# Update #2: Annnd the time-out for rank-stripped books...sheesh, I can't keep up



## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

*See Page 2, Reply 31 for Update...
See Page 3, Reply 57 for Update...*

It's the tick of a new month, and I see that every rank-stripped book I've been following (about 25) now has a rank.

Did the time-out make a difference? For a couple of the less-prolific authors, probably. The less-prolific who botted their way to the Top 10 overall in the US and Canada stores don't appear to have attempted those shenanigans again. Perhaps the warning was enough. Or perhaps they're just biding their time. Or maybe they've simply learned to keep a lower profile.

For the ones releasing every couple of weeks and routinely hitting in the Top 100? I saw no change in their new releases over this past month, either in the way they were released (read into that what you will) or in how stuffed they are. In fact, one of the stripped books whose rank was returned is still 14MB with the message: "Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download."

So, just how much of a deterrent will a rank-stripping time-out be, even for the occasional botter? I compared one author's books that each hit #6 in the US on consecutive days in early June. One was rank-stripped, the other wasn't. Their ranks today:
291K - rank-stripped book
279K - non-stripped

Five of the previously Top 100 romances discussed elsewhere returned with ranks from the low 500s to the mid 3000s.

Gee, (generic) you can miss seeing a book left for sale on a non-US vendor that even Google fails to pick up and have your book -- even your catalog -- yanked from KU. Blatantly and repeatedly bot your way to the Top 100 and/or stuff your books to the max and not only are you allowed to keep that book in KU, you can continue to keep your catalog in KU and continue to release KU-scamming titles into KU.

Priorities, anyone?

Amazon, not only can you do better, you must. Perhaps there's more clean-up going on behind the scenes, but the public view is not pretty. And it just keeps getting uglier.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Take this with a grain of salt. I heard (and no, no one had a copy of the email so that's why I say to take it with a grain of salt) that ranks are being given back if those caught botting promise to never do it again in writing. I'm not entirely sure what that does, other than give Amazon a "you were warned" posture if the botting happens again. I'm not sure if I believe it but a few people are saying it so I thought I would share.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

I hope people are starting to get a chuckle out of all this. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being super and 1 being horrible, can we all agree at this point that Amazon's efforts to control/manage/eradicate bots, scammers and stuffers is a 1?


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> I hope people are starting to get a chuckle out of all this.
> 
> On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being super and 1 being horrible, can we all agree at this point that Amazon's efforts to control/manage/eradicate bots, scammers and stuffers is a 1?


The Russian judge surprises everyone with a 3.


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

Seneca42 said:


> I hope people are starting to get a chuckle out of all this.
> 
> On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being super and 1 being horrible, can we all agree at this point that Amazon's efforts to control/manage/eradicate bots, scammers and stuffers is a 1?


I can't say I'm chuckling, but I agree their efforts fall far short.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Take this with a grain of salt. I heard (and no, no one had a copy of the email so that's why I say to take it with a grain of salt) that ranks are being given back if those caught botting promise to never do it again in writing. I'm not entirely sure what that does, other than give Amazon a "you were warned" posture if the botting happens again. I'm not sure if I believe it but a few people are saying it so I thought I would share.


My immediate thought is, _Is Amazon our business partner or our parent?_ ... because that's the kind of "bargaining" I find myself tempted to engage in when my kids have worn me down to the nub. It suggests Amazon _really _doesn't want to get rid of these authors and therefore isn't acting like a normal business partner, whose posture would be a lot more straightforward (i.e., you broke our agreement and damaged my reputation, so you're out). Problem is, kids know when a parent has set a rule she isn't really prepared to enforce.

Dunno. Maybe that's too ungenerous a reaction. In many cases, I do want Amazon to give authors second chances.


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

Becca Mills said:


> My immediate thought is, _Is Amazon our business partner or our parent?_ ... because that's the kind of "bargaining" I find myself tempted to engage in when my kids have worn me down to the nub. It suggests Amazon _really _doesn't want to get rid of these authors and therefore isn't acting like a normal business partner, whose posture would be a lot more straightforward (i.e., you broke our agreement and damaged my reputation, so you're out). Problem is, kids know when a parent has set a rule she isn't really prepared to enforce.
> 
> Dunno. Maybe that's too ungenerous a reaction. In many cases, I do want Amazon to give authors second chances.


This is a great point. I'd add that I'm fine with second chances for honest mistakes. Botting is neither honest nor a mistake, and I'd prefer a one-strike rule, personally.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

If some didn't know this was wrong, they do now. Next time it happens, they are out and can't say they didn't know better. That's my guess for why the second chance.


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

There's a thread up that I just made an OT comment on. It had to do w/ Amazon dumping reviews via their abilites to online snoop. My comment belongs here instead:
It's obvious to me that the kinds of crap that the OP is talking about is just fine and dandy w/ Zon. The thievery of rank and the botting of page reads is fine with them. If they have the abilites to establish relationships b/t reviewers and authors, they ABSOLUTELY have the ability to fix this.

But they don't fix it. 
Which begs the question 'why'?
And I have to take Littlefinger's assumption that he discussed in the most recent episode of GOT: 'If I want to figure out why someone's doing something, I ask, what is the worst reason for it?' It's a paraphrase, and if you saw the episode you know what I'm trying to say here:
They're allowing it b/c they want it to be this way.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Also, on the book pages of one of the authors who had a book rank-stripped and whose books are all stuffed (some 12 and 14MB):

This author was among the most popular in Kindle Unlimited last month. Learn more about Kindle Unlimited All-Stars.

_Edited to correct spelling. Yes, I know, 25 words. Sigh._


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## Phxsundog (Jul 19, 2017)

The rank stripping never had anything to do with page stuffing or bonus content. The authors who got rank stripped received emails from Amazon that said it was about click farming. They were rank stripped because they click farmed or used another promotional service Amazon perceived as click farming. At least two of these authors got their ranks restored after insisting they didn't click farm.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

When someone's arrested, the cops run their ID to make sure they aren't wanted for any other violations. It's not usually, "Oh, we'll let you go with a warning for that broken tail light we pulled you over for, and just ignore the APB on you for robbing that bank a couple of hours ago."


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## hottakes (Jul 25, 2017)

Phxsundog said:


> The rank stripping never had anything to do with page stuffing or bonus content. The authors who got rank stripped received emails from Amazon that said it was about click farming. They were rank stripped because they click farmed or used another promotional service Amazon perceived as click farming. At least two of these authors got their ranks restored after insisting they didn't click farm.


This, partially. Amazon stripped rank because they thought some authors were using clickfarms. I know several of the authors caught up in this, and none of them used any sort of clickfarming at all. They're all legit, serious authors.

Which I've been saying over and over in these threads, and yet you all still somehow believe that Amazon is actually good at this stuff / right about it.

Amanda Lee's comment above is just... hilariously bad/wrong. I don't know who her source is. But again, I know several rank stripped authors personally, and none of them were even contacted by Amazon prior to having their ranks reinstated.

Seems to me that Amazon messed up big time and instead of owning it, they just quietly reinstated legitimate ranks and moved on. And yet there's still this feeling on kboards that those authors deserved it.

You should all be pissed off at Amazon for stripping the ranks of legitimate authors and being horrible at actually identifying real scammers.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

hottakes said:


> This, partially. Amazon stripped rank because they thought some authors were using clickfarms. I know several of the authors caught up in this, and none of them used any sort of clickfarming at all. They're all legit, serious authors.
> 
> Which I've been saying over and over in these threads, and yet you all still somehow believe that Amazon is actually good at this stuff / right about it.
> 
> ...


I think KBoarders do generally want to give authors the benefit of the doubt vs. handing it to Amazon, and it does seem possible to me that innocent authors have gotten caught up in whatever Amazon has done. That's certainly happened in crackdowns of other kinds. Many of us feel we've lost some legitimate reviews, for instance. But the bottom line is that people like Phoenix and David have marshaled evidence that many people here find convincing. It's hard to defeat evidence without counter-evidence, or at least a reasoned explanation of why the evidence might be incorrect.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Desmond X. Torres said:


> They're allowing it b/c they want it to be this way.


Or the system is fatally flawed and can't be fixed. I mean, from Amazon's perspective there are millions (?) of books in KU. Identifying potential scammers is easy, proving it so that you can take action with 100% confidence is near impossible (and would chew up endless resources) - because an author can always say "what are you talking about? I didn't use any promo service. Someone else did this to me." or "I had no idea the promo service I was using did this."

Legally, it's on Amazon to prove you botted with intent and didn't just accidentally do so out of ignorance.

Which then puts Amazon in a very simple position. Either acknowledge that KU is fatally flawed forever OR shut it down.

They'd rather pay the scammers out of the KU pot than turn their backs on the $10 sub fee they get.

So I don't think they want it this way so much as the system can't be fixed and they refuse to shut it down because they are making mad bank off it. The authors seem more than happy to offset the cost of the scammers and botters, so from amazon's perspective the model is sustainable.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

The message is pretty clear, then. Amazon doesn't really care what's going on, so long as it doesn't become a huge PR scandal and readers keep signing up for KU. Maybe they catch a botter every once in a while, but if they don't make them pinkie swear to never, ever, ever do it again, what does it matter? They seem to not care at all about stuffed books -- some of them filled with nonsense -- taking up the top spots on the lists.

Maybe I should revisit my evil plan and game KU for all the money. Or not.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> Or the system is fatally flawed and can't be fixed. I mean, from Amazon's perspective there are millions (?) of books in KU. Identifying potential scammers is easy, proving it so that you can take action with 100% confidence is near impossible (and would chew up endless resources) - because an author can always say "what are you talking about? I didn't use any promo service. Someone else did this to me." or "I had no idea the promo service I was using did this."
> 
> *Legally, it's on Amazon to prove you botted with intent and didn't just accidentally do so out of ignorance.
> *
> ...


Is that really true? Doesn't the Select ToS basically say "we can pay you whatever we want, however we want. Or we can kick you out for any reason we want."?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Crystal_ said:


> Is that really true? Doesn't the Select ToS basically say "we can pay you whatever we want, however we want. Or we can kick you out for any reason we want."?


It probably does. I didn't mean to make that sound official. More just common sense legally 

I mean, if amazon starts banning botters it becomes very easy for authors to attack each other simply by hiring botters to download a competitors book.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

C. Gold said:


> If some didn't know this was wrong, they do now. Next time it happens, they are out and can't say they didn't know better. That's my guess for why the second chance.


Wow.

In April 2016, my father passed painfully from lung cancer after a 2-year battle. We honestly thought he had six more months but in March, he took a turn for the worse and was dead in less than a month. I had a new release in April (actually, the week he died) that was on pre-order. I wanted to postpone the release due to my father's very rapid decline and how we spent all our time in the hospital in late March and I was behind getting my book finished and ready for the preorder deadline.

I was banned from using preorder for a year.

No second chance for _me_.

Botters and stuffers and scammers get second chance as long as they promise not to lie cheat and steal? Wow...


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

hehe DS is ranked stripped again. Guess zon changed their minds. either that or he immediately went back to botting. Or it's a glitch.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

hottakes said:


> This, partially. Amazon stripped rank because they thought some authors were using clickfarms. I know several of the authors caught up in this, and none of them used any sort of clickfarming at all. They're all legit, serious authors.
> 
> Which I've been saying over and over in these threads, and yet you all still somehow believe that Amazon is actually good at this stuff / right about it.
> 
> ...


Let me be very clear about this. About half the books I've been following that were rank-stripped were certainly punished for botting. The other half were not so clear-cut on the botting, and I never accused them of it. What that half had in common was bonus stuffing clearly intended to scam the system, as well as a couple of other suspect gameplays.

Whether that half are innocent of botting or not, I'm not going to make that call. All I know is that their ranks weren't reinstated until today along with the ranks of the known botters -- even though others, as you claim, got their ranks back earlier.

But even if they are absolved of botting, that doesn't absolve them from the stuffing. I can see that each book had violated the T&Cs in one or more ways, but which violation Amazon chose to slap the punishment against for each individual book, I don't know.

Perhaps, because we're not naming the books and authors, you and I are talking about different sets of rank-stripped authors. The ones I'm talking about ARE real scammers. They're the ones with over-stuffed books at prolonged high ranks designed to scam money out of a communal pot they have no legitimate right to. If it's a matter of degree, THEY are stealing more money away from the pot than the occasional author who bots a book only for rank.

If you truly know an author whose nose is clean all the way around who was rank-stripped, then that's a different matter entirely. All I can attest to is that of the 25 or so books I'm following, not one of them is clean.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Seneca42 said:


> hehe DS is ranked stripped again. Guess zon changed their minds. either that or he immediately went back to botting. Or it's a glitch.


Ooh, that's interesting. I now see about 1/3 of the titles I was following have been de-ranked again. Titles from both halves: the known botters and the known stuffers. Hmm.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> Ooh, that's interesting. I now see about 1/3 of the titles I was following have been de-ranked again. Titles from both halves: the known botters and the known stuffers. Hmm.


zon VP: "Who ordered ranks be restored? I want their name now!"
pleb: "It was the algos boss, the algos did it."
zon VP: "F*CK! What do we do now? Are we allowed to override the algos?"
pleb: "I don't know. Do you report to the algos or do they report to you?"
zon VP: "Good question, I'm not sure."
pleb: "Oh wait, boss, the algos just deranked everything again."
zon VP: "Oh thank god. Problem solved. Yet again we steered the ship from the rocks. Damn we're good."


