# Amazon yanking sales ranking after a Bookbub promo



## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

I'm in an author collective for a fantasy series. Rowan Casey / The Veil Knights series had a Bookbub promotion in the US, cost us 500 bucks in ad spend, and resulted in driving the first three books up to #97 in the store, and made back its ad spend with 1500 sales that day. 

Then, on Day 2, Amazon arbitrarily decided to strip the book of its rank, its bestsellers status and remove it from the charts and sub charts essentially marooning the title and losing us any chance of it having a profitable long tail from the promotion push.

We suspect it's been flagged as a suspicious sales spike, but Amazon are giving us the 'we know nothing' treatment. 

I've heard stories of this happening to people in KU with suspicious reads, but this is the frst tie I've heard it happen to just a 99c series promo not in KU. 

We're in for a day of wrangling with Amazon. Wish us luck.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

That is unusual that it's not a KU book, but it seems Amazon is going all out with the stupid bots, which flag books on legit promos. Keep pushing, send proof it was a Bookbub and not one of those "guarantee" services, and it should get straightened out. Of course, loosing the oomph of the promo push will be gone, but you'll still have the books, and more importantly, the account.


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## C. Rysalis (Feb 26, 2015)

If this is now happening to 99c books as well, then... OUCH. No one is safe anymore. Several authors with free books not in KU were affected in the recent past, but I've never heard about cases with paid books.

I can't offer any advice except to email the Bezos, explain the situation and reveal all promoters used (if you used any besides Bookbub). Best of luck! These are troubling times for all of us.


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## Forgettable (Oct 16, 2015)

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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

What is going on with Amazon lately? It's like they've decided they can only bathe in writers' tears.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

LMareeApps said:


> There's a long post in an Indie Author group on Facebook at the moment. I believe David Gaughran is putting together a blog post about what he's been able to determine from the data a number of affected authors have sent him.


Yep, we're in touch with David.


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## Forgettable (Oct 16, 2015)

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## jcalloway (Jan 10, 2014)

With every new story about Bookbub runs leading to stripped ranks, I am starting to wonder if Amazon is pushing pieces across the board in order to put Bookbub in check. Why? Maybe to nudge people to AMS/some new promo venture KDP will be announcing soon.

Then again, why attribute malice when stupidity will do just fine? Sigh.

So sorry this happened to you, William.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

Have you contacted Bookbub? It seems that punishing authors who are using Bookbub and other legitimate NL is ultimately going to make authors shy away from using their services. That's going to hurt BookBub's bottom line.

I stumbled across several fake books yesterday-all with decent rank. I wonder why their bots can't catch those obvious books yet they punish real authors with real books.

What a joke.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

jcalloway said:


> With every new story about Bookbub runs leading to stripped ranks, I am starting to wonder if Amazon is pushing pieces across the board in order to put Bookbub in check. Why? Maybe to nudge people to AMS/some new promo venture KDP will be announcing soon.
> 
> Then again, why attribute malice when stupidity will do just fine? Sigh.
> 
> So sorry this happened to you, William.


If Amazon thinks I'd ever choose their spotty ads over a Bookbub they're even more delusional than I thought.


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

jcalloway said:


> With every new story about Bookbub runs leading to stripped ranks, I am starting to wonder if Amazon is pushing pieces across the board in order to put Bookbub in check. Why? Maybe to nudge people to AMS/some new promo venture KDP will be announcing soon.
> 
> Then again, why attribute malice when stupidity will do just fine? Sigh.
> 
> So sorry this happened to you, William.


That occurred to me, too. Amazon's strategy in general seems to be to gain a monopoly. This falls right in line with that goal. I would second contacting Bookbub. They're the ones with the standing to bring legal action.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

jcalloway said:


> With every new story about Bookbub runs leading to stripped ranks, *I am starting to wonder if Amazon is pushing pieces across the board in order to put Bookbub in check.* Why? Maybe to nudge people to AMS/some new promo venture KDP will be announcing soon.
> 
> *Then again, why attribute malice when stupidity will do just fine? Sigh.*
> 
> So sorry this happened to you, William.


Stupidity or malice, who knows? But if they are doing this with 99 cent BB promos, I'm not sure I want one. And forget free.

:--(


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## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

Gulp.   I'm doing a free Bookbub next Tuesday. (my book is wide)  I was so excited when I got the e-mail, but now I'm not so sure...


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Something to consider, I emailed Amazon about this last week after hearing about several authors in the same boat. Their response was basically, it's up to authors to make sure they use "legitimate" promotional services and that they "recommend using their own advertising". That last part got an ironic chuckle out of me. 

I'm in the Rowan Casey group, we're all legitimate, professional authors. We used a BookBub and a couple of us sent the deal to our NLs. That was all. No weird promo sites, not even the usual promo sites like Barbarian etc. Just BookBub. 

We are indeed talking with David and a number of other authors who are going through the same thing at the moment. However, those impacted by this aren't all BookBubs, so we can't even say for sure it's that (it probably isn't just BookBub, but it sure is a coincidence).

Anyone who is running a promo, be it free or 99c, wide or in KU, is at risk. This is not a solely KU isolated incident. It's something we all need to be aware of, and yet it appears as though there is nothing we can do about it when/if it happens.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

I'm really glad I'm wide. Even without Amazon, Bookbubs are great. I already stopped using AMS, and now I'll pause all Facebook, Bookbub, and other ads leading to Amazon until they stop being ridiculous.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

First, I'm so sorry this is happening to you.

Have you emailed [email protected]? That will generally get you in touch with someone from their executive team.

Also, have they said it is something that happened because of suspicious sales? Because if they haven't said that specifically, it could be a glitch in their system and nothing nefarious. It sucks, but I had my rank blink on and off again for a day a while back on a KU book. Zon wasn't being nefarious, they were just having trouble with their systems. 

If this happened after business hours that could also hold up the rank coming back because the techies are asleep. I'm sorry.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

C. Gockel said:


> First, I'm so sorry this is happening to you.
> 
> Have you emailed [email protected]? That will generally get you in touch with someone from their executive team.
> 
> ...


Everybody that can be emailed has been emailed, including the executive teams at both Amazon and Bookbub 

It happened in the afternoon Pacific Time yesterday, so well inside business hours. Now well over 15 hours later, we're still without a ranking. This is not a blip.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

williammeikle said:


> Everybody that can be emailed has been emailed, including the executive teams at both Amazon and Bookbub
> 
> It happened in the afternoon Pacific Time yesterday, so well inside business hours. Now well over 15 hours later, we're still without a ranking. This is not a blip.


I'm so glad that you've emailed them. I hope that you're wrong about it being a blip. If it is a blip there is hope of a permanentish fix. (Nothing in tech is really permanent.)


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Given a paid book can't be botted, this leaves three possibilities:

1) A glitch - skynet accidentally interpreted the book as free, rather than paid, and deranked it because of volume. I find this *very* unlikely. 
2) something else was wrong with the book/authors - fake reviews, past botting, etc. (the bub merely triggered attention and inspection of the book and the derank is based on other actions in the past) (op, not saying you did anything, just laying out the possibilities).
3) Zon is going after bub

If it's #3, that's good news in that it says zon is nowhere near as strong as we think they are. It would explain, in part, the KU rank bump, which creates the illusion KU books are outselling other books, when in reality they are not (not even close). It also means bub feels either threatened enough or strong enough to push back again zon's monopoly (as they have been doing by favoring wide).

I can tell you kobo has a *new* "bookbub promo" that they are offering in their promo tab. It's just a ppc ad in the bub email blast, but authors don't pay the ppc, kobo does I guess (authors pay their standard 10% of a sale). I suspect Kobo is working more closely with bub now.

Something is going on; the sands are shifting under our feet. Should be fun time ahead.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> Given a paid book can't be botted ...


*First, I just want to say that I don't think OP did anything wrong. I think this is more likely a glitch or one of the nefarious services out there decided to run their box in an effort to look legit.*

However, the idea that a nefarious promoter will not violate TOS on a paid book is absurd, and in fact has been done A LOT with box sets in order to list.

There were three popular methods:

1) Give X promoter $300 and they'd buy 250 copies of your 99-cent ebook through their scam accounts and pocket the rest. You'd get a boost in rank and visibility.

2) "Buyers circles." People on this board actually used them for Nook and organized them out in the open. They'd get 50 people and each person would promise to buy one copy of each of the others books--so for 48.91 they'd get 50 sales if everyone followed through. People did it more on the down low with Amazon books, but it violates Nook, iBooks, and Kobo TOS as well.

3) Incentivized sales through a promoter who would use methods where they'd say, "Buy this and send me the receipt and you'll be entered to win (insert Amazon gift cards / Trad pubbed paperbacks / etc.)"


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

A book I'd been promoting aggressively via AMS lost rank for about thirty minutes yesterday. It'd been bouncing up and down rank-wise for several days due to the ad. In my case, it was probably just a random check by an automated Amazon bot, and may only indicate they're aggressively going after scammers, not clamping down on BB or pursuing some new nefarious agenda.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

C. Gockel said:


> However, the idea that a nefarious promoter will not violate TOS on a paid book is absurd, and in fact has been done A LOT with box sets in order to list.


How is it breaking TOS? The book is paid, someone paid to get it, done.

I don't see how buying a product, or even paying people to buy your product, violates the TOS.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Seneca42 said:


> 2) something else was wrong with the book/authors - fake reviews, past botting, etc. (the bub merely triggered attention and inspection of the book and the derank is based on other actions in the past) (op, not saying you did anything, just laying out the possibilities).


Yeah, no. As one of the authors involved in this series - the guy running the whole gig, in fact, - I can tell you that the authors involved did nothing wrong. We're all professionals and we've all been doing this a long time. We ran a Bookbub featured deal, with NO other promotion aside from posting in our personal newsletters, and Amazon decided to punish us for it.

Sales are not high enough to suggest a bot got involved in any way. The trigger seems to be the fact that, through our successful promotion, we jumped way up in the store rankings in a single day, peaking at #97 in the US Amazon store. That's it. It isn't a mistake nor some short term wackiness on Amazon's system. It is quite deliberate.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Jnassise said:


> The trigger seems to be the fact that, through our successful promotion, we jumped way up in the store rankings in a single day, peaking at #97 in the US Amazon store. That's it. It isn't a mistake nor some short term wackiness on Amazon's system. It is quite deliberate.


well, it's not just that (I'd be shocked if the rank jump caused this). Lots of books go high off a bub. I went to #77. The vast majority (90%+) break the top 100.

I'm not saying you did anything wrong. But there's no way simple rank alone caused this. Again, not saying you did anything wrong, but skynet clearly acted on something (even if it's something nuts associated with a glitch of some sort).


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Am I reading it right that the book came out on March 5th but has no reviews?


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

C. Gockel said:


> *First, I just want to say that I don't think OP did anything wrong. I think this is more likely a glitch or one of the nefarious services out there decided to run their box in an effort to look legit.*
> 
> However, the idea that a nefarious promoter will not violate TOS on a paid book is absurd, and in fact has been done A LOT with box sets in order to list.
> 
> ...


You're 100% on target here. I'd also add the tactic of using Amazon giveaways. Creating dozens - sometimes hundreds - of one entry/one winner giveaways guarantees the sales, and if the prize is claimed that day it counts toward rank as well.

Reiterating the point above that I don't think the OP engaged in this behavior, just agreeing with C's point that a promotor can easily use nefarious means to promote books that aren't free and still turn a profit.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

GeneDoucette said:


> Am I reading it right that the book came out on March 5th but has no reviews?


Yes, that's right. We created it for a Bookbub deal and it took months to get the deal. We didn't promote to any of the fans of the series (now 8 books deep) and didn't ask for reviews. So, no reviews.


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

GeneDoucette said:


> Am I reading it right that the book came out on March 5th but has no reviews?


That's what I'm seeing, and does make me wonder if that triggered something within Amazon. Shooting up the charts with no reviews has been a hallmark of botted books, and it wouldn't surprise me that if Amazon has created a check against botting, they'd include that as a trigger for further action.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Seneca42 said:


> well, it's not just that (I'd be shocked if the rank jump caused this). Lots of books go high off a bub. I went to #77. The vast majority (90%+) break the top 100.


Yep and in the past month there are more than twenty instances that I know of where authors have been penalized for breaking that top 100.

You have your opinion. I have mine. I know what we did to promote the book and the fact remains that all we did was run a Bookbub featured deal.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> How is it breaking TOS? The book is paid, someone paid to get it, done.
> 
> I don't see how buying a product, or even paying people to buy your product, violates the TOS.


Um ... this has been discussed many times on the board before and I'm not gonna go in and find the exact lines. But yeah, it violates TOS. Go look back at the posts by the lovely Bards N' Sages, she's highlighted the deets aplenty.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Jnassise said:


> Yep and in the past month there are more than twenty instances that I know of where authors have been penalized for breaking that top 100.
> 
> You have your opinion. I have mine. I know what we did to promote the book and the fact remains that all we did was run a Bookbub featured deal.


Christina DID NOT accusing you of doing anything wrong. She suggested that may have been a trigger. I have a box set that's been out for months that doesn't have any reviews either, like you created specifically to get a 'Bub. I just haven't gotten that 'Bub yet!

I'm really hoping this turns out to be a technical glitch and this will be sorted by noon.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

C. Gockel said:


> Christina DID NOT accusing you of doing anything wrong.


I know that. I didn't think that she had accused me of anything. My comment - "you have your opinion, I have mine" was directed at Seneca's comment that there was no way simple rank could have caused this issue. I think it could have. That's all.

Edited to add - I can see how you might arrive at that conclusion though. Apologies for the lack of clarity in my post.


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

Jnassise said:


> I know that. I didn't think that she had accused me of anything. My comment - "you have your opinion, I have mine" was directed at her comment that there was no way simple rank could have caused this issue. I think it could have. That's all.
> 
> Edited to add - I can see how you might arrive at that conclusion though. Apologies for the lack of clarity in my post.


Just pointing out that the comment about having an opinion was quoting Seneca not me. (But thanks for having my back, C!)

I'm sorry this happened to you guys.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

The bundle's normal price is 7.99 and we didn't promote it at all since it was created pretty much to get a Bookbub feature when we were able to, so that's why no reviews. I have a feeling no reviews might have helped trigger the Amazon spam catcher or whatever happened, but if that's the case, people should be double worried imo because know what kind of books with no reviews hit high? Books by people who sell well and have just launched. If new releases hitting top 100 could trigger this (haven't seen it yet, but this is first time I've heard of a rank stripped from a Bookbub .99 promo too, always a first for everything I guess)... that's really bad news.

I am hoping that Bookbub will be looking into this from their end, too.   It defeats the entire purpose of running a feature if this is a real possibility of happening.


