be hard to set up, especially if you could set up a mail list of "friendly" readers. It's become pretty clear how some of these secret groups work.
> 
> That's not to say these sorts of jerk circles wouldn't intentionally "download+read" other "innocent" books to shield their fraudulent activity, which means non participating authors could look like they're involved when they aren't. The fake reader might even target specific niches/genres so their reading history looks sensible. Also, books advertized on AMS might be hit harder because most books on AMS are in KU and they're easily found (kinda the point of AMS).
> 
> ...


I don't disagree that's totally possible. I've seen some pretty heinous behavior, but I can't reallllly believe that it accounts for ALL of these page reads. Like, some people are losing 100's of thousands of page reads. Unless there's some major click farms operating? In which case bad boy authors aren't my prime suspects. To me (and I used to work closely with the team at ebay that handled fraud) that says it's criminal groups operating out of eastern european countries, etc.

When it gets into crazy money, I think like that 1800 phone scam that was funneling money through asia to terrorist groups.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

TwistedTales said:


> That means anyone who upped their marketing spend will be out of pocket, which isn't fair or reasonable.


Perhaps that is a tactic to use.

Affected authors should demand a refund on their AMS spend, proportional to the lost reads.

Just a thought.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

brkingsolver said:


> I never saw one of the letters from October, but it sounds exactly the same. Warning that it is up to the author to ensure everything they partake in is above board and that further incidents could be cause for account deletion.
> 
> Everyone who I have heard from maintains that their only ads and promotions were through AMS. That isn't what some said earlier.


A non-fiction author who sells paperbacks and ebooks but almost nothing thru KU got the Amazon notice yesterday. They claimed her jump from 500 to the vast sum of 1500 pages read was suspicious. Seriously?!?! The only advertising she'd had going was AMS.

ETA: The book was on emergency preparedness and response. Not a topic I would think would be on the radar for much of anyone except someone actually interested in the topic. Most others wouldn't even know it existed to scam it.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

It seems to me, AMS is a huge part of the problem.

Amazon cant tell if a set of KU reads came from an ams ad actually hitting the mark.

So when an ad works as it should, and the reads spike, they cry foul, and accuse people of 3rd party manipulation.

AMS SHOULD BE RECORDING EXACT READS for each download caused by following an AMS ad. 

Without that information, their own ad system is giving them false scammer paranoia.


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2018)

TwistedTales said:


> If it happened to me then my teddy would be well out the pram. I'd be pulling together evidence of my marketing activity, recreating reports from back ups (I have daily backups that don't overwrite for an extended period because my systems are for a fully operational and secured business), and summarizing into a neat, easy to read and short report that I would send everywhere... Jeff, KDP, bloggers, press, twitter, various writing bodies, etc.
> 
> No one can force Amazon to behave like a grownup company, but you sure as hell can be a thorn in their side.


I am pretty sure Jeff looks out each day upon the field in which he grows his fucks.

He lays his eyes upon it, and sees that it is barren.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

mawnster said:


> I am pretty sure Jeff looks out each day upon the field in which he grows his [expletive]s.
> 
> He lays his eyes upon it, and sees that it is barren.


Maybe you can offer a more helpful avenue for people to try.

Meanwhile, I spoke to someone last month who used to work for the team behind [email protected] and this person suggested that it was hands down the best way to get a human to look at your problem. If there was any help to be had or any ears ready to listen, this was the best method.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

When I changed my credit card, Amazon shut down my AMS account so I used the Jeff email. It took about 3 days, but a man got back to me totally addressing the issue, he completely ferreted the situation out, signed with his own name. 100% solid response.


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## grimshawl (Mar 5, 2018)

mawnster said:


> It sucks to be right in this case.
> 
> Especially with LitRPG, that's not really book-stuffing territory. They close in on 500+ pages per title on their own due to the nature of how the books are written and the content within it.
> 
> Looks like a circle of RH authors were smacked with page reads being slashed. Almost every author I know from that arena got hit, and again, they tend to not be book-stuffers. There might be a few titles that do, but RH tends to be series so there's no point in stuffing cause the reader just goes on to read the next book in the serial.


Argh, this is scary for me, I have noticed my numbers fluctuating but haven't pinned it down to one thing or another yet and haven't got any dreaded notices as of yet. but the fact its happening to Litrpg authors is hitting close to home. i'm going to have to head over there and check it out.


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## badtothebone (Mar 31, 2011)

I would email executive customer relations and CC Jeff Bezos. Phrase your email very politely, include evidence and a veiled suggestion you might have to exercise your right to take them to arbitration – this should escalate your concern more quickly. I would ask to see evidence of which books were the source of these "fake" reads, and what proof they have.

Unfortunately you have probably been caught in the crossfire of a tool Amazon developed to stop scammers. Either: a) Amazon has identified real scam reading activity, in which case sadly you are never really entitled to those reads anyway; or b) The reads were real, but they have become collateral damage.

I doubt very much whether you will get them back, but it's always possible.


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## Becca Fanning (May 17, 2014)

Just wait until people realize they can weaponize this rules enforcement against their competition for five dollars. Those are going to be some *dark* times.


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## adsmith20181 (Apr 9, 2018)

I'm actually really worried about losing my account over this. I received an email warning me about it and like others, I have no idea where the offending page reads are coming from. Since I have no idea where they're coming from, there's nothing I can do to stop them. That means that soon enough, Amazon will flag more suspicious page reads and hey presto, my account is banned.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

My Dog's Servant said:


> A non-fiction author who sells paperbacks and ebooks but almost nothing thru KU got the Amazon notice yesterday. They claimed her jump from 500 to the vast sum of 1500 pages read was suspicious. Seriously?!?! The only advertising she'd had going was AMS.


While anecdotal, that does imply that the algo looks at percentage jump rather than a numerical jump. That will tend to catch the smaller-selling authors who will log higher page read volatility in percentage terms than big-selling authors.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

adsmith20181 said:


> I'm actually really worried about losing my account over this. I received an email warning me about it and like others, I have no idea where the offending page reads are coming from. Since I have no idea where they're coming from, there's nothing I can do to stop them. That means that soon enough, Amazon will flag more suspicious page reads and hey presto, my account is banned.


People who've been suspended are slowly getting their accounts reinstated. Because obviously Amazon has screwed the pooch here.

People who've only used AMS ads to advertise and get threat-mails and/or suspension from Amazon because fraudulent accounts have "manipulated" their page reads should demand refunds for their ads immediately, often and unrelentingly.

Amazon serves those ads to accounts viewing pages based on their own algorithms. They exposed your book to fraudulent accounts within their own system, accounts they should have detected/suspected. They are at fault. They shouldn't get to turn around and blame their advertising clients for their mistakes.


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## adsmith20181 (Apr 9, 2018)

Shelley K said:


> People who've been suspended are slowly getting their accounts reinstated. Because obviously Amazon has screwed the pooch here.


Is this confirmed?


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

adsmith20181 said:


> I'm actually really worried about losing my account over this. I received an email warning me about it and like others, I have no idea where the offending page reads are coming from. Since I have no idea where they're coming from, there's nothing I can do to stop them. That means that soon enough, Amazon will flag more suspicious page reads and hey presto, my account is banned.


Unfortunately, as they crack down on the scammers, they will catch a lot of innocents, who were targeted for cover by the click farm users. Amazon's method is to declare you guilty with the algo, and then you get to try to prove your innocence. That sucks, and we all think it sucks, but it doesn't appear Amazon will be changing their philosophy any time soon, so it behooves Select users to take steps to protect themselves if possible. Keeping good records, being proactive and strident in complaining, reporting sudden jumps in page reads even though they benefit the author--and considering going wide, because all of this stuff is about Select/KU, not ordinary retail sales--is a good idea.

The retail sales model is not very fragile to manipulation. The Select/KU model is, as we have seen, utterly fragile to manipulation. Working within the latter is, as Gaughran put it, navigating a hall of spinning knives. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves if it's worth braving the spinning knives in order to get the prizes.


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## adsmith20181 (Apr 9, 2018)

Thinking about it, the part that annoys me is that it is presumed that you're guilty of something. There's no investigation, no questions. Just: _"We have detected reading or borrowing activity for your books originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services. These accounts might be related to a third-party marketing service you may have used."_

Note the *"might be related to"* and *"you may have used."*

But then it's followed up with: _"note that future violations of our policies could result in account-level actions, including termination of your account."_

Future violations? That would imply that I have already violated something. So they're basically deciding that the "might" and "may have" is now "definitely." I hate that we're not given the benefit of the doubt in anyway whatsoever.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

adsmith20181 said:


> Is this confirmed?


I haven't asked for affidavits or anything, but I personally know of a few so far. Believe it or not, says Ripley.


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## LovetoWrite (Aug 12, 2014)

I am one of the non-fiction authors who lost a bunch of page reads (and I think sales too) in March...to the tune of close to $1k (or roughly 25% of my income from Amazon). Like many others, I recieved the email saying that my account had suspected fradulent activity, and that I would not be paid for those page reads. Which, okay, if they are fradulent, I don't expect to get paid from Amazon--but I do expect them to be able to prove it, or, at a minimum, tell me what I'm possibly doing that is causing the problem. The only ads I've done for my book has been through Amazon and through my (valid) email list. (And, for what it's worth, I don't have any "stuffing" in my back matter.) I spent close to $500 in Amazon ads in March, and my page reads jumped from around 3k a day to 10k a day, and my sales increased by about 5 a day. I emailed them asking if they would consider refunding me some (or all) of the Amazon ad money I spend, and I got a generic email in response reiterating that my account had fradulent activity and that I wouldn't be getting paid for sales resulting from that activity. 

What really gets me is that a lot of other authors have done a lot in the way of Amazon ads, and Amazon is fine with collecting our ad money, not letting us pull our books out of KU, and then potentially (or actually) suspending our accounts over this.

I can understand that running a large site like Amazon is a learning curve that just doesn't end. I get that. I really do. However, it seems that they way they are going about this is not only unfair, I don't think it's even legal, as I think there's a very solid chance that KU scammers are finding our books through Amazon and/or Amazon ads. 

...My plan going forward is to pull all of my books from KU, and to never go back. If it means lost income, then so be it. It's not worth the stress and lost sleep wondering if they are going to suspend my account over things outside of my control.


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## John Twipnook (Jan 10, 2011)

Disclaimer: not a political post here, only a reflection on politics affecting business.

Many of the news stories about Amazon locking thousands of customer accounts are mentioning Donald Trump's Twitter attacks on Jeff Bezos this week. Why is Trump mad? In addition to owning Amazon, Bezos also owns The Washington Post. The Post has been in the forefront of investigative journalism re Trump's Russia connections. A few pundits have speculated that the President has been trying to punish Bezos by lambasting Amazon, Bezos' cash cow.

If that's the case, it would explain why Amazon has gone haywire, coincidentally, this same week: kicking customers off, cutting page reads, telling authors point-blank that they will not be getting KU money over SUSPECTED manipulations. It's crazy.

The craziness only makes sense if Bezos wonders, maybe correctly, if the federal government (directed from on high) may start sniffing around his companies, looking for wrongdoing as a pretext to haul them into court and also generate negative publicity. Thus Bezos has ordered Amazon to get squeaky-clean overnight, and not worry about collateral damage for the present. Because a class-action suit from customers, or authors, or both is small potatoes compared to a shakeup from Uncle Sam.

In practical terms this may mean that if Donald keeps up his Twitter rants against Bezos/Amazon/The Post, Amazon's going to remain as crazy if not crazier; but if Donald lays off (or gets distracted), and leaves Jeff alone going forward, things at Zon may return to a semblance of normal.

Just speculation. YMMV.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

John Twipnook said:


> Disclaimer: not a political post here, only a reflection on politics affecting business.
> 
> Many of the news stories about Amazon locking thousands of customer accounts are mentioning Donald Trump's Twitter attacks on Jeff Bezos this week. Why is Trump mad? In addition to owning Amazon, Bezos also owns The Washington Post. The Post has been in the forefront of investigative journalism re Trump's Russia connections. A few pundits have speculated that the President has been trying to punish Bezos by lambasting Amazon, Bezos' cash cow.


I doubt it's related. KDP is being gamed big-time. I think Bezos takes pride in the platform and wants to clean it up. There's also probably something in the pipeline for their subscription models (Prime, KU) and they're preparing for it.


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## Cavan6 (Apr 9, 2018)

I wrote back to KDP explaining that the only marketing I've done for my book is through AMS; then I wrote to AMS reporting the KDP issue and asked them to verify that they aren't doing anything that violates KDP rules. I never heard back from AMS, but I did get this snotty reply from KDP: 
Hello,

Thank you for your email regarding the status of your account.

We re-reviewed your account and have decided to uphold our decision. You will not receive royalties for illegitimate reading or borrowing activity.

As we previously stated, we cannot offer details of our investigations or advice on marketing services. If you have additional questions, you can email us at [email protected]

Regards,

Amazon KDP

http://kdp.amazon.com

Amazon.com

I'm suspending all my spend on AMS, pulling my book from KU, and requesting a refund from AMS on the basis that their marketing methods violated KDP and lost me money and put me in a risky situation.

I also think a number of the authors impacted by Amazon's conduct should take advantage of the negative press being thrown at Amazon right now by saying that while Amazon may not be cheating the taxpayer or USPS, it's definitely cheating authors.


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## MKK (Jun 9, 2015)

Dpock said:


> I doubt it's related. KDP is being gamed big-time. I think Bezos takes pride in the platform and wants to clean it up. There's also probably something in the pipeline for their subscription models (Prime, KU) and they're preparing for it.


I would put my money on this being the reason. If Amazon wants KU to be Netflix for books (and I'm not saying they do), but if they do, then then need to run a tighter ship. When your content providers fall into two categories, scammers and people who are being scammed and know it, at some point the 50% of the content providers you want will start calling it quits. And is seems that tipping point has been reached.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

TwistedTales said:


> I've long suspected there are jerk circles of KU readers. By that I mean they're readers who do "downloads only" or "downloads+reads" for kick backs of some sort. It wouldn't be hard to set up, especially if you could set up a mail list of "friendly" readers. It's become pretty clear how some of these secret groups work.
> 
> That's not to say these sorts of jerk circles wouldn't intentionally "download+read" other "innocent" books to shield their fraudulent activity, which means non participating authors could look like they're involved when they aren't. The fake reader might even target specific niches/genres so their reading history looks sensible. Also, books advertized on AMS might be hit harder because most books on AMS are in KU and they're easily found (kinda the point of AMS).


I think it's been fairly well documented that the click farms use the 30-day free subscriptions to download and flip through books as fast as their little automated fingers can fly. Choosing a few legit authors for camouflage makes sense. One of the things I keep hearing is the people who have been page stripped often had new releases or were pumping up their advertising efforts. When their page numbers skyrocketed, they were pleased and thought they'd finally hit the jackpot.

While I'm sure that a lot of manipulation was going on, I think there area a lot of things going on. I just don't like the lack of transparency, and I do wish Amazon didn't use a chainsaw to cure a hangnail.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

TwistedTales said:


> The only silver lining to all this nonsense is Amazon's follow through has historically been fairly poor. They pull stunts like this almost every six months, freak people out, anger many, convince a bunch to abandon KU, only to then reinstate accounts as if nothing happened.
> 
> It's a weird cycle and I've wondered if it's intentional to keep everyone off-center, but it probably isn't.


Yeah, that would indicate a level of planning and competence that I've never seen demonstrated.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

TwistedTales said:


> Lol. Fun summary and I've been tracking the various media outlets and the sharemarket. It has a better plot line, characters and surprise twists than anything Amazon Studios have come up with.
> 
> Do I think it's the reason for the latest drama? I doubt it. Amazon have operated this way for years. Every so often, for reasons we'll probably never know, some author's earnings come off a cliff one way or another. People get frustrated, they demand answers, they get ignored. It happened in 2015 with the switch from KU1.0 to 2.0, 2016 when page reads nose dived, 2017 when people were deranked, and now 2018. Lets just hope KDP have got it all out of their system for this year and people can get back to writing.


Of course, I think a book following a starving author through all the trials and tribulations of dealing with Amazon drama might get picked up for a screenplay.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

brkingsolver said:


> Of course, I think a book following a starving author through all the trials and tribulations of dealing with Amazon drama might get picked up for a screenplay.


I suspect if we tried to present Amazon's hijinks as fiction, we'd get told it was too unrealistic and no company that incompetent could possibly succeed the way Amazon has.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Dragovian said:


> I suspect if we tried to present Amazon's hijinks as fiction, we'd get told it was too unrealistic and no company that incompetent could possibly succeed the way Amazon has.


I've been up front and personal with a lot of very large and successful companies, and shall we say that I have seen little evidence that the Peter Principle is a fallacy.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

brkingsolver said:


> I've been up front and personal with a lot of very large and successful companies, and shall we say that I have seen little evidence that the Peter Principle is a fallacy.


Hmm... I don't think it's simple incompetence at play here. We're witnessing deliberate moves foreboding some real changes ahead (hopefully positive ones).


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Dpock said:


> Hmm... I don't think it's simple incompetence at play here. We're witnessing deliberate moves foreboding some real changes ahead (hopefully positive ones).


So you think that competence led to this situation? We've seen a lot of promising moves by Amazon over the past few years, but their carry-through doesn't have a good track record.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

It's incompetence in the collateral damage and unintended consequences arenas.

It's incompetence in not getting good feedback from some of the smartest people around that are affected, i.e., us.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

David VanDyke said:


> It's incompetence in the collateral damage and unintended consequences arenas.
> 
> It's incompetence in not getting good feedback from some of the smarted people around that are affected, i.e., us.


It's incompetence for letting it go on for 2 years, when everyone was telling you the problem existed.

It's incompetence for automating the whole process, and taking human decision making out of it.

It's incompetence for declaring people guilty, with no recourse to prove innocence.

It's incompetence to not have the information necessary to stop yourself making inaccurate claims.

To my mind, the best example of incompetence is Amazon dont have stats of KU reads from a specific AMS ad. If they had those, a lot of the threats being made against people who only use AMS would not have happened.

The fact those stats are not available, suggests total incompetence across multiple departments.

If I was made Amazon IT director, I'd fire the entire Amazon IT staff. Their incompetence is visible in everything they do.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

brkingsolver said:


> So you think that competence led to this situation? We've seen a lot of promising moves by Amazon over the past few years, but their carry-through doesn't have a good track record.


I think they knew going in it was going to be a mess and went ahead anyway.


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## Mollie (Apr 9, 2018)

Cavan6, I got the same response from Amazon after I emailed them to ask for their evidence to support their decision to downgrade my 196K page reads to a completely arbitrary and baseless 29K (that is much lower than previous months' figures).

At the same time, I provided my own figures to show that in February I'd spent ten times as much on AMS ads, that my Goodreads reviews in March were twice as high as the previous six months combined and that I'd had high interaction with my 5,500 subscribers when I told them I'd put my book into KU in my late February newsletter.

This is what Amazon said:

Hello,

As we previously stated, we still detect reading or borrow activity for your books originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services. You are responsible for ensuring the strategies used to promote your books comply with our Terms and Conditions. We cannot offer advice on marketing services or details of our investigations.

Please be aware we will not be providing additional details.

Regards,

Amazon KDP

So, they've provided no evidence for their statement: "we still detect reading or borrow activity for your books originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services."

Thanks to previous suggestions on this thread, I've just emailed [email protected] asking how I can continue to run my author business if I don't know whether upping my ad spend will result in higher monthly page reads that Amazon's algorithms will deem must be based therefore on fraud?

How hopeful should I be that enough demands for transparency from Amazon will result in them showing solid evidence as the basis for catching wrong-doers so that innocent authors are not caught up in future arbitrary clean-sweeps?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

> How hopeful should I be that enough demands for transparency from Amazon will result in them showing solid evidence as the basis for catching wrong-doers so that innocent authors are not caught up in future arbitrary clean-sweeps?


Zero hope at all.

Amazon is lack-of-transparency-central with capital letters.

But if there is enough backlash (which there will be), they'll just quietly adjust their practices.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Mollie said:


> Cavan6, I got the same response from Amazon after I emailed them to ask for their evidence to support their decision to downgrade my 196K page reads to a completely arbitrary and baseless 29K (that is much lower than previous months' figures).
> 
> At the same time, I provided my own figures to show that in February I'd spent ten times as much on AMS ads, that my Goodreads reviews in March were twice as high as the previous six months combined and that I'd had high interaction with my 5,500 subscribers when I told them I'd put my book into KU in my late February newsletter.
> 
> ...


Sending them the amount of evidence you mention and getting back that canned response ... I think I'd want to tear out every one of my hairs.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Patty Jansen said:


> But if there is enough backlash (which there will be), they'll just quietly adjust their practices.


True. They did eventually fix the page flip issue.



Mollie said:


> As we previously stated, we still detect reading or borrow activity for your books originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services.


Here's my thing:

They know exactly which accounts are the problem. But they dont delete them, and keep letting them run? Then they keep bashing innocent people who have nothing to do with these bad accounts?

There's a term for this.

Its called being *MORALY AND ETHICALLY BANKRUPT!
*
Amazon:

Find the bad accounts. Delete the bad accounts. Stop harassing innocent people who are nothing to do with the problem!

The whole mess is yours. You let it go for 2 years. Stop being smartarses trying to find and punish everyone who benefits, even when they dont know they are, and JUST FIX THE PROBLEM once and for all!

Amazon, your arse is on backwards.

Get rid of the scammers. That's all you have to do. The rest sorts itself out by itself, once they're gone for good.

Edit: I'm going to go one step further.

Amazon - By allowing scammer accounts to continue running, so you can bash innocent people, and take away their page reads, MAKES YOU THE SCAMMER.

The problem exists because you let it exist.

The fault is 1000% Amazon's. Fix your mess, before someone eventually kicks you for it, and we all lose.

_edited to remove thinly disguised swear_


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

Here's the deal.. Amazon did do something about scammers. They deleted a large number of fake accounts that were auto-generating page reads. That's why some lost up to 50% of their pages read for March. But what that indicates -and this is what actually scares me - *is more than half of the pages read reported to some innocent authors weren't legitimate.*

The bottom line is we have no idea who is reading our books or if the page reads we're receiving are even real in the first place. What a shocker to wake up and discover that half your page reads were fake. How can you plan or build a career if you can't trust your reported sales figures?


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

As far as being shocked that Amazon's willing to not pay authors for Page Reads, I think that ship sailed more than a year ago, it was called "Page Flip." It caused me to leave KU. This time's scarier though because Amazon isn't just hitting authors in the pocketbook, it's threatening to close their accounts. Amazon seems to be pretty clearly saying that if a scammer targets your book, or if Amazon even _thinks_ a scammer targeted your book, Amazon will zap YOU, regardless. That's a mighty big risk to take for KU IMO.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Gentleman Zombie said:


> Here's the deal.. Amazon did do something about scammers. They deleted a large number of fake accounts that were auto-generating page reads. That's why some lost up to 50% of their pages read for March. But what that indicates -and this is what actually scares me - *is more than half of the pages read reported to some innocent authors weren't legitimate.*


But ... but ... I don't know if I'm quite ready to accept that whatever (probably wholly automated) algorithm Amazon's developed can reliably distinguish real readers from fake ones. Are we sure about that?