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Seneca42 said:


> zon VP: "Who ordered ranks be restored? I want their name now!"
> pleb: "It was the algos boss, the algos did it."
> zon VP: "F*CK! What do we do now? Are we allowed to override the algos?"
> pleb: "I don't know. Do you report to the algos or do they report to you?"
> ...


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I could see the statement as Amazon playing CYA and the legal department requiring that. Many other people have had second chances etc. with the promise to not do it again on a variety of things. Even the preorder ban, a select handful have been able to negotiate not losing that depending on the circumstances. 

And do we really want instant ban when we know people can be targetted by this stuff? One good friend had a book skyrocket, reported it themselves and Amazon looked into it said nothing was wrong and the money dispersed. 

I am not in KU. Someone bot targets me they're paying for the privilege. But I would think for my friends in KU I would much prefer there is not an insta-ban so authors have a chance to be watched/give a defense then we go back to people trying to log into their account and just can't one day or all of their books being delisted overnight. A single targetted book could cost an authors thousands if htey have a huge catalog.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

🤦🤦🤦🤔


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## Guest (Sep 1, 2017)

ChristinaGarner said:


> This is a great point. I'd add that I'm fine with second chances for honest mistakes. Botting is neither honest nor a mistake, and I'd prefer a one-strike rule, personally.


So I use a bot farm on your books and you're banned for life? You pay for a promotion from some place you think is legit and they inflate rank with a bot farm and you're banned for life?

One strike rules are bad. There are always mitigating circumstances.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> ... But I would think for my friends in KU I would much prefer there is not an insta-ban so authors have a chance to be watched/give a defense then we go back to people trying to log into their account and just can't one day or all of their books being delisted overnight. A single targetted book could cost an authors thousands if htey have a huge catalog.


Agreed, Elizabeth. Personally, I'm not against second chances. I'm not even against Amazon giving each targeted author 5 days to clear up any misunderstandings, but being clear that if the infractions stand, the punishment is retroactive to the day the author was notified.

I'm also very much pro weighted infractions. A book appearing on BOL.com and nowhere else after being enrolled in Select is an oversight not an intent. That should not be weighted as heavily as forced price-matching or bonus stuffing, neither of which are "accidents" or committable by another party.

I'm less inclined to have Amazon give authors with a history of serial botting or serial stuffing or serial price-matching a second chance beyond when they've been caught. For example, one of the rank-stripped authors has been botting books into the overall Top 10 periodically for months. They did have their catalog pulled briefly and then reinstated in July. Additionally, one book was rank-stripped. Long ago, Amazon stripped them of their right to review. But they not only still have their account, they're still in KU.

That kind of behavior and authors with entire catalogs of stuffed content who've been operating under the radar for months have already had their second chances.

Identifying (or at least validating) patterns of behavior, however, requires intervention by humans who are savvy and who care about the process and the results. People who can work off-script. But Amazon doesn't seem inclined to want to employ a Tier-2 or Tier-3 team to help resolve these types of situations. So the result is either a wrist slap or the banhammer. No room for gray.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

PhoenixS said:


> Agreed, Elizabeth. Personally, I'm not against second chances. I'm not even against Amazon giving each targeted author 5 days to clear up any misunderstandings, but being clear that if the infractions stand, the punishment is retroactive to the day the author was notified.
> 
> I'm also very much pro weighted infractions. A book appearing on BOL.com and nowhere else after being enrolled in Select is an oversight not an intent. That should not be weighted as heavily as forced price-matching or bonus stuffing, neither of which are "accidents" or committable by another party.
> 
> ...


I totally get it. To us, it's easy to spot who's a repeat offender and who is like my friend who was like NO WAY should that book out of the blue be top whatever.

And I understand the frustrations about Amazon. I do. It's mostly uneasiness on my side of my partnership with Amazon than anything else that drove me to find a way to go wide. Yes, my genre works well that way, I am fortunate there, but a part of it is me pursuing systems and avenues and methods that many don't even try, and I took my getting laughed at when I first started going against the norm.

I agree that Amazon the corporation doesn't do well with gray, but I can say they have many individuals working there who I think do want to be good actors in the business. It's just the size and division of departments that makes it nearly impossible for them to be kind and gentle in all cases. Or make everyone 100% happy 100% of the time. I'm sure taken as an average, the # of actual cheating authors/publishers is small compared to the total pool of those using the Kindle Select program, so it might even be difficult for those Amazon employees who SEE the problem to quantify it in a way that's considered significant to the higher ups as a cause for action.

In a different recent situation, everyone was working with a single Amazon rep in regards to a very specific individual. And despite screenshots from private Facebook groups and other evidence where the person spelled out what they were doing and that Amazon would be fine with it, it took months before any action was taken and even that was token action because Amazon also doesn't seem to be enforcing any kind of ban against people who if they lost KDP accounts can just use an aggregator or a third-party.

It's just the nature of working with Amazon. They have limitations and things they do not do very well that you just have to balance with the things they DO very well and exceed their competitors' abilities in. But I know you know all of that... so just making friendly conversation.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Maalik said:


> So I use a bot farm on your books and you're banned for life? You pay for a promotion from some place you think is legit and they inflate rank with a bot farm and you're banned for life?
> 
> One strike rules are bad. There are always mitigating circumstances.


I don't think people take issue with zon having a light touch. I think the last thing anyone would want to see is someone accidentally banned that either wasn't botting, or thought a promo outlet was legit that wasn't.

The issue most people have is that zon seems to have no touch. There have been people who suddenly had 50,000 page reads that they knew couldn't be true... so wisely they contact zon and say "something is amiss here, just checking in." Zon looks and replies "everything looks fine on this end."

hehehe. I mean, this is monty python-level comedy. It's like finding a million dollars in your bank account, going to the bank to say something is wrong and they tell you "ah, looks fine to me, don't worry about it."

I mean, wtf?!

Even when you WANT to turn yourself in zon refuses to admit something is wrong.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

hottakes said:


> This, partially. Amazon stripped rank because they thought some authors were using clickfarms. I know several of the authors caught up in this, and none of them used any sort of clickfarming at all. They're all legit, serious authors.
> 
> Which I've been saying over and over in these threads, and yet you all still somehow believe that Amazon is actually good at this stuff / right about it.
> 
> ...


I just took a quick tour through the formerly rank-stripped books I'm following. *Every single one of them* has been stripped again. And the one author with the note about being an All-Star has lost that claim on the page for the rank-stripped book as well as on the page of a Top 100 book (which is 12MB full of stuffed title goodness, btw, in KU, and still somehow 99 cents). Probably on the rest of their catalog too, but I only checked those two books.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

PhoenixS said:


> I just took a quick tour through the formerly rank-stripped books I'm following. *Every single one of them* has been stripped again. And the one author with the note about being an All-Star has lost that claim on the page for the rank-stripped book as well as on the page of a Top 100 book (which is 12MB full of stuffed title goodness, btw, in KU, and still somehow 99 cents). Probably on the rest of their catalog too, but I only checked those two books.


Fascinating.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

The issue for me - and this has been the case since the scammer issue exploded in January 2016 - is not whether Amazon should apply a light touch or be heavy handed, it's that Amazon seems to treat the most egregious scammers and cheaters with a light touch and be very heavy handed with honest authors who commit a minor infraction (or are incorrectly perceived by Amazon to have broken the rules).

I have personal experience now myself, after a bug at a German retailer reactivated some dead listings from 2013, inadvertantly putting my in breach of Select's exclusivity rules, causing Amazon to cancel my Countdown deal - without telling me, just as it began, costing me hundreds of dollars. I got no apology from Amazon and they made no attempt to make it right aside from the paltry offer of a new KCD.

I'm not alone of course, others here like Patty had countdowns cancelled repeatedly with no explanation given - they wouldn't even answer her emails. An author I know had his new release yanked from sale because of typos - he received no warning email asking him to take corrective action. He also got no apology or explanation. Then of course there were the famous cases of the guy getting his book yanked for having a rear TOC in the middle of a Bookbub etc.

Contrasting this, we have seen the worst of the worst scammers and cheaters getting a slap on the wrist for the craziest behavior. There is one guy who put SIX books in the Top 10 of the overall Kindle Store over a period of a month-and-a-half, and he got just one book rank-stripped. That's it. He's still publishing and no doubt up to all sorts. He has been engaged in extremely dodgy behavior for years and continues to do so because he always gets away with it.

Let's also not forget that there are many more scammers than those who were talked about in my posts. Amazon hasn't moved against them at all. 

There's one famous scammer with 250+ titles that I didn't mention - who has been operating with impunity since at least October 2016. Phoenix has reported them multiple times. Nothing happened. I offered Amazon a spreadsheet of all their titles and ASINs.

Amazon didn't want it. All their titles are still active.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

dgaughran said:


> The issue for me - and this has been the case since the scammer issue exploded in January 2016 - is not whether Amazon should apply a light touch or be heavy handed, it's that Amazon seems to treat the most egregious scammers and cheaters with a light touch and be very heavy handed with honest authors who commit a minor infraction (or are incorrectly perceived by Amazon to have broken the rules).


The difficulty, though, as someone else has pointed out upthread, is that it's very, very hard to nail down scammy behaviour because it depends on intent. Just because a book has been rank-botted into the bestseller lists doesn't mean that that author intended to do anything illegal. If accused of it, they'll swear up and down they only paid for some promo, they had no idea what the promo people were doing, or (even worse) deny doing anything at all. And it's very, very hard to prove otherwise unless you go into private FB groups or put a team of actual human beings on the case, which Amazon isn't going to do.

On the other hand, those minor infractions are happening on Amazon's turf, and they're provable. You're exclusive but your book is still for sale on some obscure site? Amazon's bots will pick that up. TOC at the back of the book? Amazon's bots will pick that up. You don't need human intervention, at least until the author squeals about his ruined Bookbub.

In the lowest moments of reading these threads, I like to think that Amazon is, in fact, working on fixing the problems, albeit very slowly. They're never going to win by stamping on every scammer individually, and I think they're not even trying. What I think (hope) they're trying to do is to make sure it doesn't pay to scam. There are signs that the bundled books scam is being addressed, and we'll find out for sure on 15th. The rank-botting and pages read scams still seem to be chugging along.

Personally, I'll love to see borrows linked to sales in some way. The surest sign of a scammer is borrows way higher than sales, so why not restrict the allowable number of borrows in some way? Non-scammy authors wouldn't be affected, and it would limit the revenue from scams, as well as making it impossible to maliciously bot a rival author.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

PaulineMRoss said:


> The difficulty, though, as someone else has pointed out upthread, is that it's very, very hard to nail down scammy behaviour because it depends on intent. Just because a book has been rank-botted into the bestseller lists doesn't mean that that author intended to do anything illegal. If accused of it, they'll swear up and down they only paid for some promo, they had no idea what the promo people were doing, or (even worse) deny doing anything at all. And it's very, very hard to prove otherwise unless you go into private FB groups or put a team of actual human beings on the case, which Amazon isn't going to do.


I absolutely agree with the spirit of what you said, and your reason for saying it, but have to disagree with some of the substance. We have a lot of discussion on here about how Amazon might stop this or that, or what systems could be put in place to reduce Behavior X, and so forth. All of them are predicated on Amazon having the will to actually stamp out these practices. I'm arguing that assumption may be a bit hasty.

I'll give you an example. He's well known to this board, but let's just call him Fantasy Bob. Now, Fantasy Bob has a very bad reputation and has had one since I started years ago. He's known for review purchasing and sock-puppetry and drive by one-stars and republishing, and horrible bullying and threats - every dirty trick in the book.

Fantasy Bob is the author who put six books in the Kindle Store Top 10 during the summer. Amazon is fully aware of who he is. When they rank-stripped the other books, the actually took all his books off sale - a step further than the rest. Unfortunately this was temporary and all this books were returned to sale something like a week later. One of his books (that hit #6 via clickfarms/bots) is still rank stripped but the rest are untouched.

Amazon knows all about this guy. Hell, half the community knows about him. And he continues doing what he does, and Amazon continues letting him (and continues picking him for promos - purely off the back of his botted visibility!).

Let me try and be clearer: Amazon doesn't care. Amazon. Doesn't. Care.

If there is a PR mess, Amazon will swoop in and nibble around the edges of the problem. But stopping scammers completely? Amazon doesn't care. Stamping out cheaters? Amazon doesn't care.

So we can argue about how Amazon could catch people or what system could stop certain behaviors, but arguing about the means is kind of pointless when Amazon doesn't have the will.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

PaulineMRoss said:


> The difficulty, though, as someone else has pointed out upthread, is that it's very, very hard to nail down scammy behaviour because it depends on intent.


Just wanted to tease this out also. Phoenix can probably say the same at this point, but, honestly, I can spot them almost right away. Scammers - at least the greedy dumbasses that get caught - can't seem to restrict themselves to one scammy behavior. So they often won't just stop at using a clickfarm, there will be bonus stuffing and review purchasing and title keyword stuffing and click here inducements, and usually plagiarized synonimized content etc.

The average scammer is very, very easy to spot. Amazon hasn't moved against the bulk of these guys at all. Still just nibbling at the edges of the problem.

The authors engaging in some scammer tactics (like a desperate author who might occasionally use a clickfarm) are harder to spot. They often don't engage in the full suite of scamminess. Still not hard for me to spot them though. The books move in a totally different way than organic books, or books that appear on BookBub.

And if I can spot them, surely Amazon can.