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

Seneca42 said:


> Given a paid book can't be botted, this leaves three possibilities:
> 
> *1) A glitch - skynet accidentally interpreted the book as free, rather than paid, and deranked it because of volume. I find this very unlikely.*
> 2) something else was wrong with the book/authors - fake reviews, past botting, etc. (the bub merely triggered attention and inspection of the book and the derank is based on other actions in the past) (op, not saying you did anything, just laying out the possibilities).
> ...


Bold highlight is mine. I have to put this out there, because it's been bugging me since it happened. Last month, I had a FREE promo of a book via BB. It did very well, as I expected, and generated enough free downloads to hit the top 10 in the free store. This was a FREE book, mind you. Well, I was shocked to see that the free downloads apparently factored into the *Author Rank* and boosted me into the top 25 for historical romance. It was definitely the free downloads that did it, because sell through did not change significantly on my paid books until about 2-3 days after the BB, and even then, it was a gradual increase that still would not account for enough hourly sales to bump my Author Rank that high. My Author Rank shot up on the day of the BB and the day after.

At the time, I thought it was weird, since on the Author Rank page it clearly states that only PAID sales count towards rank, and in the past, thousands of downloads of free books haven't sever affected it. After hearing all these stories, it makes me wonder what the heck is going on with rank/sales tracking and how it is being triggered. I am 100% certain that it was the free downloads that bumped me up in Author Rank -- which is crazy, since FREE downloads are not supposed to have anything to do with that. If that tabulation method is screwed up, I can only imagine what else is being reported for other situations.

** Also weird, on two days past the BB, my Author Rank disappeared for two days, then reappeared - yet it never showed the highest rank of 24. Author Rank is supposed to display the best ranking for the reported day. I'd think I was seeing things if I had not taken screenshots.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Jnassie and Christina -- I'm glad we're all on the same page.

Jnassie let me just say again that I am so sorry that this happened to you. I hope it turns out to be a glitch and is fixed soon.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

usedtocare said:


> I am 100% certain that it was the free downloads that bumped me up in Author Rank -- which is crazy, since FREE downloads are not supposed to have anything to do with that. If that tabulation method is screwed up, I can only imagine what else is being reported for other situations.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

My opinion is that someone is doing something super fishy behind the scenes. I just don't think it's the people involved in this box set. Rather, others using it as a smoke screen to cover their own bad behavior.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

MonkeyScribe said:


> My opinion is that someone is doing something super fishy behind the scenes. I just don't think it's the people involved in this box set. Rather, others using it as a smoke screen to cover their own bad behavior.


Why pick on a paid book? I said it before on the last thread and called it a conspiracy theory, but I'll say it again without that tag - It's amazon trying to destroy other ad sites.


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

It's terrible that things such as this can happen. I thought the problem was confined to books in KU and to free promotions. That would be bad enough, but it now appears no one is safe.

Amazon desperately needs to be some people on this and stop relying so heavily on bots. The whole situation illustrates the dilemma of trying to beat scammers mostly by automated means. It simply can't be done. Either a lot of scammers keep on scammer with impunity, or innocent authors get caught in the anti-scam measures--or, as seems to be the case now, both things happen at the same time.

I'm reasonably confident that Amazon isn't specifically trying to attack Bookbub somehow. I think that mostly because Bookbub really might sue over something like that, since it could conceivably threaten its entire business. Yes, there are other markets, but Amazon is by far the biggest. How many people would stand in line for a Bookbub that, if it were successful, would get the author in trouble with Amazon?

Amazon would be foolish to risk a suit because the bad PR that would come out of it would be horrendous. If nothing else, it would expose how broken Amazon's bot-driven system is. Amazon would be subpoenaed for all kinds of documents I'm sure it wouldn't want to make public.

Frankly, it might be less expensive (and certainly less damaging in the long run) for Amazon to buy Bookbub. Unlikely? Yes, but stranger things have happened.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

Bill Hiatt said:


> It's terrible that things such as this can happen. I thought the problem was confined to books in KU and to free promotions. That would be bad enough, but it now appears no one is safe.
> 
> Amazon desperately needs to be some people on this and stop relying so heavily on bots. The whole situation illustrates the dilemma of trying to beat scammers mostly by automated means. It simply can't be done. Either a lot of scammers keep on scammer with impunity, or innocent authors get caught in the anti-scam measures--or, as seems to be the case now, both things happen at the same time.
> 
> ...


They'll pay a lot less for it if they weaken it first. Let's be honest, bookbub has thumbed its nose ay amazon authors and amazon aren't going to like that bookbub favour other stores. It helps to take sales from amazon.

Are bookbub big enough to take amazon to court, especially if they start losing author money? I think not. Cheaper to sell, or do what amazon wants.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

OP ~ have they verified that this is a matter of suspicious sales?


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Amazon desperately needs to be some people on this and stop relying so heavily on bots. The whole situation illustrates the dilemma of trying to beat scammers mostly by automated means. It simply can't be done. Either a lot of scammers keep on scammer with impunity, or innocent authors get caught in the anti-scam measures--or, as seems to be the case now, both things happen at the same time.
> 
> I'm reasonably confident that Amazon isn't specifically trying to attack Bookbub somehow. I think that mostly because Bookbub really might sue over something like that, since it could conceivably threaten its entire business. Yes, there are other markets, but Amazon is by far the biggest. How many people would stand in line for a Bookbub that, if it were successful, would get the author in trouble with Amazon?


I'm in agreement. To MonkeyScribe's point above, I think that could explain some (perhaps a good bit) of what's been going on. But some of the most recent incidences of rank stripping--this one included--smacks more to me of a ham-fisted, software-driven approach by Amazon at catching scammers.

I get having an algo that triggers a review. I do not get having a computer make the final decisions given the nuances involved and the far-reaching effect those decisions have.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

katherinef said:


> I'm really glad I'm wide. Even without Amazon, Bookbubs are great. I already stopped using AMS, and now I'll pause all Facebook, Bookbub, and other ads leading to Amazon until they stop being ridiculous.


Until Amazon stops being ridiculous? You may be in for a long wait.


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## Guest (Oct 20, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> How is it breaking TOS? The book is paid, someone paid to get it, done.
> 
> I don't see how buying a product, or even paying people to buy your product, violates the TOS.


Any attempt to manipulate Amazon's algorithms is a violation of the TOS.

Legitimate advertising is about generating PROFIT. If the purpose of the promotion is to instead generate a faux spike in your sales rank and artificially manipulate the ranks, then it is a violation.

Amazon cares because artificial manipulation of their algorithms pisses in the pool everyone used. By generating those faux sales, you mess up the entire system, which is dependent on accurate data concerning consumer interests. Algorithms assume sales are based on genuine interest and then extrapolate from there. If the data being imputed is corrupted, it pushed out corrupted data.

So if you pay someone $300 to generate 250 faux sales, yes, Amazon got paid. But it also ended up with 250 bad data points that the software thinks were legitimate interest. That information cascades through the entire system and messes up also-boughts and recommendations to others.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Atlantisatheart said:


> Why pick on a paid book? I said it before on the last thread and called it a conspiracy theory, but I'll say it again without that tag - It's amazon trying to destroy other ad sites.


It wouldn't be expensive to apply bots against a paid book at 99c. I mean, if the authors making six figures start going after each other (which I've always thought will happen at some point), a few hundred bucks to put someone in the dog house with zon is no big deal.

additionally, it would be a very smart way of legitimizing the bot accounts (a little more expensive, but heck, so many authors are botting it's probably worth the cost). Problem becomes if zon identifies them as bots anyway and then takes action on the paid books they were used on.

hehe, can all of this get any messier or absurd?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> So if you pay someone $300 to generate 250 faux sales, yes, Amazon got paid. But it also ended up with 250 bad data points that the software thinks were legitimate interest. That information cascades through the entire system and messes up also-boughts and recommendations to others.


I mean, i guess I can see that. I just can't see why anyone would bother with this. You'd have to spend a TON to influence the ranks significantly. And it would only last for a short time.

And I'm definitely of the belief that rank does not generate sales (sales generate rank, rank doesn't generate sales, that's the conclusion I've come to). Also boughts definitely do, though.

Anyway, of all the scams I've heard of the one I'm least offended by would be someone buying their own book. It's about the weakest form of cheating I can imagine hehe.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't assume malice when incompetence is an equally obvious explanation.

I think Amazon saw a nine-month old multi-author box set with no reviews shoot up to the top 100 in a day, and an algo is telling them that's a botted book. The algo is wrong, but the distance between the people being harmed by that conclusion and the people who can change it is too great for this to be resolved quickly.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I'll be posting about this shortly. Lots of authors getting rank stripped lately, and I don't believe they engaged in any wrongdoing.

Just going over the details with some people but should be able to post soon - just wanted to say that I don't think any of the promo sites are to blame here at all. All the various authors affected by this all used different promo.

As for why scammers would potentially do this, I'll cover that in the post but there are a whole bunch of plausible scenarios I'll cover.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

I actually think it's the "spike" that triggered the rank being stripped. By that I mean the boxed set was not being promoted, so it drifted in the pretty low rankings. When the Bub hit, it boosted the set up into the top charts. That sudden boost I think is what triggered the rank stripping, but we don't know exactly what level of boost the algo is looking for before it strips rank. I suspect it's sudden spikes of x% from the title's normal sales level. But we don't know what that x% is. (This is just me guessing what's going on). Most BB promos happen without being stripped of their rank, so it can't JUST be BookBub. But, a small percentage of BB books ARE being hit, and once it happens, there's very little any author can do about it, plus Amazon shrug and say "you should have used our advertising". Also, Amazon aren't going to say "it's xx% difference in sudden rank changes that triggers this algo" because then the scammers know what they can get away with. 

It seems clear to me that Amazon is trying to combat rank manipulation but in usual Amazon fashion, they're using a sledgehammer when they should be using a scalpel. 

If you have a low-ranking book and you're about to run a BB wide or in KU, 99c or free, I'd be concerned.


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

Seneca42 said:


> I mean, i guess I can see that. I just can't see why anyone would bother with this. You'd have to spend a TON to influence the ranks significantly. And it would only last for a short time.


This is how some (NOT all) multi-author box sets are hitting the USA Today list. And yes, they are giving away tons. If you're an author who missed out hitting USAT with a solo title because some people decided to break TOS and run 1,000 giveaways, you might be offended.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Buying their own book at 99 cents would get them 35 cents back in each purchase too, huh? So they're paying about 73 cents per guaranteed sale? At $1.08-0.35? So, about $730 for one thousand sales? Interesting.


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

Going Incognito said:


> Buying their own book at 99 cents would get them 35 cents back in each purchase too, huh? So they're paying about 73 cents per guaranteed sale? At $1.08-0.35? So, about $730 for one thousand sales? Interesting.


I've they're published via Pronoun they are getting 70% back, so cut that dollar figure in half and divide by the 20 people in the set.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

C. Gockel said:


> OP ~ have they verified that this is a matter of suspicious sales?


No, all we have so far is the "we need more time to look into it" email.


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## Guest (Oct 20, 2017)

Seneca42 said:


> I mean, i guess I can see that. I just can't see why anyone would bother with this.


Because if you can get to number one in a category, even if it is only for an hour, you can then claim to be an "Amazon bestselling author." Which you can then leverage in other things. For example, there are several "service providers" that sell their "expertise" based on the fact that they are Amazon bestselling authors. Some of them are tied to award mills. Some of them are tied to review services. Some of them sell their "promotion secrets" via email subscription.

See, your problem is that you are thinking about this like a non-sociopath.  for people who are inherently honest, it can be difficult to understand the why of these scams. Because you're right. If the goal is just to get sales, it is a bad way to do it. But when you really start digging deeply into the nature of some of the scams designed to separate authors from their money, you can begin to piece it together. Scammers need to have the appearance of legitimacy. Who wants to buy the promotion secrets of a nobody? But everyone wants to know how an Amazon bestseller gets to be a bestseller.

Remember the entire John Locke debacle from years ago? He spent thousands of dollars buying reviews, and then sold a book to authors on how to sell. John Locke was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There are a lot of "bestsellers" out there selling their "knowledge", but the realities of their bestseller status are ugly and shrouded in games like this. ]John Locke debacle[/url] from years ago? He spent thousands of dollars buying reviews, and then sold a book to authors on how to sell. John Locke was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There are a lot of "bestsellers" out there selling their "knowledge", but the realities of their bestseller status are ugly and shrouded in games like this.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

I don't think it matters whether the title is paid, free, in KU, has no reviews or is a bajillion dollars. When you look at the recent authors impacted, the variables are too many. It's that sudden shift in rank that's triggered the bot-detecting algos (or whatever), that explains why so many authors with different promotions from different sites are getting caught in this net. BookBub is the heavyweight when it comes to boosting books up the ranks, so more of BB's featured titles are being caught in the net. It's not BB, per se, it's the impact of that BB. If a title is happily in the mid-list and it gets a BB, perhaps the % change isn't enough to trigger the hunter-bot, but if the title is way down low, that % spike sets off an alarm and triggers the bot, boom, no more rank. 

Amazon, in their infinite wisdom, wrote the bot to combat rank manipulators. So when it happens, you get a reply from KDP saying "you manipulated ranks, boo hoo sucks to be you." But what they really mean is "our bot flagged your title for selling too much too quickly and it got pulled. Sorry, not sorry. You might get your rank back next month"


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> See, your problem is that you are thinking about this like a non-sociopath.  for people who are inherently honest, it can be difficult to understand the why of these scams. Because you're right. If the goal is just to get sales, it is a bad way to do it.


Well, partly that, but also my goal is to be an author hehe. I can't *make* people like my book no matter what scam I pull. I don't see the point of building a house out of smoke and mirrors.

KU I gripe against, because it's so flawed it's damaging (both in visibility and royalties) honest authors. It's a commodifying force that truly damages the whole industry. But these paid-for box sets to run the USAT... i mean, I guess it matters to others who are almost making the USAT but missing out.

And sure, I guess titles like USAT best seller matter to some people? But overall the damage it does to the overall industry has to be minuscule.

The only thing I'm finding sort of surprising is the number of authors combining up for box sets and NL swaps and all kinds of cross-promo stuff. I'm not one to let zon off the hook, but I'm finding myself slightly sympathetic to them in that how do you sort out who is doing what? I have to imagine it's extremely easy to get "cross contamination" with so much cross promotion; all it takes is one author or one NL to be dirty to tar everyone involved.

Anyway, all of this just seems like insanity to me. Whatever happened to just writing a good book and selling it? hehe.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

ChristinaGarner said:


> I've they're published via Pronoun they are getting 70% back, so cut that dollar figure in half and divide by the 20 people in the set.