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Becca Mills said:


> But ... but ... I don't know if I'm quite ready to accept that whatever (probably wholly automated) algorithm Amazon's developed can reliably distinguish real readers from fake ones. Are we sure about that?


No.

No, we're not ready to accept it.
No, they cant tell the difference.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> True. They did eventually fix the page flip issue.


Wait... they did? I thought they never admitted page flip even was an issue.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

PaulineMRoss said:


> Wait... they did? I thought they never admitted page flip even was an issue.


No, they didn't.

But the last couple of days in January showed blips where suddenly there was full reads, instead of single digits.

As soon as I came back into KU in march, I was getting full reads again, with only an occasional single digit.

My guess is, there was an actual bug behind page flip. At some point during all the complaining about it, and the continual insistence there was a problem, someone in IT actually took a look at it, found a bug, and quietly fixed it.

I was trying to test if the issue was fixed, but my tester vanished half way through.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

TimothyEllis said:


> My guess is, there was an actual bug behind page flip. At some point during all the complaining about it, and the continual insistence there was a problem, someone in IT actually took a look at it, found a bug, and quietly fixed it.
> 
> I was trying to test if the issue was fixed, but my tester vanished half way through.


I find a hard time believing that. I know authors who have very recently gotten those one pagers.

BTW, The Motley Fool just reported that Amazon paid no U.S. income taxes on $5.6 billion in domestic profits last year.


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## Mollie (Apr 9, 2018)

So if Amazon has deleted the fake accounts behind my supposedly fraudulently-acquired page reads (which they should have to justify retrospectively stripping my page reads), wouldn't that mean my page reads would be right down? The fact is, my page reads are even higher for this month on this apparently offending/scammer-targeted book.

I have a long-awaited BookBub on April 26 for this same book and I'm worried Amazon will decide that any resulting spike in page reads must indicate fraudulent activity and, once again at the end of the month, retrospectively slash my page reads by 75%. Or decide to close my account.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Mollie said:


> I have a long-awaited BookBub on April 26 for this same book


Tell them.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

Gentleman Zombie said:


> Here's the deal.. Amazon did do something about scammers. They deleted a large number of fake accounts that were auto-generating page reads. That's why some lost up to 50% of their pages read for March. But what that indicates -and this is what actually scares me - *is more than half of the pages read reported to some innocent authors weren't legitimate.*
> 
> The bottom line is we have no idea who is reading our books or if the page reads we're receiving are even real in the first place. What a shocker to wake up and discover that half your page reads were fake. How can you plan or build a career if you can't trust your reported sales figures?


I think I lost 50 pages yesterday. Not a big deal, but if that amount was removed from one of those fake accounts OR from real customers who had their accounts closed, then the scammer problem is much, much bigger than I realized. I'm a prawny prawn, so for one of my books to have been targeted makes me wonder how many hundreds or thousands of innocent authors have had their books selected to hide the work of the scammers.

AFAIK, I didn't lose any pages from March, but if it was a small amount, I wouldn't have noticed.


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## TexasGirl (Dec 21, 2011)

Coming out of kBoards-retirement because I've been thinking a lot about this, the same purge that happened last fall, and crunching the probability seeing that there were:

A LOT of affected authors using AMS ads
SEVERAL affected authors with new releases
A FEW affected authors using promo sites
A RARE FEW affected authors who were doing no promo at all

And -- most telling -- two circles of authors that were affected more than others -- Reverse Harem (RH) and LitRPG, where readers tend to be shared tightly as they are small, rabid readerships.

*DAVID and PHOENIX -- poke a hole in my thinking here.* I don't think it's random bot reading causing innocent authors to get caught. I think it goes like this:

-- An author hires a bot reader to inflate their page reads.
-- The bot account opens the book and page reads through it.
-- The bot then spiders the sales page for other books like it, to strengthen the association with other books Amazon has placed either as 1: normal also-bots 2: sponsored products
-- The bot opens the also bot or sponsored books and reads them too.

This creates synergy between the paid bot book and collaterally botted book. This means the other bot accounts will do the pathway as well, creating more page reads via bots by the bad accounts. It ALSO muddies the waters as to which books hired the bots and which were just secondary opens.

The last few months, those of us watching closely have seen page reads absolutely soar beyond what could be organic growth for readership in KU. The threshold for getting bonuses has become impossibly high for authors even if they have solid readerships.

I didn't get hit in March myself, but I have a Reverse Harem coming out and even though I wrote it for the KU audience, if that audience is too rife with bots at the moment, it makes no sense for me to risk my account in KU.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

TexasGirl, I actually do think this is part of it. However, I would go one step further: A good portion of those "bots" may well be incentivized readers. Once a real reader account has been identified as a recipient of incentives either for leaving reviews or for borrowing or for reading -- or skimming through -- a book, then all their reviews and borrows/reads become suspect. So anything they might borrow, even for their own, real personal pleasure (often within the same subgenre they're getting incentivized for) would be dinged.

One, the other, a combination? I think it's multi-layered now.

Another thing is that review numbers on books with arcs from a certain handful of "services" and private FB groups usually appear in the same 150-200 review lump that appears on certain books on publication, so the same (probably/possibly/allegedly) incentivized readers might well be leaving circle-jerk reviews, and those accounts become the target accounts that Amazon could be using to suss out the bad actor authors, catching up the dolphins' pages along the way.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

TimothyEllis said:


> Here's my thing:
> 
> They know exactly which accounts are the problem. But they dont delete them, and keep letting them run? Then they keep bashing innocent people who have nothing to do with these bad accounts?


Exactly my thought. WTF? "I'm sorry you're being bullied, Johnny. Perhaps you should change schools so the bully can't hit you anymore."


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

PhoenixS said:


> TexasGirl, I actually do think this is part of it. However, I would go one step further: A good portion of those "bots" may well be incentivized readers. Once a real reader account has been identified as a recipient of incentives either for leaving reviews or for borrowing or for reading -- or skimming through -- a book, then all their reviews and borrows/reads become suspect. So anything they might borrow, even for their own, real personal pleasure (often within the same subgenre they're getting incentivized for) would be dinged.
> 
> One, the other, a combination? I think it's multi-layered now.
> 
> Another thing is that review numbers on books with arcs from a certain handful of "services" and private FB groups usually appear in the same 150-200 review lump that appears on certain books on publication, so the same (probably/possibly/allegedly) incentivized readers might well be leaving circle-jerk reviews, and those accounts become the target accounts that Amazon could be using to suss out the bad actor authors, catching up the dolphins' pages along the way.


^This^

I think we have a combination of events that muddy the water as to exactly what is going on. Amazon is targeting scammers at the same time it's targeting customers that are engaged in hinky stuff. When all those reviewers had their accounts closed, Amazon had no reason to pay for the pages they read.

And yes, we all know that "authors supporting authors" is rampant. There are groups on facebook and Goodreads specifically to do that. And as another thread tells us the ToS is open to creative interpretation.

When I worked for a bank, we administered personality test to applicants. We really only looked at two questions out of two hundred. We called them the embezzlement questions:

1 - Is it ok to take something belonging to your employer if you plan to bring it back?
2 - Is it ok to take a pen or notepad home with you?

These questions were a couple of pages apart. I think that a lot of people who consider themselves honest don't mind cutting corners when they "can't see any real harm in it".


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

PhoenixS said:


> TexasGirl, I actually do think this is part of it. However, I would go one step further: A good portion of those "bots" may well be incentivized readers. Once a real reader account has been identified as a recipient of incentives either for leaving reviews or for borrowing or for reading -- or skimming through -- a book, then all their reviews and borrows/reads become suspect. So anything they might borrow, even for their own, real personal pleasure (often within the same subgenre they're getting incentivized for) would be dinged.
> 
> One, the other, a combination? I think it's multi-layered now.
> 
> Another thing is that review numbers on books with arcs from a certain handful of "services" and private FB groups usually appear in the same 150-200 review lump that appears on certain books on publication, so the same (probably/possibly/allegedly) incentivized readers might well be leaving circle-jerk reviews, and those accounts become the target accounts that Amazon could be using to suss out the bad actor authors, catching up the dolphins' pages along the way.


This was exactly my thought. That these things are tied up in this way. That is the only way it makes sense that people who are only using AMS ads had pages pulled-that suspect accounts had read pages. The other thing I wonder about is newsletter swaps, which are widely used by authors fast-writing romance. I have likened the problem with that to STDs. When your book goes out to that author's newsletter list, obtained perhaps by incentives and contests, you are sleeping with everyone she has slept with. If she has incentive junkies in there (however unwittingly), they could taint your account as well. Also, there are services in genres like reverse harem where longtime questionable promoters are now operating, and authors can unwittingly use them without knowing their past history.

This whole thing convinces me even more just to do my own thing. I am currently spending about $3 a day on AMS ads. I may drop them entirely. To continue to use a few time-tested email ads (BookBub, Robin Reads, etc.) and continue to stay out of romance subgenres dominated by what I feel are questionable tactics. If I did not love romance and do well writing it, at this point I would sure as heck write something else (not cozy mystery or urban fantasy, though, as the gray hats have moved into those neighborhoods now). And if I did not do very well in KU, I would leave.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

TexasGirl said:


> And -- most telling -- two circles of authors that were affected more than others -- Reverse Harem (RH) and LitRPG, where readers tend to be shared tightly as they are small, rabid readerships.
> 
> *DAVID and PHOENIX -- poke a hole in my thinking here.* I don't think it's random bot reading causing innocent authors to get caught. I think it goes like this:
> 
> ...





PhoenixS said:


> TexasGirl, I actually do think this is part of it. However, I would go one step further: A good portion of those "bots" may well be incentivized readers. Once a real reader account has been identified as a recipient of incentives either for leaving reviews or for borrowing or for reading -- or skimming through -- a book, then all their reviews and borrows/reads become suspect. So anything they might borrow, even for their own, real personal pleasure (often within the same subgenre they're getting incentivized for) would be dinged.
> 
> One, the other, a combination? I think it's multi-layered now.


This is horrifying. Honestly, the little hairs on my arms are standing up. What an unholy mess.

Now it makes sense why so many people who've lost page-reads say they've only used AMS ads. If this is what's happening, AMS would be just about the riskiest form of promo you could use?

Noting also that it might only take one or two bad actors to replicate the problem in other subgenres. It's a true one-rotten-apple-spoils-the-barrel scenario because Amazon does such a good job of webbing similar books together -- in an automated way through the also-boughts and in an author-guided way through AMS.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Usedtoposthere said:


> This was exactly my thought. That these things are tied up in this way. That is the only way it makes sense that people who are only using AMS ads had pages pulled-that suspect accounts had read pages. The other thing I wonder about is newsletter swaps, which are widely used by authors fast-writing romance. I have likened the problem with that to STDs. When your book goes out to that author's newsletter list, obtained perhaps by incentives and contests, you are sleeping with everyone she has slept with. If she has incentive junkies in there (however unwittingly), they could taint your account as well. Also, there are services in genres like reverse harem where longtime questionable promoters are now operating, and authors can unwittingly use them without knowing their past history.
> 
> This whole thing convinces me even more just to do my own thing. I am currently spending about $3 a day on AMS ads. I may drop them entirely. To continue to use a few time-tested email ads (BookBub, Robin Reads, etc.) and continue to stay out of romance subgenres dominated by what I feel are questionable tactics. If I did not love romance and do well writing it, at this point I would sure as heck write something else (not cozy mystery or urban fantasy, though, as the gray hats have moved into those neighborhoods now). And if I did not do very well in KU, I would leave.


You know, this is something I was suspecting too. Or rather, maybe some of the bigger websites like BookBub and ReadFreely, etc. are coming up as multiple users since they go after freebies or discounted books. They're members would come up multiple times and could look like bots even though they are real people just seeking discounts. They probably have the high numbers to make it happen too. I'm sure there are people that just buy books that way, or maybe even look for books in KU that way. It could be a way to target those sites third party by going after the readers and authors that use them. Eventually, people will stop using them when we figure it out and the sites would fade away.

But it seems kind of sad too. Newsletters are a great way to reach readers and give them what they want. But maybe the Zon wants to control that too. I know this is all speculation at this point, but the one sound thing to do at this time for some people may be to leave KU. Maybe it's going beyond it's scope to control authors, but to control what services we use to help us rank higher through legitimate means. I mean, all authors, traditional and self-published have to promote themselves these days. This could hurt everyone.

But it is all speculation at this point. It just comes down to the fact that leaving KU is a great way to not have this problem at all.


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## Mollie (Apr 9, 2018)

Gentleman Zombie said:


> Here's the deal.. Amazon did do something about scammers. They deleted a large number of fake accounts that were auto-generating page reads. That's why some lost up to 50% of their pages read for March. But what that indicates -and this is what actually scares me - *is more than half of the pages read reported to some innocent authors weren't legitimate.*
> 
> The bottom line is we have no idea who is reading our books or if the page reads we're receiving are even real in the first place. What a shocker to wake up and discover that half your page reads were fake. How can you plan or build a career if you can't trust your reported sales figures?


I agree that is a terrible, too, but that's not the issue I have.

What, *exactly*, is Amazon basing their decision on to slash page reads? Shutting down fake accounts or using an algorithm that deems a spike in page reads must therefore mean they're fake?

If it were proved that fake accounts were behind my spike in page reads, I'd be disappointed but I'd accept I wasn't entitled to them.

However, my page reads are a third higher at day 11 of this month than the final page read figure Amazon concluded was what I should be paid for in March? If their decision to strip me of 75% of my page reads last month was through what was left as my page reads after they'd shut down fake accounts or got rid of scammers, why do my page reads this month continue to be similar to last month (before the downgrading)?

Wouldn't the evidence that it was bots (that they'd shut down) mean my page reads should be right down this month?

When I tell Amazon I'm willing to accept a downgrading if it's through illegal activity, but where's the evidence - and then show them my evidence that March was a legitimately good month for me due to a spike in reviews and high ad spending across the board, they just resend their email saying that my higher than usual page reads is through illegal activity and they won't go into it.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Unless the activity moved to new botting accounts that are still targeting books in your genre/category as described in the scenario above...Legitimate or not those additional borrows could have given added visibility to your books which put them in front of legitimate readers who did then leave reviews, etc. No way to know from our side.


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## TexasGirl (Dec 21, 2011)

Thanks for popping in, Phoenix. I know you have a lot of data.

I've been thinking about this all day. I'm privy to some of the KENPC and removed page read numbers of some people who've been threatened and one suspended.

Even if all 200 "compromised" accounts form the review-removed accounts read the entire books at 300 KENPC each, that's only 60,000 reads. One account (who I know personally as a big time no-cheater) lost over 100,000 and another lost 200,000.

There have to be bots involved too, right?



PhoenixS said:


> TexasGirl, I actually do think this is part of it. However, I would go one step further: A good portion of those "bots" may well be incentivized readers. Once a real reader account has been identified as a recipient of incentives either for leaving reviews or for borrowing or for reading -- or skimming through -- a book, then all their reviews and borrows/reads become suspect. So anything they might borrow, even for their own, real personal pleasure (often within the same subgenre they're getting incentivized for) would be dinged.
> 
> One, the other, a combination? I think it's multi-layered now.
> 
> Another thing is that review numbers on books with arcs from a certain handful of "services" and private FB groups usually appear in the same 150-200 review lump that appears on certain books on publication, so the same (probably/possibly/allegedly) incentivized readers might well be leaving circle-jerk reviews, and those accounts become the target accounts that Amazon could be using to suss out the bad actor authors, catching up the dolphins' pages along the way.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

TexasGirl said:


> Thanks for popping in, Phoenix. I know you have a lot of data.
> 
> I've been thinking about this all day. I'm privy to some of the KENPC and removed page read numbers of some people who've been threatened and one suspended.
> 
> ...


I don't think anyone knows how many customer accounts Amazon has closed. I've seen estimates in the tens of thousands. If all the pages read by those accounts, including legitimate pages, are removed, then you could have a lot of pages. I'm seeing accounts of customers who just paid their Prime renewals or ordered something, and Amazon isn't offering to refund their money. I imagine there will be a lot of screaming to the CC companies.

That's the thing about the page removals. In many cases, Amazon hasn't said the author did anything wrong, they just said the page reads were illegitimate and Amazon doesn't intend to pay for them.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

KateDanley said:


> I wonder if we should be considering the wisdom of AMS ads...


But its damned if you do, damned if you dont.

If you use them, this [crap] happens.

If you dont, Amazon quietly push you down the ranks so you get no visibility at all. If you're also not in KU, double whammy.

_please don't go around our filters.. --Betsy_


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## 77820 (Jun 19, 2014)

I've been skulling this out since I got the threat e-mail from the Zon. Here's what I've come up with: If I go with the theory that the bots are pulling innocents from the sponsored AMS ads and the also-boughts to use as camouflage, then the only way to not get dragged in is to get out of KDP Select. If I stay in and  stop the ads, the bots can still using the also-boughts as a way to use my books as camouflage, because I can't control my book appearing in an also-bought list. The only way I see to not get my account cancelled (as threatened in the Zon e-mail) is to get out of KDP Select. I can't think of any other way of protecting myself. No matter what I do, I risk my books being used by bots to hide their nefarious activities if I remain in KDP Select.

Now, I don't make much from the page reads, so I have the option to get out and not hurt myself too badly. What I don't want is my KDP account to be cancelled. For me, it's just not worth it to stay in Select and risk account cancellation. A lot of you make more money from a month of page reads than I make in a year of combined sales, so I understand your predicament. My problem, now, is getting my books out of Select. Every attempt to communicate with Amazon using the 'Contact Us' link results in a bot sending me a form letter about not getting my page reads back.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Klendark said:


> Every attempt to communicate with Amazon using the 'Contact Us' link results in a bot sending me a form letter about not getting my page reads back.


Takes a few days, but you get a real person at [email protected]


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## Ryan W. Mueller (Jul 14, 2017)

It's like using a sledgehammer to extract a tooth. Yeah, you'll get the tooth out, but you're taking out a lot of healthy teeth at the same time.

I'm interested to see if the KU payout goes up significantly. If there are so many page reads going away, then theoretically we should have a higher payout. But I'm not holding my breath on that one.

At this point, I'll stay with KU, but it is worrying to see so many innocent authors caught up in this. Yeah, it's great that Amazon finally did what we asked for, but a little more precision would be nice.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Ryan W. Mueller said:


> Yeah, it's great that Amazon finally did what we asked for, but a little more precision would be nice.


Its not so much lack of precision, as an excess of VINDICTIVENESS, and revenge.

All they have to do is remove all the scammers, botters, and stuffers. At which point, the whole thing goes away. Get them out, and keep the out.

It's not that difficult. As was just suggested on 20B, just putting a captcha code on beginning to read a KU book, is going to stop the bots cold. All they need is out there. Its been used successfully for donkeys years now. Why dont they use all these tchniques long available?

But no, they want revenge against everyone who benefited from their 2 years of total head in the sand ignoring of the problem.

The reads are irrelevant to the problem. It's been no problem for 2 whole years, so why is it an issue now? It's not.

Taking reads away is just petty vindictiveness and revenge. It's what 2 year old's do when a sibling takes their lollypop.

Jeff Bezos looks more than 2 years old to me. Why does he allow his monster to act that way?

(Sorry, did I just call Bezos Frankenstein? Oops!)


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## SeanHinn (Aug 5, 2016)

This is probably going to be a wildly unpopular opinion, but meh. 

Amazon's KDP staff are *people*. Anecdotally, I know that most of them are pretty darned conscientious, because every time I've had to talk to them about an issue, particular at Author Central, they've been polite, friendly, helpful, and efficient. 

There are almost certainly *lots* of people who see the data behind the scenes, and if there was something truly nefarious going on, as in, Amazon is knowingly cheating authors out of page reads or sales, that sort of secret doesn't stay secret long. One disgruntled employee, one director-level staffer passed up for promotion to VP, and we'd all know about it. So, using that logic, I set aside the assumption that Amazon is actively doing something nefarious.

So what does that leave as the likely explanation for what we are seeing? It seems that they are listening, frankly. We (authors) have been complaining about book stuffers and scammers and all that jazz very loudly, for some time. Our previous complaint was that they were not doing enough. Now they're banning accounts - and any fraudulent activity associated with those accounts - and it seems the prevailing mood now is to complain that they went too far. 

It seems to me that they've done a grand sweep, which is what we've all been clamoring for. Yes, it looks like some accounts have lost page reads, and some unsuspecting authors are gonna end up with a pretty crappy month as a result. But if the end result is that they have a mechanism in place that will detect this stuff - which they must now - won't we all benefit? Doesn't the purge make the whole ecosystem healthier?

When you've got a systemic cancer, it takes a few massive doses of chemo to wipe it out. But then, once you have, it becomes easier to spot new tumors when they pop up. One would have to assume that if they are doing this big sweep, they've also got a phase two in mind - which, logic would dictate, involves watching *really* closely for new tumors to pop up. Some team has clearly been assigned the task of "fixing" KU for the authors, so that there are fewer complaints of fake reviews, scammers, bot reads, and the like. That cannot be a bad thing. In fact, it's what we've all been demanding for some time.

I have deep compassion for those of you who are affected by this right now. Big hugs all around. But Amazon as a company is doing something about it, and there are *people* charged with carrying out that task and doing a good job. I suppose it's possible that an evil cabal is behind it all, and I'm just a rube for seeking a bright side. But it seems far more likely to me that someone has heard our cries and taken them seriously. 

Maybe we ought to withhold judgement until we see how the KENP rates look, and how the next couple of months go. Be optimistic, folks. This may very well be a good thing, painful as it is in the short run. And if it's not, and the end is nigh, we'll all have to learn to succeed in a world without KU. No sense being in an unhappy state between now and the time we *really* know something.

Anyhow, that's my perspective, and if it runs counter to yours, that's cool. I'd be grateful if you not flame me for it, however. It's been quite toxic around here lately, and I was disinclined to risk putting a target on my back by writing this, as calm-and-measured opinions tend to go down in flames when tempers are high. Just trying to offer a thin ray of hope to any who are looking for one.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

SeanHinn said:


> So, using that logic, I set aside the assumption that Amazon is actively doing something nefarious.


Yes, but Amazon's definition of nefarious, and the generally accepted definition, dont even meet on the same planet.



> So what does that leave as the likely explanation for what we are seeing? It seems that they are listening, frankly.


Listening doesn't take TWO YEARS!



> It seems to me that they've done a grand sweep, which is what we've all been clamoring for. Yes, it looks like some accounts have lost page reads, and some unsuspecting authors are gonna end up with a pretty crappy month as a result. But if the end result is that they have a mechanism in place that will detect this stuff - which they must now - won't we all benefit? Doesn't the purge make the whole ecosystem healthier?