But to tease your point out fully, maybe Author X can say he used a certain service without knowing it was a clickfarm. OK, that's possible. But most of these guys are doing it repeatedly. There's one SF author who does it all the time. All. The. Time.

That's no accident.

Amazon isn't moving against those guys either. That SF author? I've never mentioned him, never reported him. He's like a control in a test. He's really obvious, really high profile, and I'm sure Amazon know what he's doing. And they haven't sanctioned him at all.

Amazon doesn't care.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

dgaughran said:


> The average scammer is very, very easy to spot. Amazon hasn't moved against the bulk of these guys at all. Still just nibbling at the edges of the problem. [...]Amazon doesn't care.


Absolutely agree that scammers are easy to spot - by humans, but Amazon as a matter of principle will not deploy humans against the problem except as a last resort.

Amazon doesn't care? Not so sure. I think there are people there who DO care, and are working slowly but methodically towards solutions. They're probably few in number and underfunded, but I am 100% convinced that there are people working on it. However, the bulk of the Amazonian behemoth neither knows nor cares, so you get repeated scammers who are left untouched because they haven't fallen over any tripwires to draw attention to themselves. There may be a couple of IT guys in a basement somewhere coding away on scamproof solutions, but Joe Customer Service on the 27th floor has no idea about any of that. Unless the scammers put the TOC at the back of the book, shock horror, no one will take a blind bit of notice. But one day, version 4,583,502 of the KU software will go live and suddenly rankbotting won't work any more.

Or so I hope, anyway.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> Scamming might be a big deal to authors, but I can't see why it would be to Amazon. They'll only care if it translates to real money out of their pocket, and even then, only if it's a decent percentage, otherwise it's considered a minor leak. It's not worth much in terms of cost and ongoing resources to fix it.


As everyone knows at this point, the only thing zon cares about is PR. And I have my theories as to why this is. I used to work in corporate communications, and along with legal and finance, these are functions of the business that concern themselves with the overall big picture. Every other department operates in their own little bubbles and with their own little agendas and targets.

So it's just like you say, they go through a "check list" of considerations, but only from their department's consideration.

When something hits the press... meaning it goes from being an issue in a little sandbox over here to impacting (potentially) the entire organization... that's when corporate communications goes right to the CEO and says "WTF is Frank doing over at KU?! How the hell is this not being fixed?"

Not sure I should say this, but I guess I will. I would occasionally get a call from a pissed off customer (we're talking big corporations here). Would always annoy me because I wasn't a customer-facing part of the business (so it usually meant my day was ruined). They were furious that the sales and tech support team weren't fixing their problem fast enough (and rightly so, they were being jerked around). The customer said if the problem wasn't fixed in x days they were going to the press.

That's all I needed. There was a risk to the corporate brand and I escalated to the VP of sales and the VP of customer implementation (i think that was his title, been a while now). Knowing I would have to inform the CEO of this matter during my weekly briefing the VP of sales moved heaven and earth to resolve the problem in a day so it was resolved by the time I was talking to the CEO. It's only when his mess was about to affect the company as a whole that he began to crap his pants... before that all he cared about was the next sale, screw the customer complaining.

*So technically, if the SP community really wanted to get amazon's attention, they would submit their grievances not to CSR or jeff's email but rather to PR / communications folks at Amazon. I haven't looked, but their contact info is usually available on a company's media/news portal. 
*
I can't speak to how zon runs their PR, but in 99% of companies, once the PR department sees a potential disaster is bubbling under the surface, and once they are officially aware of it (and now will be held partly responsible should it blow up in the press)... they will usually get involved. This is why blog posts and social media can often times generate a response... departments quickly move to resolve things before corporate communications comes down and says "WTF is going on?!" - because if it gets to that stage, then odds are the CEO is going to be told there is a problem.

People keep thinking that zon fears bad press. But what's really happening is one department (communications) is getting involved and telling people if this isn't fixed they are bringing it to Jeff.

That said, though, sometimes even communications gets told to stand down. Just that when that happens it's usually because the CEO has told them to. Microsoft is a prime example of a company that seems to disregard their communications people.

And that right there is the most interesting thing. I suspect Bezos must be aware of this issue given the $3M story that broke last year, and yet the problem persists. So either Jeff has said he doesn't care, OR, was told the issue was handled when it really hasn't been (and it just hasn't blown up again to the point where he's aware nothing has been fixed).

The PR folks are actually the ones who give a crap about the company's reputation; they are literally the one function of the business that specifically gets paid to do so. So really, for things like petitions or whatever, they are the ones you want to flag down in terms of having any hope of someone taking your complaints seriously.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> I'm less inclined to have Amazon give authors with a history of serial botting or serial stuffing or serial price-matching a second chance beyond when they've been caught. For example, one of the rank-stripped authors has been botting books into the overall Top 10 periodically for months. They did have their catalog pulled briefly and then reinstated in July. Additionally, one book was rank-stripped. Long ago, Amazon stripped them of their right to review. But they not only still have their account, they're still in KU.
> 
> That kind of behavior and authors with entire catalogs of stuffed content who've been operating under the radar for months have already had their second chances.


I have no issue with second chances, because mistakes do happen. The problem here is, you need human interaction in KU so they can actually tell the scammers from the naive or ignorant. It's not that subtle, for goodness' sake. For the most part, they're right out in the open, scamming bonuses off of KU, botting titles to the bestseller's lists, many of them without the expected reviews or sales. (Here's a clue, Amazon: if it's only extremely high page reads with no or few sales, it's 99.9% not legit.). Some are even telling readers what they're doing.



> The surest sign of a scammer is borrows way higher than sales, {sni[}


Well, statistically my borrows is way higher than my sales, though on a scum under the prawn level, but I'm certainly not botting. Nothing is stuffed full of whatever, either, though there are legitimate bundles.



> So we can argue about how Amazon could catch people or what system could stop certain behaviors, but arguing about the means is kind of pointless when Amazon doesn't have the will.


And I guess this is what bothers me the most. It wouldn't take that much time, or that much money to fix the problem to acceptable levels (you'll never totally stop scamming). Certainly less than they pay out in scammed bonuses. *They just don't care.* Until it comes from the customer side, it means nothing to them. They squeeze us down to less than .004 per page? That's fine. Plenty of people still dreaming about those bonuses, most of whom have no idea about what's going on because they're absolutely ignorant about how this stuff works. I mean, half of them can't figure out how to write anything beyond "Run, Dick and Jane!", much less wrap their minds around the shenanigans others get up to. And I don't mean to be insulting, ignorance isn't stupidity, but that's just how it is.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

Microsoft jumps on things to appease their image all the time. I know from experience they cater to their high paying business customers - if they complain about a bug, things get dropped to fix it. Anything else would cost them money and that's not a good business plan. Now an individual....   yah, good luck with that complaint.


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## Guest (Sep 2, 2017)

zzz said:


> Amazon is never going to care about scammers because it's our money they're stealing out of the KU pot, not Amazon's.
> 
> Amazon is never going to care about page flip, returning to the beginning, or any other software issue that fails to pay us. On the contrary, they want to encourage such behavior, allowing them to steal our intellectual property for their own financial gain.
> 
> ...


Yes to everything. Bravo.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> As for whether bad PR will make a business do something. In the past, I would have said yes, but these days I'm not so sure. Does bad PR add up to a loss of business? Not usuallly for many. Apple, FB, Amazon and others seem to weather bad press very well.
> 
> But hey, if people want to whip up a frenzy of bad press (assuming they can) then go for it. Like you, I just dumped KU and went wide. I'm not even a little bit confident of KU's future in terms of pay rates or even sustainability. Although KU might be good for Amazon and subscribers, it's a bit of a slow motion train wreck for authors.


Yep, totally valid point. PR tends to matter when there's competition in the market. Admittedly, it's questionable whether zon considers anyone a (serious) competitor at this point (even bad press, i strongly suspect they only care about that with regards to what shareholders think, not what customers think). And if a company gets to a point where it stops caring about its brand / reputation, that's usually when you start to see high turn over in the comms department (as PR folks have no desire to spend their day trying to convince reporters that things aren't as bad as they seem).

And yes, KU can't be fixed and will remain a train wreck. I think it will be interesting if payout hits .0038... something about being in the 30's I think is going to jar a lot of people.

Ironically I find myself cheering for KU *not* to crash and burn... I like the relative sea of calm on the other vendors.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

dgaughran said:


> Let me try and be clearer: Amazon doesn't care. Amazon. Doesn't. Care.


Nail. Head. The *only* thing that Amazon cares about is expanding their customer base. Period. The end. Unless it's something really egregious that can blow up into a media firestorm like the time they screwed with the gay/lesbian books, they don't even care about PR. The IP issue is too far removed from the general public's everyday life to show up on the six o'clock news and have crowds of angry people protesting in front of Amazon's offices. They already know they can screw their own vendors over to their black little hearts' content with no repercussions - they've been doing it for years. And they don't really care much about what happens in the bookstore. It's a tiny fraction of their overall revenue and its purpose isn't even to make money, it's to get people into the store to buy more stuff. So long as it's doing that, they're not going to mess with it any more than they have to.


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

Maalik said:


> So I use a bot farm on your books and you're banned for life? You pay for a promotion from some place you think is legit and they inflate rank with a bot farm and you're banned for life?
> 
> One strike rules are bad. There are always mitigating circumstances.


I realize my post was a bit too blanket, but I think there is a vast difference between someone who uses one questionable promo and ends up with an inflated sales rank and someone paying thousands a month to go from obscurity to all-star status within the matter of a week. When I realized I'd used a questionable service for a one-day promo I immediately self-reported. I've heard of folks who had huge spikes in page reads doing the same, fearing they were being used as cover for other bot activity. That just isn't the same as someone with 5 reviews topping the charts for months on end.

While I agree there are sometimes mitigating circumstances, I can't agree there are always mitigating circumstances, as in these cases I often believe the circumstance is, "I want money and whatever I do to get it is OK."

Having said that, Phoenix made the most sense in her post about punishment and I agree whole-heartedly.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

I think TwistedTales and Seneca42 together have the right of it -- scamming isn't a moral issue for Amazon. It's a matter if dispassionate cost-benefit analysis. It's predictable and, from their perspective, not expensive in the least. Solving it really effectively _would_ be expensive, so they largely tolerate it. PR costs, on the other hand, aren't predictable, so that's the one area where we have had and could continue to have an impact. Let's not forget the very recent improvement to the way page-reads are counted. It's an example of the company spending money to fix a problem that probably had little financial impact on it. I'm guessing they did it anyway because things were getting a little embarrassing. The ability to escalate problems a step up the KDP chain of command is another author-facing innovation. Back in early 2015, when I had my copyright problem, I had no access to any middle layers of customer service between the entry-level reps and Jeff's email address (which I was only lucky enough to have because people here shared it with me).

I have zero inside info, so this too is just a guess: I bet KDP is our natural ally on this. I bet they'd like to run a tighter ship. I mean, once-in-a-lifetime companies like Amazon aren't as successful as they are because they hire a bunch of people whose field of [expletive]s is barren, right? I think they want to do a good job and produce a good product. But surely KDP isn't a major part of the company and doesn't get a lot of resources tossed its way. So they have to make do largely with automated processes -- algorithms and bots and customer service reps who are only allowed to send canned responses (the human version of an automated process). If we find these limitations frustrating, it seems likely KDP does as well.

So. We should keep giving them PR disasters they can leverage to extract a larger percentage of the company's budget. IMO.


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

Becca Mills said:


> I think TwistedTales and Seneca42 together have the right of it -- scamming isn't a moral issue for Amazon. It's a matter if dispassionate cost-benefit analysis. It's predictable and, from their perspective, not expensive in the least. Solving it really effectively _would_ be expensive, so they largely tolerate it. PR costs, on the other hand, aren't predictable, so that's the one area where we have had and could continue to have an impact. Let's not forget the very recent improvement to the way page-reads are counted. It's an example of the company spending money to fix a problem that probably had little financial impact on it. I'm guessing they did it anyway because things were getting a little embarrassing. The ability to escalate problems a step up the KDP chain of command is another author-facing innovation. Back in early 2015, when I had my copyright problem, I had no access to any middle layers of customer service between the entry-level reps and Jeff's email address (which I was only lucky enough to have because people here shared it with me).
> 
> I have zero inside info, so this too is just a guess: I bet KDP is our natural ally on this. I bet they'd like to run a tighter ship. I mean, once-in-a-lifetime companies like Amazon aren't as successful as they are because they hire a bunch of people whose field of [expletive]s is barren, right? I think they want to do a good job and produce a good product. But surely KDP isn't a major part of the company and doesn't get a lot of resources tossed its way. So they have to make do largely with automated processes -- algorithms and bots and customer service reps who are only allowed to send canned responses (the human version of an automated process). If we find these limitations frustrating, it seems likely KDP does as well.
> 
> So. We should keep giving them PR disasters they can leverage to extract a larger percentage of the company's budget. IMO.


My experience is with school districts, not large companies, but in that kind of situation, the scenario you suggest happened all the time. Someone close to a problem wanted to solve it. Maybe everyone close to a problem wanted to solve it. However, the person who could have approved the necessary measures, usually a bureaucrat in the district office, had less (or often zero) interest in solving it. The problems that got solved quickly were the ones that had large numbers of angry community members speaking out at board meetings. That went double for teacher working conditions. Problems never got resolved unless they became a PR embarrassment.