Oh yeah.

Tho Zon US hasn't reported jack to Pronoun in a while now. So they'd have no clue what was really being made.

Not that I'm thinking this set, just generally thinking it thru out loud in public on the why/how. 
I just came off a big mix of free first in series' with the rest on 99 cent countdown deals and was bracing to see empty ranks at some point with all this cause they were all in KU but it's my first time seeing it now with wide/paid.

The whole percent of rank change vs time thing makes sense. Course it would make more sense for that to trigger a closer look, with that closer look then possibly triggering rank loss than the rank loss happening first and then it getting a closer look- but it is Amazon. Guess they figure it's time sensitive? They'd rather yank and reinstate than give a possibly dirty book more time while it's in line to be looked at?


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

To me, the main benefit of a huge number of downloads would be a lot of people downloading (in my case) #1 in a series. Ranking apart, I would hope readers will love that book enough to go on to book# 2 and #3 and #4. 

I know having your ranking stripped would be a huge problem, and would kill any tail on Amazon. But there is some benefit to a lot of downloads too. In the long run, I mean. Being wide, also helps sales in all other e-book stores as well.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> See, your problem is that you are thinking about this like a non-sociopath.


You owe me a cup of tea. Thankfully, my laptop lives on.


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> I mean, i guess I can see that. I just can't see why anyone would bother with this. You'd have to spend a TON to influence the ranks significantly. And it would only last for a short time.
> 
> And I'm definitely of the belief that rank does not generate sales (sales generate rank, rank doesn't generate sales, that's the conclusion I've come to). Also boughts definitely do, though.
> 
> Anyway, of all the scams I've heard of the one I'm least offended by would be someone buying their own book. It's about the weakest form of cheating I can imagine hehe.


$300 is not a ton of money. $300 is 300 copies, or let's say 250 copies, plus $50 to whoever organized it. 250-300 sales in one day will push a book into the top 200-300 depending on the day. If the book is in KU, that visibility will probably lead to borrows which will further increase rank.

Someone buying their own book isn't a scam, though the TOS is written in a way that makes it sound like buying your own book, even once, is possibly against TOS. Giving away hundreds of copies to raise rank is really no different than someone paying a click farm to mass borrow a KU title.

Let's say someone runs a countdown deal on their book and then pays to distribute 500 copies of their book. They paid $500, but made back $350 of that through royalties, in essence really only paying $150 to rank in the top 200 of the Amazon store. Amazon bots are less likely to look at a surge of sales as suspicious, then a surge of borrows with no sales. But it seems that is changing, which is affecting innocent authors and negatively impacting promotion sites like Bookbub.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Susanne. said:


> To me, the main benefit of a huge number of downloads would be a lot of people downloading (in my case) #1 in a series. Ranking apart, I would hope readers will love that book enough to go on to book# 2 and #3 and #4.
> 
> I know having your ranking stripped would be a huge problem, and would kill any tail on Amazon. But there is some benefit to a lot of downloads too. In the long run, I mean. Being wide, also helps sales in all other e-book stores as well.


Of course, the sales are the main benefit. But the added benefits include increased visibility for a number of days, thereby generating more sales. Now that the set has been stripped, it doesn't appear anywhere in the store. That impacts long-term rank. The longer it's rank-less, the bigger the impact. It's widely known Amazon takes into account sales over many, many days when determining where a book should sit in its pop lists and charts. If a title has very few sales for a day, the rank doesn't get hit too badly. But if a title has few sales over a period of many days, a week, more, then it kills ANY sales momentum. Visibility leads to sales leads to visibility and so on. Break that chain, and it's tough to claw your way back, especially when it shouldn't have happened in the first place.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

HopelessFanatic said:


> They paid $500, but made back $350 of that through royalties, in essence really only paying $150 to rank in the top 200 of the Amazon store. Amazon bots are less likely to look at a surge of sales as suspicious, then a surge of borrows with no sales. But it seems that is changing, which is affecting innocent authors and negatively impacting promotion sites like Bookbub.


But you'll only stay up there for a day and then start tanking. So you'd have to keep spending money. And I honestly don't think rank generates sales. The also boughts do, but if the buyers aren't legit buyers, you won't get the also boughts because the buyers didn't buy other books.

I mean, I can see how you could work the paid side to rank up, but I really don't see the value in it. I've noticed this with a ton of the rank borrowers. They get high in the store, but they hardly get any reviews because they aren't making sales. Which is why lately I've been noticing they are switching to review padding. I guess they think if they rank high AND have a ton of reviews maybe that will trigger buys. But again, I really don't think it does. I don't think a lot of readers are actually perusing the charts.

Now, where things might start to get more logical (from a scammers perspective) is if you can rank up and hold it, then you may trigger the algos further to suddenly start pushing yoru book to people in emails. Then I can see the ROI starting to make sense.

hehe, honestly, there's no way I could focus on writing if I was engaged in all this silliness. I don't know how people do it. It all seems ridiculous to me.


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## Guest (Oct 20, 2017)

1) Regarding this: Anyone who is running a promo, be it free or 99c, wide or in KU, is at risk. This is not a solely KU isolated incident. It's something we all need to be aware of, and yet it appears as though there is nothing we can do about it when/if it happens.

2) Regarding this: Don't attribute to malice what is simply incompetence

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

How many data points do you need before you stop attributing everything to incompetence?

Authors are quick to come up with rationalizations

when there is delay introduced in how quickly the rank changes
- oh sales must be more in the Western States and less in the Eastern States. Yeah, One half of the ENTIRE US decided they are going to start buying less books

when smaller promo sites start not getting results, despite growing bigger and growing steadily
- oh, the promotion sites must all be getting saturated

when medium size promo sites start not getting results, despite becoming bigger and growing steadily
- oh, perhaps email lists now aren't working as well. Readers are tired of getting free and $0.99 book offers

when tail is reduced
- oh, tail isn't as much any more. Perhaps all sales are going to KU

so many rationalizations

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

Thankfully it's now affecting the one thing that will make authors wake up - Bookbub tail

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

Incompetence - half the mistakes should be IN YOUR FAVOR

All the issues (pages read, rank moving slowly, permafree not performing well, wide books not performing well, small promotion sites results hammered, medium sized promotion sites results hammered, now Bookbub tail getting affected) - each and every one of the big recent issues is against indie authors. How is that possible? Statistically, it's impossible that all the incompetence is ALWAYS against indie authors

Being done to counter scammers is a narrative.
When lots of promo sites in summer 2016 were kicked out of affiliate program, the narrative was - for a better customer experience
Interesting how a better customer experience conveniently hurts some of the biggest visibility channels for indie authors.

Read this: http://the-digital-reader.com/2016/06/15/amazon-brings-the-hammer-down-on-discount-ebook-sites/

Now in end 2016 and in 2017 there are way more extreme moves

And narrative to cover them is - It's being done to 'counter scammers'

Pages Read issue - to counter scammers
Tail removed issue - to counter scammers

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

'to counter scammers' is a narrative that lots of indie authors are buying into. Are you really saying that there is no way to distinguish between a genuine author/group of authors and scammers? That all these moves to 'counter scammers' also very conveniently affect the people taking over the stores with low priced books?

Jack Welch

1) Control Your Destiny, or someone else will
2) See Reality As It Is, not as it was or as you wish it were

It is all about REMOVING VISIBILITY
They cannot fight off indie authors on merit because now indie authors are producing reasonable quality at low prices. So the fallback option is to remove visibility

They are removing all your means of getting visibility and you are faffing around talking about 'attribute it to incompetence' and 'it's being done to counter scammers' and other rationalizations. Wake Up!


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## Guest (Oct 20, 2017)

1 million times this: 
Why pick on a paid book? I said it before on the last thread and called it a conspiracy theory, but I'll say it again without that tag - It's amazon trying to destroy other ad sites.


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


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Carolynn, you asked. It has now been confirmed that this title has been stripped of its rank due to what Amazon calls "purchases or borrows originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales". We've had the email. 

99c sales are not safe either, folks.  

Remember, this was a BookBub only promotion. No NL swaps. A couple of the authors did mail it out, but they are legitimate authors involved in this penname.


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## Guest (Oct 20, 2017)

*********

Regarding this:


> I'm reasonably confident that Amazon isn't specifically trying to attack Bookbub somehow. I think that mostly because Bookbub really might sue over something like that, since it could conceivably threaten its entire business. Yes, there are other markets, but Amazon is by far the biggest. How many people would stand in line for a Bookbub that, if it were successful, would get the author in trouble with Amazon?
> 
> Amazon would be foolish to risk a suit because the bad PR that would come out of it would be horrendous. If nothing else, it would expose how broken Amazon's bot-driven system is. Amazon would be subpoenaed for all kinds of documents I'm sure it wouldn't want to make public.
> 
> ...


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

1) Bookbub or anyone else can't sue Amazon for using their status to destroy/attempt to destroy them

US monopoly laws only come into play if customers are affected
So absolutely zilch Bookbub can do legally until and unless they can show that customers are affected. Amazon going after Bookbub is legally very hard to make a successful case out of

Check the references to legal precedent in this area yourself, if you like

***

2) THIS is spot on. It's better for Amazon to buy Bookbub and even better for Amazon to first weaken Bookbub



> ***
> Frankly, it might be less expensive (and certainly less damaging in the long run) for Amazon to buy Bookbub. Unlikely? Yes, but stranger things have happened.
> 
> They'll pay a lot less for it if they weaken it first.
> ***


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

3) This year we had a shell company based in Panama try to buy us. Obviously, this is a well known strategy in the tech world. Google, Microsoft, etc. all do it

However, the author who suggested the strategy of - First Weaken, then Buy. 
Is Super Spot On

The aim is to control DISCOVERY and DISCOVERABILITY. so weaken everyone who is big right now, then buy them. Then do whatever the heck you want with the store as you own all the discovery


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

Going Incognito said:


> Until Amazon stops being ridiculous? You may be in for a long wait.


Acceptably ridiculous then.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> But you'll only stay up there for a day and then start tanking. So you'd have to keep spending money. And I honestly don't think rank generates sales. The also boughts do, but if the buyers aren't legit buyers, you won't get the also boughts because the buyers didn't buy other books.
> 
> I mean, I can see how you could work the paid side to rank up, but I really don't see the value in it. I've noticed this with a ton of the rank borrowers. They get high in the store, but they hardly get any reviews because they aren't making sales. Which is why lately I've been noticing they are switching to review padding. I guess they think if they rank high AND have a ton of reviews maybe that will trigger buys. But again, I really don't think it does. I don't think a lot of readers are actually perusing the charts.
> 
> ...


There was one person who actually had her botted book _promoted _by AMAZON's emails. At least _twice_.

After the first rank stripping we heard about, her books eventually had its ranks returned. Then all the ebooks were taken off Amazon, and have been gone for quite some time now.

So yes, botting pays off for those who don't get caught.

It's hard to make money selling books. Which is why we have botters and other shenanigans.

The one I'm tracking now is will probably take home between $27,000 to $32,000 this month. Probably more because I doubt I spotted all of their pen names.

Not only are they taking KU money but they are taking up visibility for real authors with real books and that hurts everyone, both in and out of KU.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

D-C said:


> Carolynn, you asked. It has now been confirmed that this title has been stripped of its rank due to what Amazon calls "purchases or borrows originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales". We've had the email.
> 
> 99c sales are not safe either, folks.
> 
> Remember, this was a BookBub only promotion. No NL swaps. A couple of the authors did mail it out, but they are legitimate authors involved in this penname.


And I take great personal exception at being called a cheat. Just as well I'm a long way from the Zon... Scotsmen have been known to get a tad irritable when their reputation is impugned.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

williammeikle said:


> And I take great personal exception at being called a cheat. Just as well I'm a long way from the Zon... Scotsmen have been known to get a tad irritable when their reputation is impugned.


So many authors have received this "you manipulated ranks" email and it's like a slap in the face. Nobody likes to be wrongly accused and have no means of fighting back. It's unacceptable.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

D-C said:


> So many authors have received this "you manipulated ranks" email and it's like a slap in the face. Nobody likes to be wrongly accused and have no means of fighting back. It's unacceptable.


the problem, as it's been since day one, is that how do you discern intent? How do you prove ignorance?

From zon's end, all they know is whether bot accounts or blacklisted accounts were applied to a book. They have no way of knowing whether the author applied them, or someone else applied them. If zon does nothing, we scream at them. If they do something, we scream at them.

Which is why they should just shut down KU. Sure, this instance may have still happened, but in general the botters will move on to counterfeiting Kentucky Fried Chicken coupons or something once KU is gone (because KU is the source that's creating these bot operations).


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## DaniO (Oct 22, 2012)

D-C said:


> Carolynn, you asked. It has now been confirmed that this title has been stripped of its rank due to what Amazon calls "purchases or borrows originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales". We've had the email.
> 
> 99c sales are not safe either, folks.
> 
> Remember, this was a BookBub only promotion. No NL swaps. A couple of the authors did mail it out, but they are legitimate authors involved in this penname.


Wow. This is nuts. So there is nothing authors can do to protect themselves from this happening to them. Do you think the set was targeted by scammers? Scammers targeting books on Bookbub to look legit? Scammers making purchases to look more like a normal book buyer?

Why don't Amazon get rid of the accounts if they know the accounts are attempting to manipulate sales.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

Seneca42 said:


> Which is why they should just shut down KU. Sure, this instance may have still happened, but in general the botters will move on to counterfeiting Kentucky Fried Chicken coupons or something once KU is gone (because it's the source that's creating these bot operations).


Which would do sweet FA to help us in this case, as we're not in KU.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

williammeikle said:


> Which would do sweet FA to help us in this case, as we're not in KU.


Well nothing is going to help you in this case. Zon has yet to overturn one of their decisions (a few months will go by then they might rerank).

So case by case is irrelevant, what would have helped you, and what will help others, is a bot free ecosystem. And that's best achieved by killing the source that's incentivizing these operations, which is KU.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> From zon's end, all they know is whether bot accounts or blacklisted accounts were applied to a book. They have no way of knowing whether the author applied them, or someone else applied them. If zon does nothing, we scream at them. If they do something, we scream at them.


I honestly don't think they even know that. If they did, they would shut those accounts down. In my opinion, all they're seeing is a large % spike increase. That's it.

If they know which accounts are botting, as they claim, hence the "we have determined you've gotten clicks from accounts that are manipulating ranks" then why don't they shut them down? They frequently shut down dodgy KDP accounts. They MUST have the power to shut down dodgy "customer" accounts. Why haven't they? Because, despite what they say, they don't know. This is a form response. All they know is a 567% increase in sales over x3 days (for example) = potential rank manipulation. So, it's from a BookBub? They don't care. It's from a NL swap? They don't care. It's from a freebooksy AND an ENT and a BookBarbarian? It's free, it's 99c, it KU - They don't care. But hey, you know what is safe *wink wink nudge nudge* Amazon Marketing Services (and KDP have explicitly told me this!)