But it hasn't. By the words on their own emails, they admit they know who the scammers/botters/stuffers are, and they can tell when authors are STILL benefiting from them. Which means, they HAVEN'T done anything with the real problem, because if they had, no-one could STILL benefit from it.

Their own words condemn Amazon as NOT fixing the problem, only using it to harass people.

Case in point, a recent comment the worst of the stuffers are still cluttering up the top 100 list. Shouldn't they have been the first to go?

They can claim they've deleted thousands of accounts all they like. Most likely they were all sock puppets, and absolutely zero of the real problems have even been looked at. I'll judge the job done when you cant find a stuffed book, or a botted ranked book anywhere after looking all day.



> When you've got a systemic cancer, it takes a few massive doses of chemo to wipe it out. But then, once you have, it becomes easier to spot new tumors when they pop up. One would have to assume that if they are doing this big sweep, they've also got a phase two in mind - which, logic would dictate, involves watching *really* closely for new tumors to pop up. Some team has clearly been assigned the task of "fixing" KU for the authors, so that there are fewer complaints of fake reviews, scammers, bot reads, and the like. That cannot be a bad thing. In fact, it's what we've all been demanding for some time.


2 Years, with no evidence now anything has happened except deleted sock puppet accounts and stripped reads.



> But Amazon as a company is doing something about it, and there are *people* charged with carrying out that task and doing a good job.


What evidence is there anything at all has changed?

Why would people be told there is still ongoing wrongdoing giving them reads, and Amazon know where its coming from, if something had actually been done?



> Anyhow, that's my perspective, and if it runs counter to yours, that's cool. I'd be grateful if you not flame me for it, however. It's been quite toxic around here lately, and I was disinclined to risk putting a target on my back by writing this, as calm-and-measured opinions tend to go down in flames when tempers are high. Just trying to offer a thin ray of hope to any who are looking for one.


Your thin ray of hope died a quick death several years ago. 

We've seen all of this before. Amazon appears to act, nothing changes. 6 months later, they do it again a different way, and nothing changes. They rinse and repeat, nothing changes.

Amazon, let's see some real change come out of this. Just for once. Just to give us a slim ray of hope.

And if it is true a lot of the top 100 are stuffed or botted or whatever, lets see everyone jump 100 in the ranks when you do finally do something.


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## AYClaudy (Oct 2, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> We've seen all of this before. Amazon appears to act, nothing changes. 6 months later, they do it again a different way, and nothing changes. They rinse and repeat, nothing changes.
> 
> Amazon, let's see some real change come out of this. Just for once. Just to give us a slim ray of hope.


It's a slim hope, but Amazon did do something once. They changed to KU2, where authors were no longer paid for a full read at the 10% mark, but instead paid "per page". That was in response to the store being littered with pamphlets or serials-- some of which were also top 100. So maybe this is a sign of things to come... July has often been the time for rolling out changes. I'm not holding my breath waiting, but I wouldn't completely dismiss the idea of a change coming.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

SeanHinn said:


> There are almost certainly *lots* of people who see the data behind the scenes, and if there was something truly nefarious going on, as in, Amazon is knowingly cheating authors out of page reads or sales, that sort of secret doesn't stay secret long. One disgruntled employee, one director-level staffer passed up for promotion to VP, and we'd all know about it. So, using that logic, I set aside the assumption that Amazon is actively doing something nefarious.


Firstly, I wish I had your hope. Sadly, after four years in this business, I don't trust Amazon/KDP to know anything about the KU monster they've created, for one simple reason: each department is isolated. The content team doesn't talk to the tech team, tech doesn't talk to customer services, customer services don't talk to content, don't talk to ECR, and around and around we go.

We've all seen the botters hijack also-boughts from legitimate books. We know the signs. I can point to one right now that's been botting the system FOR YEARS. Amazon has been informed, multiple times, and the account is still live. The botters are obvious to anyone actually paying attention, but KU is too big, and too unwieldy to monitor.

Retrospectively removing page-reads and blaming the author has been going on for months, maybe over a year now. To date, that I know of, none of the page-reads have ever been returned and none were able to "clear their name." KDPs oversensitive "page-reads fraud bot" needs to stop pointing fingers at the authors and dig deeper into the issue. Until that happens, this won't change. And that won't happen unless readers (customers) start complaining. Authors might as well scream into an echo chamber, but customers... Amazon listens to customers.

I'm very much of the mind that readers should be left out of author drama BUT when it gets to the point that KU has become such a mess, readers are likely the only folks who can fix this. So, if you have a KU subscription, contact customer services and give them feedback. Ask your readers to do the same.

Sadly, as self-pub'd authors, we don't have much of a voice. We're easily ignored. But readers can make a difference.

Beyond that, I don't have any advice to give to those impacted. Right now, rank stripping and page-read removals from innocent authors is the reality of KDP Select/KU. So is the "fantasy payout pot" and "made-up KENPC" which, frankly, is so ludicrous a way to pay authors that anyone outside the industry would laugh that we roll-over and accept KDPs payment terms. It's horrible, but that's Amazon.

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact WE can't do anything (we've tried, time and time again), but readers can.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

If vindictiveness and incompetence are equally likely, I tend to think incompetence is the explanation. With Amazon, the complaint is that they don't appear to want to devote enough time and resources to being competent.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

GeneDoucette said:


> If vindictiveness and incompetence are equally likely, I tend to think incompetence is the explanation. With Amazon, the complaint is that they don't appear to want to devote enough time and resources to being competent.


In every place where I or members of my family have worked, incompetence is exponentially related to the size of the company. It's not that bigger companies want to be incompetent, it is that departments become so big they don't need to don't talk to each other, departmental heads go on kingdom-building sprees, cost-cutting leads to ridiculous expectations, worker morale is not always high in all places where it needs to be, and computer systems become so complicated and inefficient that one needs a degree in IT just to understand how the system works. I have zero belief that somehow Amazon will be any different.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

If Amazon has created a fraud detection system which is generating so many false positives, and sanctioning authors who have done nothing wrong, then that is most definitely on Amazon.

I say "if" though. We still don't know whether it is that, or nefarious third parties targeting the innocent to provide cover, or both, or something else...


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## 98368 (Sep 4, 2017)

PhoenixS said:


> Another thing is that* review numbers on books with arcs from a certain handful of "services"* and private FB groups usually appear in the same 150-200 review lump that appears on certain books on publication, so the same (probably/possibly/allegedly) incentivized readers might well be leaving circle-jerk reviews, and those accounts become the target accounts that Amazon could be using to suss out the bad actor authors, catching up the dolphins' pages along the way.


Phoenix--
I'm aware of only two ARC services--HG and a service that the Book Rank fellow started a month ago. Is HG somehow involved in this? If so, can you say so? Or is that not kosher here? Because I'm using them for an upcoming release, which I'd intended to put a, for me, large AMS ad spend on. Now I'm concerned that putting the book in KU, spending on AMS ads, and using an ARC service--methods I'd thought were legit and would help my book's visibility and sales--are all bad ideas.
I realize that a lot of the successful authors on kboards are wide, but as someone who has few sales and a tiny mailing list, I have to start somewhere. But the where is getting harder and harder to discern.
Thanks.


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## Cavan6 (Apr 9, 2018)

Well, I've continued to email both KDP and Amazon Marketing Services to argue this and AMS referred me to KDP, who sent the canned responses that they reviewed my account and I was guilty and they wouldn't provide more information, etc.  So then I sent evidence that the only marketing services I've used are AMS and included the amount of money I've paid AMS for those services.  I stated that if Amazon KDP was correct that my marketing service had used fraud, then AMS committed the fraud and needed to refund me every penny I've spend wit it which was significantly more than KDP was going to have to pay me for sales/reads. Then I said if KDP couldn't prove that AMS committed fraud, then they needed to stop accusing me of using fraudulent means and pay me.  Then I forwarded Amazon's ridiculous emails to the [email protected] address requesting proof that AMS violated KDP policies and a refund.  

Two hours later, I got an email from KDP saying: 

Hello,

Thank you for your email concerning the status of your account.

Unfortunately, we need some more time to look into the matter. We are sorry for the delay and for any inconvenience it may cause you. We will be in touch within five business days.

Thank you for your patience.

Amazon.com

Better than the canned response that I'm guilty and they won't provide any info, but still not satisfactory by any stretch of the imagination.  I immediately stopped spending money with AMS.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Cavan6 said:


> Better than the canned response that I'm guilty and they won't provide any info, but still not satisfactory by any stretch of the imagination. I immediately stopped spending money with AMS.


You got a person this time, so you should get some sort of decent response in a few days.

Let us know when you do.


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## Cavan6 (Apr 9, 2018)

TimothyEllis said:


> You got a person this time, so you should get some sort of decent response in a few days.
> 
> Let us know when you do.


Let's hope! I will! Thanks for all the support and advice you all have provided here. I've never used Amazon KDP before and had no idea all this was going on, so I was feeling pretty confused on Monday and this site has really helped me understand everything better. I appreciate it!


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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

RTW said:


> Phoenix--
> I'm aware of only two ARC services--HG and a service that the Book Rank fellow started a month ago. Is HG somehow involved in this? If so, can you say so? Or is that not kosher here? Because I'm using them for an upcoming release, which I'd intended to put a, for me, large AMS ad spend on. Now I'm concerned that putting the book in KU, spending on AMS ads, and using an ARC service--methods I'd thought were legit and would help my book's visibility and sales--are all bad ideas.
> I realize that a lot of the successful authors on kboards are wide, but as someone who has few sales and a tiny mailing list, I have to start somewhere. But the where is getting harder and harder to discern.
> Thanks.


I've used Hidden Gems more than once and never seen any sign of suspicious activity. There is a relatively long HG thread in which you can read other reactions, but everyone seems to agree they're honest. The reviews come out with about the same rating spread I get from organic reviews on the same books. Typically, incentivized reviews have a much higher average.


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## Ryan W. Mueller (Jul 14, 2017)

This really makes you wonder just how many page reads are legitimate. I didn't have any change in mine, but I'm not visible enough that the scammers would flip through my books to make their activity on other books look legitimate.

It's easy to see why Amazon might think legitimate authors are scamming when this occurs. I'm not sure how they'd go about separating the actual scammers from those who were used as cover for the scammers.

Personally, I think it would be best if they suspended these bot accounts reading pages but kept the page reads for March. Alternately, they could compensate with a much higher page rate (which we should theoretically have with all these page reads being taken out of the equation).


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

Okay, I want to throw another wrench into the discussion. As in, something just happened to me that raised my eyebrows.
Every once in a while, I'll shut down the computer, restart, and have to resign into some websites again. So, I had to resign into my Goodreads account again. I used my Facebook account to do this.

An interesting option came up when I did. For the first time, it asked me if it was okay to have my profile, friends list and email. I found that when I wasn't totally happy with this option, it took me to a window where I could uncheck what Goodreads would require me to share to log into the website. The only thing required was my public profile, but I unchecked my friends list and email.

So, in light of what is going on Facebook's data sharing becoming so public, I'm guessing maybe now other websites, including Amazon and Amazon websites, are making their data gathering more visible. Which means in the past, Goodreads has been gathering data from its accounts for Amazon. ***WHICH IS A LOT***

That is the FB and Amazon connection we've been looking for in a lot of other things that have gone on in the past. Like people that were just friends being considered to "know" the author.

Just throwing this out there for people to let their brains chew on a bit.


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## Desmond X. Torres (Mar 16, 2013)

I think you've made a really good point, Marilyn; one that's definitely worthy of its own thread. While I know this one's getting a lot of views for obvious reasons, that FB-GR-Zon connection is something worth discussing on its own merits.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

Desmond X. Torres said:


> I think you've made a really good point, Marilyn; one that's definitely worthy of its own thread. While I know this one's getting a lot of views for obvious reasons, that FB-GR-Zon connection is something worth discussing on its own merits.


Have posted now a thread on just this subject. 
https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,262477.0.html

But I thought it might be worth talking about here too since we're trying to figure out why all the accounts are going down. It might not be just AMS where the Zon is getting its data.


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## jb1111 (Apr 6, 2018)

Dumb question time:

How do those of you on KU know who actually is reading pages from your books? And why would you think Amazon doesn't know? Would their tracking software be that inept?


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## JWright (Apr 10, 2018)

Ryan W. Mueller said:


> This really makes you wonder just how many page reads are legitimate. I didn't have any change in mine, but I'm not visible enough that the scammers would flip through my books to make their activity on other books look legitimate.
> 
> *It's easy to see why Amazon might think legitimate authors are scamming when this occurs. I'm not sure how they'd go about separating the actual scammers from those who were used as cover for the scamme*rs.
> 
> Personally, I think it would be best if they suspended these bot accounts reading pages but kept the page reads for March. Alternately, they could compensate with a much higher page rate (which we should theoretically have with all these page reads being taken out of the equation).


Yeah, the part in bold is what I have been thinking about too. Not only are the scammers using fake page reads from totally honest authors to mask who they are getting to read their books but they are probably doing whatever they can to look like legit authors too, so it might be difficult to figure out who the scammers are in some cases. I definitely don't think they should be sending out threatening letters though. As people have said, you might be able to prove what you did but you can't prove what you didn't do.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

jb1111 said:


> Dumb question time:
> 
> How do those of you on KU know who actually is reading pages from your books? And why would you think Amazon doesn't know? Would their tracking software be that inept?


Fair questions. I do not know who read mine, personally.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Patty Jansen said:


> In every place where I or members of my family have worked, incompetence is exponentially related to the size of the company. It's not that bigger companies want to be incompetent, it is that departments become so big they don't need to don't talk to each other, departmental heads go on kingdom-building sprees, cost-cutting leads to ridiculous expectations, worker morale is not always high in all places where it needs to be, and computer systems become so complicated and inefficient that one needs a degree in IT just to understand how the system works. I have zero belief that somehow Amazon will be any different.


I agree with all of this.

I don't believe Amazon is being nefarious. I just think the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. They do know that there are people scamming the system. It's not just us, it's been in the press:

http://observer.com/2016/04/how-amazon-kindle-unlimited-scammers-wring-big-money-from-phony-books/ 
https://www.zdnet.com/article/exclusive-inside-a-million-dollar-amazon-kindle-catfishing-scam/

It's really easy to find forums online with the scammers "talking" to each other. I'm sure Amazon has seen them.

Now they've come up with a system to crack down, and as always, the crack down is a sledgehammer not a scalpel. I'm sorry for anyone caught up in this.


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## 98368 (Sep 4, 2017)

Bill Hiatt said:


> I've used Hidden Gems more than once and never seen any sign of suspicious activity. There is a relatively long HG thread in which you can read other reactions, but everyone seems to agree they're honest. The reviews come out with about the same rating spread I get from organic reviews on the same books. Typically, incentivized reviews have a much higher average.


Bill and also Phoenix--Thanks for responding. Reading kboards sometimes throws me into heavy despair, thinking that basically no marketing idea or service I've spent months "learning" about is useful, legitimate, or even allowed by Zon. It's very frustrating.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

I had a fairly successful book (for me) in October. Made me perhaps $2k thus far. Page reads started off good (high of 24k in one day) and have declined ever since. I did no advertising other than word of mouth. I have done no advertising at all in over one year. I have never engaged the services of anyone to promote my books.

In March I had a total of 24,829 page reads, slightly more than February, but still trending down. 65% were stripped from me, leaving me with 8,905. I also received the threatening letter + the confirmation letter when I asked how I was manipulating anything.

The book that generated almost all my page reads was a LitRPG by a pen name. It had over 750 KENPages, thus the 'illegal reads' represent 21 full reads of this book over 31 days. I obviously hired the worst manipulators ever.

I can't afford to lose my account, as threatened, and I can't control who gets to borrow my books. I feel I have no other choice but to pull out of KU.


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

D.A. Boulter said:


> I had a fairly successful book (for me) in October. Made me perhaps $2k thus far. Page reads started off good (high of 24k in one day) and have declined ever since. I did no advertising other than word of mouth. I have done no advertising at all in over one year. I have never engaged the services of anyone to promote my books.
> 
> In March I had a total of 24,829 page reads, slightly more than February, but still trending down. 65% were stripped from me, leaving me with 8,905. I also received the threatening letter + the confirmation letter when I asked how I was manipulating anything.
> 
> ...


Sadly, you're probably right. It's too easy for innocent authors to be targeted by bots, and there is no way on the author side to prevent it. I think if I got the threatening email, I would request that all my books be pulled from KU immediately.

The optimistic side of me wonders what would happen if enough authors did that. Would Amazon be forced to develop a better system for dealing with the issue? It's easy to threaten people without proper investigation, but maybe not as easy if doing it precipitates a wholesale withdrawal from KU.


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## Lu Kudzoza (Nov 1, 2015)

I've noticed that people with both large and small page read counts are being affected. Also, a few of the people affected didn't see a noticeable spike in reads. So, maybe those two things aren't factors (or the only factors) in the algo that's removing the page reads.

What about the possibility that page reads are being removed from accounts that have a very high number of reads compared to actual purchases? Does anyone affected want to give numbers on actual sales vs. equivalent full book reads?


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Not Lu said:


> What about the possibility that page reads are being removed from accounts that have a very high number of reads compared to actual purchases? Does anyone affected want to give numbers on actual sales vs. equivalent full book reads?


That's a very good question.

I'm seeing this month, sales are about 27% of total sales and full reads, in terms of numbers. But sales accounts for about 36%of money.

So one wonders if people being targeted are seeing less than a 1/3 sales value, against the total of sales and full reads?

Maybe the bot is looking for authors where the average sales to KU breakdown, is heavily in favour of KU? Its a thought.

Maybe some of the affected might like to post their percentages?


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## eroticatorium (May 6, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> That's a very good question.
> 
> I'm seeing this month, sales are about 27% of total sales and full reads, in terms of numbers. But sales accounts for about 36%of money.
> 
> ...


I was not affected, and I get maybe 60% of revenue from sales, 40% reads. I'm only partially in KU though, I do erotica and most of my most kinky, interesting and weird stuff is non-KU. Only the somewhat vanilla stuff gets enrolled in KU (and that percentage is going down since all this has played out, I'm moving to like 20% in KU).


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

Puddleduck said:


> It does seem like this sort of dictatorial behavior works only as long as those people directly affected are the only ones who respond. If enough others see what's happening and preemptively pull out of KU or avoid it in the first place, Amazon might be more likely to ease up. Unless, of course, they're _trying _to get indies out of their store. Which, now that they've built it so big, is not something I'd entirely discount.


Amazon seems to want to keep KU, for whatever reason, and the vast bulk of authors in KU are indie authors. For that reason alone, it seems unlikely Amazon is trying to get rid of indies.

Keep in mind that Amazon could get rid of all indies with the flick of a switch by simply ending KDP. That gets rid of all indies instantly, without having to spend months getting people to want to leave. In such a scenario, Amazon might invite the really high selling indies a contract with one of the imprints. Of course, since a third or so of Amazon's ebook revenue comes from indies, such a step, even if Amazon could hold onto all of the really high sellers, would be risky. That's why I don't see it happening.


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## 77820 (Jun 19, 2014)

Not Lu said:


> ...
> What about the possibility that page reads are being removed from accounts that have a very high number of reads compared to actual purchases? Does anyone affected want to give numbers on actual sales vs. equivalent full book reads?


I estimate that for March, before the purge, less than 50% of my revenue was from page reads. After the purge, it is now around 25%. Keep in mind that my revenues are very, very small overall, and I only use AMS ads for marketing. I used to count myself blessed if I got 2000 page reads in a day. Now, I wonder if I get too many page reads in a day, some bot will cancel my account.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Not Lu said:


> I've noticed that people with both large and small page read counts are being affected. Also, a few of the people affected didn't see a noticeable spike in reads. So, maybe those two things aren't factors (or the only factors) in the algo that's removing the page reads.
> 
> What about the possibility that page reads are being removed from accounts that have a very high number of reads compared to actual purchases? Does anyone affected want to give numbers on actual sales vs. equivalent full book reads?


I had 34 sales of books in KU in March, of which 19 were of my most popular. I had 24.8k reads which is about 32-36 full read equivalents.

The 24k is up from 18k in February, but down from 50k in January, 70k in Dec and more previous to that in Nov & Oct. My KU page read equivalents have consistently scored well above my actual sales since Oct when I pubbed the new book.

About 11k of my 16k illegal pages came from my new book -- about 14 book equivs.


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## Avery342 (Aug 23, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> That's a very good question.
> 
> I'm seeing this month, sales are about 27% of total sales and full reads, in terms of numbers. But sales accounts for about 36%of money.
> 
> ...


Sorry to burst this bubble, but...

Full disclosure. To reiterate my story very briefly to set the stage for the numbers: In mid March, I released the third book in my series (not yet shown in my sig--need to get that done). During release week, I set the first book to free and ran a Kindle Countdown deal on the second to 99 cents. While it worked well (for me, anyway, as I'm just gaining momentum), to be truthful, I still thought the page reads were a bit on the low side.

Silly me.

In April, my page reads for March were reduced greatly. So even though there were no spikes (just a gradual increase due to the above), for some reason Amazon thought my reads were fake. I still don't believe it. Sorry.

Anyway, here is what you wanted. Cold, hard numbers.

All About Zane (book one) 1617 free downloads, 39 sales (after switching to a 99 cent loss-leader price point), page reads were at 19,189.
With a KENP of 283, if I did my calculations right, that means roughly 68 full reads. (Just for the record, seems pretty legit to me.) Promos while free: BookDoggy and BKNights.

Until Proven (book two) 158 sales (some at 99 cents), 11,488 page reads. KENP is at 265, so 44 full page reads? See why I was thinking my page reads were a bit on the low side? Absolutely no promo done on this book at all.

Separation Anxiety (new release) 262 sales, 25,368 page reads. KENP is at 202, so 126 full reads. The only promo was LGBT-Romance Deals newsletter, which is highly recommended and honest in their dealings.

When I published my first book, I got well over 100K page reads for the month on that book. In March, with the free run and Kindle Countdown Deal, I got a grand total of just over 56,000. Like I said, it seemed low to me, but hey, I was going to hit $1000 within 30 days, so I was ecstatic!

Then Amazon decided that a great portion of those lowly 56,000 page reads were fake--I truly must be the worst scammer ever born to see such poor results from such hard work. I ended up with 28,167 page reads from all three books combined.

Someone earlier in this thread came up with the theory that Amazon's scam-buster algo was going on percentage of growth. That's the only thing that makes one iota of sense to me.

Unless my math is wrong? If so, I'd love to know where I went wrong. (On so many levels)

As others have already said, the very worst part of all of this isn't the missing page reads. Losing around $170 hurts, yes, but it isn't the end of the world. The worst part is that now my KDP account is in jeopardy. (And the fact that I can no longer look at my sales stats with any kind of confidence is a heck of a bummer too.)

And just for the record one last time. I don't cheat, scam, bot, or stuff.

I write.

(edited for typo)


----------



## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Klendark said:


> Now, I wonder if I get too many page reads in a day, some bot will cancel my account.


Not too many. Rather, too much of a percentage change, it appears from anecdotal evidence.