We are vendors, not employees, but I think some of the same reasoning still applies. An issue that's important to us but not to Amazon's bottom line will be slow to get addressed--unless the issue creates a PR nightmare.

I'm sure Amazon does care about what stockholders think, but it still isn't in a position to ignore what customers think. There are still alternatives, even for people who want to shop online for books. In other areas, that's even more true. The breadth of Amazon's offerings makes it attractive for one-stop shopping, and the Prime free shipping makes it much easier to impulse buy, but a customer annoyed enough by something Amazon was doing would still have other options.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Hey, guys:

We're dealing with one of the biggest corporations in the world. Amazon is #237 on the Forbes Global 2000 list.

We're dealing with one of the richest men in the world. I think Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates trade places with Warren Buffett for top dog.

So, Kindle Unlimited scams are so small in the greater scheme of things to Amazon that I'm not surprised that scammers get away with it.

Remember the old Ford Pinto story?

Ford knew the Pinto's gas tank was placed in a bad location, leading to horrible deaths of passengers in rear-end collisions. They did a cost-benefit analysis of fixing the problem or paying the legal costs when they were sued by the dead passenger's families. 

They decided to pay the families instead of revise the design and retool the assembly line.

It was cheaper.

Amazon wants to keep everything as automated as possible. That's key to their margins. So, if automated checks find small fry making TOS infractions like forgetting to check obscure websites that might incorrectly have a book up for sale, they take them down. If automated checks don't recognize scamming or botting or stuffing, nothing happens. To really address the problem -- which is a problem only for us authors aka suppliers -- they'd probably have to spend some shekels, and hire some meat suits to investigate and enforce.

It's cheaper to let the scammers scam.

/cynicism


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

sela said:


> Hey, guys:
> 
> We're dealing with one of the biggest corporations in the world. Amazon is #237 on the Forbes Global 2000 list.
> 
> ...


Completely agree with this. KU is a funnel into Amazon's eco-system, and as long as content providers are willing to keep the funnel stocked - little if anything will be done to improve terms for said providers. And there's ALWAYS going to be willing content providers. Always.

The payment could fall below the 30s into the 20s, 10s or even lower and there will still be authors clamoring to be part of KU. The page flip issue could worsen or something even more blatantly wrong could crop up and authors will still clamor to put their books in KU. The scamming may become even more brazen and ubiquitous than it already is and authors will still clamor to put their books into KU. All of the above may or will occur and Amazon will continue to be incentivized to do nothing.

Nothing's going to change.


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

jaehaerys said:


> Completely agree with this. KU is a funnel into Amazon's eco-system, and as long as content providers are willing to keep the funnel stocked - little if anything will be done to improve terms for said providers. And there's ALWAYS going to be willing content providers. Always.
> 
> The payment could fall below the 30s into the 20s, 10s or even lower and there will still be authors clamoring to be part of KU. The page flip issue could worsen or something even more blatantly wrong could crop up and authors will still clamor to put their books in KU. The scamming may become even more brazen and ubiquitous than it already is and authors will still clamor to put their books into KU. All of the above may or will occur and Amazon will continue to be incentivized to do nothing.
> 
> Nothing's going to change.


 Nothing ever changes--until it does.

While I have no doubt some people would still be in KU at a quarter of the current payout, how many of them would be good writers? How many KU subscribers will want to read the offerings available at that point? There could be a few strong writers who get so many pages read that they could still make a good amount even at that point, but I'm willing to predict that they won't be able to produce enough quality content to keep KU afloat if everybody except the desperate or the ill-informed flee. I can see a brand new writer falling for KU, but it wouldn't take someone long to start questioning the wisdom if the pay is extremely low. That just leaves people who aren't that successful clinging to KU because at least it gives them a little. (I'm not that successful, but even I wouldn't stay in KU if I wasn't making anything on it.)

In that kind of scenario, Amazon will be trapped by its own insistence on exclusivity. If it's an either-or choice between KU or wide, only people doing much business in KU have an incentive to stay. If the payout drops so far that even a miserable performance going wide would be better, then the center of gravity will shift. Had KU been non-exclusive, authors might have stuck to it because it was an extra source of income, and your prophecy would have been fulfilled. Under an exclusive model, though, KU only looks more attractive than wide if it can bring in more than people could get wide.


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

sela said:


> Remember the old Ford Pinto story?


I do, and yes, Ford did what you described--years ago. I was just checking an article on the _Popular Mechanics_ website that reminded me that incident turned into a total PR debacle for Ford, so much so that it still haunts the company today. The writer also suggested that in today's climate, the problem would have been handled differently.

Amazon obviously isn't going to cause any deaths because of the structure of KU, so the stakes are much lower. However, Amazon has shown some sensitivity to PR in earlier situations, even if the solution was sometimes not very nuanced.

The company could save headaches by dropping KU. For whatever reason, it doesn't want to do that. People like Atunah have already suggested it's getting harder to find good books among all the scammer garbage. If Amazon wants to keep the program going, it will eventually have to do something. That probably won't happen, though, until subscriptions noticeably decline.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

The comedy show isn't over folks... DS got its rank back. 

hehehe.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Put the book rank in...
Pull the book rank out...
Put the book rank in...
And shake it all about...


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Why yes indeedy. Every de-de-ranked book has its rank back. And FIVE of the authors are sporting All-Star tags.

Excuse me. Must run. I feel a new marketing plan coming on...


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## TessOliver (Dec 2, 2010)

Suddenly, the decision to go wide is so easy.


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## Some Random Guy (Jan 16, 2016)

The mods didn't like this meme the first time around. Let's see how long it lasts this time before it's deleted.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Eric Thomson said:


> The mods didn't like this meme the first time around. Let's see how long it lasts this time before it's deleted.


And people wonder why people get put on post approval ... 

The problem is not the meme itself. It's that posting it in a thread that isn't about the question of whether authors should be in KU threatens to derail the thread into that contentious debate. In other words, it's a crappy thing to do to someone else's thread -- in this case, someone who's worked awfully hard for our community. So, you know. If you want to have that (tired old) debate, start a thread about it. We'll see how it goes.


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2017)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Nothing ever changes--until it does.
> 
> While I have no doubt some people would still be in KU at a quarter of the current payout, how many of them would be good writers? How many KU subscribers will want to read the offerings available at that point?


The counter-argument to this is that there are enough imbecile readers to handsomely sustain a subscription service that caters to imbecile readers. Change will not depend on authors but on subscribers and the pool of imbecile subscribers is effectively without limit. Quality is important and worth striving for, but we live in a world where quality is often not necessary for successful commerce, so the question remains is Amazon's priority quality or money?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

icarusxx said:


> so the question remains is Amazon's priority quality or money?


not a question at all. 10000% money. Look at all the sketchy, scammy Chinese crap they sell for other products.

Amazon used to be a "high quality, low margins, high quantity" business model. Now it's more of a "flea market" business model. The two models can easily be confused with one another as they look similar. The difference is that one focuses on ensuring a good customer experience (ie. you can trust what you buy) and the other operates on a "buyer beware" experience (zon tries to offset this by being good about returns). Zon hasn't descended to Alibaba levels yet, but it's heading in that direction.

As much as we want scammers stopped because they are damaging our ecosystem, Amazon should want them stopped also because they are degrading the customer experience (even if the customers don't yet realize this). I chuckle when people say zon cares about the customer experience... they don't really... if they did they wouldn't let their store fill up with bots and scammers.

But they let it. Which means Amazon is fine with a flea market business model. Which will increase profits, but will also leave them vulnerable to competitors as time goes on. Zon is doing damage to itself today that won't be felt for a few more years.

The folly of Amazon's behavior won't be evident until someone challenges them. One day, you'll wake up, and Walmart will have decided to attack zon in the ebook space and the authors and customers will abandon KU in droves. Zon execs will scratch their heads wondering where it all went wrong.

But until that day, they will enjoy the market dominance they have and ignore the fire in the kitchen because it hasn't spread to the rest of the house yet.

Similarly people say Bezos didn't get where he is by ignoring problems. All I can say is that strange things happen to people when they get to the top and get older in age. Many start wanting to enjoy life and they take their eye off the ball. I totally think that is happening at Amazon and has been for the past few years.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I don't consent


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> Which means Amazon is fine with a flea market business model.


Agreed. Which suggests that if KU is a funnel into Amazon-at-large, maybe Amazon WANTS imbecile readers in KU because they make good flea market customers. (As the Shadow said, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?)


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

icarusxx said:


> The counter-argument to this is that there are enough imbecile readers to handsomely sustain a subscription service that caters to imbecile readers. Change will not depend on authors but on subscribers and the pool of imbecile subscribers is effectively without limit. Quality is important and worth striving for, but we live in a world where quality is often not necessary for successful commerce, so the question remains is Amazon's priority quality or money?


Imbecile readers? Really?
Thirty-six years of teaching in public high schools taught me that most people actually aren't imbeciles. The percentage of people who are imbeciles who spend a lot of time reading, especially for pleasure, is even lower. If Amazon really intends to keep KU afloat with a never ending stream of imbecile readers, they need to check their demographic analysis.

The truth is, though, that we have no idea what readers are thinking (except for people we know personally) and no idea what Amazon is thinking. We can speculate, but we don't really know who knows what when, and we certainly don't know why they do what they do. Nor do we even know how much scamming is really going on.

We know there is scamming, and we know it's a problem on several levels. We can make an educated guess that Amazon isn't fixing it because it would cost more to fix than Amazon expects to make from the fix. There isn't enough data to go much beyond that. There certainly isn't enough data to assume readers who can't find satisfactory content won't start migrating away from KU. Nor is there enough data to know that Amazon won't respond in some way when that happens.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

icarusxx said:


> Agreed. Which suggests that if KU is a funnel into Amazon-at-large, maybe Amazon WANTS imbecile readers in KU because they make good flea market customers. (As the Shadow said, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?)


The more I've thought about my comment, the more I'm realizing a lot of this may be tied to Alibaba. A few years ago I was shocked to see so many junk chinese products popping up on Amazon. I mean, no way zon is moving a ton of quantity with these guys and it seriously degraded the customer experience (now you have to be ultra careful about what you buy, whereas before you didn't). It was a very strange direction for zon to go - logical in terms of slowing Alibaba's growth, but totally illogical in terms of customer experience.

But, they may view Alibaba as a threat down the road that they have to try and defang now. If true, then the entire business may be moving away from quality control and toward one giant virtual flea market model. Their behavior with KU totally suggests this... not only do they not gate anything, they don't even address the criminals in the bazaar who are pick pocketing everyone. It's just a mad max flea market.

Similar with their fire tv box... which I love. But I don't use any of the zon apps/services on it. Yet the media box is FILLED with endless amazon icons that you have to wade through. It's a truly horrific customer experience, but it's all about pushing things to buy. You can't remove their icons or anything they put in the interface.

From my perspective, it's very clear that zon is not committed to the customer experience. Rather, it's all about aggressively pushing people into revenue streams. It's not a good look and I don't think it bodes well for the future (unless of course they can stop someone from ever challenging them, then the customer experience doesn't matter).


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

T. M. Bilderback said:


> I saw in another thread, and I can't remember which one (sorry), that a comment was made about a blog post asking customers to complain to Amazon concerning KU. It was along the lines of zzz's post. The response that I saw was that "no one is going to care about an author's problems when *voluntarily* entering KU".
> 
> If you enter into KU of your own free will, and don't like what's happening, you are free to leave at the end of your three-month signup period. Many customers know this (Lord knows we've all talked about it enough here and other places), _and they won't care!_
> 
> ...


I don't want to bash you. I will point out, however, as I just did to another poster, that we don't really know that Amazon and customers don't care. We can tell what Amazon and customers do, but not why.

The problem with your last statement is that a lot of people are still making significant money in KU, despite all its faults. It's easy to tell those people they should leave KU. It's a lot harder for someone to take that step if a) they rely on their writing income to make a living, and b) a large chunk of their income is coming from KU. Everyone isn't in a position to support their families for several months while waiting for wide sales to kick in--and sometimes they don't.

Believe me, I have days when I wish that everyone would uncheck their autorenewal boxes, but it isn't really the fault of authors who are pursuing what looks like (even if only in the short-term) their best bet. If we want someone to blame, we should be blaming the scammers and/or Amazon.


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

Seneca42 said:


> From my perspective, it's very clear that zon is not committed to the customer experience. Rather, it's all about aggressively pushing people into revenue streams. It's not a good look and I don't think it bodes well for the future (unless of course they can stop someone from ever challenging them, then the customer experience doesn't matter).


There is certainly some truth in that, at least in the sense that Amazon is pursuing a different path than it used to. The question this thread keeps raising, though, is how Amazon would respond if enough customers complained or if the bottom line started suffering. You and I might not like the deluge of icons you describe, but maybe most users don't mind it--in which case it isn't a bad customer experience for them.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Bill Hiatt said:


> There is certainly some truth in that, at least in the sense that Amazon is pursuing a different path than it used to. The question this thread keeps raising, though, is how Amazon would respond if enough customers complained or if the bottom line started suffering. You and I might not like the deluge of icons you describe, but maybe most users don't mind it--in which case it isn't a bad customer experience for them.


Well, the rating system we know is openly mocked by everyone. Just go on reddit, say /r/books and ask "what do people think of Amazon's rating system?" and you'll get a 1,000 replies with everyone saying it's a total and utter joke. I've seen such threads and it's beyond clear consumers do not trust amazon's rating system.