Some will call me cynical, but I've been doing this a while. We all get a bit cynical after a few years, usually with good reason.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

D-C said:


> I honestly don't think they even know that. If they did, they would shut those accounts down. In my opinion, all they're seeing is a large % spike increase. That's it.


If that were true I would have been deranked. My book was at 870k and in one day rose to #77 all store due to my bookbub.

There is way more to this than we know. I have no idea what zon uses to figure all this out in the background, but it's not just a rank jump. Or if it is, then it's randomly applied.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

David's post on this issue: https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/amazons-hall-of-spinning-knives/


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

So what should you do if you have a Bookbub promo coming up? Cancel the promo? Email amazon ahead? Hide behind the couch and hope they won't notice you?


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Susanne. said:


> So what should you do if you have a Bookbub promo coming up? Cancel the promo? Email amazon ahead? Hide behind the couch and hope they won't notice you?


Hide behind the couch and hope they don't notice. Seriously, we just don't know why some books are being stripped, not for certain, and that makes it frankly, quite terrifying.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

D-C said:


> Hide behind the couch and hope they don't notice. Seriously, we just don't know why some books are being stripped, not for certain, and that makes it frankly, quite terrifying.


Feels like some kind of Russian roulette.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I see someone has already linked my post above. If you are interested in helping out those affected authors (including Phoenix Sullivan if you haven't read the post yet), this tweet might be a good choice as it has a hashtag: 

But any spreading of the word is appreciated. Also happy to answer any questions as best I can.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

I hope it goes viral! It will if we all share.


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## karalockharte (Oct 8, 2015)

I'm so sorry this happen to you guys. This just sucks and I hope it gets resolved fairly quickly in a positive manner for you.


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

Thanks for posting the link. I'm reading David's post now and just got to this part:


> All of these authors had a similar experience to Phoenix - and had books rank-stripped in the same two-week period at the end of September. They shared with me which promo sites they used - and, I must stress, all were legitimate sites. I didn't see anything at all which would cause concern.


The issue I had where free books were being counted towards Author Rank was during that period as well, 9/25-9/30. Thinking it was not a coincidence.


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> But you'll only stay up there for a day and then start tanking. So you'd have to keep spending money. And I honestly don't think rank generates sales. The also boughts do, but if the buyers aren't legit buyers, you won't get the also boughts because the buyers didn't buy other books.
> 
> I mean, I can see how you could work the paid side to rank up, but I really don't see the value in it. I've noticed this with a ton of the rank borrowers. They get high in the store, but they hardly get any reviews because they aren't making sales. Which is why lately I've been noticing they are switching to review padding. I guess they think if they rank high AND have a ton of reviews maybe that will trigger buys. But again, I really don't think it does. I don't think a lot of readers are actually perusing the charts.
> 
> ...


I understand where you're coming from. And part of it isn't even whether it's effective, but rather whether the person doing it thinks its effective. But I do think it could be effective for some people. (Not that I think this is okay. Just the opposite. I think it's horrible.)

If you have a good book with an attractive cover and a compelling blurb, people will buy it. The hard part is getting people to see it in the first place. There's been enough examples of people here on Kboards launching a new book, putting some (or a lot) of money into the launch, hitting a high ranking (top 300 or 500 or 1k) and sticking there for weeks to months later. Or examples of people getting a paid Bookbub, ranking into the top 100, and sticking there for a long time. Even doing a free run, then returning with a paid ranking much higher, can produce a tail of higher revenue for a period of time. I've launched two books of another author, one into the top 200 and one into the top 600.

Difference being I used legitimate advertising like ads to get sales rather than breaking TOS and scamming by giving away hundreds of copies. And let me tell you, it would have been cheaper to just buy the copies and give them away. Was it profitable for the author? Very. We're talking a 400% ROI from just a short boost in only a 30 day period. The ROI continues to go up as the books sell without any other advertising keeping it up.

So for unscrupulous people, spending less to cheat the system but get the same results is too tempting to pass up. Instead of spending $500 in one day, you can split it up like one would legitimate promo sites so instead of shooting up all at once, you climb. It mimics a successful promotion on the outside, even though it breaks all kinds of TOS and ethics.

As to how this affects other authors, it has the same effect as bot clicks, only without the illegitimate reads stealing money from the pot. Higher visibility that pushes other authors down.

Rank, especially the bestseller ranks, only really affects those at a high rank financially. Botting or scamming to hit the top 2k is not going to be as effective long term as hitting the top 200. If I'm sitting down at 10k, bestseller ranking isn't going to affect my sales for the most part. Pop list might. Also-boughts will. If I'm in the top 20 in a highly competitive and visible category, like say contemporary romance, but get bumped down to #21 or #22 because a couple of people are scamming, that will have an impact on revenue.

And to put it into numbers, using the above scenario of 500 copies for $500 only costing $150, a person would only need to sell 75 copies at 2.99 to break even or 37,500 page reads to break even. Authors in the top 500 of the store can make that in a day (and much more). Personally, I'd rather have 500 copies in the hands of actual readers with the hope of selling more books to them, but, ethics aside, that's a long range view.


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> the problem, as it's been since day one, is that how do you discern intent? How do you prove ignorance?
> 
> From zon's end, all they know is whether bot accounts or blacklisted accounts were applied to a book. They have no way of knowing whether the author applied them, or someone else applied them. If zon does nothing, we scream at them. If they do something, we scream at them.
> 
> Which is why they should just shut down KU. Sure, this instance may have still happened, but in general the botters will move on to counterfeiting Kentucky Fried Chicken coupons or something once KU is gone (because KU is the source that's creating these bot operations).


But this isn't true. Amazon doesn't know whether bot accounts or blacklisted accounts were applied to a book. Unless Bookbub is suddenly using bots, this box set only had a Bookbub promo on it, and it's highly doubtful someone else went after it using bots. That makes no sense why someone would pay (because 99cents isn't free) to target this particular set or pen-name. Unless someone has a personal grudge or vendetta against on the authors, which is still a bit of a stretch.

So it looks like Amazon has programmed some kind of bot to flag books that check off certain (currently unknown) factors. But instead of using this to flag books and then investigate, they just rank strip it and leave it up to the author to contact and try to fix things.

Canning KU is not going to make the scammers go away. They were scammers before KU, and they will continue regardless. They'll just find new, fun ways to manipulate the system in their favor. Not that I'm a huge fan of KU, or anything, it's just not the solution.


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## RuthNestvold (Jan 4, 2012)

dgaughran said:


> I see someone has already linked my post above. If you are interested in helping out those affected authors (including Phoenix Sullivan if you haven't read the post yet), this tweet might be a good choice as it has a hashtag:
> 
> But any spreading of the word is appreciated. Also happy to answer any questions as best I can.


I reblogged. More scary stuff here, but it seems to be par for the course at the moment. If only we could make a living without Amazon ...


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

HopelessFanatic said:


> But this isn't true. Amazon doesn't know whether bot accounts or blacklisted accounts were applied to a book. Unless Bookbub is suddenly using bots, this box set only had a Bookbub promo on it, and it's highly doubtful someone else went after it using bots. That makes no sense why someone would pay (because 99cents isn't free) to target this particular set or pen-name. Unless someone has a personal grudge or vendetta against on the authors, which is still a bit of a stretch.


Or to hide other dark hat shenanigans. Spread out their naughtiness to include legitimate books to help throw Amazon off the scent. Also, I believe Amazon knows bot accounts. It's not hard for them to track incoming page referrals and what Amazon accounts are known to participate in shenanigans. If they can match reviewers using social media, they can surely suss out accounts that churn and can definitely know where traffic is coming from.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

You know something else that no one has mentioned.

It's also possible that dirty authors are buying up a bub that goes on sale in order to link their book with that books also boughts.

I mean, if you're dirty and have access to bot accounts that haven't been discovered yet (or that are at least active). And you apply those accounts to your books (obviously) and then apply them to *bub books* (say buy 100 copies at 99c)... voila, you are now in that bookbub book's also-boughts and you'll gain exposure to all the traffic going to that book.

It would basically be like getting a kick butt AMS ad for $100 flat. Or maybe it only takes 50 buys. Or 25. Whatever zon requires to link one book with another in the also-boughts.

Maybe there's a flaw in my thinking, but this actually seems like a relatively efficient marketing strategy as we know also boughts do generate sales.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

HopelessFanatic said:


> ...it's highly doubtful someone else went after it using bots.


I would say this is very much a live question. I'll give one potential reason someone could go after it with bots: testing the fences, seeing what level triggers fraud detection.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

I want to say, we can all call Amazon on this. One email to the executive team doesn't mean a lot, but three hundred panicked writers (I know some big names are reading this) that might be a big help.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I spoke with Amazon a couple of times this evening just as the post was about to go live. They say they are looking into it, but I'm not 100% convinced - yet - that Amazon is fully aware how serious this is.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

C. Gockel said:


> I want to say, we can all call Amazon on this. One email to the executive team doesn't mean a lot, but three hundred panicked writers (I know some big names are reading this) that might be a big help.


More likely, we'd get three hundred boilerplate replies about how they can't share details, but they can assure us that everything is working as intended and that this sort of thing only happens when they have "evidence"...which of course they can't share or tell us anything about.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Dragovian said:


> More likely, we'd get three hundred boilerplate replies about how they can't share details, but they can assure us that everything is working as intended and that this sort of thing only happens when they have "evidence"...which of course they can't share or tell us anything about.


Well, I sent an email anyway. When Becca Mills was the target of a fraudulent DMCA notice and a scammer tried to blackmail her, an email campaign DID help.

Here is what I wrote for anyone who wants to send a note:

***

Dear Sir or Madam:

I'm writing because two box sets have recently been stripped of rank. I understand and support the cracking down on bot farms and scammers, but I'm afraid innocent authors are getting caught up in the fray.

This box set was ranked stripped in September:
Wild Hearts: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYP56J8/
The author in this box set has been very vocal champion of Amazon's TOS. I really think she was targeted because of it. Her box set's rank is back, but she is worried that she now has a "stained" record.

This collection is still rank stripped:
Veil Knights: https://www.amazon.com/Veil-Knights-Box-Set-Books-ebook/dp/B06XG3B8VT/
They had a BookBub promo at 99-cents. BookBub, to the best of my knowledge has always been a legitimate website. Has that changed?

I'm currently in KU with six books, but this is making me want to pull them all out. At least if this happened to me I'd still have income from non-Amazon sites. I don't want to leave KU, it helps so many of my customers on limited budgets. Please look into this as soon as you can.

Thank you,

C. Gockel

A longer run down is here:

***

Anyone who wants to borrow my words but change the number of books they have in KU, please go ahead!


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## going going gone (Jun 4, 2013)

dgaughran said:


> I see someone has already linked my post above. If you are interested in helping out those affected authors (including Phoenix Sullivan if you haven't read the post yet), this tweet might be a good choice as it has a hashtag: https://twitter.com/DavidGaughran/status/921470385253691392
> 
> But any spreading of the word is appreciated. Also happy to answer any questions as best I can.


Retweeted, tagging Bezos.

I'm in the process removing my books from KU. Yeah, I've been an Amazon apologist, and I never do free, and I've never had a Bookbub, but this is all too messed up and scary. I'm hiding under a rock with sales only at Zon until/if/when they get it figured out.

So, so sorry to hear about Phoenix, someone who has done so much work for the indie community to educate us about algos and so on. If she needs anything I'm capable of doing, she has but to ask via pm.

Frankly, no amount of income is worth the constant anxiety and monitoring of reads every day that this undealt-with-scam situation brings.

BTW, though only three of my titles are out of KU, every title has dived a lot in ranking. Increased sales have made up for page reads lost, so my income is the same...but the rankin' is a-tankin' so I assume that won't last.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

ParkerAvrile said:


> It seems like you are suggesting scammers are buying multiple copies of someone else's book, and I'm mystified as to why they would do that or how that would help them.


Individual purchases do nothing. It's when 100 or 1,000 people/accounts (I don't know the number is) buy book A and book B... then book A ends up in book B's also-boughts (and/or vice versa).

So imagine you are book B and you want to reach all the readers of book A. Well right now all you can do is run an AMS ad to get *your* book on book A's page. And book A is generally a high visibility book (at least if it had a bookbub it would be) and you'll pay a lot for each click in AMS (and you'll often be on page 72 of the ads).

But if you can get into the also-boughts, which run above the AMS ads. You not only are on a small list of usually 17 pages, but you're also surrounded by (supposedly) high-quality books that other readers take seriously. And clicks cost you nothing because amazon put you there.

What I've found (and others as well) is that the also-boughts generate sales. Readers seem to actually look at them, click them, and buy them.

I don't know what the numbers are, like I say maybe $100 or $50, but if you can insert yourself into books with a ton of traffic (ie. a bookbub book) you're getting a TON of exposure on those pages if you're in the also-boughts section. If you have deep pockets and could do this regularly, I'd see it as being WAY more effective than AMS ads.

At the end of the day the strategy (might) work based on four simple facets. 1) people look at also boughts 2) LOTS of people look at bookbub books 3) it would integrate you into a bunch of other top books as well (as there tends to be a pattern of people buying books with high visibility, so you end up on other books also-boughts as well) 4) we know people buy also-bought suggestions.

So you're basically getting the most coveted advertising spot, on books that would cost a ton of get on with AMS, and you'd be doing it on the cheap. You're getting sales, and getting spillover exposure on other books tied into that also-bought network.

I'm not sure anyone is doing it. I'm just saying, to me, it would be logical. The only two things you'd need to do it are:

1) the bot accounts to create that connection that people buying book A are also buying book B
2) the money to do it. It's probably feasible on a 99c book. I'm not sure what the threshold is to connect the two books, whether it's 25 sales or 500 sales. Obviously, the more required, the less feasible this would be. But my guess is that somewhere in the $100 range (ie. 100 users buying both A and B) the connection would be made; but that's just a wild guess.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

ireaderreview said:


> Incompetence - half the mistakes should be IN YOUR FAVOR


Nope.

As Taleb clearly lays out in The Black Swan and other books, the key here is that the more fragile a system is, the more likely any change (any error, any deviation from expectation) is negative.

Highly complex systems tend to be fragile. Badly managed systems tend to be fragile. A single highly complex badly managed system, like KDP, is fragile.

If the expectation is for an efficient state, nearly every mistake will degrade the system. Road traffic systems, especially busy systems, illustrate this well. Any disruption in the system almost always results in delay to your travel time, from minutes to potentially hours. Very seldom do you arrive far in advance of expectations. More likely, you will arrive late if there's any deviation at all.