My page reads run around 20K per day, fairly steady, no problems, but they're mostly off the .de (German) site. I know authors that have 5x as many in English with no problems.

So, it seems to be all about the spikes and from which accounts the page reads come.

In the latter case, the more customer dolphins get swept up, the more authors will get page reads removed unjustly, i.e., if a customer account is falsely accused or removed, all their page reads will, in essence, falsely accuse an author.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


----------



## Avery342 (Aug 23, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> Just a random thought as I was catching up on this thread -- no evidence/analysis or even much consideration given to it...
> 
> Feb payments are likely being processed and all previous months are paid. What if Amazon is clawing back reads from other months and it isn't just March reads being hit? Perhaps they did a Q1 audit in mid-March and are reducing some accounts' reads for something that happened (or at least that Amazon thinks happened) in Jan or Feb? Or maybe they're even a quarter behind, and doing a Q4 audit, so they might be retroacting back to Oct/Nov/Dec.
> 
> Again, just tossing the idea into the hat with all the others.


Would it be right of them to slash page reads then on a book that literally didn't exist until Mid March? My new release had page reads cut too.

But who knows? Maybe that's the new Amazon way. If true, then our sales numbers really don't mean squat.

edited to add: Book one's release with the higher page reads was at the first of October 2017. If they are going back that far to determine there was a problem...well, there is a problem...


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

This doesn't seem to be a good time to apply for a BookBub


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> This doesn't seem to be a good time to apply for a BookBub


I've had 3 this year and no page reads removed. The removals are still very much the exception, from what I see. I wish we knew exactly what was going on, and I'm very sorry for folks who haven't done anything wrong and have had this happen. I hope this is Amazon really and truly cleaning house and that the playing field will level. Who knows, though.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

You can't make any sense out of what happened by looking at the numbers. I released a first-in-series March 18. Prior to that, I was having a crappy month.

March 1-17: 196 sales, 100K pages read.
March 18-31: 827 sales, 300K pages read. I did about 10 promos, BB ad, FB ad, AMS ad. Book hit #886 and #1 in 2 or 3 subgenres. 

All the tales of people getting their pages stripped, I didn't do anything much different than they say they did. The more I delve into the issue and hear people's stories, the less the whole thing makes sense.


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> New conspiracy theory. Someone just tweeted this under #amazonclosed.
> 
> _*
> @amazon accidently admitted to closing "at least a million" accounts. There was no reason that they are giving. If #amazonclosed your account, file a report AND a review with @bbb_us. Don't let them do this to us. Call your attorney General. Do whatever it takes to be heard.*_
> ...


A post or two below that tweet is a screenshot of a letter received by one who had their account restored with a plausible explanation (fraudulent activity detected, account suspended while being investigated). So, maybe we're on the other side of this now. Perhaps page reads will be restored.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> This doesn't seem to be a good time to apply for a BookBub


That's what's so ridiculous. It should never be a bad time to get a bookbub and make money. Amazon is the only site where I've ever had to worry that if I do something right and make money I'll LOSE money.


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## 77820 (Jun 19, 2014)

katrina46 said:


> That's what's so ridiculous. It should never be a bad time to get a bookbub and make money. Amazon is the only site where I've ever had to worry that if I do something right and make money I'll LOSE money.


Amen!


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> If this was a case of accidental customer account banning, then they should restore the page reads, but I'd be surprised if that happens. I mean, I'd like to be surprised, but it would be quite a forward-thinking attitude from Amazon, and they are not prone to showing that toward us itty-bitty authors. Also, given they are restoring accounts now shouldn't the page reads also be adjusted? In fact, now that I think about it, why aren't the page reads adjusting to reflect the accounts being restored? Hmm...


I think the tweet concerned account closures and not the page-reads issue, though they are likely related.

Anyway, I suspect Amazon detected a whale of a bot grossly inflating a client's page reads while camouflaging itself in innocent's accounts. Maybe the botter felt if inflated reads occurred across the board, Amazon would just assume business was up and redecorate the boardroom.

Instead, it appears Zon caught on, panicked, and chose a remedy that did not bear the hallmark of finesse. Now they're surveying the collateral damage and making piecemeal amends.

Their treatment of the small-fry KU author is not what I would call stellar, but it is consistent. We can give them credit for that. It would be nice if they had a representative on this board.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

PaulineMRoss said:


> You don't need to worry about Bookbub. This goes back to some of the rank-stripping panic from last year, when several Bookbubees were rank-stripped, and people jumped to conclusions that Bookbubs were being targeted. But there were plenty of non-Bookbub folks who were also rank-stripped and a ton of people who had a Bookbub without the slightest problem. There's never been any evidence that a Bookbub is risky.


If anyone gets a BookBub and is afraid to use it, I volunteer to substitute my book for you.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

PaulineMRoss said:


> You don't need to worry about Bookbub. This goes back to some of the rank-stripping panic from last year, when several Bookbubees were rank-stripped, and people jumped to conclusions that Bookbubs were being targeted. But there were plenty of non-Bookbub folks who were also rank-stripped and a ton of people who had a Bookbub without the slightest problem. There's never been any evidence that a Bookbub is risky.


I'm not worried, but yeah, there have been times when it's proven not so profitable to do a bookbub when Amazon is in the middle of doing something screwy. I remember Walter John Williams blogging that he wanted to vomit when they blocked his book from sale during a bookbub promotion. It happens.


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## levolal (Apr 13, 2018)

My book reads have not been halved, but my author account was suspended for 24h and my books are still taken down (it takes a while to go back on sale). 

On Facebook groups, a lot of people have experienced this particularly in the past month. They did an investigation and they gave me back my account and surprisingly my reads were mostly intact. However, I am terrified as I have no idea what caused it or how to prevent it in the future. I simply make too much money off KU (65% of my income) to pull my books out. And it seems like this is the first strike of a two strike policy where I will be removed period from Amazon.

How are others dealing with this? If this is a new algorithm, can we share data here to figure out what might have triggered it?

I have not had a big jump in any books page reads.


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

PhoenixS said:


> Cindy, assuming the US is your biggest market, then there are some possible oddities.
> 
> If Title 3 is on Day 2 of free, are you promoting it at all? Its free rank would indicate maybe 5 to 10 downloads only over the past couple of days.
> 
> ...


Hi, sorry, I couldn't return for a few days.

Title 3, yes, I was promoting it as free but not much. Just putting it free because I had the days, and with the intention of the updated back matter to drive readers to Title 1. It didn't have many downloads of free (like 45 and then some page reads) and is an erotica short, so not many places to advertise it. I did get a lot more downloads of it than I did of Title 2, which was free when the page read spike on Title 1 began.

Both the shorts either don't get any page reads or get 1 page read on a day (for a very long time they didn't have a 'start' point, so the KDP dashboard said - but my dog died and then it was Christmas, so frankly I didn't check into it and didn't notice or care very much as the dog dying was impending but still "sudden," if you know what I mean.)

The shorts were not new titles when I put them in. Title 3 was also stripped of rank for a few days when the whole erotica rank-stripping thing happened a couple weeks ago. But neither of these shorts do much of anything on Amazon. I only re-enrolled them in Select because I was putting the novel back in. Hah!

I appreciate you looking into things and dissecting it, because it helps provide perspective. After receiving the "you're not getting royalties" email, I emailed back with the places I had advertised, including AMS. By the time I emailed, a day after other folks did, I jumped over the "we have looked again, and our decision is final" email and received the one stating they need five more business days to look into things. I suspect April page reads for Title 1 are also suspect.

Now, see, I thought, based on my last two experiences with a book in KU (V 1 and V2) that the high price of Title 1 (which was $4.99 entering the KCD and for a few weeks thereafter - I only put it down to $2.99 last week) was driving KU reads *instead*. I was running AMS ads and doing a ton of Tweeting as the page reads grew. So I thought it was working, and the rank was remaining relatively stable, with a spurt of 3 sales in one day as a result of an Authors XP Daily Deals Machine ad. I took out the Deals Machine ad to drive KU reads, not sales, but I got a few sales as well.

I signed up for more promos to drive eyeballs to the novel, Title 1, in KU. I've since been able to back out of those promos and have stopped tweeting for the most part. I'm just hanging around to see how things shake out.

To me, in retrospect, maybe the spike was suspicious. *I* thought it was an accumulative effect of the free days on the other titles, and promotions to get eyes on KU, newsletters to both names to get eyes on the title in KU (example, a newsletter in an automation sequence went out to 500 people recently and I have no idea if the people who clicked are reading the book in KU or if those reads are suspect).

I figure I have two choices at this point: (1) Wait and see how things shake out (what happens to my April reads and what Amazon thinks of that now that I'm allowing the book to die in reads and sales in any way I can control (I still have one AMS ad going) or (2) to ask to be let out of the program.

Note, this is the first time I've ever had more than one title in KU at the same time. The other times, as Cindy, free days on the KU title created spikes that caused very nice halos, whether in terms of borrows or reads, depending on which Select version the book was in. And the free days also created sales in other books even though the free book was a stand-alone. So, dumb me, I thought with 3 titles in KU from this one pen name, that I was hitting a momentum. It might seem silly to folks who know KU inside and out, but I hadn't tried it for I think coming up on 3 years. Whenever the page reads thing came into effect was the last time I tried it. I was always happy with the results before, so decided to try again with the reissue of Title 1.

In April, reads have gone up and down, but have never cracked 5000 since the spike in March. Today, there are at 1000. And probably all suspect.


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

PhoenixS said:


> So, I see possible oddities in one account that I, admittedly, have a very limited view into. And Lucey was able to discern that there were big discrepancies in her account that she attributes to bot reads.
> 
> If you're a low-to-moderately selling author* who's lost a substantial percentage of your page reads for March and are willing to share your ranks, sales and page reads with me, I'll run them through a quick analysis to see if there are any big tells regarding botted reads, such as Lucey ran across. I'll share results but will maintain your anonymity if you prefer.
> 
> ...


Those are my page read numbers. My other March 6-8 coincidences are that (1) the book was was offered up for review and it was reported that something like 24 folks were given the book to review, leaving a handful of reviews in that time period; and (2) I started using BookReport. I thought maybe folks who reviewed the book and liked it were recommending it to other readers. And I was one of those who thought maybe Amazon itself was recommending the book. I don't belong to KU myself and am not really aware how it works. Only that it has worked for me in the past.

At any rate, Amazon now has a description of my promotional efforts and that I am now wondering about the April reads. Zero reads on April 1st and then they started up again, just at a much lower rate with today being the lowest of the month. I'm waiting to hear back from them so I can decide what to do from here.


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

dgaughran said:


> Around the same time that a dozen or so authors were incorrectly rank stripped by Amazon last September/October (when I first blogged about it), another author contacted me saying she had a huge number of pages reads - hundreds of thousands - retroactively removed by Amazon. They didn't notify her or explain it until she emailed them. Then they accused her of rank manipulation using the same form letter that those authors received.
> 
> She never got it resolved. It was the only case of its kind that I'd heard of until last month, when an author told me he had a large number of page reads removed too. Now that there are a few cases, I'll try and raise it with Amazon via the same channels as it appears to be a growing issue.


I did report it to RWA, and then say they've passed my concerns on to their Amazon rep. I don't expect it'll help much, but at least I'm not getting emails threatening to close my account anymore. Now they just say they're looking into it. The next reply will determine where I go from here.

If accounts are being manipulated, I fear mine might still being manipulated. The bots just took off April Fool's Day to eat chocolate Easter bunnies and are now reading my book at lower numbers.


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## 77820 (Jun 19, 2014)

cindypk said:


> .....
> In April, reads have gone up and down, but have never cracked 5000 since the spike in March. Today, there are at 1000. And probably all suspect.


I feel your pain. I worry every time my number goes over a 1000. In fact, if it gets too high, I send "Contact Us" a note telling them I might be having a spike. I absolutely hate this situation. For me, the whole KDP Select experience has become dehumanizing. I have taken steps to get all my books out of KDP Select. Until then, I can only watch and worry.


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

TwistedTales said:


> FWIW, I've run through the thread and stripped out what people state they've lost in page reads or money from March. It'll be easier for anyone who wants to add their numbers to the list. If Phoenix gets enough data (even if it's flaky), then maybe she can find a pattern, because I've never seen people reporting this sort of problem before, or at least not to this extent. In 2016 we simply didn't get the page reads and some people lost up to 90% of their usual run rate. Seeing this many page reads removed post reporting is a new problem to me.
> 
> TM285 - lost 50%, plus claims FB group reporting same
> solo - reported lost page reads (volume?)
> ...


It's more accurate for me, CindyPK, to say I lost ~192,000 page reads because the $835-ish was a number from BookReport, and because I never expected it to disappear I wasn't keeping exact track of which books were represented by those numbers (I had a new release as Cindy last week).

I print out my Amazon numbers every 1st of the month. I *usually* print for each country per month. But this month I forgot because we were OOT detailing with an issue that weekend. So I only printed out the totals, I realized to my chagrin when this occurred. So I can report that as of April 1 my printout states I had 179,110 KENPC for March and now it states I have 5078. If my math (ahem, the calculator) is correct, that's a difference of 174,032 (I had been saying around 172,000 but my brain was obviously confused.) The book in question has a KENPC of 459. So I went from having 390 books read in March to 11 read in March, if I divide those amounts by 459.

Again, maybe it seems silly in retrospect that I thought I had 390 books read in March. But when I compared it to having 94,000 downloads (as in books, not pages) of a novel during 5 free days in Select 1, to my little ol' addled self, it made sense.


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> No, they didn't.
> 
> But the last couple of days in January showed blips where suddenly there was full reads, instead of single digits.
> 
> ...


I had low page reads in Jan and Feb, but bumps coinciding with promos. I admit I was frustrated thinking about the page flip thing and wondering if it was partly responsible because I was running promos that so far weren't earning out. Then in March, on top of everything else I dared to believe, I dared to think I was now getting full novel reads reported rather than 1-pagers. I thought perhaps full reads from Jan and Feb were coming into play (the book having gone up Dec. 29th). It turns out I thought a whole lot of stuff that made sense at the time...


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

Regarding Hidden Gems, I used them on my Cindy release from last week (Cindy isn't in KU) and was very happy with them.

For my Kate name, I used eBookDiscovery's R/R service and the jury is still out. 

I would use HG again. I can't really compare the two, because Cindy's was a totally new book and Kate's was an updated reissue (it was with Samhain previously).


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

Klendark said:


> I feel your pain. I worry every time my number goes over a 1000. In fact, if it gets too high, I send "Contact Us" a note telling them I might be having a spike. I absolutely hate this situation. For me, the whole KDP Select experience has become dehumanizing. I have taken steps to get all my books out of KDP Select. Until then, I can only watch and worry.


Thanks, and I hope you are successful getting your titles removed.


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## levolal (Apr 13, 2018)

The crazy thing to me is that they suspended my account but DID NOT adjust my page reads. So it's like... they suspended my account and basically found nothing, but if I had ignored the email then I would have been banned. What logic is that? An algorithm that purely detects spikes in page reads makes no sense as there are millions of reasons this can happen. How are we supposed to exist like this? I was really proud of the money I've built to and now I feel like it'll be taken away in a heartbeat. I'm on strike 1 for.... reasons they won't tell me, and it only goes to strike 2.


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## DanteSakurai (Mar 17, 2018)

Hey everyone. Thought I'd chip in. I published my first LitRPG on the 19th of March. Reads and sales grew steadily over a week where it leveled off at about 100-150k reads per day, now currently on the decline. Amazon took around 500k pages read around the 7th of April iirc and sent the standard warning email a couple days later. I emailed back within the day.

content-review emailed back a day later with the standard "We re-reviewed your account and have decided to uphold our decision. You will not receive royalties for illegitimate reading or borrowing activity."

I wrote to [email protected] and a representative just go back to me today.

"Hello,

My name is <name> with Kindle Direct Publishing Executive Customer Relations. Jeff Bezos received your email and I am responding on his behalf.

I've received your request and am connecting with the appropriate team to review the information you've provided. You should expect a response regarding your account status in the next few days.

Best regards,
<name>"

13 minutes later I got another email from KDP.

"As we previously stated, we still detect reading or borrow activity for your books originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services. You are responsible for ensuring the strategies used to promote your books comply with our Terms and Conditions. We cannot offer advice on marketing services or details of our investigations.

Please be aware we will not be providing additional details.

Regards,

Amazon KDP"

Any advice? Does this mean my book is still being botted because the last email said "still detect"? I'm really concerned I might be banned within the next month right now.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

DanteSakurai said:


> "As we previously stated, we still detect reading or borrow activity for your books originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services. You are responsible for ensuring the strategies used to promote your books comply with our Terms and Conditions. We cannot offer advice on marketing services or details of our investigations.


This is what really gets me.

The ONLY way they can know this, is to be allowing scammer accounts to remain active.

What sort of person lets the bad guys alone, and punishes the innocent instead?

Who in Amazon made the decision to operate this way?


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

TimothyEllis said:


> This is what really gets me.
> 
> The ONLY way they can know this, is to be allowing scammer accounts to remain active.
> 
> ...


It's a bit much when you have to fear an *increase* in sales


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

I heard from Amazon yesterday afternoon that they re-reviewed (I didn't ask them to re-review, btw) my March page reads and royalties will not be paid. Something new is that the guy said the illegal activity on my account was not related to my AMS ads. 

Okay, as least there's that. I emailed him back right away and asked about April reads. Specifically, do they have an answer on April reads now or will they not know until May? Another rep got back to me today confirming that they will not know about April until May.

I hope they will reword their May email, which I now fully expect to receive, as I have no reason to believe my April reads aren't suspect, as well. If my March reads were suspect, then my April reads are.

So I've asked for all three of my Kate titles to be removed from Select ASAP. They have done this for others, so crossing fingers.


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> This is what really gets me.
> 
> The ONLY way they can know this, is to be allowing scammer accounts to remain active.
> 
> ...


My guess would be that they need to allow the scammers to keep operating until such time that they can pounce on them?


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

DanteSakurai said:


> Hey everyone. Thought I'd chip in. I published my first LitRPG on the 19th of March. Reads and sales grew steadily over a week where it leveled off at about 100-150k reads per day, now currently on the decline. Amazon took around 500k pages read around the 7th of April iirc and sent the standard warning email a couple days later. I emailed back within the day.
> 
> content-review emailed back a day later with the standard "We re-reviewed your account and have decided to uphold our decision. You will not receive royalties for illegitimate reading or borrowing activity."
> 
> ...





DanteSakurai said:


> Hey everyone. Thought I'd chip in. I published my first LitRPG on the 19th of March. Reads and sales grew steadily over a week where it leveled off at about 100-150k reads per day, now currently on the decline. Amazon took around 500k pages read around the 7th of April iirc and sent the standard warning email a couple days later. I emailed back within the day.
> 
> content-review emailed back a day later with the standard "We re-reviewed your account and have decided to uphold our decision. You will not receive royalties for illegitimate reading or borrowing activity."
> 
> ...


I went through the exact same process (almost) and received the exact same results. The only difference was that my letter to Uncle Jeff detailed why I felt forced to withdraw my books from KU. I didn't ask for another check on the status of my account. [see: https://daboulter.blogspot.com/ for letter which I decided to make as an open letter to Mr Bezos]

Didn't matter. The rep sent it back to content-review and I received the same reply.

Now, I read that reply as you and others did



TimothyEllis said:


> This is what really gets me.
> 
> The ONLY way they can know this, is to be allowing scammer accounts to remain active.
> 
> ...


however there is another way to read it. "we still detect reading or borrow activity for your books originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services." may mean that they have rechecked their original data and have found it to be correct, NOT that they have checked and the illegal borrowing is ongoing. At the moment that's what I'm hoping for, anyway. Besides, I have just 3000 pages this month, and only a handful since my main book came out on the 10th.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

TimothyEllis said:


> This is what really gets me.
> 
> The ONLY way they can know this, is to be allowing scammer accounts to remain active.
> 
> ...


Maybe they figure they need to choke off the demand (from authors) before addressing the supply. Otherwise new suppliers will just replace the ones they shut down (that is, the click-farms will just open new accounts).

This assumes, of course, that authors are actually demanding.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Becca Mills said:


> Maybe they figure they need to choke off the demand (from authors) before addressing the supply. Otherwise new suppliers will just replace the ones they shut down (that is, the click-farms will just open new accounts).
> 
> This assumes, of course, that authors are actually demanding.


Otherwords it sounds like, if I can use a metaphor, they are going after the "Johns", or authors, in the Scammers' "prostitution for page reads" rings. SO, accounts being shut down are assumed to be buying page reads or getting them some how from the scammers. 
Geez. Glad I am slowly pulling all of my titles out of KU and that I don't get many reads these days. Sign of the times to just "pull out" while I can. ;-)


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

I asked to have my pen name's books pulled from KU, and they have been. The person who spoke about worrying about next month, that was my concern. I sent them the titles and ASINs and asked to be removed ASAP. They pretty much did it overnight. Now, onto going wide.

Select was a lot more fun last time I tried it...


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

I had an odd thought.

What if Amazon's algo is identifying repeat content in people's KU books? Or repeat content over 10% or something like that. Then removing page reads on that basis. Seems like that could induce a lot of errors and catch dolphin, but would mostly hurt stuffers and scammers?


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

TimothyEllis said:


> This is what really gets me.
> 
> The ONLY way they can know this, is to be allowing scammer accounts to remain active.
> 
> ...


Or they shut down the accounts they detect, only to have new ones pop up. Perhaps part of the problem is that it's too easy to set up a new customer account. It's been suggested in an earlier thread that if customers had to provide bank info instead of just a credit card number, it would be a little harder for bots to keep registering. Of course, it would also make real people less likely to sign up.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

If they could actually identify the total-scam accounts, it should be easy to simply deny them any payment. Let them keep trying and spinning their wheels, and don't shut down the accounts. Just no payment allowed. That's what I would do, were I Jeff.

But hey, that would be too easy, right?


----------



## Desmond X. Torres (Mar 16, 2013)

David VanDyke said:


> If they could actually identify the total-scam accounts, it should be easy to simply deny them any payment. Let them keep trying and spinning their wheels, and don't shut down the accounts. Just no payment allowed. That's what I would do, were I Jeff.
> 
> But hey, that would be too easy, right?


I thought this was going to happen the last time, but nooo...
Which is bewildering.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Just out of curiosity, was anyone actually allowed to take their books out of Select early because of this?


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## Becca Fanning (May 17, 2014)

Just a friendly reminder that even if your book is taken out of KU, a "bot" that has borrowed your book but hasn't gotten around to reading it yet can still trigger illegitimate pages even months down the line, which will result in the pages being stripped and your account threatened again. *Even when your books are out of KU.*

Sigh.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Becca Fanning said:


> Just a friendly reminder that even if your book is taken out of KU, a "bot" that has borrowed your book but hasn't gotten around to reading it yet can still trigger illegitimate pages even months down the line, which will result in the pages being stripped and your account threatened again. *Even when your books are out of KU.*
> Sigh.


You mean even bots have a tbr mountain Argh!