Here's the irony... I think zon gets WAY more love from us (ie. indie authors) than by general consumers. People don't like zon, but it's still the most convenient online shopping option. I'd say right now zon's #1 strength isn't even its store or customer experience... it's its shipping times.

zon seems invincible, until you remember walmart revenues are almost 4 times as much as zons. And I'll say this, mind you I'm in Canada, Walmarts shipping times are f-in insane. Ordered some stuff from them online and it arrived same day. I guess because they have local stores they literally are shipping from down the block.

All too say, it's entirely possible zon has lost its way and it will take time for us to see that. It's possible Bezos has lost his way (diversified so much that he can't manage zon's efforts as closely as he once did). But no matter how you cut it, zon is not behaving like a company that has its act together (at least not in the KU world).


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Seneca42 said:


> Amazon used to be a "high quality, low margins, high quantity" business model. Now it's more of a "flea market" business model. The two models can easily be confused with one another as they look similar. The difference is that one focuses on ensuring a good customer experience (ie. you can trust what you buy) and the other operates on a "buyer beware" experience (zon tries to offset this by being good about returns). Zon hasn't descended to Alibaba levels yet, but it's heading in that direction.


What you're saying is alien to my experience of Amazon. It's the "everything store." Selling _everything_ means they have cheap crap; high-quality expensive stuff; and best of all, high-quality cheap stuff. Sure, they sell lots of stuff that's made in China. That's because Chinese manufacturing has captured huge percentages of some segments of consumer goods. Many of those products are excellent despite their low cost. Just this morning I bought a bunch of kids' toothbrushes on Amazon. They're made in China, they're terrific, and they're $.68 each.

Also, I find Amazon's product reviews quite helpful. I occasionally encounter fake reviews, but by and large, the reviews on products I'm considering are genuine and helpful. When I do brick-and-mortar shopping, I check product reviews on Amazon while standing in the aisle. Admittedly, reviews on books are highly subjective and therefore less helpful than reviews on laptops and kitchen faucets and toothbrushes. I still do find book reviews helpful, though: I just look for reviews by people who seem to share my sensibilities.



icarusxx said:


> The counter-argument to this is that there are enough imbecile readers to handsomely sustain a subscription service that caters to imbecile readers. Change will not depend on authors but on subscribers and the pool of imbecile subscribers is effectively without limit. Quality is important and worth striving for, but we live in a world where quality is often not necessary for successful commerce, so the question remains is Amazon's priority quality or money?


I don't think they think in terms of "quality or money." I think they think in terms of customer satisfaction. The bottom line is that if people aren't satisfied with the products they're receiving and the amount they're paying for them, they won't keep shopping at Amazon. Amazon's share of retail sales in the segments they serve is growing, taking market share away from others, so what they're doing does seem to be working.

Also, I'm a KU subscriber, and I'm not an imbecile. It's true that I don't finish most of the books I borrow, but I also don't finish most of the books I start that are not in KU. In the genres I read, book quality seems similar inside and outside the program.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> The more I've thought about my comment, the more I'm realizing a lot of this may be tied to Alibaba. A few years ago I was shocked to see so many junk chinese products popping up on Amazon. I mean, no way zon is moving a ton of quantity with these guys and it seriously degraded the customer experience (now you have to be ultra careful about what you buy, whereas before you didn't). It was a very strange direction for zon to go - logical in terms of slowing Alibaba's growth, but totally illogical in terms of customer experience.
> 
> But, they may view Alibaba as a threat down the road that they have to try and defang now. If true, then the entire business may be moving away from quality control and toward one giant virtual flea market model. Their behavior with KU totally suggests this... not only do they not gate anything, they don't even address the criminals in the bazaar who are pick pocketing everyone. It's just a mad max flea market.
> 
> ...


Yeah to this.

Amazon has its eye on the only real competitor. Alibaba.

It has to compete with all that cheap product coming from China. So far, Amazon has been able to out-compete its competitors by pricing low, offering huge selection, offering fast and cheap or free shipping and user-friendly interface. It's gearing up for the battle of the century when Alibaba gets its [deleted] together enough to compete in the western market.

If we think Amazon is bad, imagine Alibaba.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I don't consent


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Atlantisatheart said:


> I've just put a thread up. My free promo book has been rank stripped and disappeared from all the charts I was in.
> 
> No botting. No stuffing. Ran AMS ads- Facebook - Freebooksy yesterday. Had two organic reviews with double my normal sales yesterday. And I'm miffed.


Can you link to the book in question? (Or to the thread - can't see it.)


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2017)

PhoenixS said:


> Why yes indeedy. Every de-de-ranked book has its rank back. And FIVE of the authors are sporting All-Star tags.


Before everyone gets depressed, will you read the following?

- In July 2005, Yahoo settled a class-action lawsuit against it by *plaintiffs alleging it did not do enough to prevent click fraud.* Yahoo paid $4.5 million in legal bills for the plaintiffs and agreed to settle advertiser claims dating back to 2004. In July 2006, Google settled a similar suit for $90 million.

- On March 8, 2006, Google agreed to a $90 million settlement fund in the class-action lawsuit filed by Lane's Gifts & Collectibles. The class-action lawsuit was filed in Miller County, Arkansas, by Dallas attorneys Steve Malouf, Joel Fineberg, and Dean Gresham. The expert witness for the Plaintiffs in the case was Jessie Stricchiola, an internet search expert who first identified instances of PPC fraud in 2001.

(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud#Legal_cases)

The Garner/Hamilton case sets a precedent. It shows that the indie community has matured enough to be able to self-organize, fundraise and take legal action.

Think about it.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

dgaughran said:


> Can you link to the book in question? (Or to the thread - can't see it.)


https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,255057.0.html


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

icarusxx said:


> The counter-argument to this is that there are enough imbecile readers to handsomely sustain a subscription service that caters to imbecile readers. Change will not depend on authors but on subscribers and the pool of imbecile subscribers is effectively without limit. Quality is important and worth striving for, but we live in a world where quality is often not necessary for successful commerce, so the question remains is Amazon's priority quality or money?


Insulting the millions of readers in KU, now there's a good idea.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

JRTomlin said:


> Insulting the millions of readers in KU, now there's a good idea.


Or the imbecile authors supplying books to those readers. Like myself and others here. Geesh.


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2017)

Rosie A. said:


> Or the imbecile authors supplying books to those readers. Like myself and others here. Geesh.


You can't have it both ways. Authors and readers complain about the mountain of garbage in KU, especially the garbage apparently read by a great many people. So who are the people reading the garbage? Hidden geniuses?


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## kenbritz (Oct 24, 2016)

Techcrunch has picked up the general thread of clicks and reviews.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/03/real-news-of-fake-reviews/amp/

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

Reopening this thread to see if anyone has any advice for me!

I did free days on a book last week, and really tried to optimize promotion, since I didn't have a new release in August or September (edited to fix months). The book did great, getting to #17 in the Free Store. There was some tail afterwards, and for the first couple of days it was around #1800 (which is around the best I've ever ranked in the Paid Store). I also had another book start free days this week.

Then the rank on that book disappeared. After a couple of days, I emailed them to ask why, and they replied:
"We detected that purchases or borrows of your book(s) are originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. As a result, your sales rank will not be visible until we determine this activity has ceased. While we fully support the efforts of our publishers to promote their books, we take activities that jeopardize the experience of our readers and other authors seriously. Please be aware that you are responsible for ensuring the strategies used to promote your books comply with our Terms and Conditions.  We encourage you to thoroughly review any marketing services employed for promotional purposes. You may email us at [email protected] with any questions."

I emailed them back immediately at the address they gave me, but they all bounced. I resorted to copying and pasting my email reply into a help box at KDP. I said "Oh no! The free days ended on the 23rd, and I understood that the continued activity was simply positive momentum from the KDP Select promo. I submitted the book's free days last week to a handful of established, reputable promo sites (such as Freebooksy). I also leveraged some newsletter swaps and other ways of getting the word out through other authors and some Facebook advertising. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary, other than try to build "word of mouth" through other author friends. Please let me know what you discover in your investigation, as I try very hard to be transparent and do my due diligence when publishing and promoting my books. Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, and I sincerely hope that my rank can be re-established soon."

I don't think they even read my response, just noticed that I emailed again? I got this today: "As we previously stated, we still detect purchases or borrows of your book(s) are originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. 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."

So what am I supposed to do now? FWIW, we're not talking about a super crazy jump, either. I had about 15k downloads for the free days, and then sales were up after the promo was over. KENP reads rose steadily through the promo and afterwards. But we're talking about going from $40 days to $100 days, not $1000 dollar days.

I feel kind of helpless here, and I'm not sure what to do. I wouldn't consider myself a success at all, only very recently edging into a four-figure month. I've worked hard over the last year and any errors I've made have been honest ones. I'm trying to learn how to market better or learn more, and I've already been frustrated at how difficult it is get visibility or traction in such a crowded genre/market (contemporary romance)--especially when there are people stuffing books and such.

Any advice? I'm terrified that Amazon is going to terminate my account for something that I can't prove the negation of and something, if true, I can't control and can't even begin to pinpoint. I had really thought that the improvement was due to finally having a successful FB ad and other promo stuff.


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## Guest (Sep 29, 2017)

nikkykaye said:


> ...
> The book did great, getting to #17 in the Free Store....
> Then the rank on that book disappeared.


What advertising/promo did you book, to get to #17 in the free store?
I suspect you already have the answer in who you used.


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## ImaWriter (Aug 12, 2015)

nikkykaye said:


> I submitted the book's free days last week to a handful of established, reputable promo sites (such as Freebooksy)


I'd be giving these promo sites a good look. Just because something is "established" doesn't mean it's legit. And if other authors had a hand in promotion, I'd be asking them how they _helped_ as well.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Hey Nikky: I think the only way any of us can help is if you are very transparent with us and provide a list of all your promo efforts. That includes everyone you did NL swaps with, and all your FB activity. Not trying to out anyone or cast a negative shadow over any legit authors and services, of course, but without knowing exactly who you worked with, there's just not much anyone here can do to help prove, disprove or pinpoint.

I also have to say that if Amazon is going to accuse an author or publisher of violations, they should be open about what those violations are and where they originate. Maybe they're keeping it close to the chest so they can build a case against these types of service providers, but it certainly doesn't help anyone else avoid them if those providers do what they can to appear to be on the up-and-up. Due diligence efforts don't always uncover behaviors that Amazon may have already spotted.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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

Modi Gliani said:


> You can't have it both ways. Authors and readers complain about the mountain of garbage in KU, especially the garbage apparently read by a great many people. So who are the people reading the garbage? Hidden geniuses?


I don't think it's a question of having it both ways. The true garbage that appears to be read a lot is probably being botted. KU caters to voracious readers, who, as I pointed out earlier, generally aren't imbeciles. It's true that some may have less sophisticated tastes than others or be more tolerant of the occasional typo, but these still aren't the kind of people who will take a steady diet of nothing but garbage and keep on paying their monthly fees.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Nikky...

1) Sounds like you honestly stepped on a landmine. 15k free over a couple of days is approaching bookbub numbers. No free service out there is going to generate those results (freeboosky is probably the best and they might generate 2k). 

2) You can't on the one hand say "I didn't do anything wrong" and then on the other hand not disclose the promos you used. While I trust you had no intention for this to happen, not revealing the promos you used sort of makes it seem like you're covering for people. If you can't be transparent with us, at bare minimum do so with Amazon. 

3) What you're going through is part of the reason I left KU and also part of the reason I left permafree. Where ever the botters can validate their bots and make those accounts look more legit, they will. The only safe way to sell on amazon, in my view, is paid. No one can bot your account that way. KU and permafree are now dangerous (the degree to which they are, no one knows). 

4) As for how you resolve this. I don't think any of us know. I would start by emailing Amazon a comprehensive list of all the promotion sites you used. I'd stay away from terms like "author friends". I'm sure that set off a red flag with them also... from your side it may be an innocent comment, but from their end they may have heard "group of people I game your system with."

The problem at the end of the day is that whether you did it intentionally or not (I suspect the latter) Amazon is convinced that bot accounts were used on your book. And 15k downloads makes it pretty obvious they were (the fact your spidey senses weren't set off makes me think you're too naive to this to know what was going on; that's not an insult, just a statement of fact). The only thing I can even think to do is send them a full list of all the promos you used and ask them blankly is there anything you can do to rectify this situation. And if they stonewall perhaps ask that the situation be escalated to someone that can consider the situation further. 

I'm actually really surprised they are being this heavy handed with you on a first offense. If history means anything, they've given multiple warnings before deranking someone. 

But your situation is a cautionary tale to others (not about botting, we all know that's wrong). Rather, about the dangers of simply being in KU or offering anything for free. If the botters can access your work, they can ruin anyone they set their sights on.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> but it certainly doesn't help anyone else avoid them if those providers do what they can to appear to be on the up-and-up. Due diligence efforts don't always uncover behaviors that Amazon may have already spotted.


Not to mention if someone wants to bot you to try and hurt you, there's no way to stop that.

The only way to sell 100% safely is no KU and no permafree. It's sad that it has come to this, but I just don't see what other options there are to avoid this.


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## Guest (Sep 30, 2017)

Bill Hiatt said:


> I don't think it's a question of having it both ways. The true garbage that appears to be read a lot is probably being botted. KU caters to voracious readers, who, as I pointed out earlier, generally aren't imbeciles. It's true that some may have less sophisticated tastes than others or be more tolerant of the occasional typo, but these still aren't the kind of people who will take a steady diet of nothing but garbage and keep on paying their monthly fees.