If your car is running as expected, changing something almost always results in poorer performance, unless the change is very specific and precise, such as adding a turbocharger. Your car may suddenly quit for no apparent reason: it never suddenly doubles in efficiency for no apparent reason (some form of "mistake".)

People often get sick, reducing their capacity to near zero; they almost never contract some form of disease that makes them twice as effective or efficient.

Also, systems tend to evolve to identify and control the most likely stressor. In a strange but still illustrative example, Wal-Mart has a institutionalized system to catch shoplifters. It has no system to catch the opposite of shoplifters, i.e., people who would (in our thought experiment) enter Wal-Mart and un-steal things, i.e., place things on shelves and leave. We can infer that un-stealing almost never happens, i.e., the "mistake" (deviations) from the norm are not half in Wal-Mart's favor.

And, entropy is still a force. Complex systems that are neglected break down. They almost never get healthier, unless there's some antifragility mechanism in place, like the organic process we call "life," which needs lots of energy input and is still, philosophically, not fully understood.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

More than 24 hours on now, still no ranking and given the experiences of those in David's blog above, we're not holding our breath. We've involved about everybody we can think of involving, stirred up some nests and made a lot of noise. Whether it has made a blind bit of difference is yet to be seen.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

David VanDyke said:


> Nope.
> 
> As Taleb clearly lays out in The Black Swan and other books, the key here is that the more fragile a system is, the more likely any change (any error, any deviation from expectation) is negative.
> 
> Highly complex systems tend to be fragile. Badly managed systems tend to be fragile. A single highly complex badly managed system, like KDP, is fragile.


Amazon runs a highly complex computer system, and refuses to hire people to provide common sense and true intelligence to oversee it. Instead, they keep programming additional processes on top of what they have, hoping to plug the holes in the ****. Over time, the complexity increases, and so does the fragility.

They have a base system to sell books. It does that function well, and so they're afraid to touch it. The major issues arise because of human interaction. Those problems are what they keep trying to tweak. They have shown repeatedly through the years that they have idiots doing system design, incompetent or inexperienced programmers, and some of the worst QA practices in the world. As a result, the system degrades rather than improves.

A professor of mine once said, "It's impossible to program a fool-proof system because fools are so creative." Replace "fools" with "scammers" and you have the current situation.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> Amazon runs a highly complex computer system, and refuses to hire people to provide common sense and true intelligence to oversee it. Instead, they keep programming additional processes on top of what they have, hoping to plug the holes in the ****. Over time, the complexity increases, and so does the fragility.
> 
> They have a base system to sell books. It does that function well, and so they're afraid to touch it. The major issues arise because of human interaction. Those problems are what they keep trying to tweak. They have shown repeatedly through the years that they have idiots doing system design, incompetent or inexperienced programmers, and some of the worst QA practices in the world. As a result, the system degrades rather than improves.
> 
> A professor of mine once said, "It's impossible to program a fool-proof system because fools are so creative." Replace "fools" with "scammers" and you have the current situation.


Amazon hires some of the best minds in this country and others. But they have to make updates to a system that can never be offline.

As complex as KDP is, it's hard not to make a change to one thing, and have it not affect something else, and as David pointed out, that change is more likely than not to be negative.

It is very likely that the higher ups aren't really aware that there is an issue.

Think about it, every scammer they every shut down has probably emailed [email protected]n.com, so emails on this subject likely are sent to an underling to reply with the same canned response. That is why I think it is important for all of us to send an email focusing on Phoenix and this latest incident. They aren't likely to take the authors' words for it, because scammers lie. If we all speak up, are polite, but curious and concerned, I think we will get somewhere.

Here is the email I sent: 
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,257088.msg3579787.html#msg3579787

Feel free to use it yourself.

I'm afraid this won't get solved until next week, but if we put a lot of emails in these people's inboxes, someone might listen.


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

My usual post on matters like these - indie authors need to organize in some form of global society that can represent them with one, hopefully powerful, voice.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

cadle-sparks said:


> So, so sorry to hear about Phoenix, someone who has done so much work for the indie community to educate us about algos and so on. If she needs anything I'm capable of doing, she has but to ask via pm.


That's very kind, Lou. What I would ask of you or anyone else wishing to help is to continue reporting bad behavior and to call it out publicly.

Here's the thing. My rank was restored, but the Amazon folk who made that happen still didn't understand it was not about the rank. especially not once the promo was already borked. At that point it was about understanding how and why, and what any of us who are legit can do in the future to avoid the knives. It was about communication and respect. It was about if Amazon -- our business partner -- had negative information about sites, service providers, newsletters, or practices we as a community hadn't been able to ferret out on our own through many layers of due diligence, and Amazon refused to share that information to protect its business partners, then that's shameful and irresponsible. Protecting their business partners is a far cry, it seems to me, from endorsing third-party marketing services.

As an aside, as I was doing some further research on the topic, it struck me that some scammers seem to be branching out from Facebook a bit. Pinterest seems have some pages where the scammers hang, hosting free books. Interestingly, I noted on those apparent scam sites (mainly incentivized sales and downloads), there seemed to be one clean title dropped in among every 10-12 scambooks.


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## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> That's very kind, Lou. What I would ask of you or anyone else wishing to help is to continue reporting bad behavior and to call it out publicly.
> 
> Here's the thing. My rank was restored, but the Amazon folk who made that happen still didn't understand it was not about the rank. especially not once the promo was already borked. At that point it was about understanding how and why, and what any of us who are legit can do in the future to avoid the knives. It was about communication and respect. It was about if Amazon -- our business partner -- had negative information about sites, service providers, newsletters, or practices we as a community hadn't been able to ferret out on our own through many layers of due diligence, and Amazon refused to share that information to protect its business partners, then that's shameful and irresponsible. Protecting their business partners is a far cry, it seems to me, from endorsing third-party marketing services.
> 
> As an aside, as I was doing some further research on the topic, it struck me that some scammers seem to be branching out from Facebook a bit. Pinterest seems have some pages where the scammers hang, hosting free books. Interestingly, I noted on those apparent scam sites (mainly incentivized sales and downloads), there seemed to be one clean title dropped in among every 10-12 scambooks.


This is so disheartening - I feel so sad for everyone who's been innocently caught up in it, and so frustrated at how this sort of situation makes us powerless to take control of our own careers


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

To those who don't understand why a scammer would buy copies of a book promoted by BookBub, in the words of my son:

"See Mom, if a scammer used the same bots to buy a BookBub book and a scam book, the scam book would look like it was bought by 100% of the people who bought the popular book, and having 100% in common would mean that it would have a greater probability of being recommended even if the number of books bought wasn't that high."

I think he's probably right. (He's 11 and he picked up on this detail I hadn't even thought of!   )


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2017)

> from Phoenix:
> Amazon refused to share that information to protect its business partners, then that's shameful and irresponsible. Protecting their business partners is a far cry, it seems to me, from endorsing third-party marketing services.


Of course you are right. But the reality is it takes two to tango, and since Amazon does not treat authors in general as business partners. authors are NOT business partners, but apparently merely replaceable suppliers of commoditized products. Re scammers, as long as authors bear the cost of scammers, AZ will not spend money to get rid of them. As for being more transparent, there is no indication that will ever happen with this company. Anyway, with this thread, it now seems that even if KU is dumped, there will still be scammer problems with ranking and honest authors will get hurt.


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## going going gone (Jun 4, 2013)

PhoenixS said:


> That's very kind, Lou. What I would ask of you or anyone else wishing to help is to continue reporting bad behavior and to call it out publicly. ...
> 
> It was about if Amazon -- our business partner -- had negative information about sites, service providers, newsletters, or practices we as a community hadn't been able to ferret out on our own through many layers of due diligence, and Amazon refused to share that information to protect its business partners, then that's shameful and irresponsible.


Well, if it's kind of me, it's not a fraction of the kindness you've shown total strangers here over many years. Your insight into the mysterious algos has been illuminating.

I wrote them and explained I was withdrawing my titles and referenced your situation. It'll actually be quite a relief to not have to check reads every day to make sure I'm not the next person targeted and unfairly accused. I suggested a solution, which I'm sure they won't listen to either, if in fact an actual human being reads the email, which I somehow doubt.

I understand: it is what is it. And what it is right now is too messed up for me to want to risk dealing with. (As always, everyone else gets to make his or her own decision. I'm not advising. I'm just doing what will help me rest easier.)


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

Thanks, David, for putting together a really well-comsidered article on this. It’s been a month since my rank was stripped, and frankly I’m afraid to send any kind of inquiry to Amazon—with regards to pulling out of KU, or their progress in this “investigation.” 

I hadn’t realized the breadth of this, however. I’m horrified to learn that Phoenix was targeted, for example. With regards to the whole “rank jump” trigger, they did not strip my book until two days AFTER the promotion ended. So I lost any kind of tail and also boughts on that book. 

Im almost expecting Amazon to garnish my royalties for that promotional period, by claiming that any residual sales are fruit from the poisoned tree. It sounds ridiculous, but the fact that it’s completely conceivable demonstrates how little faith I have in Amazin’s ability to tell which are the snakes and which are the sticks on the forest trail. 

I truly hope that this can be resolved soon. I’ve had to reconsider my whole career trajectory and approach because of this. Because it’s not hard enough already, right?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> Of course you are right. But the reality is it takes two to tango, and since Amazon does not treat authors in general as business partners. authors are NOT business partners, but apparently merely replaceable suppliers of commoditized products. Re scammers, as long as authors bear the cost of scammers, AZ will not spend money to get rid of them. As for being more transparent, there is no indication that will ever happen with this company. Anyway, with this thread, it now seems that even if KU is dumped, there will still be scammer problems with ranking and honest authors will get hurt.


I'm still not convinced that *paid direct* is much of a risk (if any). One or two instances of a rogue or overzealous algo (assuming that's even what it was; and that's a big assumption people are making without knowing what zon knows), is nothing compared to the insanity associated with KU. And I'm not convinced it's even an algo error versus an attack or something we don't even understand yet.

The only thing I'm pretty sure of (which almost everyone seems to disagree with) is that this has nothing to do with selling a ton in a day. Very unlikely in my mind. Zon are lazy, but they aren't idiots. It takes all of one second to check to see if a book had a bub on the day of the spike.

Even if the algo itself can't check (and generates false positives), when the author complains and explains their promo(s), it should be a no-brainer to undo the damage. But zon *isn't* undoing the deranks. And there's a reason; it's *not* the rank jump / sales that generated the derank. As they've said in emails, it's to do with specific account activity on the book (ie. most likely blacklisted accounts used to buy the book).

This should be obvious as hundreds of books have had massive rank jumps and the algo wasn't triggered. So either it's triggered at random, or zon is attacking bookbub, or there is activity on the book zon specifically is reacting to. Zon is telling us point blank that it's the last one (now if they are lying, then that's a bigger issue).

Someone asked earlier why they let these blacklisted accounts exist. It's entirely possible they are able to attribute source on new accounts... so they shut down a blacklisted account, and can associate new accounts playing the same game; call them accounts on a zero-day blacklist. I don't pretend to know the full extent of zon's ability to trace data points associated to various accounts.

*I'm not saying authors have done anything wrong*, but *something* is being triggered and even after reviewing the data zon is sticking to their guns. That's telling you they feel the derank was justified based on the data; they don't care if the author caused it or intended it, all they care about is those factors are present, therefore derank.

Anyway, the coming weeks will tell us the full story. Sales spikes is a comforting explanation, but it makes no sense. If zon has a new way of rooting out shenanigans though, this will only be the start of something much bigger.

Personally I still think paid direct is perfectly safe. Until we have more examples of this phenomena, it's way too early to say that zon has gone trigger happy. Free and KU, ya, I've been saying that's dangerous for a while now. Paid? I wouldn't worry myself, not yet at least.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Seneca42 said:


> I'm still not convinced that *paid direct* is much of a risk (if any). One or two instances of a rogue or overzealous algo (assuming that's even what it was; and that's a big assumption people are making without knowing what zon knows), is nothing compared to the insanity associated with KU. And I'm not convinced it's even an algo error versus an attack or something we don't even understand yet.
> 
> The only thing I'm pretty sure of (which almost everyone seems to disagree with) is that this has nothing to do with selling a ton in a day. Very unlikely in my mind. Zon are lazy, but they aren't idiots. It takes all of one second to check to see if a book had a bub on the day of the spike.
> 
> ...


Our book was paid. Wide. Not KU. It had only a Bookbub promo (marked down from 7.99 to 0.99). It got rank stripped. So... clearly paid isn't safe.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Annie B said:


> Our book was paid. Wide. Not KU. It had only a Bookbub promo (marked down from 7.99 to 0.99). It got rank stripped. So... clearly paid isn't safe.


so if this starts happening to dozens of authors, then for sure, everyone should panic. The fact it's happened one time doesn't concern me. There are plenty of reasons that could explain this.

And I have to repeat this because if I don't people read what they want into my words, *I'm not saying anyone did anything wrong*. Just that something is happening that we don't understand yet. The only thing we know is that zon has been clear the derank was due to account activity designed to manipulate rank; whatever that ultimately means.

While you can say "it's not safe", 99% of paid bubs have not had an issue (free bubs is a different story though). So I don't buy for a second that the rank jump caused the derank. It's something else.

Maybe you were attacked by someone with dirty bots. So ya, in that sense, it's not safe (but it never has been in that regard).


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## JustWriting (Mar 5, 2013)

How many 'paid' books are we aware of that this has happened to? Are there lots of them?

Are the 'paid' books that this has happened to all box sets or has it happened to individual titles too?

Just trying to see some kind of pattern.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

The box set in question is not a multi-author set, btw. It's all in one series under a single pen name. A typical single-name bundle of first 3 books in series.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

brkingsolver said:


> A professor of mine once said, "It's impossible to program a fool-proof system because fools are so creative." Replace "fools" with "scammers" and you have the current situation.


The only way to make a system foolproof is to remove the fool. It also works for scammers.

Until Amazon build a way of detecting scammer books at the upload time, nothing they do will effectively work.



Annie B said:


> Our book was paid. Wide. Not KU. It had only a Bookbub promo (marked down from 7.99 to 0.99). It got rank stripped. So... clearly paid isn't safe.


Did you tell KDP in advance the BB promo was happening?

BB has moved to favouring 99c books instead of free, so its likely Amazon's promo matching algos haven't adapted, hence the problems.

But I wondered if any of those affected by this have let KDP know in advance of the coming BB promo?


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

I have a Bookbub promo on Tuesday. A free, wide book (The Blow-In) permafree right now, if that has anything to do with it. I'll report what happens, or if you're interested you might take a look at rankings on the day. 