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## anotherpage (Apr 4, 2012)

DanteSakurai said:


> Hey everyone. Thought I'd chip in. I published my first LitRPG on the 19th of March. Reads and sales grew steadily over a week where it leveled off at about 100-150k reads per day, now currently on the decline. Amazon took around 500k pages read around the 7th of April iirc and sent the standard warning email a couple days later. I emailed back within the day.
> 
> content-review emailed back a day later with the standard "We re-reviewed your account and have decided to uphold our decision. You will not receive royalties for illegitimate reading or borrowing activity."
> 
> ...


So i guess this answers this entire thread.

Basically DON'T whatever you do try to argue with AMAZON as they will DENY they are doing anything wrong and will blame the author.

So frustrating. Because I am seeing great page reads and then seeing them reduced the next month.

I don't dare ask them about it in fear that they might suspend my account or flag my account or do something else.

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


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

thevoiceofone said:


> What I don't get is how are INNOCENT accounts getting stripped of page reads? It makes no sense.


Scammer bots their own books. Ranks get better. Books start to stand out.

Scammer bots other peoples books, making their ranks rise, making their own books stop standing out.

Amazon finds scammer account, and strips the reads from every single book that account read from.

This is how innocent people lose their reads. They dont know the reads came from a bot or a scammer some other way, and Amazon does.

The stripping happens because Amazon is more interested in not paying out, than it is from stopping the fraudulent activity completely. They will do anything necessary not to pay out 1c, instead of do what is necessary to stop scammers.


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## anotherpage (Apr 4, 2012)

TimothyEllis said:


> Scammer bots their own books. Ranks get better. Books start to stand out.
> 
> Scammer bots other peoples books, making their ranks rise, making their own books stop standing out.
> 
> ...


Yep i think you hit the nail on the head. SCAMMERS create a ton of amazon accounts

They then setup automated BOTS to borrow their own books ALONG with innocent books ( in order to hide among a LARGE number of books their own )

Then amazon NUKED all these customer accounts that had BORROWED tons of books and maybe were reading them too fast.

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-closes-users-accounts-customers-fight-back-2018-4

And after doing so. WIPED any reads that came from those CUSTOMER accounts. ( which were probably targeting their own books PLUS innocent books )

Then out accounts get adjusted.

Oh well no point arguing with amazon on this. They aren't going to pay out pages that didn't generate from real readers. They know whats going on if they have hit customer accounts


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## Nikkira (May 19, 2016)

thevoiceofone said:


> Anyone else seen this.
> 
> If i go into my account and click on 'Prior months royalty tab' where you can see previous months and current month
> 
> ...


Are you sure you're seeing page reads and not dollars once it becomes a drop down? It changes on that screen when the KU rates are announced. The figures you gave don't support that theory, but I thought I'd mention it for consideration.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## It&#039;s A Mystery (Mar 14, 2017)

I'd imagine that they've identified some scammers, closed their account, and all reads that were attributed to those accounts have been removed.


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## anotherpage (Apr 4, 2012)

PhoenixS said:


> It makes a BIG difference whether you come back on the 10th or the 19th. Royalties for those page reads are calculated on or around the 15th of the month, and the monetary amount for total pages read replaces the number of pages read once the payment rate per page is determined and the final royalty account is tallied up.


Ah... that makes sense now. LOL I was looking at it wrong. Thanks for clarifying. I rarely look at my KU stuff. I usually just focus on SALES and what comes into my bank.


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## DanteSakurai (Mar 17, 2018)

It's A Mystery said:


> I'd imagine that they've identified some scammers, closed their account, and all reads that were attributed to those accounts have been removed.


That doesn't seem to be the case because they did the culling on the 7th but only took reads for March (and feb for some). None of the reads from the 1st to 7th were touched. I also doubt exactly 50% of my pages read were fraudulent. It seems to be exactly 50% for a lot of authors.


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## cindypk (Jan 30, 2013)

loraininflorida said:


> Just out of curiosity, was anyone actually allowed to take their books out of Select early because of this?


Yes, I sent ASINs for three titles in the program to the address from which I had been receiving emails and asked to have the titles removed. They came down very quickly. My enrollment went to June 28th, and the platform is just too unstable for me now.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

cindypk said:


> Yes, I sent ASINs for three titles in the program to the address from which I had been receiving emails and asked to have the titles removed. They came down very quickly. My enrollment went to June 28th, and the platform is just too unstable for me now.


That's good they are at least doing that for people.


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## A. Pepper (Apr 19, 2018)

I didn't record my stats to compare, but my March pagereads are below the numbers I had in February and April, with consistent advertising and no change in releases. March was no fun at all! I've been through plenty of peaks and valleys over the years, and it was definitely a valley. You know it's bad when I start thinking about a strategy for going wide with everything, and I have been. But putting in a year of patience for things to get rolling...ugh.


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## Seand13 (Apr 24, 2018)

Does anyone have an update on this? I heard some cases where people get their account suspended, which they get it back after protesting. But I heard that once you get suspended and your book removed even for a few days, you lose your book ranking and it really affects sales.

I got the warning too and I want to keep publishing but I'm afraid I will get my account suspended as well.


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## Book Cat (Jan 3, 2016)

I just had this happen to me, today on May 9th. I lost about half my page reads in April and got the automated response about page reads being illigitament and...

"We take activities that jeopardize the experience of our readers and other authors seriously. Please know any additional violation of our Terms and Conditions – including a violation caused by any marketing services you, or others on your behalf, may have used – could result in account-level actions, up to and including termination of your KDP account."

I haven't run any third party promotions on my book. Nothing but AMS, and linking to my book on my website, a popular website called Royal Road (a bit like Wattpad) and that's it. Oh, sorry I sen a link to my small mailing list.

Does anyone know what I should do? My page reads for May are about what they were in April before the reduction. I assume they will take page reads again. I don't care about the loss of money, I'm worried about my account. The book they removed them from is brand new, and is the first book I got anywhere with. So it is very upsetting that this has happaned. I understand they want to get rid of scammed pages, and I support that, but to threaten me, and I assume other authors, who have done nothing wrong is just silly.

So is my only option to demand to be taken out of KU? To pull my book down? Either option seems like career suicide for a newer author like me who was only just getting somewhere and had a whole series planned.

Thanks.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

I've just seen this happen again to a few of my friends who are all Litrpg writers. I didn't get hit but am nervous as I'm readying a new book. *Sigh* It seems like the scammer bots are targeting the Litrpg sub-genres now. This is frustrating and scary.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

This just happened to myself and a friend who is an author. Now, we are both very small fries, but have had a tiny bit of success in recent months (but still extremely small fries). We both spend maybe $1-$3 per day on AMS ads. He hasn't used any paid promotional sites, but I've used a few, usually on new releases. On my most recent release, I used Bargainbooksy, Fussy Librarian, My Book Cave and Awesomegang (yeah, peanuts to most people). 

So my friend emails me this morning and says to check my page reads - his were cut in half. I check mine for this month and they are fine. I check mine for last month, and sure enough, I've lost maybe half (sorry, I don't track my stuff like I should). Now, page reads last month were nothing special at all. Each month after releasing last September, page reads have fallen steadily after the 60, 90 day cliffs. Usually about 20% decrease each month, starting in January. April was very much in line with that pattern, until the new release on April 28. Page reads were up, but nothing insane. 

To boot, we both received nasty emails from Amazon this morning stating they've detected illicit activity with our page reads and that if it continues our accounts will be terminated.


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## AuthorX (Nov 11, 2014)

This just happened to me.

Every book I release hits the top 100 or 200 of Amazon, and my books are well-known in the genre that I write in, so I have not experienced any abnormal growths or rises in my page reads whatsoever. They have been steady for a long, long time.

Amazon basically decided to randomly strip 50% of my page reads in April, making it my lowest month since I can remember.

The said that they detected malicious marketing, but the only marketing I have is AMS ads and Facebook ads. I don't work with any other third parties.


I don't know how they can get this so wrong... I've been publishing for years and have been a six-figure author for some time. The idea that I would randomly start using bots or something when I'm doing just fine is ridiculous. And them just deciding that they're going to take half of my page reads away and give me one of my worst months ever is scary as hell. I don't know what to do other than email them back. I doubt I'll get anywhere but hopefully they will reason with me.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Saboth said:


> This just happened to myself and a friend who is an author. Now, we are both very small fries, but have had a tiny bit of success in recent months (but still extremely small fries).


Are you and your friend writing LitRPG like RileyMorrison? Because if so, it does seem like a very targeted attack.

The only consolation is that if those pages read really did originate from click farms, then they weren't legitimate readers anyway. You still have the readers and pages read that you earned through your own hard work.

Sorry this has happened to you. The indie world is not a pleasant place to be right now.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

PaulineMRoss said:


> Are you and your friend writing LitRPG like RileyMorrison? Because if so, it does seem like a very targeted attack.
> 
> The only consolation is that if those pages read really did originate from click farms, then they weren't legitimate readers anyway. You still have the readers and pages read that you earned through your own hard work.
> 
> Sorry this has happened to you. The indie world is not a pleasant place to be right now.


I don't write litRPG, more like superhero/action adventure. The fan base seems to cross over with litRPG though, as a lot of my also boughts are litRPG books and similar. I don't think 50% of my page reads could have been from bots though, because of the steady monthly decline.

For instance, each month after the 90 day cliff had a steady decline of about 10-15% page reads. There was a sharp drop after 90 days, but then it smoothed out. 10% less this month, 10% less this month and so on. April was going to be the worst month to date, simply because of another 10% drop. However, at the very end of the month there was a spike in page reads due to releasing book 2. Nothing crazy, and totally what I expected. But that was for only the last few days in April, so it basically just erased that 10% drop from the previous month.

So now Amazon is saying 50% of the page reads for April were really illicit? So instead of a 10% drop, according to them, it should have been a 50% drop? It just doesn't add up. My sales (not KU) were in line with the KU page reads and borrows (historically, it's about 35/65...35% sales and 65% KU borrows and page reads). So a 50% drop from March to April seems illogical, judging by consistent sales that did not see a drop anywhere close to that. But there's no way to verify anything, you simply have to take Amazon's word for it and hope they don't drop the hammer for something you not only can't control, but can't even see or defend yourself against.


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## Book Cat (Jan 3, 2016)

PaulineMRoss said:


> Are you and your friend writing LitRPG like RileyMorrison? Because if so, it does seem like a very targeted attack.
> 
> The only consolation is that if those pages read really did originate from click farms, then they weren't legitimate readers anyway. You still have the readers and pages read that you earned through your own hard work.
> 
> Sorry this has happened to you. The indie world is not a pleasant place to be right now.


I am happy I kept some of my page reads. But that is not what I'm worried about. It's more the account threat thing. And going, wide, seems like it would kill me writing career, as I don't have a big audience. I'm really just starting out. Going wide would make things 100x more difficult, as I also don't have the money for mass promotions. And, to think I would have to make such a drastic decision over this, after having done nothing wrong is just... Sad.

But, anyway. It seems others are hit too. I assume Amazon knows that innocent people will be snatched up in this. I hope that works in our favor.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Saboth said:


> For instance, each month after the 90 day cliff had a steady decline of about 10-15% page reads. There was a sharp drop after 90 days, but then it smoothed out. 10% less this month, 10% less this month and so on. April was going to be the worst month to date, simply because of another 10% drop.


But that is not normal.

After 30 days, the drop should be on the order of 10% a day, compounding as the month goes along! After 90 days, the reads should be just about dead.

Down 10% a month is extraordinary!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Saboth said:


> So now Amazon is saying 50% of the page reads for April were really illicit? So instead of a 10% drop, according to them, it should have been a 50% drop? It just doesn't add up.


No, that does seem odd. It's more like a punishment than some sort of clawing back of illicit page reads. And everyone affected seems to have seen the same 50% drop. That's very harsh. I do wish Amazon could deal with this from the other end, by shutting down whatever illegal bot activity is triggering all this. Because there do seem to be a lot of innocent authors caught up in this, and none of us have any protection against bots that want to hit us, for their own ineffable reasons.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

This was one of the primary reasons I quit KU early last year - I didn't want the risk of being associated with those who could arbitrarily manipulate my account without my knowledge and then be forced to take the blame from Amazon.

My income means something to me. NO KU for me...


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## AuthorX (Nov 11, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> But that is not normal.
> 
> After 30 days, the drop should be on the order of 10% a day, compounding as the month goes along! After 90 days, the reads should be just about dead.
> 
> Down 10% a month is extraordinary!


This is inaccurate. With a small, targeted marketing spend, it is quite easy to keep your rankings high for years after a release. So long as your book is popular, has a great reviews, and a lot of them, you will be able to continue selling your book well after 30 days. 10% per day sounds more like a book with a front loaded marketing campaign and then fell off. I've had many of those books, so its not abnormal... just you don't have to count on that kind of loss.

I also see major bumps in my back catalog whenever I release a new book. I have books that are over a year old that are still in the 1k-5k range.

I can tell that 50% of my reads aren't fake just by looking at my mail list signups. I can sort of count on getting a certain % of readers signing up each day based on reads/sales. That percentage hasn't fluctuated. If 50% of my page reads were suddenly phony, then my mail list subscribe rate somehow increased by 100%. That, of course, doesn't make sense.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

PaulineMRoss said:


> No, that does seem odd. It's more like a punishment than some sort of clawing back of illicit page reads. And everyone affected seems to have seen the same 50% drop. That's very harsh. I do wish Amazon could deal with this from the other end, by shutting down whatever illegal bot activity is triggering all this. Because there do seem to be a lot of innocent authors caught up in this, and none of us have any protection against bots that want to hit us, for their own ineffable reasons.


I love how these bots know exactly when to stop, ya know? Author incomes vary wildly, but somehow the bots know to scam right at 50% of an author's income. Just double the author's income perfectly, the bot maker says. 
Hmm you lost 50%? So weird! Me too! 
Uh huh. A 50% average seems more like a Zon chosen number. 
Something looks fishy, cut em all by half!
Yes, sir!


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

I just sent this e-mail to Amazon.



> I guess Amazon has figured out a new way of stealing from its writers. I had no advertising or gave any books away in April so there was no reason to steal some of my page reads. You dropped me from 21192 to 1788. I have only been in KU since the first of this year. I was pleased at first, but now I realize I made a mistake by putting my books in KU. I will consider withdrawing my books from KU and putting them Wide again when the time limit is up.


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## Sebourn (Jun 18, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> Let me get this straight...
> 
> The last game was the circular one where you have to use AMS to be visible to get page reads, but then pay a good percentage (if not all and then some) back to AMS. Let's not forget the 6 week delay between paying AMS and getting paid by Amazon for page reads.
> 
> ...


I didn't agree with you much until I got to your last paragraph.

Yes, Amazon charges authors to run ads. So does everybody else.

Yes, those ads probably generate more page reads than many other forms of promotion, because you're advertising directly on the site that's going to generate the page reads.

Yes, I think Amazon has a right to (and SHOULD) tackle/cancel/obliterate these fake bots or whatever the heck is going on. Sometimes I seriously hate the world we live in.

But you are absolutely right that Amazon is not handling this well, and they're practically begging people to not trust them. Amazon needs to be (MUCH) more transparent about this. They're playing a risky game if this is the best they have to offer regarding transparency. Right now they're on top of the world, sitting god-like above just about everybody else.

Treat your honest authors and customers like crap for a long enough period of time and see what starts to happen.


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## JacquelineSweetDesign (Jul 6, 2017)

I woke up to one of these scary emails too and saw my page reads for April obliterated.

The only marketing I did was AMS ads and newsletters. That's it.

What can authors do? Who can we contact? 

How can they steal 50% of my money when I didn't do anything wrong?


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## JWright (Apr 10, 2018)

Wow, so it seems everyone who got the letter it was 50% - no way that could be true even if honest writers accounts are being targeted by bad apples to "read" their books for cover for their black hat tactics. It's like a form letter and taking away half of the earnings for a month for those affected.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> Scammer bots their own books. Ranks get better. Books start to stand out.
> 
> Scammer bots other peoples books, making their ranks rise, making their own books stop standing out.
> 
> ...


This is how innocent people get *fake reads*, but don't realize it. While they didn't purchase botted pages, they are getting read from bot accounts and those no longer count. The page reads are posted but then taken away after verification fails.

It's a horrible tease, accompanied by raises in rank that also go away.

That being said... the flat 50% removal across the board points to a much less elegant solution than actually invalidating bot pages... more like- this bot read this book, dock the author 50%... which is horrible.

Removing verified botted pages? A hard pill to swallow but understandable.

Removing a flat 50% of page revenue? Guaranteed to impact innocent accounts at a ridiculous level.


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## DanteSakurai (Mar 17, 2018)

I haven't been hit this month but I'm extremely worried. Were the pages read taken and letters sent out at the same time for everyone?


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

It is Amazon's system so they need to fix it instead of blaming the writers. I regret ever getting on KU since it is a waste of time. It is better to go back to Wide where you have control over your books.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Has Amazon ever actually shown any evidence that it's bots generating these page reads Amazon is taking?


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

loraininflorida said:


> Has Amazon ever actually shown any evidence that it's bots generating these page reads Amazon is taking?


Their e-mail comes complete with the following justification: "While we *cannot offer details of our investigations* or advice on marketing services, you can email us at [email protected] if you have other questions."

So, the answer to your question is ... no. Complete lack of transparency.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Sam Rivers said:


> It is Amazon's system so they need to fix it instead of blaming the writers. I regret ever getting on KU since it is a waste of time. It is better to go back to Wide where you have control over your books.


Elsewhere. several victims during the last round discovered that even losing half of their KU page reads, the affected books still earned more from the remaining KU reads credited than they would have had the books been wide. That's just an observation, not an endorsement.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

Looking at last month, it really does look like they just took 1/2 of every day's page reads. The thing about that is, until I released Book 2 on the 28th, page reads on Book 1 were nothing special. Talking about probably 800-1500 a day, but some days were inexplicably like 100-200. So the 1500s became 750s and the 200s became 100s after Amazon stripped them.

Then I had Book 2 release on the 28th and page reads shot up to 4x what they were. Book one went from 50-100K rank (been bouncing in that range for a month prior) to below 10K. Book 2 did very well too. Yet those days of the 28th-30th also had their page reads halved. So were the book spammers scaling their operation? Why supposedly give me exactly 75 page reads on April 19th, 400 on April 24, then when my book released, give me 4,000 page reads that day? Meaning those days were 150, 800 and 8000 before Amazon stripped half of them.

No, something about this stinks. They aren't just removing scammer pages (if they actually are "illicit" reads), they are just hitting people with 50% penalties without providing proof of anything.


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## 77820 (Jun 19, 2014)

Dpock said:


> Elsewhere. several victims during the last round discovered that even losing half of their KU page reads, the affected books still earned more from the remaining KU reads credited than they would have had the books been wide. That's just an observation, not an endorsement.


I'd still be in Select if they hadn't tacked on the account termination threat on the end of the robo-letter. For me, sales make more money than page reads. Since I can't pick and choose who rents my books, I felt the only choice was to remove all them from Select. Each author's risk tolerance is different.


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## Gone To Croatan (Jun 24, 2011)

kw3000 said:


> Gosh, self-publishing really seems to be on a downward spiral. So much doom'n gloom at the moment. I feel like a lot of this was predicted going back to December 8, 2011, or was it July 18, 2014? I guess pre-December 2011, or perhaps pre-July 2014, were the halcyon days.


It was good back when, you know, you put up a book and if people liked the look of it they paid Amazon some money and Amazon gave you a cut of that money.

Rather than Amazon just giving you some amount of money that might bear some resemblance to the number of people who read your book or might be completely made up.


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## Book Cat (Jan 3, 2016)

Well, even if you take your book out of KU now, you are going to have 10 days of page reads from May Amazon haven't even touched yet. So, they will likely cut that back too, unless the bots decided to halt all operation on April 30th. Then, it seems once you get the second hit to page reads, Amazon terminates your account. That's what other authors have experienced in FB I'm in.

*So, the money is one thing, but the account itself is way more important.* Just because you get out of KU now, does not mean your safe.


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## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

RileyMorrison said:


> Well, even if you take your book out of KU now, you are going to have 10 days of page reads from May Amazon haven't even touched yet. So, they will likely cut that back too, unless the bots decided to halt all operation on April 30th. Then, it seems once you get the second hit to page reads, Amazon terminates your account. That's what other authors have experienced in FB I'm in.
> 
> *So, the money is one thing, but the account itself is way more important.* Just because you get out of KU now, does not mean your safe.


I just want to clarify this. You're saying authors you know had their March page reads hit in April and have now also had their April page reads hit this month, and as a consequence, have had their accounts terminated?


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## Book Cat (Jan 3, 2016)

MelanieCellier said:


> I just want to clarify this. You're saying authors you know had their March page reads hit in April and have now also had their April page reads hit this month, and as a consequence, have had their accounts terminated?


Yes, according to authors talking on 20booksto50K and a LITRPG group I'm in. Not all were hit a second time though, but some where.


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## notenoughcoffee (May 5, 2018)

Question:

If you had your reads taken away, did you use AMS ads? That seems to be a common denominator here.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Why would anyone risk their account by being in KU? The cut and Amazon cheats on income is worth possibly losing everything? I didn't find the income worth it.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Laran Mithras said:


> Why would anyone risk their account by being in KU?


Can we not do this? If you feel that your account is at risk in KU and opt not to do it, that's fine. But questioning the judgment of vast numbers of authors who are in KU for their own reasons, many of them doing just fine with no problems, is uncalled for.


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## brinabrady (Jun 19, 2014)

I received one of those letters too. I didn't use any third parties to promote my book. I asked what I can do to prevent this, and they had no answer. They blamed me for something I did not do. I have no control over who reads my book on KU.  I told them if they couldn't help me so this didn't happen again, and if not, then I would have to get out of KU. I make most of my money on KU. No one seems to know why this is happening. I'm very upset.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Laran Mithras said:


> Why would anyone risk their account by being in KU? The cut and Amazon cheats on income is worth possibly losing everything? I didn't find the income worth it.


That's a risk every author should assess for themselves. Rather like "why would anyone become a professional poker player?" 85% of those who turn pro still end up broke, I believe the stat is. Yet people still do it.

And it's always easy to justify the risk until the bad event occurs. That's how market crashes are brought on and investment banks go bankrupt--usually taking on too much risk, chasing big rewards.

It's fair to say any author who stays all-in with Select in today's environment has to take responsibility for potential bad results--including disaster. Every author who reads these boards knows or should know. As Poirot said, if you put your head into the mouth of the lion, you should not be surprised if he bites it off. That's not victim-blaming, because nobody is obligated to use Select. It's a pure risk-reward assessment.

IMO if an author stays in Select, s/he needs to have that Dave Ramsay--suggested 6 months worth of living expenses IN THE BANK so s/he can survive while fighting the Big A to get an account reinstated. The riskier the business, the more reserves an author should have. Select is adding risk to an author's business.

But there's no moral weight to it. It should be a simple business decision, not cause to blame each other.