I was not talking about typos or anything like that. I meant adults reading juvenile fiction promoted to adults. My personal view of some of the stuff in KU and of who is reading it.


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

I will try to be as transparent as possible. FWIW, I always have been. I've never used a throwaway account and I use my pen name when posting here or on Reddit.

The rank-stripped book was released in July. It's my only full-length novel (the rest of my titles are novellas, pretty much). The majority of reviews happened then, I believe, with my own ARC list and the use of an ARC service. [The book that was published today is a box set of already published work, and I didn't tell anyone that was coming out (even my list).]

For the book in question:

I booked and paid for Freebooksy and My Romance Reads individually.

I used KDROI to submit the following for Sept20-22:
Successful: "I JustRead.It", "Free Books", "eReader Cafe", "Indie Book of the Day", "Free99Books", "Awesome Gang", "eFreeBooks", "Book Deal Hunter", "eBook Bargains Today", "Book Boost", "Frugal Freebies", "Free Stuff Times", "eReader Girl", "Armadillo eBooks", "Ignite Your Book", "eBook Lister", "Free Discounted Books", "Book Goodies"
Error: "People Reads", "BookHearts", "eBooks Habit", "Discount Book Man", "Book Circle", "Pretty Hot", "Its Write Now"

I got 806 clicks from NL swaps (from the data available to me).

I invested $500 in FB ads for the promo period Sept19-23 (got 16k clicks with a CPC of $0.03), and $500 for a couple of weeks following (slightly different ad, since the book wasn't free anymore).

Free downloads for this title were as follows:
Sept19: 3693
Sept20: 3990
Sept21: 5135
Sept22: 2114
Sept23: 1468

KENP reads were as follows:
Sept19: 2298
Sept20: 4587
Sept21: 8880
Sept22: 7695
Sept23: 8764
Sept24: 10,691 (book back at full price)
Sept25: 11,166
Sept26: 17,303
Sept27: 18,768

Sales at full price were:
Sept24: 27
Sept25: 13
Sept26: 9
Sept27: 12

I have a couple of permafree titles that also got downloads, and usually have sales and page reads across pretty much my whole catalogue on a daily basis
.
So in theory, it looks like something happened between the 25th and the 26th, but I don't know where or how to pinpoint it.


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> Nikky...
> 
> 2) You can't on the one hand say "I didn't do anything wrong" and then on the other hand not disclose the promos you used. While I trust you had no intention for this to happen, not revealing the promos you used sort of makes it seem like you're covering for people. If you can't be transparent with us, at bare minimum do so with Amazon.


Sorry, I was in the process of putting the data together and composing the post (in between trying to stain my deck and parent my twins) while a few posts came in--including yours.

I had no intention of being evasive. Just needed time to put the information together from various sources to be as comprehensive as possible.


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> The problem at the end of the day is that whether you did it intentionally or not (I suspect the latter) Amazon is convinced that bot accounts were used on your book. And 15k downloads makes it pretty obvious they were (the fact your spidey senses weren't set off makes me think you're too naive to this to know what was going on; that's not an insult, just a statement of fact). The only thing I can even think to do is send them a full list of all the promos you used and ask them blankly is there anything you can do to rectify this situation. And if they stonewall perhaps ask that the situation be escalated to someone that can consider the situation further.


Thank you for the advice. Just wanted to add that the last free days I did for a book in May resulted in 13,878 downloads over five days (again, booking things like Freebooksy). So the 15k downloads on this promo didn't surprise me, overly.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Just as a data point, I've run Freebooksy twice on different contemporary romance titles and had around 4K downloads each time. What else did you use in May?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

nikkykaye said:


> Thank you for the advice. Just wanted to add that the last free days I did for a book in May resulted in 13,878 downloads over five days (again, booking things like Freebooksy). So the 15k downloads on this promo didn't surprise me, overly.


ah romance. Ya, I readily admit to knowing nothing about romance numbers. Looking at that list nothing unusual in there. No giant spikes or anything really.

I'd definitely push Amazon to escalate this up the chain because something is off.

It may just be that some botter saw your promo and decided to bot against it. They've done this before. Either they do it to cause zon to target innocent authors or to make their accounts look legitimate.

Ultimately it's one of five situations, that much we know:

1) You botted (but doesn't sound like you did)
2) One of those promos botted (god forbid the promos start doing this stuff. But I know (suspect) of one "author" who also offers marketing services and I know they bot, so I'd actually be shocked if they didn't bot their clients also - even though the clients would have no idea).
3) A botter just picked you out of a hat (very possible)
4) Someone targeted you (hopefully not the case)
5) The amazon algos have gone nuts. They did last year and were banning legit authors. So maybe they are cranking up the detection threshold, generating false positives again.

I don't have the risk profile to handle KU or free anymore. Authors shouldn't have to worry about losing their careers if they aren't doing anything wrong. But, I don't see how you stop that from happening because zon has to addresst he botting, which is out of control

Good luck with Amazon. Fingers crossed they look into this more and realize you aren't trying to game them.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

PhoenixS said:


> 3) Do you mind sharing the name of the ARC service? Was it Book Sprout, by any chance?


Uh-oh; do I need to put Book Sprout on my naughty list? I've been considering using them (and I don't recall seeing any discussion of them here that would red flag them).


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> 2) I'm assuming the Book Boost mentioned here is a website/provider, and not the service affiliated with GenreCrave?


http://freeboostmarketing.com/authors-package/

she's probably referring to these guys. If so, I doubt a $5.99 service is going to be botting. But she did it via KDROI so she may not even know who they are/were (and all the other KDROI outlets are all legit).

and the NL swaps only generated 800 downloads. Enough to trigger concern, but also not enough (I wouldn't think) for zon to drop the hammer so quickly (or stonewall her in response).

Barring more info (obviously) I'm starting to lean toward zon increasing their threshold for detection (or simply bots validating themselves against her book).

Wow, what a mess. If they've increased the threshold though we'll start to hear about others getting false positives in the coming week.


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

ExclusiveARC featured it on the 22nd. I've known the owner since its inception, and he is admirably upfront and transparent. Book Boast is a newsletter swap site, used by many romance authors.

The authors who agreed to mention my book to their lists were mid-list authors with an average of 5-7k subs (my own list is 4k). I'm reluctant to name names, simply because I don't have their permission to do so. None of them are Top 100 authors, or in the cabal that regularly clogs up the romance lists. I've never purchased or sold newsletter spots, though I know that's common in some circles. Even with "swaps" I try not to participate in ones that 'REQUIRE' mutual [trades] or a minimum number of subscribers.

When I returned to writing romance after a 15-year hiatus, it was more or less as an experiment. I began self-publishing with a niche non-fiction book, but the process reinvigorated my love of writing. My first novella was written without much knowledge of the market, and I was delighted that it resonated with some readers. My agent had retired last year, but it didn't occur to me to look for a new one this year. I've enjoyed the independence and control that self-publishing allows.

It might sound ridiculous or naive, but part of my approach to this business has always been authenticity. I never want to be insincere or disingenuous. This may well hinder my career, to be honest. I have a pretty distinct voice, and I have a hard time writing strictly to market or to a formula. But on the flip side, I've genuinely liked everything I've written. One of the reasons I use my pen name when engaging online is because I have nothing to hide--whether it be failure or success. If any of my experiences can help others, then that's great.

It's taken me more than a year and a release every month to get to $1000/month. Sure, I'm envious as hell of romance authors who seem to hit the Top 20 every few weeks. For example, Penny Wylder and I started at the same time, but she's selling >$100k/month. I'd LOVE that. Who wouldn't? I'm lucky in that I don't rely on my writing income to feed or shelter my family, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to be successful at it! Of course I do! But I also have to live with myself at the end of the day, and I'd prefer to get further along by improving my craft, building my readership, and learning better marketing strategies--not gaming the system or black-hatting it.

Sounds silly, doesn't it? But that's why this is distressing me so much, I suppose.

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


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

Argh! For a writer, you'd think I'd be able to communicate better! I didn't mean to insinuate in any way that Penny Wylder is gaming the system in any way. As far as I can see, she nailed title/cover/blurb from the get-go, and I hear she invests heavily in advertising that pays off.

I have my own mental list of authors that I believe don't play fair, but I would never accuse or name anyone online. I'm too worried about my own grass to worry if theirs is greener.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Dragovian said:


> Uh-oh; do I need to put Book Sprout on my naughty list? I've been considering using them (and I don't recall seeing any discussion of them here that would red flag them).


I've seen some ... patterns ... that I'm following up on. And those patterns could indicate how the service is being used rather than what the service offers and how it delivers. So no speculations off my query, please. For now, they're simply on my neutral list.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

nikkykaye said:


> It's taken me more than a year and a release every month to get to $1000/month. Sure, I'm envious as hell of romance authors who seem to hit the Top 20 every few weeks. For example, Penny Wylder and I started at the same time, but she's selling >$100k/month. I'd LOVE that. Who wouldn't? I'm lucky in that I don't rely on my writing income to feed or shelter my family, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to be successful at it! Of course I do! But I also have to live with myself at the end of the day, and I'd prefer to get further along by improving my craft, building my readership, and learning better marketing strategies--not gaming the system or black-hatting it.
> 
> Sounds silly, doesn't it? But that's why this is distressing me so much, I suppose.
> 
> _Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


How do you know she's selling 100k+/month? I would guesstimate she's making quite a bit less from looking at her rankings/page counts. Do you have a good idea of what a book that hits a certain ranking at a certain price makes? After three years and lots of friends' charts, I do, but it's still a big guessing game with KU, especially with stuffing.

I don't know about this author in particular, but a lot of new pen names are authors who have been around forever. I would take any claims of debut author with a grain of salt in the world of trendy/sexy romance.

I talked to a friend about this recently. She has a short smut pen name that's doing better than her main pen name. But the shorts pen name is jumping on a trend, and the author knows that the pen name will die with the trend, wheras her main name is forever. That's part of why you see so many new authors doing well in KU romance--they aren't new authors.

A lot of people are spending a fortune on ads to hit top 20/50/100. A high (technically low) rankings doesn't necessarily mean a high profit.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

nikkykaye said:


> But I also have to live with myself at the end of the day, and I'd prefer to get further along by improving my craft, building my readership, and learning better marketing strategies--not gaming the system or black-hatting it.
> 
> Sounds silly, doesn't it? But that's why this is distressing me so much, I suppose.


I suspect zon will resolve this, might just take some time. You sound honest and sincere.

This same thing happened back in 2016. So it's not necessarily something new. Zon backed way off after too many false positives (except back then they were banning, not deranking). Given botting seems to have hit their radar again (as it really is insanely out of control right now), it's entirely possible you're nothing more than a false positive. Or the random victim of a bot swarm.

Sucks to be sure, but after you send them your list of promos and get someone to actually look at your case, I suspect they'll undo all this.

And I know nothing about romance, but is it a "dirty" genre to be in? By dirty I mean highly competitive with people willing to do anything to rank up?

I've long expected authors will start attacking each other with bots, and if that ever happens we'll probably see it first in romance, as it seems to be the most competitive genre of them all.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

nikkykaye said:


> Thank you for the advice. Just wanted to add that the last free days I did for a book in May resulted in 13,878 downloads over five days (again, booking things like Freebooksy). So the 15k downloads on this promo didn't surprise me, overly.


I suspect this simply means whatever you did now to get tagged, you did before and got away with--but those free download numbers look high to me for the promos you booked.

Also, IMEO the sales/borrow numbers look low for the effect that many legit downloads should have, which is another indication that may DLs may be non-legit.

So, somewhere among those the promos wandered off the path.


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

Crystal_ said:


> How do you know she's selling 100k+/month? I would guesstimate she's making quite a bit less from looking at her rankings/page counts. Do you have a good idea of what a book that hits a certain ranking at a certain price makes? After three years and lots of friends' charts, I do, but it's still a big guessing game with KU, especially with stuffing. A lot of people are spending a fortune on ads to hit top 20/50/100. A high (technically low) rankings doesn't necessarily mean a high profit.


You're right, of course, Crystal. Calculations based on current rank of her titles, for example, through something like KDSpy has her books selling $118k this month in the US, but of course that doesn't take into account royalties rates, KENP income, other countries/markets, or other costs (such as advertising). In some ways, it's a little frustrating to know that authors hitting lists regularly might be one person with seven pens, or seven authors sharing one pen. I'm acutely aware that my desire for transparency is NOT the norm. Most days I think "Good for them! They've clearly figured out something that I haven't." Some days I want to cry and wail, "What am I missing?!"

This is all beside the point. One of the things that's kept me going has been the positivity and encouragement of the community as a whole, and the friends I've made along the way. I also have a healthy enough ego to know that I am not a bad writer. I have some talent. Of course, that's a minor ingredient in self-publishing success these days, it seems.

It's worrying to know that I could have been building this all year only to have my account terminated through no fault (at least, no knowing fault) of my own.  That's all.

Thanks for letting vent!


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

David VanDyke said:


> I suspect this simply means whatever you did now to get tagged, you did before and got away with--but those fee download numbers look high to me for the promos you booked.
> 
> Also, IMEO the sales/borrow numbers look low for the effect that many legit downloads should have, which is another indication that may DLs may be non-legit.
> 
> So, somewhere among those the promos wandered off the path.