Feeling a little shaky about this.


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

TwistedTales said:


> There's something very odd about these deranking events, but fair to say if authors don't quit it (whatever it is) then the ban hammer is coming down, and this time I don't think starting a social media war or complaining to Jeff will help. KDP appear to have their ducks in a row.


I'm sorry- what are you trying to say here? That the OP, Annie B and Phoenix, among others, are all lying about what they did and didn't do? People who've been nothing but helpful and have devoted a lot of unpaid time to trying to figure out Amazon's increasingly arcane algorithms - and sharing that knowledge with the rest of us gratis?

Um. No. It seems _far_ more likely to me that Amazon is using the 'bot' problems as a cover to hit out at one of its main advertising competitors- not at all coincidentally the one that is NOT part of a multibillion dollar company and is therefore unlikely to be able to do much damage to them if they decide to take Amazon to court over it.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

TwistedTales said:


> I very much doubt Amazon are using this to attack advertising competitors. Don't BookBub advertise Amazon's imprints? I'm not saying it isn't possible because anything is, but it's not the first explanation I'd go to, and I quite enjoy a good conspiracy theory.


This could actually be Amazon taking a shot at Bookbub specifically because they wont support KU. The very fact people who are wide find it much easier to get a BB, could be annoying Amazon enough to declare war on.

Amazon may also be thinking BB may soon move to stop promoing KU books entirely, and this would change a lot of dynamics for Amazon.

In any case, if it is Amazon shooting at BB, they are shooting their own foot off first.

Here's a question though - Is it possible to get a BB without Amazon at all?

If not, maybe BB should start offering Amazon excluded promos? I for one would love one of these, just to boost being wide.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

TimothyEllis said:


> Here's a question though - Is it possible to get a BB without Amazon at all?


It's not. I know an author who tried, but they told her it wasn't possible.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

Susanne. said:


> I have a Bookbub promo on Tuesday. A free, wide book (The Blow-In) permafree right now, if that has anything to do with it. I'll report what happens, or if you're interested you might take a look at rankings on the day.
> 
> Feeling a little shaky about this.


You could try contacting Amazon prior to your promo expressing your concerns. It might not help but at least they have been alerted. Whatever you do, or don't do, good luck with your promo.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

I'd be astonished if BookBub were doing anything in the slightest bit dodgy.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

Lydniz said:


> I'd be astonished if BookBub were doing anything in the slightest bit dodgy.


So would I. They'd have little to gain and a _lot_ to lose.


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

It's kinda sad that people are willing to believe that Bookbub is botting before they are willing to believe Daddy Amazon makes mistakes.

Amazon has a bad habit of letting machines make choices for them, and machines are stupid.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

kcmorgan said:


> It's kinda sad that people are willing to believe that Bookbub is botting before they are willing to believe Daddy Amazon makes mistakes.
> 
> Amazon has a bad habit of letting machines make choices for them, and machines are stupid.


All of this. I cannot believe the Amazon apologeticism on this thread. This is Amazon's hot potato. Don't attempt to pass it off to someone else, least of all the affected authors, not even if they were indeed using bots.

Don't gimme the "Amazon is so smart" BS, because their actions have made it overly plain that they haven't the foggiest what they're doing and are willing only to pay lipservice and put a (very small) bandaid on a festering sore when an unfavourable article appears in the Huffpost or similar.

This is Amazon's mess. Not David's, or Phoenix's, or Annie's. Or even what-iz-face who is known to rank-bot frequently. Amazon allows botting and Amazon has zero QC and their attempts at retro-fitting bot detection are more than laughable. Like with every large company, their right hand doesn't know what their left hand is doing, and their internal communication obviously leaves a lot to be desired, or--as I suspect--is judged unimportant.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

In case anyone is wondering why some of us have been defending BookBub, it's because a post, now removed, presumably by the poster, was strongly inferring that BB was somehow conniving with the scammers.


Edited for typo!


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Thanks for pointing that out, Colin. I hadn't noticed, but now it looks like I'm strongly hinting it was BookBub's fault.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

Lydniz said:


> Thanks for pointing that out, Colin. I hadn't noticed, but now it looks like I'm strongly hinting it was BookBub's fault.


No probs.


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

TwistedTales said:


> I'm not levelling accusations at anyone, but I am thinking logically, and looking at some of the books that have been deranked. This deranking business extends to far more authors than the ones you've mentioned, so I don't know why you're personalizing it on their behalf.


Uh, because this thread is about them? When you specifically post here to say these authors need to get their ducks in a row or they'll be banned, it's clear you're talking about them as well. No one else "personalized" it.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

TwistedTales said:


> The thread is also discussing possible causes for deranking, which is what I'm trying to understand. Personally, I suspect there are levels of assessment. The first step may be there has been downloads/buys detected from questionable sources/regions. That might get a book flagged for further assessment, which puts the book into a form of suspension/deranking. Once the book is assessed, if there isn't a problem then the rank is returned. If the findings aren't conclusive then it gets further assessed, etc.
> 
> What that would suggest is initially a deranking just means the bot detected suspicious downloads/sales. Depending on what they use to trigger the bot it could be quite meaningless (i.e. downloads/sales from geographical regions that may be perfectly legitimate).
> 
> ...


Authors whose books were deranked are in this thread, and in fact started it. That makes it personal when you question their motives.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

Colin said:


> You could try contacting Amazon prior to your promo expressing your concerns. It might not help but at least they have been alerted. Whatever you do, or don't do, good luck with your promo.


Thank you, Colin. I'm not sure I want to draw attention to myself that way.

(BTW, the hero in my promo book is called Colin).


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## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

Susanne. said:


> Thank you, Colin. I'm not sure I want to draw attention to myself that way.
> 
> (BTW, the hero in my promo book is called Colin).


Yes, Susanne, there's always the possibility that you might draw unwanted attention - heads you lose, tails you come second.

If your hero is called Colin, you need the luck of the Irish, tenfold!

;--)


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

Colin said:


> Yes, Susanne, there's always the possibility that you might draw unwanted attention - heads you lose, tails you come second.
> 
> If your hero is called Colin, you need the luck of the Irish, tenfold!
> 
> ;--)


Not at all, at all. Colin is a great name for a hero.

I have e-mailed Bookbub asking for advice. I'm sure they're aware of the situation. They might even have discussed it with Amazon.


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## BillSmithBooksDotCom (Nov 4, 2012)

My question on this is when does Amazon get sued for mis-representation and deceptive practices?

They position these lists as "Best Sellers" ... but it is clearly not a list of best selling books.

It is doctored and manipulated list that is not strictly a measure of sales volume. So therefore Amazon cannot honestly claim that these are "Best sellers" -- perhaps "popular, hot titles, featured, rising, of interest," etc. but NOT best sellers. Granted, I'm sure the user agreements has language precluding any lawsuit ... but it would be a hell of a threat to throw out there as not only are authors harmed, but READERS (customers) are harmed by this manipulated data, as they are being tricked and pushed into buying products under false promises (they are not best selling, they are simply featured by Amazon).


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## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

Susanne. said:


> Not at all, at all. Colin is a great name for a hero.
> 
> I have e-mailed Bookbub asking for advice. I'm sure they're aware of the situation. They might even have discussed it with Amazon.


Let's hope so on both a matters.



> Not at all, at all.


Nice one.

:--)


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

TwistedTales said:


> My theory is they have a number of different checks now. They could range from speed of rank climb plus source of download(s) plus whatever.
> 
> First step is to suspend/derank. A further check is done and your rank returns, which explains the short down period. Extended periods may be due to a resourcing problem.
> 
> ...


In my case, I was only informed of my "rank manipulation" after contacting KDP myself to ask where my rank went. I was shocked, and gave them as much information as I could about newsletter clicks and promo sites I used. Incidentally, this email, sent directly to the address mentioned in the text of their email (ie contact us here), bounced like flubber. I ended up having to send my response through a web form, to which I got another canned, hostile reply from Walter: "We will not be supplying you with additional information."

That was nearly a month ago. I have spoken to one author who, after politely inquiring about their rank being restored, had their KDP account summarily terminated. What would you suggest I do, in this scenario? Amazon clearly isn't just systematically investigating and then restoring ranks. And they've put the fear of god in us for asking simple questions.

You may suspect I'm being disingenuous, but the fact is that I am also only barely a four-figure author, and I've made it a point to be transparent and honest in all my dealings. I don't hide behind pseudonyms or random avatars online, for example. I've done my best to be forthright, because I have nothing to hide. I don't want to say or do anything that I feel needs to be cloaked or shielded.

So, with the wisdom of your experiences (which is surely greater than mine), should I ask Amazon about restoring my rank? If your answer is "no," then maybe that says more about Amazon's practices than about my own.


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## CABarrett (Feb 23, 2017)

WasAnn said:


> The second tier check is a mystery to me...is it human? Another bot? I don't know yet, but I'm guessing it's not tuned properly. Either the people are *trained only to look at information in a vacuum and therefore, are doing it badly ....*


I work on Amazon's Mechanical Turk site. It is my guess that they use this microwork platform for some KDP checks and that the weaknesses of mTurk explain some of Amazon's inconsistency when they sweep through the KDP catalog. (This is speculation on my part, but I've seen a couple of tasks that make me think I'm right.) On Amazon's mTurk tasks, workers are looking at the fields they provide and have no other information. Each micro task may be completed by a different person, making subjective criteria a real mess. And finally, some workers in the pool are either not native English speakers, determined not to give the task more than two cents worth of effort so that they can hit minimum wage today, or bots selecting a random option on the form.

Tangential to this thread, of course. But mTurk workers share many of indie writers' fears about arbitrary bans, scammers, and powerlessness, so it may be relevant to the wider discussion.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

CABarrett said:


> I work on Amazon's Mechanical Turk site. It is my guess that they use this microwork platform for some KDP checks and that the weaknesses of mTurk explain some of Amazon's inconsistency when they sweep through the KDP catalog. (This is speculation on my part, but I've seen a couple of tasks that make me think I'm right.) On Amazon's mTurk tasks, workers are looking at the fields they provide and have no other information. Each micro task may be completed by a different person, making subjective criteria a real mess. And finally, some workers in the pool are either not native English speakers, determined not to give the task more than two cents worth of effort so that they can hit minimum wage today, or bots selecting a random option on the form.
> 
> Tangential to this thread, of course. But mTurk workers share many of indie writers' fears about arbitrary bans, scammers, and powerlessness, so it may be relevant to the wider discussion.


So Amazon's outsourcing could be a key factor in screwing things up? Thanks for sharing. Hope Zon put more of their profits into addressing this issue - an issue that is threatening the livelihoods of honest authors and publishers.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

nikkykaye said:


> So, with the wisdom of your experiences (which is surely greater than mine), should I ask Amazon about restoring my rank? If your answer is "no," then maybe that says more about Amazon's practices than about my own.


The problem is, assuming you did nothing wrong (and I believe you) is that you, and perhaps many others, are trapped between two battling parties: zon and the botters.

I really think people are massively overestimating the role of selling/downloading a lot of books. I think there probably are dirty bots involved (which may have nothing to do with the author... but in many cases, it most likely does).

Which then leaves zon having to figure out what to do. Do they ignore the botting? If they do that then their store continually gets more F'd than it already is. Do they ban the author, even though the author may not have been the one to launch the bots?

So zon seems to have gone middle of the road. They don't ban, but they hand slap (ie. derank). Which to me has never made sense. If you KNOW someone botted, then terminate their account. The fact they are just deranking means, to me, they know there's some fuzziness to these situations and so don't go nuclear.

They seem to track the author afterward and if no more suspicious activity unfolds, they rerank them.

There's no answer to any of this, not on the author's end. Something is going on, we aren't really sure what (despite all the guessing), and it will have to play itself out before things return to some sort of sanity. This is likely just the beginning of a serious effort on zon's part to go after botters... the only question is whether the botters will win like they did last time (zon eventually pulled back after too many false positives) or whether this time zon has its act together.

The sad thing about this is that the biggest offenders are still running free. Which, yet again, suggests zon may be outmatched in this cat and mouse game. But, the fact they are deranking as much as they are, suggests they are sick of the bs and are serious about addressing this issue; there just may be some collateral damage as they do.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

Amazon _might _employ smart people but the scammers will ALWAYS be one step ahead because Amazon is _reacting __to the problem_ instead of being proactive.

First, it was KU and the scamlets. The "fix" for that was to reward longer books. So Scammers uploaded 10,000 page books that contained the bible, recipes, pretty much anything they could think of sandwiched between two "books" coupled with the "click to the back for" some reward.

So Amazon capped the payout to 3k pages.

The scammers are still producing 3k page books and I found a set yesterday that IN THE TITLE mentions a "free gift".

They are botting their way to the top, but the smart ones are keeping their books out of the limelight. A borrow a day for a large catalog is still tens of thousands of dollars.

Amazon is still reacting. They can't and won't stop the scammers until they decide to be proactive, and that means having real people sit down and think about this rather than a hurried "IT you need to stick a band aid on this YESTERDAY."

I know how it is in the IT world. It's quick fixes for the current fire(s) while trying to work on The Next Big Project. And quick fixes ALWAYS introduces new problems. They might "fix" one thing and break two more. That's what happens when people rush.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2017)

> NikkyKaye wrote:
> I don�t hide behind pseudonyms or random avatars online, for example. I�ve done my best to be forthright, because I have nothing to hide. I don�t want to say or do anything that I feel needs to be cloaked or shielded.


Sorry, but I must protest this. I agree you seem to have been mistreated by Amazon, but FYI, I use pseudonyms and avatars because I have a professional life outside my writing life and the two lives need to be separated and one hidden from the other. I suspect there are many others like myself. Using your real name online is your choice but in itself not deserving of any kudos.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

40 hours in, and still no restoration of rank and nothing of any substance from Amazon apart from accusations of wrongdoing with no evidence to show us to back up the contention. They're 'looking into it' and won't get back to us until the 24th. By which time, of course, any tail from the Bookbub will have completely evaporated. What a coincidence.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

TwistedTales said:


> At some point Amazon need to be held to account. If anyone out there has been banned or permanently deranked and can absolutely guarantee they did nothing, not even by accident, then why not be the spearhead case?


There's a reason why, in the US, the onus is on the prosecutors to prove guilt, not for the innocent to prove that they are innocent.

How is an author supposed to prove they didn't do anything wrong?

Why doesn't the accusing party provide PROOF that they did something wrong?

Because THEY CAN'T. They can't prove WHO hired the bots.

If they have some kind of information that suggests botting was involved, then that begs the question:
WHY don't they just terminate the botting accounts and remove any influence those botted accounts have on the books they downloaded?