On the other hand, moral weight accrues if the author in question tries to deny his or her own responsibility to be prudent. "Waah, I didn't know this could happen" will naturally invite a derisive "bud, you should have known." Heads and the mouths of carnivores again.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

brinabrady said:


> I received one of those letters too. I didn't use any third parties to promote my book. I asked what I can do to prevent this, and they had no answer. They blamed me for something I did not do. I have no control over who reads my book on KU. I told them if they couldn't help me so this didn't happen again, and if not, then I would have to get out of KU. I make most of my money on KU. No one seems to know why this is happening. I'm very upset.


The reason it is happening is because the system is easily scammable. People are making bank even after writing barely readable books, buying reviews, and paying people to flip through the books.

Innocent authors are getting punished because the scammers have been flipping through their pages, too, to make themselves look "legit."

When it will end is when it becomes unprofitable for scammers to do this. (Things tend to persist until they can't anymore.)

When that will happen, I don't know.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Is there any hard data on how many have been affected and in what genres? (Wondering if there's a site I haven't heard of that's putting it all together.)


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Dpock said:


> Is there any hard data on how many have been affected and in what genres? (Wondering if there's a site I haven't heard of that's putting it all together.)


This would be quite useful. Hmmm ...


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

C. Gockel said:


> This would be quite useful. Hmmm ...


Poll listing all the variables, how many affected, etc.?


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## Book Cat (Jan 3, 2016)

notenoughcoffee said:


> Question:
> 
> If you had your reads taken away, did you use AMS ads? That seems to be a common denominator here.


Yes, that seems to be a common thread.


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## SuzyQ (Jun 22, 2017)

RileyMorrison said:


> Yes, that seems to be a common thread.


Maybe that's how the people using illegitimate means are finding books to incorporate for cover?


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## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

SuzyQ said:


> Maybe that's how the people using illegitimate means are finding books to incorporate for cover?


It could well be. It could also just be that the majority of authors in Select are using AMS, though.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

SuzyQ said:


> Maybe that's how the people using illegitimate means are finding books to incorporate for cover?


Since almost all authors affected had new book releases, I think the spammers are merely targeting new books that are ranking decently and are maybe on top 100 category lists.


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## joesmithx (Mar 21, 2018)

Laran Mithras said:


> Why would anyone risk their account by being in KU? The cut and Amazon cheats on income is worth possibly losing everything? I didn't find the income worth it.


To be perfectly honest with you, you probably don't make enough with or without KU for it to matter one way or another. A LOT of KU authors are pulling in six figure months, and being in KU is the biggest reason. I do five figures every month and have, throughout all the different iterations of KU, and for me, KU is the REASON for that high monthly earning. I know it's because of KU because I couldn't even come CLOSE to what I'm making now in KU when I was wide.

Yes, being in KU is a risk. A BIG one. But NOT being in KU presents a bigger loss of income. When you're talking about a few hundred here and there a month, sure, it's easy to say, "Don't trust KU!" But when you get into thousands... It's not quite as cut and dry.

You asked, and I gave you the most honest answer you'll get.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

notenoughcoffee said:


> Question:
> 
> If you had your reads taken away, did you use AMS ads? That seems to be a common denominator here.


I had reads taken away last month for March. I haven't engaged any marketers ever, nor done any advertising in over a year -- and even then not for a book that was in KU.


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## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

D.A. Boulter said:


> I had reads taken away last month for March. I haven't engaged any marketers ever, or done any advertising in over a year -- and even then not for a book that was in KU.


Did you have a new release in March?


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

MelanieCellier said:


> Did you have a new release in March?


The last book I released was in October, and it did well in October and November (for me) and has made me about $2k so far. It had, I believe, fallen off all charts before March. It last topped the 40,000 mark in store rank in late January, and hasn't since (high rank came in October at about 1800 in store). In Feb it had 19 sales and 14k page reads; in March it had 17 sales and 20k page reads, of which 13k were taken away. (I lost 16k page reads all told.)

I am in no way, shape or form a big cheese in this game.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Questioning why authors might risk their entire account is very "called for."

Not only successful authors who make billions off of KU (and those who might get their feelings hurt) read these K-threads. Amazon reads these threads. D2D reads these threads. And others.

Improvement comes with exposure. The question is not only called for but pertinent if we are to ever see improvement. "Shut up" for the sake of people who aren't suffering is "uncalled for."

Here's to hoping this thread and many others like it shift the monolith to change.


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## Sati_LRR (Jul 10, 2017)

Laran Mithras said:


> Questioning why authors might risk their entire account is very "called for."
> 
> Not only successful authors who make billions off of KU (and those who might get their feelings hurt) read these K-threads. Amazon reads these threads. D2D reads these threads. And others.
> 
> ...


I would suggest you make a new thread if you want to discuss this, otherwise it will just spiral into the same old arguments. Personally, I'd like to see this thread stay on topic regarding the page reads being cut and those affected.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Sati_LRR said:


> I would suggest you make a new thread if you want to discuss this, otherwise it will just spiral into the same old arguments. Personally, I'd like to see this thread stay on topic regarding the page reads being cut and those affected.


You're right. It's better to just shut up. There are already a billion threads on things that will never get better and complaining isn't going to work.

Carry on.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Laran Mithras said:


> You're right. It's better to just shut up. There are already a billion threads on things that will never get better and complaining isn't going to work.
> 
> Carry on.


"Start a new thread to discuss being in KU" is hardly being told to "shut up."

Losing pagereads is a serious issue and your continued effort to derail this particular thread into a general whinefest about authors choosing to be in KU is not appreciated.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

I've emailed Amazon twice (once the day I got the threatening email, then again the next day). Merely asking if there's anything that can be done, or for some guidance. No response. I emailed this morning asking that all of my titles be taken out of Kindle Unlimited. Apparently, what happens is you get the warning letter for the previous month. You wait to see if you are okay the following month. You get hit again and get suspended. You fight the suspension and maybe get your account reinstated. BUT if there are straggling page reads in the following month, you get permanently banned (heard this has happened to a few people who just stopped their AMS ads and hoped for the best).

So first strike (you aren't even aware there is a problem) = 1/2 your page read income, nasty letter.
Second strike = suspension (also 1/2 your money that month too?)
Third strike = permanent ban.


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## Sebourn (Jun 18, 2016)

I’ve read (nearly) this whole thread.

But can somebody clarify what this issue might actually look like?

Is it several days of bizarre spikes in pages read?

Can it be more modest than that and thus hard to notice?

Did those who had their reads slashed notice anything?

I’m trying to study my own graph and compare it to some of those who’ve experienced this issue.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> I've emailed Amazon twice (once the day I got the threatening email, then again the next day). Merely asking if there's anything that can be done, or for some guidance. No response. I emailed this morning asking that all of my titles be taken out of Kindle Unlimited. Apparently, what happens is you get the warning letter for the previous month. You wait to see if you are okay the following month. You get hit again and get suspended. You fight the suspension and maybe get your account reinstated. BUT if there are straggling page reads in the following month, you get permanently banned (heard this has happened to a few people who just stopped their AMS ads and hoped for the best).
> 
> So first strike (you aren't even aware there is a problem) = 1/2 your page read income, nasty letter.
> Second strike = suspension (also 1/2 your money that month too?)
> Third strike = permanent ban.


Let us know if Amazon will take your books out of KU ahead of time. I might do that myself since I have lost total faith in KU.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

For myself, I had normal sales and page reads throughout April. 500 one day, 100 one day, 1500 one day (yeah, spikey like that). I put the second book for my series up for preorder around the 15th, and page reads picked up slightly after that, but didn't really pick up until the night before release of book 2.

I had 4 promos lined up for the book 2 release, but all on book 1, and all for 4/28 (I know, you aren't supposed to stack promos for the same day, but I wanted to see what would happen). Since I have only 3 books out, I am not doing major promos. Fussy, Bargain, My book Cave and Awesome Books (Awesome is the only promo I ran on book 2 outside of AMS)

So Book 1's rank had been bumping around 35-100K for the past month. Once the Book 2 preorder went up, rank started to very slowly fall., down into the 30K range. Page reads went up slightly. The night before book 2 released and all the promos hit, book 1's rank fell to 10K.

So for page reads: 
4/24 - 800
4/25 - 1600
4/26 - 1200
4/27 - 2100
4/28 (release day) - 3100 (combined for both books)
4/29 - 3900
4/30 - 7500 
5/1 - 7300 (bumps around this number from hereon out for the next 1.5 weeks).

Book 1 rank within the next two days fell to 4400, book two 3300. They both rose fairly quickly after that. So...nothing out of the ordinary, and pretty much what I saw with book one's release last year. I received an email from Amazon stating I had illicit page reads and they cut every day's page reads by 50% for the month. Pretty sure if spammers did give me illicit page reads, it started on or after release day since the rest of the month was very lackluster. Yet Amazon penalized the entire month, every day, all 3 books. Still haven't heard back from any of the emails I've sent. Page reads right now are about 40% book one and 60% book two.

I saw nothing unusual as far as page reads. My sales were in line with the page reads I was getting. Like 25-35 sales on days with 6500-7500 page reads. There are no huge days like 20K page reads or 50K or anything. Just bumping around 5-7K for now, and book sales are in line with that number of page reads (generally I get about 35% book sales to 65% KU borrows).

So no, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. If there are illicit page reads, they must be a few hundred snuck in there, or else my usual 35% to 65% ratio has suddenly become completely unstable.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

Twisted Tales...it's a theory, but I don't think it really explains all of what's happening.

My sister writes non-fiction and almost ALL her income is through paper sales. She signed up for KU for the sole purpose of occasionally offering her readers a free electronic copy of the paper book they already bought. She doesn't participate in newsletter swaps or on FB groups and isn't in any author group in any form--the books are really more promo and support for her consulting business than they are a separate business. 

Last month she had her page reads almost entirely cut. Amazon ignored all her requests for an explanation. This week, without warning, her account was closed. It's since been reinstated, but....

She had, however, ventured out with some AMS ads, so she falls in that category, not the one you're suggesting.

To me, this looks like changed algorithms that were intended to stop the scammers but are so broad that they've led to way too many hits on honest, legitimate authors who are following the rules.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

TwistedTales said:


> I have a theory, but I'm not sure anyone will like it or it's easily solved. Try not personalize this theory because it's not targeted at anyone or laying blame on anyone in this thread. It's only a possible explanation and nothing else.
> 
> We all know there are friendly and/or incentivized circles inside KU. These are groups of people who download books and flip through pages so the author gets paid. It's not a bot, but a real person with a real account. It's not offshore and probably includes a lot of authors who are "helping" one another out. It was always going to happen because the design of KU makes it too easy to do.
> 
> *Snip*


I don't actually think you are too far off.. but here's where I differ from your line of thought.

A lot of this nonsense seems to be happening in genres with heavy concentrations of Whale Readers. These are the guys and gals who read several books a month. So a program like Kindle Unlimited is a smorgasbord to this type of reader. Their activity is also very outside the normal range of the average reader. I think their unusual reading habits are triggering new security algorithms Amazon has put in place.

Remember when Scribd kicked all Romance and Erotica titles out of their program? Well what if something similar is going on with Kindle Unlimited right now.

Of course this is all baseless speculation, but its what I think is happening.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

While we are "what if'ing", I've got a conspiracy theory in mind.

So...what if the scammers/spammers weren't just covering their tracks? Like...would you really want to use a service like that to boost your page reads if you were a legit author and doing very well? No matter how well they covered themselves, *eventually* Amazon is going to catch the person who hired them (along with all of the innocent people) and shut their account down.

Now, what if instead of covering their tracks, these companies were being hired to target the competition. "Hey, I'm number one in 5 categories, but man, the competition is tough, so you click farms give page reads to the other people who are selling well and moving up the charts, so I don't get bumped out of my top categories. They'll either take their books out of KU, or get banned, but either way, the threat is eliminated."

Makes more sense to me than risking your own account for a few thousand page reads.

As for the theory that there are groups of authors helping each other out or something, I'm not part of any such group and know like 2 other authors personally and we certainly don't leave reviews for each other or do any other questionable things. One author I know caught up in this doesn't even do any marketing outside of inexpensive AMS ads...not even newsletter swaps.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

As long as we're what if'ing... What if Amazon is identifying incentivized readers? Some of these folk in circle jerk * groups are real readers, too, and are probably picking up books here and there in KU to read for personal pleasure. So while the purpose might not be track-covering or targeting, anything those readers touch might be suspect. And if one suspect reader has borrowed one of your books, that's an immediate 50% hit to page reads.

It could be the Ammy scambots need to learn behavior, perhaps tying incentivized reader behavior to new releases, books borrowed and reviews left. And the bots need to run long enough to get enough data to learn. And then they'll be reined in and/or tweaked.

We don't, for instance, hear about innocent authors being willy-nilly rank-stripped at the rate they were a few months ago.

_* Really, KB? That's the euphemism being used for 'circle j*rk'? _


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

It really would make business sense to incentivize for KU. And I'm sure they would not want to advertise that, either.


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## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> As long as we're what if'ing... What if Amazon is identifying incentivized readers? Some of these folk in [mutual admiration society] * groups are real readers, too, and are probably picking up books here and there in KU to read for personal pleasure. So while the purpose might not be track-covering or targeting, anything those readers touch might be suspect. And if one suspect reader has borrowed one of your books, that's an immediate 50% hit to page reads.


This is exactly where my mind went, too, when I read the suggestion the problem could be incentivized groups of readers. Scary stuff.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

PhoenixS said:


> As long as we're what if'ing... What if Amazon is identifying incentivized readers? Some of these folk in [mutual admiration society] * groups are real readers, too, and are probably picking up books here and there in KU to read for personal pleasure. So while the purpose might not be track-covering or targeting, anything those readers touch might be suspect. And if one suspect reader has borrowed one of your books, that's an immediate 50% hit to page reads


I wondered about that, too. It's hard to find another explanation for some people who've been hit who aren't in hot genres, aren't big sellers and don't do any advertising.

In which case, once the incentivisers realise the declining utility of it, they will move on to the next thing, and we'll see less of this punitive page stripping going on. She said optimistically.


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## Book Cat (Jan 3, 2016)

I want to add, as a LITRPG writer, that as far as I know, no big name authors were hit in this. Like, ones in the top 1k on Amazon. Everyone who seems to have been hit were small timers, or one hit wonder types (like me). So this might throw the whole AMS is behind it out the window, as I am sure the big names are using the same keywords we are.

It is fascinating that the bots somehow miss the big names who advertise everywhere. Either that, or Amazon just didn't touch them because they don't want the big names pulling out of KU.

A few of my books had some weird borrows, like a book 2 of a series that flopped, got a borrow and 1 page read. Weird stuff like this has happened before, and I didn't think much of it, beyond someone accidentally borrowed book 2 instead of 1, and moved on.

But maybe that is the bots borrowing my book, opening it up, getting the 1 page read, and then moving on.

Who knows. All I know is, I'm getting out of KU and hoping to hell I don't get hit next month and have my account terminated. Even if I get it back, I will be on Amazon's "one more infraction, no matter how minor, will result in permanent termination" list.

So infuriating. I finally have a successful book, then its all taken away from me and now I face termination over something I had no control over. I like to think Amazon will see what is happening, and step in, and stop it, but each day that passes I lose hope in that.

As to the authors, not here so much, but elsewhere who care so little about this...

First, they came for the communists and I did nothing.
Then they came for the socialists and I did nothing.
Then they came for the trade unions and I did nothing.
Then they came for the jews and gypsies and I did nothing.
Then they came for the sick and disabled and I still did nothing.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to stop them.


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## Avery342 (Aug 23, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> As long as we're what if'ing... What if Amazon is identifying incentivized readers? Some of these folk in [mutual admiration society] * groups are real readers, too, and are probably picking up books here and there in KU to read for personal pleasure. So while the purpose might not be track-covering or targeting, anything those readers touch might be suspect. And if one suspect reader has borrowed one of your books, that's an immediate 50% hit to page reads.
> 
> It could be the Ammy scambots need to learn behavior, perhaps tying incentivized reader behavior to new releases, books borrowed and reviews left. And the bots need to run long enough to get enough data to learn. And then they'll be reined in and/or tweaked.
> 
> ...


This is exactly what I've been thinking. My sales to reads ratio was lower than I expected even before they took half my March reads. They would have to show me some pretty hard proof to get me to believe half my reads were botted.

But the bad news is, I think they are tying the new Algo to new releases, etc. Most of the people I've seen affected had new releases that month.

Scary. Especially when you see those accounts using incentives for reads still hitting so freaking high in the charts. Obviously this isn't hitting them, just us small fries.

So just when I was beginning to see momentum after releasing the third book in series, I find myself back at square one and going wide.

Really hard to read all the "KU is still making me great money posts" right now. This whole thing is just so unfair.


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## Sebourn (Jun 18, 2016)

It's pretty infuriating that Amazon's obviously faulty system is being scammed and they're apparently taking it out on writers who've seemingly done nothing wrong.

I have four AMS ads running and see modest at best success-- as in, typically a few hundred pages read a day, sometimes none, sometimes close to a thousand.

Roughly 50% of what I earn comes from KU.  I've always enjoyed keeping up with how many pages get read.

As of now, I don't think I've been hit by any fishy activity.  But the thought that a scammer or a bot might stumble upon one of my books, provide me fake page reads that I in no way asked or fished for--that this totally out of left field, nothing to do with me malarkey could THEN see 5+ years of hard work, multiple novels and short stories, axed? 

Total garbage.  I expect better from the almighty, more money than God Amazon.

The only RISK that should come with KDP Select is the business decision to throw all your eggs in the Amazon basket.  It should not be a RISK because Amazon apparently built a beast that they have no way of properly maintaining or controlling and are thus plowing over anybody and everybody, be darned with whether or not they've done anything wrong.

If this continues I'll back out of Select and hope it's not too late.  

And Amazon might hear from me anyway.

Just venting.


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## MKK (Jun 9, 2015)

PhoenixS said:


> [mutual admiration society]
> _* Really, KB? That's the euphemism being used for 'circle j*rk'? _


Just spit my coffee onto my keyboard. Thank you Phoenix and KB.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

PhoenixS said:


> As long as we're what if'ing... What if Amazon is identifying incentivized readers? Some of these folk in [mutual admiration society] * groups are real readers, too, and are probably picking up books here and there in KU to read for personal pleasure. So while the purpose might not be track-covering or targeting, anything those readers touch might be suspect. And if one suspect reader has borrowed one of your books, that's an immediate 50% hit to page reads.
> 
> It could be the Ammy scambots need to learn behavior, perhaps tying incentivized reader behavior to new releases, books borrowed and reviews left. And the bots need to run long enough to get enough data to learn. And then they'll be reined in and/or tweaked.
> 
> ...


Hey, we were rather proud of that one! 

Question: how do incentivized readers differ from click-farms? And how would they be incentivized? One can't really offer proof that one has paged through a book, not if a whole lot of other people are also reading or paging through that book.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

I wonder if it has something to do with the method of reading... as far as I know, Cloud Reader jump-to-the-end has not been fixed.  Possibly they are removing pages that show as Cloud Reader...?  It's a theory.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

MyraScott said:


> I wonder if it has something to do with the method of reading... as far as I know, Cloud Reader jump-to-the-end has not been fixed. Possibly they are removing pages that show as Cloud Reader...? It's a theory.


If they're threatening authors' accounts for that, we're going to have to come up with a "Most Obnoxious Thing Ever" award and overnight it to them. The Cloud Reader is their problem.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

PhoenixS said:


> As long as we're what if'ing... What if Amazon is identifying incentivized readers? Some of these folk in [mutual admiration society] * groups are real readers, too, and are probably picking up books here and there in KU to read for personal pleasure. So while the purpose might not be track-covering or targeting, anything those readers touch might be suspect. And if one suspect reader has borrowed one of your books, that's an immediate 50% hit to page reads.
> 
> It could be the Ammy scambots need to learn behavior, perhaps tying incentivized reader behavior to new releases, books borrowed and reviews left. And the bots need to run long enough to get enough data to learn. And then they'll be reined in and/or tweaked.


Even if this is the case, I strongly dislike the idea that authors are acceptable collateral damage to the Skynet learning curve. Because I don't believe for an instant that the Great and Powerful Zon will compensate the people unfairly targeted for lost income, or even take the "naughty marks" off their record.



> _* Really, KB? That's the euphemism being used for 'circle j*rk'? _


But hey, at least this comment gave me a giggle.


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## Lu Kudzoza (Nov 1, 2015)

RileyMorrison said:


> It is fascinating that the bots somehow miss the big names who advertise everywhere.


If it's not affecting authors that advertise everywhere, then maybe the trigger for the scam checker is a percentage of borrows/reads that resulted from a hit to your book page from a direct search for the book or author on Amazon (which would be the likely way the "mutual admiration society" would get to the book - they might not want to use a link from an email). It could also answer the correlation to AMS ads if the author is using their book title as one of their keywords.


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

Just chiming in... This hasn't impacted me, but I am really sorry to hear about this happening to my fellow authors. What's maddening is that I still see so many questionable books so high on the charts. If the Amazon hammer is hitting honest authors while gray-hat/black-hatters remain unscathed, that really stinks. 

Already, I've pulled most of my books out of KU for a multitude of reasons. But if I hadn't already, this would be the final straw. I can't imagine how frustrating it is to base your ad spends and personal budgets on income that vanishes overnight. Add this to the threats of account termination. Yikes.

I hope you'll keep us posted. Sending you hugs & sympathy. Not that it does much good, I know...


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Not Lu said:


> If it's not affecting authors that advertise everywhere, then maybe the trigger for the scam checker is a percentage of borrows/reads that resulted from a hit to your book page from a direct search for the book or author on Amazon (which would be the likely way the "mutual admiration society" would get to the book - they might not want to use a link from an email). It could also answer the correlation to AMS ads if the author is using their book title as one of their keywords.


I've seen at least one author report that they were hit over books which are over a year old; no promotion, no new books, nothing but some old titles left up for whatever passive income they bring in.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

What if Amazon has developed an algorithm that supposedly identifies abusive KU subscribers based on reading speed, but is not applying that algorithm to all books' page-reads every month. Because ... scarce computing resources? Instead, they aim it at clusters of books that are disproportionately represented (hot genres) and a random sample of others. (And at books belonging to whoever got dinged last time -- getting dinged once gets you on the permanent watch list.) Such an algorithm would catch click-farm reads and reads from incentivized readers, but also reads from real readers who skim or who simply read faster than Amazon thinks is reasonable. 

I mean, there's a speed-of-reading line past which only bots can go, right? Even a very fast human reader can't read a Kindle page in one second. My guess is that good bot-readers are designed to read on the possible-for-humans side of that line. If so, then Amazon cannot catch bot-readers based on reading speed without also catching some human readers. Maybe quite a few human readers, if those creating bot-readers react to the crackdown by setting their bots to even more conservative reading speeds. It would be like an arms race, with bots getting slower and slower and Amazon catching more and more real human readers, until Amazon blinks, which it would, eventually, because bots can read as slow as slow can be and still make money: more slow bots can accumulate as many reads as fewer fast bots.