If that's the case, David, then it's even more frustrating and embarrassing--since that means that clearly I'm an ignorant fool. I watch the threads here and have bookmarked people's experiences with different promo sites, and I try to stick to ones with good reputations or at least some consensus about their validity.

So now, not only am I a clueless moron, but I'm also even more of a failure than before. And with my luck, Amazon will not only ban me, but also withhold a bunch of my anemic royalties as punishment... and I don't even know what happened or how.

Is the answer to not use any promo sites at all? Not use KU? Have it all live or die on basic unit sales and word of mouth?

Now I'm even more depressed.


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## TellNotShow (Sep 15, 2014)

David VanDyke said:


> I suspect this simply means whatever you did now to get tagged, you did before and got away with--but those free download numbers look high to me for the promos you booked.
> 
> Also, IMEO the sales/borrow numbers look low for the effect that many legit downloads should have, which is another indication that may DLs may be non-legit.
> 
> So, somewhere among those the promos wandered off the path.


Clearly, David, you missed the bit where she said:
"I invested $500 in FB ads for the promo period Sept19-23 (got 16k clicks with a CPC of $0.03), and $500 for a couple of weeks following (slightly different ad, since the book wasn't free anymore)."

16,000 clicks to a free book with good reviews in that genre should certainly have brought those numbers up to what you got. Doesn't seem at all unusual to me.



nikkykaye said:


> If that's the case, David, then it's even more frustrating and embarrassing--since that means that clearly I'm an ignorant fool. I watch the threads here and have bookmarked people's experiences with different promo sites, and I try to stick to ones with good reputations or at least some consensus about their validity.
> 
> So now, not only am I a clueless moron, but I'm also even more of a failure than before. And with my luck, Amazon will not only ban me, but also withhold a bunch of my anemic royalties as punishment... and I don't even know what happened or how.
> 
> ...


I know you feel frustrated by this, as would anyone in your position. But you may be better off focusing on all you've achieved so far, rather than the negatives. The fact you've actually been getting somewhere before all this is a good indication you're doing plenty right. It's difficult to get anywhere right now, for everyone. Head down, arse up, keep going, it'll work out.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I don't consent


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> The other thing that is particularly irksome is that people who are rank-stripped for alleged shenanigans to a one who've reported it are all saying they received no communication from Amazon about it until _they _initiated the conversation with KDP.


very similar to back in 2016. I suspect when they increase the detection threshold, the CSR's don't really question the results. If the algo says ban / derank, then that's that. Last time it seemed to take about 2-4 weeks before enough damage started to pile up that they lowered the threshold back down (making detection basically useless).

But if that's happening, we'll know in the next two weeks as false positives start to happen. If not, then something else went on with Nikki (ie. actual bots were used, just a question of why and how).


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Atlantisatheart said:


> If Amazon have built a new super-bot-detection device and the botters are spreading their muck then who's to say that we're not all going to be caught up in the net?


The irony is that it's authors who get the publicly used bots that will get caught quickly. I strongly believe there are authors using dedicated bots (ie. bots that aren't used by the public at large... basically reserved only for their books, or a group of authors... this ensures the also boughts don't get messed up).

Anyway, this could all be a lot worse. Deranking is the least painful thing. Banning is pretty bad. *But zon suing you would be the worst*. I think we're going to see more people get sued before this is all over, because there are people who have developed intricate ways of gaming amazon that go against the TOS; and it's very obvious and clear they didn't stumble into botting, but rather devised methods to rip off zon.

So deranking is almost like zon's least punitive action at this point. They probably realize some false positives will happen, but can live with that as they start to identify the gamers.

There are a lot of people flying high who I think will ultimately suffer worse than banning; they are going to get themselves sued.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

PhoenixS said:


> I really, really don't believe you were de-ranked as any sort of punishment for suspicious behavior, Atlantis, if you're referring to when you posted here about losing rank and positioning for about 3-4 hours.


Yes, this happened to me during a free promo, too. It did clear up in a few hours.


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## Allyson J. (Nov 26, 2014)

C. Gockel said:


> Yes, this happened to me during a free promo, too. It did clear up in a few hours.


This also happened to me in the middle of this month. I ran a Robin Reads, ENT & Freebooksy promo for a permafree. My rank disappeared for a few hours, but was returned. I suspect Freebooksy triggers an evaluation. I don't think it was a punishment.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

And now I'm getting super nervous about my October promos. Two pen names. Two free first in series booked thru Ram on all the sites, freebooksy included, with countdown deals on pretty much the entirety of the rest of my catalog to push a new release on the one name and a just because simultaneous push on the other. 
Gah. I was going to do some NL swaps but now I'm not so sure.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

nikkykaye said:


> You're right, of course, Crystal. Calculations based on current rank of her titles, for example, through something like KDSpy has her books selling $118k this month in the US, but of course that doesn't take into account royalties rates, KENP income, other countries/markets, or other costs (such as advertising). In some ways, it's a little frustrating to know that authors hitting lists regularly might be one person with seven pens, or seven authors sharing one pen. I'm acutely aware that my desire for transparency is NOT the norm. Most days I think "Good for them! They've clearly figured out something that I haven't." Some days I want to cry and wail, "What am I missing?!"
> 
> This is all beside the point. One of the things that's kept me going has been the positivity and encouragement of the community as a whole, and the friends I've made along the way. I also have a healthy enough ego to know that I am not a bad writer. I have some talent. Of course, that's a minor ingredient in self-publishing success these days, it seems.
> 
> ...


Oh, yeah, Kindle Spy is wayyy off, especially for KU books, .99 books, and well ranked books. I would not use it as an estimate. It's not even close IME. I wish I made what Kindle Spy says I make.

There are a lot of sh*tty looking romances that do well. It can be frustrating to see a book with a nonsense title or a terrible Look Inside doing well when you work hard to make your books awesome. And you can really never explain why one book is a hit. Even if it's a great book, it's not really clear why one great book takes off while another doesn't. But it's one of those things you can't control, so you just have to try to focus on your writing and marketing. It's much easier said than done. I struggle with it a lot, but I'm here because I love to write, not because I love good Amazon rankings (so easy to forget that), so I focus on that. There are a lot of ups and downs with publishing. No one can be on the upswing forever, so you have to get used to riding that wave.


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

All this input and theorizing is very interesting, thank you. A couple of points to note:

The de-ranking didn't happen until two days AFTER the free days ended on the book. That is also when the KENP reads jumped up, which likely flagged the system. I suppose it was naive of me to think that it was just the tail from a successful promo.

Through most of those free days, the book hovered at around #23-30 in the store. ALL of the rank history is missing on that book in my Author Central now, so I can't check. 

What would be the best way for me to proceed, do you think? Send all the data I have to the person who has been in contact with me (though they don't seem very receptive to anything coming from me)? Send it to someone else up the chain? Wait and see what they do next?


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

nikkykaye said:


> If that's the case, David, then it's even more frustrating and embarrassing--since that means that clearly I'm an ignorant fool. I watch the threads here and have bookmarked people's experiences with different promo sites, and I try to stick to ones with good reputations or at least some consensus about their validity.
> 
> So now, not only am I a clueless moron, but I'm also even more of a failure than before. And with my luck, Amazon will not only ban me, but also withhold a bunch of my anemic royalties as punishment... and I don't even know what happened or how.
> 
> ...


Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were a fool. Ignorant, in the literal, non-pejorative sense, as we all were at one time, of course, and possibly naive. That, and the landscape has worsened, with more and more scammers popping up.

I think the answer is not to depend on services that we're not absolutely sure of to schedule our promos. Any time we turn something over to a service, we risk that service making a mistake or doing something shady. I would except Ram's stacker from my concerns, but I'd never use any service I wasn't rock-solid sure of. Unfortunately, it appears--and we still can't be at all sure--that the service you used might have slid to the wring side of the line--possibly unintentionally, possibly not. I'm not pointing fingers, but I am waving in that general direction.

I hope you can get ECR to listen to your pleas. Your transparency and continued engagement make me certain you're innocent of all ill intent.

This does illustrate how, of course, the innocent can easily be falsely accused when people jump to conclusions based on appearances.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

TellNotShow said:


> Clearly, David, you missed the bit where she said:
> "I invested $500 in FB ads for the promo period Sept19-23 (got 16k clicks with a CPC of $0.03), and $500 for a couple of weeks following (slightly different ad, since the book wasn't free anymore)."
> 
> 16,000 clicks to a free book with good reviews in that genre should certainly have brought those numbers up to what you got. Doesn't seem at all unusual to me.
> ...


Those FB numbers still do not justify the downloads, based on my own experience.

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


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

PhoenixS said:


> The good news, however, is that KND Tracker seems to think your box set freebie that ran on BB on Sept 19 hit #3.
> 
> 23rd Sep Highest: 23 $0.00
> Lowest: 37
> ...


Ooooo ... wow ... oh, I must have been taking how high it went in the paid store before and confusing the numbers in my brain. Author Central has not liked the box set since it went free and it's all a straight line since before my USA Today run.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I don't consent


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## raminar_dixon (Aug 26, 2013)

This topic has been brought up to me several times over the past ~week or so by potential clients of my Book Rank / Promo Stacker service who want to be sure that none of the sites I regularly use on their marketing campaigns are up to anything shady or unfair. So, I figured I would address it here.

*To the very best of my knowledge*, none of the sites I use take part in any sort of unfair botting or TOC-breaking manipulation. I've used most of the sites on my list while advertising my own work and never experienced a problem. Likewise, I've run over 700 campaigns for other authors so far this year and not once has a client informed me of a problem w/ Amazon "not liking" the promotions being run on their books or punishing them in some way for any kind of perceived rule-breaking.

If I were to discover any sort of shenanigans going on with any of the venues that I use they would be off my list immediately.

A list of the current paid venue sites that I use when building orders for clients in case you are curious: http://www.book-rank.com/venue-list.html (basically the same list of sites I have on my Promo Stacker order form, just laid out all nice and comfy)


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

raminar_dixon said:


> This topic has been brought up to me several times over the past ~week or so by potential clients of my Book Rank / Promo Stacker service who want to be sure that none of the sites I regularly use on their marketing campaigns are up to anything shady or unfair. So, I figured I would address it here.
> 
> *To the very best of my knowledge*, none of the sites I use take part in any sort of unfair botting or TOC-breaking manipulation. I've used most of the sites on my list while advertising my own work and never experienced a problem. Likewise, I've run over 700 campaigns for other authors so far this year and not once has a client informed me of a problem w/ Amazon "not liking" the promotions being run on their books or punishing them in some way for any kind of perceived rule-breaking.
> 
> ...


I get the concerns, for sure. I even mentioned ya in here, I think. It's not you I'm worried about tho. It's being legitimately lifted by you, and then being used by botters to fit in, grabbing my freebies to make their other stuff look legit. But like someone else already said, the only sure fire way to avoid that possibility is to only promo at 99 cents, which has never done as well for me.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Nikky, i noticed you're still deranked. Did anything ever happen with zon? Or did they just stonewall you?


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## hottakes (Jul 25, 2017)

Hi all, another author I know just had her rank stripped from a book-- and not even a new release, but one she released in June. She hasn't run any promo on it since the book came out, although she did use her 5 free days a couple weeks ago (but no promo or swaps). Again, I know this author personally, and while she may do things this forum disagrees with (stuffing), she has never and will never buy borrows. This is a legit writer making a living and supporting her family with romance novels.

I worry people are starting to target authors, possibly by reporting them (??) or by using botnets to attack them?? Or free runs are compromised??

Amazon is targeting legit authors and nobody knows why. Personally, I'm going to be very careful who I swap with and what promo services I use.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Doesn't this board have a KDP rep of some kind? I've never noticed anyone from Amazon dropping by to address issues or just say "hey". Maybe I've missed it.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

hottakes said:


> I worry people are starting to target authors, possibly by reporting them (??) or by using botnets to attack them?? Or free runs are compromised??
> 
> Amazon is targeting legit authors and nobody knows why. Personally, I'm going to be very careful who I swap with and what promo services I use.


We know this was done in 2016 when zon went ban happy. The bots simply turned themselves on legit authors and zon had to stop because a ton of false positives were happening.

As zon backed off, the bots backed off doing this (but they never fully stopped). The fact zon has deranked some authors recently and launched lawsuits... i'd be shocked if the bots weren't increasing their obfuscation tactics again.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

hottakes said:


> Hi all, another author I know just had her rank stripped from a book-- and not even a new release, but one she released in June. She hasn't run any promo on it since the book came out, although she did use her 5 free days a couple weeks ago (but no promo or swaps). Again, I know this author personally, and while she may do things this forum disagrees with (stuffing), she has never and will never buy borrows. This is a legit writer making a living and supporting her family with romance novels.
> 
> I worry people are starting to target authors, possibly by reporting them (??) or by using botnets to attack them?? Or free runs are compromised??
> 
> Amazon is targeting legit authors and nobody knows why. Personally, I'm going to be very careful who I swap with and what promo services I use.


A friend of a friend was targeted by bot borrows. It can happen and, as far as I can tell, there's really nothing you can do about it. As far as stuffing goes, Amazon clearly doesn't have a problem with it (we should all readjust our strategies/stance on KU based on that information), so I doubt that has anything to do with it.


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

Crystal_ said:


> A friend of a friend was targeted by bot borrows. It can happen and, as far as I can tell, there's really nothing you can do about it. As far as stuffing goes, Amazon clearly doesn't have a problem with it (we should all readjust our strategies/stance on KU based on that information), so I doubt that has anything to do with it.