That way innocent authors aren't punished and the guilty ones don't get the benefit of the bots.

So why isn't Amazon doing this? They can make Alexa but they can't remove botted accounts? Seriously?
It's no longer an issue of not being able to do it, it's a matter of not wanting to fix the situation.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

So, if you only have the promo with Bookbub and the book starts off very low and then suddenly shoots up in the ranks it will trigger the alarms, or whatever. But if you have a smaller promo just before and the book is quite high when the BB kicks in, it might seem less suspicious to them?

Too late for me, but if I had submitted to a few smaller ones, it could have helped. No idea, I'm just trying to figure out what could be done.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

williammeikle said:


> By which time, of course, any tail from the Bookbub will have completely evaporated. What a coincidence.


Amazon have been doing this for a long time anyway.

2 years ago, you had a good day, and it was followed by a better day, and a string of them, until you finally rached a high point and things tailed off.

For the last year of so, you have a good day, and the following day will be a terrible one. Stringing a better day after a good day is almost impossible unless you string together building promos. 2 years ago it happened automatically, now it seems to be prevented from happening.

Now we see promos boosting ranks high, and Amazon deliberately moving to make sure there is no tail effect.

It seems to be Amazon policy that promos only last 1 day now. Regardless of the rank boost you achieve, or any sales momentum you make. Average, Promo high, terrible, average.

I dont know how they do it, but its been very apparent for a long time that the rank number showing on the page has nothing to do with the actual rank they use for visibility purposes. The day after you promo high, something makes your books vanish, so their ranks crash back again rapidly.


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

TimothyEllis said:


> Amazon have been doing this for a long time anyway.
> 
> 2 years ago, you had a good day, and it was followed by a better day, and a string of them, until you finally rached a high point and things tailed off.
> 
> ...


I've actually had some contrary experiences in the last few months where a good day wasn't automatically followed by a terrible one. The fluctuations seemed normal to me. Of course, all that demonstrates is that Amazon's algorithms are more complicated than we know.

This won't do any good for something as massive as a Bookbub promo, but in general a different kind of promo strategy would probably solve the problems. Unless one is shooting for bestseller status, it's now much better to spread promos than stacking them. As far as I can tell, the algorithms still reward steady sales much more than the massive spike. Also, that kind of pattern hasn't yet provoked the suspicion of Amazon--so far, anyway.


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

dianapersaud said:


> Amazon is still reacting. They can't and won't stop the scammers until they decide to be proactive, and that means having real people sit down and think about this rather than a hurried "IT you need to stick a band aid on this YESTERDAY."
> 
> I know how it is in the IT world. It's quick fixes for the current fire(s) while trying to work on The Next Big Project. And quick fixes ALWAYS introduces new problems. They might "fix" one thing and break two more. That's what happens when people rush.


I couldn't agree more. What Amazon needs is a combination of live people and a proactive mindset. The problems can certainly be solved, but not by Amazon bots, and not by playing catch-up all the time.


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

TwistedTales said:


> However, if anyone is deranked and/or banned in permanent way (i.e. they tried the Jeff route to no avail), then it's probably time to invoke the arbitration clause. They need to be whiter than white and they'll likely need some crowd funding.
> 
> At some point Amazon need to be held to account. If anyone out there has been banned or permanently deranked and can absolutely guarantee they did nothing, not even by accident, then why not be the spearhead case?


Absolutely! I know that's one crowdfunding campaign I could get behind.

While Amazon's desire to hit the scammers hard is a good one, collateral damage isn't acceptable. They need to find a way to do business without crushing innocent authors in the process. It would be nice if Amazon found the way to do that on its own, but if it just won't, I hope someone takes the issue to arbitration.


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

TimothyEllis said:


> Now we see promos boosting ranks high, and Amazon deliberately moving to make sure there is no tail effect. It seems to be Amazon policy that promos only last 1 day now. Regardless of the rank boost you achieve, or any sales momentum you make. Average, Promo high, terrible, average.


I've noticed this, too. As soon as I stop promoting, my sales-rank tanks. I do think Amazon algos have something to do with it, but here's another theory. Almost everyone is advertising now, which means as soon as you stop, someone else is going to claim your rank with their own advertising. Plus (and here's a big one), the borrows (some by bots, some by real readers) are a nonstop force, nudging some KU books higher, which means that other books must go lower to make room.

The funny thing is, the longer this goes on, the less that sales rank is a representation of actual popularity.

KU used to give you a real edge in gaining visibility. Now, it's so crowded, especially with 99 cent books, that it's becoming more and more expensive to climb the charts, especially for authors unwilling to engage in shady practices.

A weird thing for me is this... The current system must be hurting Amazon too. For example, the top-selling new adult books used to be priced at $2.99 or $3.99. Now, it's almost all 99-cent books. On a sale, these books make 34 cents. On a borrow, these books make $1.40, give or take. It's utterly unnatural, and is only fueling a race to the bottom, earnings-wise -- for authors and for Amazon.

And it's very frustrating to think that with just a few tweaks -- such as not allowing a book to earn more from a borrow than from a sale, or only allowing borrows to count toward rank if there's a corresponding actual sale, they could eliminate a good portion of this and drive the scammers elsewhere, thus helping to ensure that actual authors weren't caught up in this mess.

I'm really sorry to see good, genuine authors -- especially ones who have done so much for the indie community -- getting snagged by this. Amazon should be ashamed of themselves for letting things get so bad.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

MmmmmPie said:


> A weird thing for me is this... The current system must be hurting Amazon too. For example, the top-selling new adult books used to be priced at $2.99 or $3.99. Now, it's almost all 99-cent books. On a sale, these books make 34 cents. On a borrow, these books make $1.40, give or take. It's utterly unnatural, and is only fueling a race to the bottom, earnings-wise -- for authors and for Amazon.


This perfectly explains why the per page payout rate is continually heading downward.

If KU is becoming 99c haven, then Amazon is paying too much for the reads. And it makes perfect sense for them to want to reduce the payout anyway they can.



MmmmmPie said:


> And it's very frustrating to think that with just a few tweaks -- such as not allowing a book to earn more from a borrow than from a sale,


You would think this would be the ideal solution. Limit the pages paid to the 70% royalty on the sale price. Why haven't they done this?



> or only allowing borrows to count toward rank if there's a corresponding actual sale, they could eliminate a good portion of this and drive the scammers elsewhere, thus helping to ensure that actual authors weren't caught up in this mess.


I suggested to KDP they create an entire new rank chart for KU only. Paid store ignores KU borrows and only ranks by actual sales. Free store does free books. KU store does rank on KU borrows. No overlap of any kind. Shuts down the whole scam to get rank in the paid store completely. It was received well, but not holding my breathe. As people point out, getting rank in the paid store is one of the benefits of being in KU. But by removing it, Amazon immediately removes one incentive to bot/scam the system. They might lose some more authors because of it, but a lot would go back as the Paid store ranks returned to normal.

I'm firmly of the opinion that KU borrow rank must be removed from the paid store.

And when you think about it, the rank of KU books has absolutely nothing to do with the paid store. KU books should have their own rank chart, the same as free does.

The paid store is supposed to be for paid books. The free store is for free books. KU is neither.

Sure, some books are for sale, and in KU. So they would be listed in both charts, with a sales rank based on their sales, and a KU rank based on borrows. So the top KU books, might be in the millions in the paid store. But as far as I'm concerned, that's how it should be.

The biggest single mistake Amazon did, was not creating a separate ranking chart for books in KU, and not keeping sales rank and KU rank separate. But this could be fixed at any time, and it wouldn't be all that difficult to do. Might take them a few weeks to create the new chart, and add the extra pages, but in the long run, it would solve a lot of problems.


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

TimothyEllis said:


> I suggested to KDP they create an entire new rank chart for KU only. Paid store ignores KU borrows and only ranks by actual sales. Free store does free books. KU store does rank on KU borrows. No overlap of any kind. ...And when you think about it, the rank of KU books has absolutely nothing to do with the paid store. KU books should have their own rank chart, the same as free does.... this could be fixed at any time.


That's a really great idea, and it makes total sense. What's going on now is similar to when free books and paid books were ranked in the same best-seller lists. The lists eventually had very little to do with a book's actual popularity. I wasn't an author back then, but I WAS a reader, and it was terrible. I had to wade through lots of free stuff just to find books that were genuine top-sellers.

It's true that creating a separate list for KU would drive some authors away, but it would also bring some in. Right now, I'm in the process of moving my books wide, just because KU has become such a train-wreck. Within the last two days, I've sold five books on GooglePlay and two on Kobo, with no advertising whatsoever. Soon, I'm going to start advertising those books, and drive sales not toward Amazon, but toward other retailers.

If you look at some of the biggest names in romance, you'll notice that a lot of them are already doing this.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> I really think people are massively overestimating the role of selling/downloading a lot of books. I think there probably are dirty bots involved (which may have nothing to do with the author... but in many cases, it most likely does).


I don't think they're overestimating.

Here is how it works: Scammer is hired to promote Scam Book, they promise lots of great Also Bots. They have 50 of the same gift card accounts purchase a BookBub Book in Scam Book's genre and 50 Scam Books. BookBub Book is a great target--it is on sale and guaranteed to hit the top in the genre lists.

Because 50 accounts downloaded BookBub Book and Scam Book (and nothing else!) that is going to tell the algos that 100% of people who like BookBub Book also like Scam Book. Voila! High ranking in also-bots.

ScamBook and BookBub Book both get deranked while Amazon sorts through it.


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## BillSmithBooksDotCom (Nov 4, 2012)

This problem is largely caused by KU and while we, as authors, would love to see a separate KU "most borrowed" list (since they are not bought, only borrowed), it will never happen because one of the key enticements for KU is the sales rank boost. 

Those terrible best-seller lists full of scam solely to get KU read payouts? Those aren't bugs, they are features. They are part of the design because Amazon has decided that they can offer perks and benefits to authors who submit to them. It shows that they feel they can manipulate these lists with impunity ... and it shows that there is no integrity in their "best seller" lists. (This is no different than the NY Times being called on the obvious manipulation of its "Best seller" lists, which has been a known factor for years.)

But it is important to point out that Amazon is being fraudulent and deceptive in its handling of best seller lists. The de-listing is just the latest wrinkle; the KU boost for borrows, not sales, is the most obvious example of dishonestly.

Amazon wants to make sure that outsider parties are not affecting the best-seller lists (Hugh Howey wrote a lengthy but deeply flawed logic-wise essay on this) -- but the problem is, they are trying to make sure that actual sales don't effect the best-seller list. Kind of like how Trump tried to claim the sun was shining during his inauguration while everyone huddled under rain panchos ... because people always huddle under panchos when the sun is shining.

The fact is, if a book is actually selling -- regardless of whether it got a boost from a promo -- it should be reflected in the "best seller" rankings. If the list isn't managed that way, where does it stop -- this book got featured on Oprah and so therefore the sales boost coming around that time shouldn't count? Being featured on a TV or radio show or a prominent blog is no different at all, and so Amazon should not penalize.


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

dianapersaud said:


> If they have some kind of information that suggests botting was involved, then that begs the question:
> WHY don't they just terminate the botting accounts and remove any influence those botted accounts have on the books they downloaded?
> 
> That way innocent authors aren't punished and the guilty ones don't get the benefit of the bots.
> ...


This, 100% ^^

Amazon has stated quite clearly that they KNOW there are accounts that attempt to manipulate sales rank. So why aren't they shutting down *those* accounts? It just doesn't make any sense.


> "We are reaching out to you because we detected purchases or borrows of your book(s) originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. As a result, the sales rank on the following book(s) will not be visible until we determine this activity has ceased."


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## NotMyRealName (Aug 18, 2014)

I do not accept nor do I consent to KBoards/VerticalScope's Terms of Service which have been updated without notice or the opportunity to opt out.


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## MmmmmPie (Jun 23, 2015)

BillSmithBooksDotCom said:


> ...while we, as authors, would love to see a separate KU "most borrowed" list, it will never happen because one of the key enticements for KU is the sales rank boost.


At one time, this was 100% true. But it is becoming less true every day. Right now, if you want to rank in many categories, you almost HAVE to discount your book to 99-cents, put your book in KU, and advertise like crazy. And why not throw in some botting and book-stuffing, just to help things out? (The botting to boost rank, the stuffing to boost payout. Or in some cases, bot for rank AND fake-page reads, which are stolen from the community pot.)

But let's say you're a genuine author who's unwilling to do this. You're unwilling to price at 99 cents. And/or you're unwilling to book-stuff or bot. In those cases, Kindle Unlimited doesn't do much good anymore. Odds are, you won't make the "top-seller" lists, anyway, even at $2.99. (Yes, there are some exceptions, but I challenge you to review the top-100 lists of any romance category. They're jam-packed with 99-cent KU books, some with unnaturally long page-counts.)

All this to say, if you enroll in KU, odds are good you won't get a lot of visibility without pricing cheap, botting, and/or spending a fortune on advertising. After a while, you're spending so much money/effort/frustration that it becomes a losing proposition. So why bother "renting" your book for a 40% royalty rate when you can sell it for 70%? AND sell on other outlets, too?

It's true that your rank will be worse without Kindle Unlimited, but your net earnings might not be impacted at all. Or heck, there's a decent chance they'll actually improve. And here's why: The top 100 lists are no longer a true representation of popularity.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

dianapersaud said:


> If they have some kind of information that suggests botting was involved, then that begs the question:
> WHY don't they just terminate the botting accounts and remove any influence those botted accounts have on the books they downloaded?
> 
> That way innocent authors aren't punished and the guilty ones don't get the benefit of the bots.





usedtocare said:


> This, 100% ^^
> 
> Amazon has stated quite clearly that they KNOW there are accounts that attempt to manipulate sales rank. So why aren't they shutting down *those* accounts? It just doesn't make any sense.


Because the accounts are apparently short term accounts created with gift cards. The only way to fix it is if they no longer allow people with gift card accounts to buy Kindle books. There are a lot of reasons Amazon wouldn't want to do that.

The best option would be if they could check flagged accounts for an ad trail. The trouble is, I'm not sure if AI is at that level yet. They could probably manage it, I suppose, if they had major advertisers send emails to a special server that a spider could crawl through.

I think that Amazon is still in the early days of dealing with this and it will be a while before it gets fixed. In the meantime, it will suck.


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## ilamont (Jul 14, 2012)

I am going to offer a hypothesis about why this is happening (I posted something similar on David Gaughran's blog):

Amazon's prohibitions against "rank manipulation" have been recently expanded to include unauthorized promotional tools, regardless of whether authors consider them to be legitimate.