If selective application of the algorithm doesn't make sense .... Amazon could be having it examine all page-reads but only dinging authors and sending the nastygram if their illegitimate (according to Amazon) page-reads exceed a certain percentage of the total. That could be their way of allowing for extra-speedy legit readers: if they think only about eight percent of humans can read a Kindle page in five seconds, then they set the algorithm to catch a five-second/page reading speed but only ding you if more than eight percent of your page-reads hit that speed. Or fifteen percent. Or fifty percent ... there could be a reason so many people are reporting losses around that level.

ETA: something needed clarifying


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Becca Mills said:


> Hey, we were rather proud of that one!






> Question: how do incentivized readers differ from click-farms? And how would they be incentivized? One can't really offer proof that one has paged through a book, not if a whole lot of other people are also reading or paging through that book.


That's an easy one since screenshots abound from a few of these _mutual admiration society_ FB pages. There are some variances, but the generic form goes like this:

* Lots of readers are invited to the group with the promise of prizes.

* Lots of authors are invited in to 1) spread the joy, 2) offer more prizes, 3) make it harder for scammed books to be found since lots of books are being borrowed by the group.

* When an author has a new release or other dedicated promo, they offer a few really nice prizes for the book, such as $100 gift cards, ensuring everyone in the group wins at least every few weeks.

* Before the flip-to-back tactic was 'fixed', entrants simply needed to post a shot of the last page in the book as proof they borrowed it. So, borrow, flip to end, screen/camera shot, post to FB thread as an entry. With the 'fix' in, entrants are now either required to click to the end in the cloud or asked to screenshot a page with a particular image (so they can't just run a search for it) somewhere near the middle of the book along with the last page (one where they have to back up a page or two from the "go to end" command).

* The stuffier the book (or the bigger the box set), the more money earned from the incentivized reads, and the more money the authors can afford to put into prizes, so the more incentivized reads they get. Full circle. Loyal participants.

* For additional prizes, some of these same 'readers' can also post a review for an entry (but that's fodder for another thread).


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

PhoenixS said:


> That's an easy one since screenshots abound from a few of these _mutual admiration society_ FB pages. There are some variances, but the generic form goes like this:
> 
> * Lots of readers are invited to the group with the promise of prizes.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the explanation, Phoenix. It's good to understand how this works.


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

PhoenixS said:


> That's an easy one since screenshots abound from a few of these _mutual admiration society_ FB pages. There are some variances, but the generic form goes like this...


Thanks for explaining this. It's good to know what's going on, but man, is that depressing...especially for those of us who put most of our creative effort into, oh, I dunno, writing books that readers actually want to read.


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## Sebourn (Jun 18, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> That's an easy one since screenshots abound from a few of these _mutual admiration society_ FB pages. There are some variances, but the generic form goes like this:
> 
> * Lots of readers are invited to the group with the promise of prizes.
> 
> ...


I'm not on Facebook and had no idea.

These folks need to take a hike.


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## Avery342 (Aug 23, 2016)

Well, it's official. I just hit the send button on an email requesting all my books currently in KU to be removed immediately. For those who are interested, here is the email I sent. (Second pen name and actual book info deleted.)

Sent to every available email address to reach someone at KDP:

Please remove all my current KU titles under the pen names of XXX and Avery J. Moon from Kindle Select effective immediately. If you are even remotely interested in my reasoning, keep reading. If not, the list of books, complete with ASIN #s is at the bottom of the email.

I know I am small potatoes to you, and I totally get that. But whatever new 'scambots' you have put into place in the last few months aren't working. Unless your sole intent was to let the book stuffers and people who are actually MANIPULATING page reads by with a free pass and threaten and remove page reads from innocent and honest authors. If that was your intent, then you are doing a bang up job!

Yes, I am one of those honest authors. In March, you took approximately 50% of my page reads--after a new release, a book one free run, and a book two Kindle Count Down deal. I did VERY little promo, and only used sites with the highest of reputations. Truthfully, my page reads were a bit on the low side by my way of viewing them--especially when you looked at how many actual SALES I was getting at the time. (Nothing earth-shattering, but good numbers for me.)

And I lost half my page reads.

Truthfully, I could live with losing the page reads. Especially since this month (no new release but still riding the tail from March), you let me keep all of them. (So far, anyway.)

However, what I absolutely cannot accept is the threat to my KDP account. This month, like I said, I wasn't hit. I had planned to ride it out and see if it was a one-time thing. If so, I was going to stay in KU. After all, I was finally gaining momentum.

Then you started suspending accounts for those unlucky few that did get hit the second month. While some of them have managed to get reinstated, they have been told if it happens again, they will lose their accounts. For good, we are assuming. 

Let me repeat that: They will lose their accounts...for good if it happens again. 

Want to know what the problem with that is? WE HAVE NO CONTROL OVER WHO READS OUR BOOKS! None. Zero. Zilch.

It is my very strong opinion that what you are doing has no integrity whatsoever. In trying to come up with some way to stop some scammers, while letting others still dominate the charts with their books stuffed with 5-7 other KU exclusive books at their backs, you have managed to kill the hopes and dreams of a LOT of budding authors. Way to go.

Because of this situation, I am hereby requesting all of my books, under both of my pen names, to be removed from Kindle Select immediately. I simply can't take the ever-hanging threat of a reader that is on your "list" reading one of my books and resulting in my account being terminated. 

How does one politely says this bites? If I come up with a way, I'll let you know. Again, please remove my books immediately from Kindle Select. 

Here is the list with ASIN #s:


I'll let you know when I hear back from them, if you like. I really hate this. How can so much change in so short a time? In March, I was on cloud nine dreaming of being a full-time author. Now... well, let's just say I have a long road ahead of me.

Here is hoping the Wide waters will be good to me.


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

Avery342 said:


> Well, it's official. I just hit the send button on an email requesting all my books currently in KU to be removed immediately. For those who are interested, here is the email I sent.


That's a terrific email! Thanks for sharing it. I was cheering and nodding the whole time. Bravo!


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## Avery342 (Aug 23, 2016)

MmmmmPie said:


> That's a terrific email! Thanks for sharing it. I was cheering and nodding the whole time. Bravo!


Thank you. It was a hard one to write. Being polite (or at least trying to be) at a time like this is really hard.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

PhoenixS said:


> That's an easy one since screenshots abound from a few of these _mutual admiration society_ FB pages. There are some variances, but the generic form goes like this:
> 
> * Lots of readers are invited to the group with the promise of prizes.
> 
> ...


Not only ethically cruddy, but flat illegal according to the laws that govern giveaways, sweepstakes and lotteries. Nice!


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

Avery342 said:


> Thank you. It was a hard one to write. Being polite (or at least trying to be) at a time like this is really hard.


Sent my email this morning too. So far I've sent 1 email 3 days ago (no reply), contacted them through Author Central yesterday (no reply), and emailed like 8 recommended emails (from other people doing this) this morning (no reply).

Really hard to kick a ton of work, time and money to the curb over Amazon's callousness. I was wide from the start, and it sucked royally. "Hey, someone bought my book this month!", but after going KU I got some good traction, then some really good traction with the most recent book release (which was half a year coming and just released a few days ago). Now I have to pull out of KU right as I'm making back the costs of book 2, and kill my rank and momentum. But I guess it beats a permaban. Like spending a year building a house just to have a tornado rip it up right as you are about to move in. "Oh well, I guess I at least have the foundation left."


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> That's an easy one since screenshots abound from a few of these _mutual admiration society_ FB pages. There are some variances, but the generic form goes like this:
> 
> * Lots of readers are invited to the group with the promise of prizes.
> 
> ...


Wow, no wonder amazon can only find their butt when they're looking for their brains - any of us could have those readers reading our books, and I actually feel sorry for those readers because if they don't know what's going on and amazon pulls the plug on their accounts then they won't know what they did either because ... it's amazon and communication isn't their strong point.

But ... this is amazon we're talking about; they're all over the net looking for reader-author connections, how do they not know what's going on and terminate those authors accounts?


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> Sent my email this morning too. So far I've sent 1 email 3 days ago (no reply), contacted them through Author Central yesterday (no reply), and emailed like 8 recommended emails (from other people doing this) this morning (no reply).
> 
> Really hard to kick a ton of work, time and money to the curb over Amazon's callousness. I was wide from the start, and it sucked royally. "Hey, someone bought my book this month!", but after going KU I got some good traction, then some really good traction with the most recent book release (which was half a year coming and just released a few days ago). Now I have to pull out of KU right as I'm making back the costs of book 2, and kill my rank and momentum. But I guess it beats a permaban. Like spending a year building a house just to have a tornado rip it up right as you are about to move in. "Oh well, I guess I at least have the foundation left."


Maybe you should stay in KU until your 90 days run out. Perhaps this KU problem will get corrected. You said you didn't do that well when you were wide. That was my experience too. I unchecked my renew option and will make a decision when the time is up.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

Sam Rivers said:


> Maybe you should stay in KU until your 90 days run out. Perhaps this KU problem will get corrected. You said you didn't do that well when you were wide. That was my experience too. I unchecked my renew option and will make a decision when the time is up.


I was planning on doing that. Just waiting it out to see what happens. *However*, this isn't the first month this has happened. A bunch of authors got hit with this in April for March reads. So some of them waited it out and got suspended. The way it went down:

A few days into April they were contacted that Amazon detected elicit page reads and they lost 1/2 their page reads for March. They protest, but no answer from Amazon - it's not something that can be contested. So May rolls around and Amazon says "you didn't correct your illicit page reads in April, you are now suspended." So now they panic and take everything out of KDP Select. They get their account back after fighting to get it reinstated. BUT they didn't get the May notice until a few days into May. That means they still have some page reads showing up for this month. Amazon was admonishing them for *last* month. If they find more illicit page reads in May, it's full account closure and Amazon ceases all contact with you (from what I've heard).

So one can play around with it hoping it's corrected, or risk next month a full suspension and possibly lose their account the following month. Amazon is not working with you on this, they don't care about your proof, innocence or anything you have to say. They'll let you out of KDP Select early, but that seems to be the extent of their "help".

So you basically start out with strike two since they don't notify you the month of, but the month after. I suppose that's the problem with having automated bots destroying people's accounts is they don't have to think about how reasonable their demands are.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Saboth said:


> I was planning on doing that. Just waiting it out to see what happens. *However*, this isn't the first month this has happened. A bunch of authors got hit with this in April for March reads. So some of them waited it out and got suspended. The way it went down:
> 
> A few days into April they were contacted that Amazon detected elicit page reads and they lost 1/2 their page reads for March. They protest, but no answer from Amazon - it's not something that can be contested. So May rolls around and Amazon says "you didn't correct your illicit page reads in April, you are now suspended." So now they panic and take everything out of KDP Select. They get their account back after fighting to get it reinstated. BUT they didn't get the May notice until a few days into May. That means they still have some page reads showing up for this month. Amazon was admonishing them for *last* month. If they find more illicit page reads in May, it's full account closure and Amazon ceases all contact with you (from what I've heard).
> 
> ...


If I were looking for conspiracies instead of incompetence, I'd find it interesting that the number of strikes to get an account closure is the same as the number of months in a KU contract. But I'm still pretty sure it's incompetence plus a lack of forethought, rather than a diabolical scheme.


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## levolal (Apr 13, 2018)

Saboth said:


> I was planning on doing that. Just waiting it out to see what happens. *However*, this isn't the first month this has happened. A bunch of authors got hit with this in April for March reads. So some of them waited it out and got suspended. The way it went down:
> 
> A few days into April they were contacted that Amazon detected elicit page reads and they lost 1/2 their page reads for March. They protest, but no answer from Amazon - it's not something that can be contested. So May rolls around and Amazon says "you didn't correct your illicit page reads in April, you are now suspended." So now they panic and take everything out of KDP Select. They get their account back after fighting to get it reinstated. BUT they didn't get the May notice until a few days into May. That means they still have some page reads showing up for this month. Amazon was admonishing them for *last* month. If they find more illicit page reads in May, it's full account closure and Amazon ceases all contact with you (from what I've heard).


I have gotten a rank manipulation warning email (subject : Your Sales Rank, Your KDP sales Ranks were the two subjects) for two months in a row and was automatically suspended like two days after. It is funny, because the emails come on the 12th typically and if you get one early (on the 9th), you're about to be terminated. The interesting thing to me is that mine had two different subjects which is odd if they are totally automated. They were both the same email, though.

"We are reaching out to you because we detected purchases or borrows of your book(s) originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank."

It seems like my fellow just borrowed and didn't read shit, and interestingly, I did not get the blanket half penalty that others got for that reason. Still, this is totally unreasonable and unacceptable activity. Whoever's "list" I'm on has gotten my account banned once already. Interestingly, as others have said, it is a month behind so I *still* got another letter after that but they did not ban my account *again* quite yet. If they do ban my account, I am already making preparations to get a new EIN, a new company name (I'm in a state where you can have an LLC and do a DBA) and a new bank account. Amazon is worthless to me without Kindle, but then also you can't use your old pen name if you get permanently banned. Some authors work wide, somehow, I don't know how they do it, but it just won't payoff to me. It would be peanuts.

This is basically my entire livelyhood destroyed as I quit my job to be a fulltime manager for my ghostwriters and a writer myself. Now with having to worry about this, I've had to drop all my ghostwriters and who knows if I'll be able to get them back or not, it was a carefully cultivated team that I had a lot of pride in, and some of them were basically full time employees where I was their livelihood and that sucks. We have no control over who reads our books, who borrows our books, and I frankly don't give a shit if Amazon removes fake reads because if they're fake, they're fake. But how they are going about it is wrong, incompetent, and it's going to fuck over everyone because it only takes two hits and you're out. Mine were such a blip that I literally don't even notice any page reads gone. Just borrows. And you wanna know what? They're targeting books specifically now (perhaps out of spite) who are using AMS ads so good luck with that.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

RBN said:


> There is no human being at Amazon reading anyone's social media content. They either bot or buy email lists from those great data collectors everyone likes to think of as free services, and then they bot connections in comparison to their own data, and then they bot a response to those findings.


I have no idea what any of that means, I truly am tech-internet-scam daft. As a UK teen of the 80's, while the US teens were doing computer stuff, I was all about, boy-bands, big hair, and electric blue nail varnish. But I'll take your word for it, lol.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Atlantisatheart said:


> I have no idea what any of that means, I truly am tech-internet-scam daft. As a UK teen of the 80's, while the US teens were doing computer stuff, I was all about, boy-bands, big hair, and electric blue nail varnish. But I'll take your word for it, lol.


Basically, everything Zon does is run by a computer program. All these notices and threats? All computer generated. And calling some poor soul in India for "customer service" usually solves nothing because they don't control the Amazon programs.

"We're sorry..." is what you get.


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## busywoman (Feb 22, 2014)

levolal said:


> I have gotten a rank manipulation warning email (subject : Your Sales Rank, Your KDP sales Ranks were the two subjects) for two months in a row and was automatically suspended like two days after. It is funny, because the emails come on the 12th typically and if you get one early (on the 9th), you're about to be terminated. The interesting thing to me is that mine had two different subjects which is odd if they are totally automated. They were both the same email, though.
> 
> *"We are reaching out to you because we detected purchases or borrows of your book(s) originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank."
> *


Clearly, Amazon is following a trail from known wrongdoers. That triggers the action.

However, Amazon is not taking into account that the fake borrows could be an attempt at a smokescreen. Or worse, that they might be part of a deliberate attempt by a competitor to get you banned. So they need to have an appeal process.

But I will say this: it seems to me likely there's also a percentage threshold that if exceeded, triggers an Amazon action. In other words, if suspicious borrows are fairly large as a percentage of overall borrows on an account or they suddenly jump up to go beyond a certain threshold, that may be a trigger. Or perhaps page reads occur super fast like someone is flipping without reading. That is likely another trigger point.

Once triggered and once wrongoers are identified, then all activity involving the wrongdoers would be reversed no matter when it occurred. Reversals in one month may seem large because they are reversing activity occurring over several months prior.

I say this not having any inside knowledge, but having experience with other fraud triggers. Haven't you ever had a credit card transaction denied, or received a fraud text alert, because the transaction triggered certain flags? I have, such as when traveling and suddenly the card issuer sees transactions exceeding a certain amount, from a city you've never charged from before, for a type of transaction that tends to be subject to stolen cards, etc.?

Amazon, however, is wrong in acting like prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner without allowing a defense. They are catching dolphins in the tuna net. I hope their employees realize they may be destroying livelihoods of innocent authors with an overreactive response.

Authors, I know this is tough advice to act on, but the best protection is to try to keep getting better at your craft, try to engage more real readers, and get more real engagement activity on your books. That way, any suspicious activity is a small proportion and doesn't trigger thresholds.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Actually, the best protection is reducing your (all general "you" here) exposure to KU. Tying your livelihood to one vulnerable and badly run program within one arbitrary company is a high-risk activity. If you don't want to risk your life skydiving, don't skydive. (I do, so I get to use that one). Don't put all your eggs in one basket, etc.

It's far from impossible to go wide and eventually make it work. It does take work and learning new ways of doing things, and you will likely not make as much during the transition period. However, you don't have to do it all at once. You can go wide series by series. If you have only one series and it's all in KU, that's a fragile model anyway.

Sure I say this as someone who's already done it, and I sympathize (to a point) with those of you who're getting caught up in this mess--but the writing was on the wall 2-3 years ago with problem after problem within the KU program, and that's why my sympathy is limited. Every time we go around this track we hear the same things--complaints, go wide, I went wide, I don't wanna go wide, they have to make it better, I have no doubt they'll make it better, oh look they made it a little better so I'm gonna hold on a little longer.

If you thought about it over the past couple of years and made a deliberate decision to stay all-in with KU, you have to face the risks and do something about them to mitigate them. If you don't, there's a very real possibility the machine will grind you up and spit you out. I applaud anyone who escapes the nasty, tasty cheese-filled rat-trap that KU has become.


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## JWright (Apr 10, 2018)

David VanDyke said:


> Actually, the best protection is reducing your (all general "you" here) exposure to KU. Tying your livelihood to one vulnerable and badly run program within one arbitrary company is a high-risk activity. If you don't want to risk your life skydiving, don't skydive. (I do, so I get to use that one). Don't put all your eggs in one basket, etc.
> 
> It's far from impossible to go wide and eventually make it work. It does take work and learning new ways of doing things, and you will likely not make as much during the transition period. However, you don't have to do it all at once. You can go wide series by series. If you have only one series and it's all in KU, that's a fragile model anyway.
> 
> ...


Yes, I agree with this. I don't think it's a good decision to be part of a program where there definitely seems to be a lot of fraud and Amazon has such a poor handle on it and is treating writers so badly without giving any means of recourse.

Also, how can you even measure your ROI on advertising when you don't know for sure what percentage of your page reads are real or if some of them will be taken away from you at any time or that your account could be shut down without you having done anything wrong with no means of recourse? That's not a rational or logical way to run a business or writing career.

For those who are doing well in KU and want to continue that is certainly up to you and you should do what is best for you.

For me, it doesn't make any business sense to be in KU and I am completely opposed to how Amazon is handling this. They are a huge corporation. They could handle things a lot better than they are. It doesn't mean all problems could be solved overnight or anything like that. But they certainly could do much better.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

One thing that hasn't been addressed is the impact on KU readers. Many writers are being forced to leave KU so that means that the numbers of books are being reduced. Their fans will be unable to get books that are entitled to. 

Of course there will be inexperience writers that will replace the experienced writers, but the books will not be as good. 

Ever writer is feeling nervous since their future is uncertain. They may just decide to leave KU and move on.

The real losers will be the KU readers since they will lose writers that they no longer have access to. Perhaps the readers will leave too and stop paying a monthly fee for poor service.

Surely Amazon will realize this and will fix the problem. It is pretty to think so, but it is not likely to happen.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Sam Rivers said:


> One thing that hasn't been addressed is the impact on KU readers. Many writers are being forced to leave KU so that means that the numbers of books are being reduced. Their fans will be unable to get books that are entitled to.
> 
> The real losers will be the KU readers since they will lose writers that they no longer have access to. Perhaps the readers will leave too and stop paying a monthly fee for poor service.


If anything, this is what will get Amazon's notice--loss of income and customers.

I take issue with the terminology "entitled to"--KU readers are getting exactly what they pay for, which is unlimited access to a large number of titles, but with no guarantee of what those titles will be. They have expectations, but expectations are not entitlements,

Also, it's not true KU readers will no longer have access to the books they want (unless an author unpublishes completely) - they will simply have to pay retail. /sarc/ My heart bleeds for them /sarc/.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> Also, it's not true KU readers will no longer have access to the books they want (unless an author unpublishes completely) - they will simply have to pay retail. /sarc/ My heart bleeds for them /sarc/.


Why pay retail when you have already paid a monthly fee?


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Sam Rivers said:


> Why pay retail when you have already paid a monthly fee?


The same reason you pay retail to get a movie that's not on the Netflix you already paid for, if you really want it. Obviously.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

I think the number of books in KU continues to climb. As long as Zon has the appearance of maintaining "best sellers" and "popular" authors in the mix, KU won't see any kind of customer shift in satisfaction. I don't think changes to KU will stem from this direction.

The continuously growing avalanche of new authors trying to make a billion dollars pouring into KU is likely far, far larger than the awakened outflow of burned authors.

KU would have to be the subject of a class action lawsuit before we see any author-friendly improvements, IMO.


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## TWGallier (Apr 21, 2011)

I got pinged in April, too, when the only promo I do is through Amazon, so I have no choice but to request that all of my Select titles be removed from KU.  I didn't want to go wide, but they left me no other option.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> I got pinged in April, too, when the only promo I do is through Amazon, so I have no choice but to request that all of my Select titles be removed from KU. I didn't want to go wide, but they left me no other option.


We have no evidence why KU removed our page reads. There have been a lot of opinions but nobody knows for sure. One thing we can be sure of is that they blame us for something we had no control over. I will let my books run out and remove them in a little over a month. I think we will see the process go on each month as more and more writers are targeted and stripped of page reads. Even Amazon's teacher pets are being hit since Amazon doesn't really care.

On the plus side, D2D is happy to see so many people leaving Amazon and putting their books with them. D2D is honest and cares about us.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Lilly_Frost said:


> Has anyone successfully gotten their page reads back?


And the silence is deafening, lol.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Lilly_Frost said:


> Has anyone successfully gotten their page reads back?


They're now terminating KDP accounts on what I'm guessing is the third month when an account is showing allegedly fake page reads.

Nobody's getting those pages back, whether they're really illegitimate or not.


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## Crime fighters (Nov 27, 2013)

I've been thinking about this a lot today, and I've searched for reasonable solutions Amazon could put into place to stop this from happening. Alas, I've got nothing. The only way I personally see to stop scammers is to install Gatekeepers, but that is nigh impossible in the current environment where thousands of books are being published on Amazon per day. Even with some kind of quality control (and that's a slippery slope to be sure), it doesn't stop someone with a somewhat decent book publishing their work and then gaming the system through the use of click-farms or reader-circles. 