If I recall correctly, Amazon did write some do's and don'ts about stuffing into its guidelines, didn't it? On the other hand, didn't testing suggest that skipped pages no longer produce pages read, thus removing the only shady reason for stuffing in the first place? Either way, I agree the stuffing probably has nothing to do with a rank stripping at this point. It would be appropriate for Amazon to tell people why action is being taken against them.

The only thing one can do to avoid bot borrows right now is to not be in KU. What Amazon needs to do if it wants to preserve KU is count pages only if a reader is on them for a certain length of time. I guess scammers could eventually beat that by slowing the bots down, but maybe by then Amazon could figure out another way to detect bot activity. The pages involved wouldn't count, but no other action would be taken against the authors involved. The reason people scam is to make money. If the ability to make money by bot reads in KU disappeared, so would the associated scams.

I suppose botting could still gain visibility and therefore encourage legitimate borrows and sales, but that only works with a good book. If the scammers actually had to put out quality content, I suspect they would look for an easier way to make a buck.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Bill Hiatt said:


> If I recall correctly, Amazon did write some do's and don'ts about stuffing into its guidelines, didn't it? On the other hand, didn't testing suggest that skipped pages no longer produce pages read, thus removing the only shady reason for stuffing in the first place? Either way, I agree the stuffing probably has nothing to do with a rank stripping at this point. It would be appropriate for Amazon to tell people why action is being taken against them.
> 
> The only thing one can do to avoid bot borrows right now is to not be in KU. What Amazon needs to do if it wants to preserve KU is count pages only if a reader is on them for a certain length of time. I guess scammers could eventually beat that by slowing the bots down, but maybe by then Amazon could figure out another way to detect bot activity. The pages involved wouldn't count, but no other action would be taken against the authors involved. The reason people scam is to make money. If the ability to make money by bot reads in KU disappeared, so would the associated scams.
> 
> I suppose botting could still gain visibility and therefore encourage legitimate borrows and sales, but that only works with a good book. If the scammers actually had to put out quality content, I suspect they would look for an easier way to make a buck.


They basically said you can't publish the same collection of books in a different order. So no "Sexy Bundle" Book A, Book B, Book C then "Sexy Bundle Two" Book B, Book C, Book A. They also said you can't use the same bonus material in all of your books, but there was no guideline as to where they draw the line between one and literally every single one of your titles. (Is two okay? What about ten? What about twenty? Who knows?)


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

Is it possible that Amazon could solve all the scamming and botting by way of embracing the blockchain?


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

***********************************************************************************************
Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms. 

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


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## hottakes (Jul 25, 2017)

Friend went back and forth a bit with Amazon and got this email:

Hello,

As we previously stated, we still detect purchases or borrows of your book(s) are originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. 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.

Best regards,

Walter W.
http://www.amazon.com

Basically, Amazon's stance is: shut up, too bad, we're not telling you anything, we're not letting you try and prove that you're totally innocent, stop emailing.

Anyone think that's okay? Because I think it's pretty messed up and she's pretty pissed.

She's not running any free promo anymore. In fact, she's not running any promo at all. Why would she risk her career for a book that she claims isn't making any money?

Also, I regret mentioning the stuffing thing. That has nothing to do with that's going on here. Amazon believes they're detecting bots that are borrowing/buying books, and they're targeting authors and stripping their ranks for it. Even if that author is totally innocent and has no clue what's happening.


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

hottakes said:


> Friend went back and forth a bit with Amazon and got this email:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> ...


It's terrible that something like this is happening. If I were in her place, I'd copy the text of the last email into an email to Bezos and ask some tough questions. For instance, how can authors comply with the suggestion in the email when they have no way of knowing what a promoter is doing? Sure, there are red flags, but I'd be willing to bet some shady promoters look fine on the surface.

Of course, the biggest question is why not just close the accounts engaging in rank manipulation? The answer is probably that the same people would just open new accounts. Someone else suggested long ago that creating a customer account should require having a verified bank account. Normally, companies only do that with vendors, and it would cause a delay in account creation, but if Amazon's current process is causing widespread scamming behavior, then it should be Amazon's responsibility to fix the problem. (Maybe such a process would need to apply only for KU membership, which would be less disruptive.) It's easy to set up a customer account with a fake credit card or fraudulently obtained one, then do all kinds of shenanigans in KU with it. It's much harder to set up a fake bank account.

Though most of my sympathy is for the authors in this case, I would hate to be the Amazon employees trying to solve this problem. They won't want to slow the new account process. They do probably want to stop scamming. They can't tell authors which promo services not to use, because they probably can't prove which manipulating accounts go back to which promo services (the legal department is screaming about potential lawsuits). Every time they crack down on scammers, legitimate authors get caught and justifiably complain. When they don't crack down on scammers, we all justifiably complain that they aren't doing anything. The only way to crack down without unduly impacting the innocent is to put more real people into the vetting process, and I'm guessing they don't have the OK from the higher-ups to get more resources.

I've always done better in KU than in wide, but if Amazon doesn't allocate more resources toward running KU in a reasonable fashion, there's only one way this can end: eventually, even authors who do well in KU will have to pull out just to protect themselves.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

hottakes said:


> Basically, Amazon's stance is: shut up, too bad, we're not telling you anything, we're not letting you try and prove that you're totally innocent, stop emailing.
> 
> Anyone think that's okay? Because I think it's pretty messed up and she's pretty p*ssed.


Everything about KU is "pretty messed up".

Amazon can't prove intent. I mean, how can they? Unless they were to orchestrate their own sting so that authors were approaching an undercover zon outfit pretending to offer rank bumps... short of that they have no idea whether the author is intentionally botting or a victim of a bot swarm launched against them (or even simply deceived by a promo outlet who uses some bots to bump up their performance for authors). Even a legit promo outfit could at any time decided to bump up their returns with bots (there's competition among the promos for our business after all.. nothing better than word of mouth that promo x performs gangbusters).

Anyway, if you live in the KU world this is just part of that world now.


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## Athena Grayson (Apr 4, 2011)

Those bot accounts are using the "first month free" promise of a KU subscription. Zon could cut things down considerably--or at least make them a little more costly for the botfarms--by making that free month contingent on buying one or two months at price. Then, at least you have bank accounts tied to potential identities and the clickfarms have to invest that much more to make their scams run.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Bill Hiatt said:


> The only way to crack down without unduly impacting the innocent is to put more real people into the vetting process, and I'm guessing they don't have the OK from the higher-ups to get more resources.


Tying rank to reads instead of borrows would stop 80% of all this. Heck, it might even stop 100% of it.

All you have to do is remove the incentive to bot and people will stop. You don't even need to punish anyone.

Which takes us into tin foil hat territory... why in the world is zon structuring KU in a way that *heavily encourages* botting? This isn't a problem that blindsided zon, this is a problem they created.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

hottakes said:


> Basically, Amazon's stance is: shut up, too bad, we're not telling you anything, we're not letting you try and prove that you're totally innocent, stop emailing.
> 
> Anyone think that's okay? Because I think it's pretty messed up and she's pretty p*ssed.


It's not ok, but there is a silver lining. She still has her account. 
This time last year- even a hint that maybe something might be off and they closed your account, no questions asked. So all this back and forth she's getting non-helpful responses about? Be grateful it's over missing rank on one book and not a missing account.

It could be soooo much better, I know, but it could also be a lot worse. Not that it helps much, I'm sure. But it's something.


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## hottakes (Jul 25, 2017)

Going Incognito said:


> It's not ok, but there is a silver lining. She still has her account.
> This time last year- even a hint that maybe something might be off and they closed your account, no questions asked. So all this back and forth she's getting non-helpful responses about? Be grateful it's over missing rank on one book and not a missing account.
> 
> It could be soooo much better, I know, but it could also be a lot worse. Not that it helps much, I'm sure. But it's something.


Yeah, this is totally true. I'll pass that along, try and keep a little perspective.


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## Pandorra (Aug 22, 2017)

Pfft they aren't even posting the reviews I get in KU so not sure how well botting the books there will work. So far KU is a total crash!


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

hottakes said:


> Friend went back and forth a bit with Amazon and got this email:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> ...


I don't see how they can implement this policy long term. No author can control nefarious marketers targeting their books for borrow or free download. The only option is not running free/not being in KU. And I really doubt Amazon is trying to encourage people to leave KU.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Crystal_ said:


> I don't see how they can implement this policy long term. No author can control nefarious marketers targeting their books for borrow or free download. The only option is not running free/not being in KU. And I really doubt Amazon is trying to encourage people to leave KU.


They don't have to leave KU. But I'm thinking Amazon wouldn't mind it if people stop running free. They never liked free anyway.


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

Hottakes, that is exactly the same message I got from Walter, myself. 

The book is still rank-stripped and has been done promos for nearly two weeks. The book's reads and sales patterns have held steady for more than a week now, with no other word from KDP. I've put together some data, which I was planning to forward to a customer rep recommended further up-thread. But I'm almost scared to do that! This has definitely been a lesson on the perils of KU and how Amazon has us all bent over a barrel. I've been doing some soul-searching (in addition to the hand-wringing) to figure out how to reduce my risk.


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## writerlygal (Jul 23, 2017)

So let me get this straight since I only pop in here now & then... suddenly ya'all are saying it's okay to use bonus books? Those who do are no longer being called scammers on par w/ the clickfarm bot buyers?? Woah, mind blown. Next I'll be reading on Kboards that the authors chased out of here w/ pitchforks wielded for having bonus books will be welcomed back into the fold w/ an apology. Perhaps, even, an acknowledgment for being smart enough to realize that bonus books ARE, in fact, allowed by Amazon, despite the oodles of posts calling them scammers for not somehow reading something into the TOS that was never there. Oh, never mind, I'm sure that would be taking things too far. 

BTW: to nikkykaye & to all authors who were rank stripped through no fault of their own- I'm very sorry this happened to you.


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

TellNotShow said:


> "I invested $500 in FB ads for the promo period Sept19-23 (got 16k clicks with a CPC of $0.03), and $500 for a couple of weeks following (slightly different ad, since the book wasn't free anymore)."


This is WILD speculation, but it feels like while we're all groping in the dark, I wonder if the FB ads were what triggered it. There was a story (semi)recently that some users found 80-90% of the clicks on their Facebook ads were actually bots:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/07/31/why-do-some-advertisers-believe-that-90-of-facebook-ad-clicks-are-from-bots/#76fa8afc4386

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?id=10153880424557933


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

The more I read this entire front page of kb the more I think my tongue in cheek idea of bot day shoulda been a go. All of us botting our arses off on the same strike-day. Just to feel like we're doing something. Sigh.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> suddenly ya'all are saying it's okay to use bonus books?


Not what anyone was or is saying. Having a bonus book isn't the problem. Never was. Having every single blasted book, in varying orders, in multiple "books", with a "brand new, sooper dooper special new story at the end" was. And I think you know that, but whatever.

No one was run out with pitchforks. And it's "y'all".


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

KateDanley said:


> This is WILD speculation, but it feels like while we're all groping in the dark, I wonder if the FB ads were what triggered it.


Not wild speculation at all, Kate. In fact, that's the best explanation I've been able to come up with. But it is something that I have little to no control over.


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## hottakes (Jul 25, 2017)

KateDanley said:


> This is WILD speculation, but it feels like while we're all groping in the dark, I wonder if the FB ads were what triggered it. There was a story (semi)recently that some users found 80-90% of the clicks on their Facebook ads were actually bots:
> 
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/07/31/why-do-some-advertisers-believe-that-90-of-facebook-ad-clicks-are-from-bots/#76fa8afc4386
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?id=10153880424557933


That might explain other rank stripped books, but in the case of my friend (she wants to stay anonymous, sorry this is so clunky) there were no Facebook ads. Just the free promo run.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

It sounds to me that the only answer is to not run free books on Amazon. Bots can target free books not in KU too.


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Believe me, I have days when I wish that everyone would uncheck their autorenewal boxes, but it isn't really the fault of authors who are pursuing what looks like (even if only in the short-term) their best bet. If we want someone to blame, we should be blaming the scammers and/or Amazon.


This is definitely true, because an author is not hurt by being in KU. Their income may be temporarily stultified but it's not like their image is damaged. Or they may be making more money than they would if they went wide, depending on where they are in their career. At any point they (well 3 month contract aside) can leave KU and go wide. As an author just starting out, there are visibility paths, even in a crappy ecosystem like Amazon, that just aren't easily available to newbies if you go immediately wide. And with a lot of work, or money, you could do things to achieve similar visibility, most newbie authors are much better served by writing more words and getting them out to the public.


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## MammaItaliana23 (Jul 27, 2017)

Wow. I got this same message from Walter today.
And have done nothing wrong. I ran a bookbub, ams, fb, mailchimp ads and a bargain booksy all around sept. 18-23.
And now this ...
I'm terrified, frankly.


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## ImaWriter (Aug 12, 2015)

MammaItaliana23 said:


> Wow. I got this same message from Walter today.
> And have done nothing wrong. I ran a bookbub, ams, fb, mailchimp ads and a bargain booksy all around sept. 18-23.
> And now this ...
> I'm terrified, frankly.


Check this thread as well. 

Another author who just ran a BB and got rank stripped. It looks like the scammers are piggybacking in BB's now--if they haven't always been. If that's what's happening, and Amazon is blaming authors for it, it's kind of like blaming the Treasury in the US or Bank of Canada here for fraudsters making counterfeit copies of real bills.


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