If you reduce the payment from pages read and go back to a flat fee, the scammers will just push through shorter works again.Whatever is implemented, the scammers will find a way around the new restrictions. Now, honest authors have been caught in the crosshairs. The only way to fix Kindle Unlimited is to burn it to the ground. And that sucks because it can be such a great tool for writers and readers alike. 

The ban-hammer as of late has proven that Amazon is in over their heads. If a company as big as Amazon can't figure out a solution, then I don't see much hope for the program. Amazon has made a lot of bad decisions lately though, including the moving of Also-boughts to now be placed under two rows of sponsored ads.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

As someone with a background in compliance monitoring systems, I can think of about a dozen ways they could approach this more effectively. But clearly there isn't the will to do so.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Cassie Leigh said:


> As someone with a background in compliance monitoring systems, I can think of about a dozen ways they could approach this more effectively. But clearly there isn't the will to do so.


Amazon is customer centric. KU 2 came out when KU 1 started getting hammered in FB ads by Kindle Unlimited customers who called it "Kindle Limited" and said things about it that would violate Kboards profanity policy to repeat. Until KU subscribers start complaining vocally and in public, there will be no desire for change.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Shelley K said:


> They're now terminating KDP accounts on what I'm guessing is the third month when an account is showing allegedly fake page reads.


Does anyone know ... if one's account gets terminated, would it work to republish one's existing books through D2D, or would Amazon catch them with its plagiarism filter and refuse to let them through?


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## K&#039;Sennia Visitor (Jan 14, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> Does anyone know ... if one's account gets terminated, would it work to republish one's existing books through D2D, or would Amazon catch them with its plagiarism filter and refuse to let them through?


 I don't know about closed accounts, but I'm pretty sure it was authors submitting their banned books through D2D that caused D2D to lose amazon access the first time. So prolly if a ton of terminated authors start using that loophole that's most likely what will happen. But it'll work for a while.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

The biggest false assumption to make, is to think this latest round of KU clean up isn't working. Amazon may actually consider it a success. Let's say there's a 5% false positive rate ( I'm making that number up). On paper that looks pretty good. 

"Hey we caught thousands of bots with a 95% accuracy rate!"

Now the hundred or so authors who got caught up in the system, won't see it that way. But to Amazon these authors are just a tiny column on the spreadsheet. They'll feed that data into the AI so it learns from the false positives and go have a celebratory luncheon.

And there's not much the authors who got screwed can do. Other than drop out of KU.  I'd bet real money Amazon sees this as a huge success and a win. 

Welcome to the age of AI and autuomated data driven businesses.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

^^ He's right, you know.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

I live in the UK, but surely, there has to be some kind of regulatory body that can go through amazon like a dose of the poops if enough authors complain to them.

I know the EU were trying to bring in regulations in regards to amazon and others practices with small businesses and this was the reply;

CCIA, which represents Google, Amazon and eBay, said online platforms go to great lengths to maintain good relations with their business users because it was in their own interest.

"There is no evidence of a systemic problem that would justify regulation through the strongest legislative instrument available to the EU. A more flexible approach, rather than an outsized, one-size-fits-all Regulation, would be more conducive to the growth of Europe’s digital economy," said Jakob Kucharczyk, Vice President, Competition & EU Regulatory Policy at CCIA.

I think there is a lot of evidence, but authors need to speak out.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Atlantisatheart said:


> "There is no evidence of a systemic problem that would justify regulation through the strongest legislative instrument available to the EU. A more *flexible* approach, ...


coughcoughLook the other way and pocket the Amazon bribe money.coughcough


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## TWGallier (Apr 21, 2011)

Going Incognito said:


> And the silence is deafening, lol.


I got an reply from the Executive Cus Support, saying he'll get back to me, but haven't heard anything since. Yeah, the silence is deafening.


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## Ryan W. Mueller (Jul 14, 2017)

C. Gockel said:


> Amazon is customer centric. KU 2 came out when KU 1 started getting hammered in FB ads by Kindle Unlimited customers who called it "Kindle Limited" and said things about it that would violate Kboards profanity policy to repeat. Until KU subscribers start complaining vocally and in public, there will be no desire for change.


And that will only happen if popular authors leave KU in droves. If there's suddenly a lack of quality material to read, then readers will complain.


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## levolal (Apr 13, 2018)

Gentleman Zombie said:


> The biggest false assumption to make, is to think this latest round of KU clean up isn't working. Amazon may actually consider it a success. Let's say there's a 5% false positive rate ( I'm making that number up). On paper that looks pretty good.
> 
> "Hey we caught thousands of bots with a 95% accuracy rate!"
> 
> ...


Well the real problem with this system beyond the 5% who get caught up in it is that there are many providers who have already swapped towards saying they will get your competitors banned by spamming page reads to them. It's even a better business model tbh as it is basically guaranteed and instead of before where it was on a per-book basis, this is guaranteed three months worth of payments to get someone banned.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

There have been some people that have notified Amazon to remove books from KU. I wonder if Amazon has actually removed them or said to wait until the KU 90 days is up.

I notified them myself last week and Amazon has not contracted me. I suspect they will just ignore my e-mail. Most of my mine run out in July.


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## 77820 (Jun 19, 2014)

Sam Rivers said:


> There have been some people that have notified Amazon to remove books from KU. I wonder if Amazon has actually removed them or said to wait until the KU 90 days is up.
> 
> I notified them myself last week and Amazon has not contracted me. I suspect they will just ignore my e-mail. Most of my mine run out in July.


 Back in April, I asked the Zon how to immediately remove my books from KDP Select and they replied I needed to send them a list of titles and ASIN numbers. I did as instructed and the titles were removed that day with no questions asked or warnings given. Note: I never mentioned the pages stripped from my account or the threat of account termination. I kept things simple and straightforward.


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## Megan Michaels (Mar 31, 2016)

Sam Rivers said:


> There have been some people that have notified Amazon to remove books from KU. I wonder if Amazon has actually removed them or said to wait until the KU 90 days is up.
> 
> I notified them myself last week and Amazon has not contracted me. I suspect they will just ignore my e-mail. Most of my mine run out in July.


I sent KDP a note last Friday to release me early from my Kindle Unlimited term for over 20 of my books. Within six hours they released them, and let me know that I'd still receive page reads as they trickled in. I was polite and kind when requesting it, but told them that I wanted to leave because authors being banned was frightening and I didn't want to risk my name or books. I told them that I had never requested to leave early, and hoped that my reputation would garner me favor.

It worked. They did it and were kind about it. So far I have made the same amount and some days MORE than when I was in KU. So far, I feel relief that my account is safe, and concerns about money don't seem as frightening.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Megan Michaels said:


> I sent KDP a note last Friday to release me early from my Kindle Unlimited term for over 20 of my books. Within six hours they released them, and let me know that I'd still receive page reads as they trickled in. I was polite and kind when requesting it, but told them that I wanted to leave because authors being banned was frightening and I didn't want to risk my name or books. I told them that I had never requested to leave early, and hoped that my reputation would garner me favor.
> 
> It worked. They did it and were kind about it. So far I have made the same amount and some days MORE than when I was in KU. So far, I feel relief that my account is safe, and concerns about money don't seem as frightening.


And now you can put everything up wide. Good luck!


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Sam Rivers said:


> There have been some people that have notified Amazon to remove books from KU. I wonder if Amazon has actually removed them or said to wait until the KU 90 days is up.
> 
> I notified them myself last week and Amazon has not contracted me. I suspect they will just ignore my e-mail. Most of my mine run out in July.


Email again with the list of books and ASIN numbers you want removed from KU. Probably just got lost in the shuffle.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

levolal said:


> saying they will get your competitors banned by spamming page reads to them. It's even a better business model tbh as it is basically guaranteed and instead of before where it was on a per-book basis, this is guaranteed three months worth of payments to get someone banned.


Has anyone followed up this? As in "I think I'm being deliberately targeted by a competitor to make you ban me, and thus remove their competition. Why are you allowing them to do this?" and see what sort of response you get?
Add to it, "Reader satisfaction comes from having plenty of good books, but if a competitor bots my books and they are removed by you, you are damaging reader satisfaction by doing so."
Just wondered if anyone had pursued this sort of line of response.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> Has anyone followed up this? As in "I think I'm being deliberately targeted by a competitor to make you ban me, and thus remove their competition. Why are you allowing them to do this?" and see what sort of response you get?
> Add to it, "Reader satisfaction comes from having plenty of good books, but if a competitor bots my books and they are removed by you, you are damaging reader satisfaction by doing so."
> Just wondered if anyone had pursued this sort of line of response.


I sent Amazon (varying email addresses) as well as KDP support several emails about the whole situation, explaining I was doing nothing wrong and it's very unfair to be forced out over something I can't control. In each of them, I mentioned/explained the fact click farms can target whoever they want, but also the theory that people could simply target competitors who are hurting their rank and visibility and have them removed from the marketplace (I'm not sure if that is what is going on, but it's a viable theory). They didn't respond to a single one of my emails or contact form submissions, other than the one where I asked to be preemptively removed from KU in order to protect my account from something I have no control over. In that email, their only response was, "Sorry for the inconvenience. Your books have been removed from KDP Select." Inconvenience? No, an inconvenience is when the young man at the drive thru forgets to put a straw in my bag.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Saboth said:


> I sent Amazon (varying email addresses) as well as KDP support several emails about the whole situation, explaining I was doing nothing wrong and it's very unfair to be forced out over something I can't control. In each of them, I mentioned/explained the fact click farms can target whoever they want, but also the theory that people could simply target competitors who are hurting their rank and visibility and have them removed from the marketplace (I'm not sure if that is what is going on, but it's a viable theory). They didn't respond to a single one of my emails or contact form submissions, other than the one where I asked to be preemptively removed from KU in order to protect my account from something I have no control over. In that email, their only response was, "Sorry for the inconvenience. Your books have been removed from KDP Select." Inconvenience? No, an inconvenience is when the young man at the drive thru forgets to put a straw in my bag.


Makes me wonder if KU removal is now bot operated as well, and the policy is now 'let anyone out if they ask for it', and give the relevant urls.
Did you try cc'ing to Mr B?


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> Makes me wonder if KU removal is now bot operated as well, and the policy is now 'let anyone out if they ask for it', and give the relevant urls.
> Did you try cc'ing to Mr B?


Yeah, there was a bit of info floating around some author forums/groups where the emails to several top people (B included) were provided, and I sent one email to that list (I believe there were 8 people on that list). Like upper management at KDP, and several others. Never got a response.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

I feel like if pages are being halved retroactively, then amazon should also reimburse every other author in KU; after all, a part of the total KU pot had been unfairly taken by scammers (whether they're real scammers or not), so that money should go to all the legit authors, right?

They shouldn't be allowed to just say "oh, we'll keep all of that money ourselves".


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

That's how it works.  The pot of KU money is split among all the page reads.  Amazon isn't "keeping" anything by eliminating what they feel is bogus page reads, although by eliminating a lot of page reads, they may not have to supplement the fund much as usual.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> Email again with the list of books and ASIN numbers you want removed from KU. Probably just got lost in the shuffle.


I never gave them a list of books and ASIN numbers since I wanted them all removed from KU. I have over a hundred books so that would be a lot of work. I decided to just let the time run out. Most of them will be out by early July and then a few in August. I don't mind waiting.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

MyraScott said:


> That's how it works. The pot of KU money is split among all the page reads. Amazon isn't "keeping" anything by eliminating what they feel is bogus page reads, although by eliminating a lot of page reads, they may not have to supplement the fund much as usual.


No, what I meant is this. Let's say that they determined there were 100 pages read last month, and the payout per page is 0.0045.

But then, afterwards, they "realized" that 2 of those pages read were not legit, so they retroactively eliminated those reads from those authors.

Thus, now, there are actually only 98 pages read last month, in which case the payout for last month for the 98 legit read should have been 0.0045918 (100*0.0045/9. The amount of money that was at first allocated to those fake reads should not just disappear, but should be allocated back to legitimate reads.

I haven't written anything in a long time, so I'm not sure if that's how it works or not; I would think it isn't, though. Anyway, that's what I meant.


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## Ryan W. Mueller (Jul 14, 2017)

I'm pretty sure Amazon just picks whatever payout rate they feel like. They generally keep it somewhere between .004 and .005.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

AsianInspiration said:


> No, what I meant is this. Let's say that they determined there were 100 pages read last month, and the payout per page is 0.0045.
> 
> But then, afterwards, they "realized" that 2 of those pages read were not legit, so they retroactively eliminated those reads from those authors.
> 
> ...


Supposedly that's already what they're doing. Most are talking about April's page reads being taken from people around May 10th ish, or so? Right before the April rate is/was announced on May 15, which will actually pay on June 29th. 
So supposedly they are taking the pages away, then splitting the pot.


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## AsianInspiration (Oct 12, 2016)

Cool. Then they're not being as apathetic as I thought. That's good news for us, I think more than just the little bit of money that will be reimbursed.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

AsianInspiration said:


> Cool. Then they're not being as apathetic as I thought. That's good news for us, I think more than just the little bit of money that will be reimbursed.


Well, good news for some people. Others are having their earnings halved and are being forced out of KDP Select with no way to defend themselves and with no evidence of wrongdoing presented.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Saboth said:


> Well, good news for some people. Others are having their earnings halved and are being forced out of KDP Select with no way to defend themselves and with no evidence of wrongdoing presented.


Right?

But I do totally get how it would look like good news- to those who still believe there is an actual pot. And that the rate is really determined by said pot being divided by any real count of actual pages being actually read. It's definitely a great smoke and mirrors magic trick, as long as you don't start poking around behind the curtain.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> Well, good news for some people. Others are having their earnings halved and are being forced out of KDP Select with no way to defend themselves and with no evidence of wrongdoing presented.


Amazon made a bad decision when they sent out those stupid e-mails that got people upset. They could have just removed the illegal reads and not said anything. If someone missed their deleted sales, they could contract Amazon for an explanation. Then they would have received a standard form letter.

Nobody is being forced out of KU. The ones that left were tired of being treated unfairly. Whether to stay in KU is a personal decision that each person has to make. There are financial rewards for some people to stay in KU so they ignore the way they are treated. Of course, they may have just been lucky and KU will be zeroing in on them in the future.

To get back into KU is easy since it just takes a click to enroll again.

I got into KU at the first of the year and decided to try it for 6 months. When my 90 days run out in July, I will not renew them in KU. I haven't found the financial rewards to be any better than being wide. KU is not worth the hassle.

It was an interesting experiment and I am glad I did it.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Sam Rivers said:


> Nobody is being forced out of KU. The ones that left were tired of being treated unfairly. Whether to stay in KU is a personal decision that each person has to make. There are financial rewards for some people to stay in KU so they ignore the way they are treated. Of course, they may have just been lucky and KU will be zeroing in on them in the future.


I think you've missed the reports of people losing their accounts due to Amazon's accusations of illicit activity. Once you've got that first strike, whether you've done wrong or not, the choice really does become "Leave KU or risk losing your Amazon account". It's Russian roulette to stay in once you've been dinged.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> I think you've missed the reports of people losing their accounts due to Amazon's accusations of illicit activity. Once you've got that first strike, whether you've done wrong or not, the choice really does become "Leave KU or risk losing your Amazon account". It's Russian roulette to stay in once you've been dinged.


I am not overly concerned about losing my account even though I got dinged. It is easy to get the account back. However, I am getting out of KU since I don't think it is worth the hassle. If a person is making a lot of money in KU, it is worth the hassle.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

Sam Rivers said:


> Amazon made a bad decision when they sent out those stupid e-mails that got people upset. They could have just removed the illegal reads and not said anything. If someone missed their deleted sales, they could contract Amazon for an explanation. Then they would have received a standard form letter.
> 
> Nobody is being forced out of KU. The ones that left were tired of being treated unfairly. Whether to stay in KU is a personal decision that each person has to make. There are financial rewards for some people to stay in KU so they ignore the way they are treated. Of course, they may have just been lucky and KU will be zeroing in on them in the future.
> 
> ...


Yeah...you might want to double check your info. The people leaving are doing so to protect themselves from a permanent ban. You stated you are content letting your books earn out their 90 day periods in KU, then you will go wide. I was going to do that too, but what's going on is if you get that first strike and do nothing and still get illicit page reads the next month, Amazon is going to take 1/2 your page reads again *and* suspend your account. So now you think "Holy crap, this is serious, I need to get my books out of KU so I can stop this crazy stuff." So you beg them to be let out of KU early, and you beg to have the suspension removed. Problem is...you are now in the 3rd month, because of the way they send out their notices. So now you think you are safe, because you are out of KU. But you notice you are still getting page reads. So the NEXT month, you get the account termination notice. You are out of KU, but since you are still getting page reads, the Amazon bots flag you a 3rd time. You beg to have your ban overturned...but so far I haven't heard of one single time a ban was overturned (suspensions-yes, bans-no).

I'd be happy to hear from someone who got a ban overturned, though.

So yeah, forced out of KU is the appropriate term. You can stay in and risk your account, or leave against your will and hope the "illicit" page reads die down by the 3rd month.

My books were actually doing awesome in KU, but I figured pulling out of KU and selling a few books beats not having an account and selling 0 books.


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## 77820 (Jun 19, 2014)

Saboth said:


> So yeah, forced out of KU is the appropriate term. You can stay in and risk your account, or leave against your will and hope the "illicit" page reads die down by the 3rd month.


I agree. I felt that the Zon had forced my hand.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Klendark said:


> I agree. I felt that the Zon had forced my hand.


And such little hands, too.


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

I've not read through every post so maybe this has been pointed out. Or maybe some authors have had their account terminated without warning and I have missed the posts.

Seeing as how Amazon don't send an email out warning the author to cease and desist, or else, could it be that they don't in fact blame the author in that instance, but don't want to admit it as such, and that maybe they are aware that scam bots are creating page reads for legitimate authors as a smokescreen for their own wrong doing. So all that is happening really, is that an automatic adjustment is being made to remove credit for scam reads when scam bot accounts are identified and closed, which more than likely are picked out because their page reads for their own books are 100% scammed.

Still, if that were the case, a simple email to the author to advise them their page reads accounts had been compromised by bot reads and an adjusment was being made. I can understand Amazon saying to be careful of who you use for promotions as there are some sites out there that guarantee free downloads which maybe use bots to get the numbers and then follow that up with bot page reads to justify the payback of their fees.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Long story short:

In April, Amazon sent out threatening letters to authors from whom they'd taken away 'illegal page reads' from the March totals. If we kept up the nasty deeds we could find ourselves in trouble -- up to and including account termination. I was one of the recipients of this threatening letter. It didn't matter whether the author instigated this or not. In my case, I'd done nothing in March (or before) to warrant this. No advertising, no marketing, nothing. Fortunately, in April I had no 'illegal page reads'. I pulled my books from KU as soon as possible to avoid further action on Amazon's part. So did many others. Still others took a chance. Unfortunately, some did have further 'illegal page reads'. So:

In May, more letters came out, with some authors' accounts suspended because of alleged continued bad actions -- i.e. more 'illegal page reads'.  I believe at least one account was terminated. (It may have later been restored.) This sent many authors fleeing KU.

In June, Amazon changed their letter to simply say that they had detected 'illegal page reads' for which the author wouldn't be paid, but that the author didn't need to do anything about it.


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## Ann Howes (Apr 7, 2018)

Suzan Tisdale has written an open letter to Jeff Bezos regarding book stuffers and scammers. I think it's worth sharing.

https://yourcheekywench.com/2018/06/12/an-open-letter-to-jeff-bezos/


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

Ann Howes said:


> Suzan Tisdale has written an open letter to Jeff Bezos regarding book stuffers and scammers. I think it's worth sharing.
> 
> https://yourcheekywench.com/2018/06/12/an-open-letter-to-jeff-bezos/


That's a GREAT letter.


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## Ann Howes (Apr 7, 2018)

MmmmmPie said:


> That's a GREAT letter.


Agreed. I think we all need to share it. :


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Ann Howes said:


> Agreed. I think we all need to share it. :


I've put the link on my Facebook page.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Ann Howes said:


> Agreed. I think we all need to share it. :


Shared and exhorted others to share it. This is something which needs to go viral. (not often I say that.)


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I don't consent


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

Ann Howes said:


> Suzan Tisdale has written an open letter to Jeff Bezos regarding book stuffers and scammers. I think it's worth sharing.
> 
> https://yourcheekywench.com/2018/06/12/an-open-letter-to-jeff-bezos/


That is a great letter.

The one thing that puzzles me is where all these devoted fans who flip to the back of the book without reading it because they're told to are coming from. I always thought that kind of thing was the result of botting and click-farming. How does a scammer without real books to offer get real people to perform the kind of actions described? Am I missing something?


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## Ann Howes (Apr 7, 2018)

Bill Hiatt said:


> That is a great letter.
> 
> The one thing that puzzles me is where all these devoted fans who flip to the back of the book without reading it because they're told to are coming from. I always thought that kind of thing was the result of botting and click-farming. How does a scammer without real books to offer get real people to perform the kind of actions described? Am I missing something?


There's a video (link below) that she posted last night that explains how these book stuffers do it. Take from it what you will but I for one am happy she's bringing attention to it. She also addresses cockygate briefly.

https://www.facebook.com/suzan.tisdale/videos/10155835487284401/UzpfSTc1OTk1OTQwMDozMDYwNjExMjk0OTk0MTQ6MTA6MDoxNTMwNDI4Mzk5OjQyOTkyMTAyODE5NTk5NDc4NTA/

And there's also this by Dave Gaughran http://davidgaughran.com/2018/06/10/cassandra-dee-mosaic-book-stuffing/


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## MissingAlaska (Apr 28, 2014)

Bill Hiatt said:


> The one thing that puzzles me is where all these devoted fans who flip to the back of the book without reading it because they're told to are coming from. I always thought that kind of thing was the result of botting and click-farming. How does a scammer without real books to offer get real people to perform the kind of actions described? Am I missing something?


Annie Wilkes from "Misery" comes to mind. She would have done anything for Paul Sheldon, provided that Misery lives! (Still one of my favorite novels...)

In all seriousness, I've run across a lot of hate towards Amazon from readers in places like reddit/r/books. For example, I've seen dozens of readers say that the will NOT under any circumstances read a book on Kindle with their Wifi on due to privacy concerns. Others would rather side-load a novel to keep Amazon from profiting. This is generally linked to fears over monopoly abuses (many of the same concerns that we writers lament about). My impression is that these sham "authors" use this notion of Amazon as a corporate monstrosity (that mistreats its authors) as a way to generate sympathy. They ask their readers to support a poor indie author and help fight this 'evil' corporation by doing XYZ. Readers never realize the effects on other authors; they see it only as picking the pockets of Amazon. They legitimately think they are helping a struggling artist and have no idea that books are being ghost-written etc.

It's a bit like the guy you see begging for money in the parking lot or street corner with a "Homeless Vet" sign and dirty clothes who, at the end of the day, gets into his BMW and drives to his home in the suburbs.


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