I don't have direct evidence of this, but I believe the following activities by Bookbub et al likely run counter to Amazon's own goals and priorities:

A) Maintaining a giant list of Amazon customers
B) Encouraging behavior that runs counter to Amazon's own navigational and promotional tools
C) Diverting money away from potential AMS spending
D) Running up affiliate payouts
E) Providing potential cover for actual botters and scammers, who mix in among legit authors and hope they won't get noticed.

We all know that amazon values iron control over its platform, and wants to extend its power. Newsletters, which are basically mini platforms that depend on Amazon to survive, may be causing too many problems, and not generating enough value in return.

Does Amazon really care if Bookbub et al loses business, especially if skittish authors decide to stick with AMS? I suppose you could argue that these newsletters increase sales, but from Amazon's POV those sales might have happened anyway -- and in a more profitable way for Amazon -- if customers just used Amazon search, Amazon recommendations, Amazon sponsored ads, and Amazon newsletters to find good deals.

That's my hypothesis, anyway. And there are a few things that go against it:
1) if it really wanted to crack down on newsletters, it could do so in ways that don't rile up the author community and increase resentment. A change in stated policy ("you can't use affiliate links or newsletters to increase sales") or cease & desist letters to newsletter operators based on real or supposed TOS violations could effectively end these types of promotions in a very short period of time.
2) Customers really like the newsletters, and to Amazon, customers are king.

Just my two cents.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

C. Gockel said:


> Because the accounts are apparently short term accounts created with gift cards. The only way to fix it is if they no longer allow people with gift card accounts to buy Kindle books. There are a lot of reasons Amazon wouldn't want to do that.
> 
> The best option would be if they could check flagged accounts for an ad trail. The trouble is, I'm not sure if AI is at that level yet. They could probably manage it, I suppose, if they had major advertisers send emails to a special server that a spider could crawl through.
> 
> I think that Amazon is still in the early days of dealing with this and it will be a while before it gets fixed. In the meantime, it will suck.


We don't know for sure if the short term accounts are created with gift cards. Though it does seem likely. Stolen credit cards are the other possibility.

But the issue is the same-they can spot the fake accounts, so remove whatever those fake accounts have done, whether it's borrow and read or buy. That would kill the effect of the bots and make them useless.

UNLESS...this is large scale fraud and being handled by entities that won't touch it until there is a significant amount of money involved. Amazon might be sending out those generic emails to ALL because then when they do capture the criminals, the criminals can't say, but Amazon never told me it was wrong....

Or maybe I'm giving the law too much credit. Probably.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

dianapersaud said:


> But the issue is the same-they can spot the fake accounts, so remove whatever those fake accounts have done, whether it's borrow and read or buy. That would kill the effect of the bots and make them useless.


Closing the accounts doesn't work because they are EXTREMELY short term, one or two purchases gift card accounts. Someone upthread said they interviewed a spammer and gift cards are how it's done, so it's not conjecture.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

C. Gockel said:



> Closing the accounts doesn't work because they are EXTREMELY short term, one or two purchases gift card accounts. Someone upthread said they interviewed a spammer and gift cards are how it's done, so it's not conjecture.


That would be SO easy to fix on Amazon's end with just a bit of code - don't factor gift card purchases in sales rankings.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

Dpock said:


> That would be SO easy to fix on Amazon's end with just a bit of code - don't factor gift card purchases in sales rankings.


Nope. I use whatever affiliate money (sent to me via amazon gift card) to buy ebooks. Why shouldn't that count towards rank for the authors?

They've already disallowed posting reviews unless you've spent $50. So why not have something to deter short accounts? Which person on earth has only spent a $10 or $20 gift card on Amazon?

Anyway, there are solutions to the problems but they involve real people not bots. And a willingness to do something about it.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Dpock said:


> That would be SO easy to fix on Amazon's end with just a bit of code - don't factor gift card purchases in sales rankings.


Are you a programmer who has worked on large systems like Amazon's?


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Dpock said:


> That would be SO easy to fix on Amazon's end with just a bit of code - don't factor gift card purchases in sales rankings.


I don't know what the answers are for this problem Amazon content providers are having, but I don't think this is it. I, and I believe the majority of digital book purchasers on Amazon, fund their accounts with gift cards. It prevents having multiple small charges like .99 show up against a credit card. If purchases through a gift card balance didn't count towards sales rank, I don't think ranks would move much at all during promotions. No one would ever get a rank boost for the hundreds of books purchases I make each year. And with a free book promotions it wouldn't matter because there would be no payment process to count anyway.

Am I misunderstanding the point?


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

crebel said:


> Am I misunderstanding the point?


No. I just assumed the majority of book purchases were made by customers charging their stored credit cards (for "one-click" purchases, I guess), not gift cards.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

crebel said:


> I don't know what the answers are for this problem Amazon content providers are having, but I don't think this is it. I, and I believe the majority of digital book purchasers on Amazon, fund their accounts with gift cards. It prevents having multiple small charges like .99 show up against a credit card. If purchases through a gift card balance didn't count towards sales rank, I don't think ranks would move much at all during promotions. No one would ever get a rank boost for the hundreds of books purchases I make each year. And with a free book promotions it wouldn't matter because there would be no payment process to count anyway.
> 
> Am I misunderstanding the point?


You know, I never thought about it before but I bet all my ebooks are purchased via gift cards too. Everything else, including print books are bought via credit cards.

And the other day I was thinking of getting a gift card so my oldest could purchase ebooks via Amazon.

I wonder what percent of ebooks are purchased via gift card.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Dpock said:


> No. I just assumed the majority of book purchases were made by customers charging their stored credit cards (for "one-click" purchases, I guess), not gift cards.


As far as I know, if you have a stored credit card and a gift card balance, one-click defaults to the gift card balance. (And if anyone knows how to change this, I would like to know.)


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

dianapersaud said:


> You know, I never thought about it before but I bet all my ebooks are purchased via gift cards too. Everything else, including print books are bought via credit cards.
> 
> And the other day I was thinking of getting a gift card so my oldest could purchase ebooks via Amazon.
> 
> I wonder what percent of ebooks are purchased via gift card.


I have no clue what percent of ebooks are purchases through gift card balances, but if I were betting on it I would choose a high number. Plus, since digital purchases are all processed as "one-click", if there is _any_ gift card balance on the account, they always pull from that before charging to the credit card connected with the account. I see Dragovian asked if there is any way to change that - no there isn't for digital purchases. With anything you put in your cart, you can choose your credit card instead.

When there are multiple people on one Kindle account, it's the easiest way for the account to stay funded as well. If my son is buying Kindle books, he brings me a gift card to cover the costs and doesn't purchase until I've added it to the account.

Then there are people who open the account with a credit card (I think you have to), but then delete the credit card information and only fund through gift cards so they or someone else on their account can not just spend willy-nilly against a credit card.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Dragovian said:


> As far as I know, if you have a stored credit card and a gift card balance, one-click defaults to the gift card balance. (And if anyone knows how to change this, I would like to know.)


You can't change it for one click items, only if you can put something in the cart.

A lot of my purchases are paid by my giftcard balance, mostly though anything digital. Ebooks, movies, tv shows, music. I always have a balance in GC so of course all digital by default always comes out of that. No other option.

I'd say that probably 95% of kindle books I have bought since 2008, have been paid off my GC balance. And I have bought many


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> Sorry, but I must protest this. I agree you seem to have been mistreated by Amazon, but FYI, I use pseudonyms and avatars because I have a professional life outside my writing life and the two lives need to be separated and one hidden from the other. I suspect there are many others like myself. Using your real name online is your choice but in itself not deserving of any kudos.


I apologize. I didn't mean to suggest that pseudonyms and avatars are intentional obfuscations in that way. Honestly, my memory is so bad that I'd probably forget what name I use where. For me, it's a personal decision to ensure my own code of conduct. It's my version of accountability.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

crebel said:


> I have no clue what percent of ebooks are purchases through gift card balances, but if I were betting on it I would choose a high number.


So, if a scammer put $1000 on a gift card, and gave the gift card number to fifty people, could those fifty people use it to pay for purchases on their individual accounts?


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Dpock said:


> So, if a scammer put $1000 on a gift card, and gave the gift card number to fifty people, could those fifty people use it to pay for purchases on their individual accounts?


No, that would apply $1000 to one account. Each GC number can be used only once. They probably buy a bunch of smaller amount gift cards and give those to their people.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

C. Gockel said:


> Are you a programmer who has worked on large systems like Amazon's?


Yes.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

LilyBLily said:


> No one ever gives me gift cards. Don't think I have ever given anyone a gift card. I just buy with a credit card I use strictly for online purchases. From a card company that has been hacked in the past and now has very good security because otherwise they'd be out of business.


I was going to say, what land do you all live in, where gift cards are cheap and plentiful? I would like to move there.

I don't buy anything on Amazon with a gift card. The notion that it's standard seems utterly alien.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

GeneDoucette said:


> I was going to say, what land do you all live in, where gift cards are cheap and plentiful? I would like to move there.
> 
> I don't buy anything on Amazon with a gift card. The notion that it's standard seems utterly alien.


I get a few pennies from Amazon affiliates but usually the bulk of it comes from redeeming credit card "points" into Amazon gift cards.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

GeneDoucette said:


> I was going to say, what land do you all live in, where gift cards are cheap and plentiful? I would like to move there.
> 
> I don't buy anything on Amazon with a gift card. The notion that it's standard seems utterly alien.


Well, for one thing, I have a credit card that gives me cashback point thingies. 1.5% on anything I buy. For amazon stuff I have a amazon prime credit card where I get 5% back. But for everything from electric bill and all that, I can collect those points and get a amazon gift card. The other thing I do is collect all the coins that keep falling out of my husbands pants everywhere and once a year, I feed them into a coin star machine and get a amazon GC. Then there are online survey things one can do where you get a few bucks here and there you can get in Amazon GC. Where there is a will, there is a way 

Oh, and Amazon just gave me more money as GC from the apple settlement.


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## C. Rysalis (Feb 26, 2015)

GeneDoucette said:


> I was going to say, what land do you all live in, where gift cards are cheap and plentiful? I would like to move there.
> 
> I don't buy anything on Amazon with a gift card. The notion that it's standard seems utterly alien.


Maybe gift cards are primarily used by teens who don't have credit cards? Just a guess.


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

Does anyone know if the authors are losing the royalties associated with the de-ranked books?


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

usedtocare said:


> Does anyone know if the authors are losing the royalties associated with the de-ranked books?


We haven't been told one way or the other. We're now in contact with the Executive Customer Relations team. I'll keep you posted.


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## C.F. (Jan 6, 2011)

usedtocare said:


> Does anyone know if the authors are losing the royalties associated with the de-ranked books?


I don't know, but if Amazon really does know that fraudulent accounts were used to manipulate the rank of a book, then shouldn't they be able to just nullify those sales in the ranking and not pay out for those sales? That seems like the reasonable thing to do, but I don't think Amazon really does know. They just see something they can't explain and so they assume nefarious actions.

If Amazon genuinely detected fraudulent sales on one of my books, I'd be perfectly fine with them not counting those toward rank and not paying me for them. I think many authors feel the same way. I don't need or want ill-gotten gains. But Amazon obviously doesn't really detect fraudulent accounts, so such a solution wouldn't work. So instead, Amazon goes scorched earth.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

In response to "Are you a programmer?"


williammeikle said:


> Yes.


Do you think it would be that easy? My question was asked sincerely. I've worked in fin tech and sometimes different aspects of their business didn't "talk" to each other for reasons of security. (ie, marketing couldn't access bank account data of customers, but could look up location, age and some other details exported from the main database.)

I could see where the program that is accessing sales data for ranking might be calling on a completely different database (i.e., something that relies on an hourly export of sales data with book ASIN only for instance.)

Data like purchase method might not be part of that export because it is deemed too sensitive, or was never thought important. In which case it would demand a change to the database on the algo end as well as a change in code and might affect rank calculation times, which, as we've seen, are already wonky and slow.

I think this would be more than some "simple code."

We're in the early stages of this, and I think Amazon just doesn't have it's ducks in a row yet.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

boba1823 said:


> How do the high-ranking authors in KU avoid getting knicked (or cut to ribbons) by the hall of spinning knives?
> 
> Based on all that has been discussed about the botters, I would assume that any KU book hanging around in the top 100 is going to be targeted by botters attempting to get their books into the also-boughts.
> 
> Do you get special consideration from Amazon once you hit a certain level of success to avoid problems like this?


This is a very good question and one there isn't a good answer for. My personal theory is that if you're moving enough units consistently that zon puts you on a whitelist. Others have refuted that theory and say that zon does not put anyone on a whitelist; there is no whitelist. I still think they do. Or maybe call it a "gray list"... unless there is massive evidence showing you bot, they don't aggressively take action like they do with others.

Most of the top KU authors are spending thousands per month on AMS ads as well. Does zon use kid gloves with people spending that much? Perhaps. Keep in mind these authors are 1000% zon loyalists. They are in KU, they spend a ton on AMS.. they are *all in* with zon. The other books (especially bubs) are not.

Additionally, the authors sticking at the top of charts aren't doing it with a bookbub. A bub will give you a boost, but you'll slide back down quite quickly. Right now the thing with the cases that we know of, in terms of what they had in common, was they all had bubs.

It's very unclear what is going on and there are plenty of things don't make sense.

It's entirely possible that unethical behavior is occurring on both sides, both authors and zon. Which makes it very hard to ever figure things out when no one is behaving ethically.

I mean, zon's rank bump off a borrow is one of the most unethical things we've ever seen. It's one of the main drivers behind the botting yet zon does nothing to address it.

So is it that preposterous to consider that they may be selective in which botters they go after? Not saying they are, just saying who knows at this point.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

C. Gockel said:


> In response to "Are you a programmer?"
> Do you think it would be that easy? My question was asked sincerely. I've worked in fin tech and sometimes different aspects of their business didn't "talk" to each other for reasons of security. (ie, marketing couldn't access bank account data of customers, but could look up location, age and some other details exported from the main database.)
> 
> I could see where the program that is accessing sales data for ranking might be calling on a completely different database (i.e., something that relies on an hourly export of sales data with book ASIN only for instance.)
> ...


I oversaw the development of two different Medicare databases for detecting fraud and abuse. The algorithms for identifying the patterns are extremely complex, but in the end it still requires people to analyse and evaluate the results. False positives are always possible, but more often the computer misses a problem because the programmer didn't envision the possibility. Individual instances are extremely difficult to identify. You have to look at patterns.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

C. Gockel said:


> Are you a programmer who has worked on large systems like Amazon's?


Yes to the programmer, no to Amazon, since they didn't exist back then.

But as far as I can see, all Amazon's problems could be solved with a lot of old fashioned array handling, and a computer with some serious grunt.

I cant see why you cant store bot data, run a series of array handling programs against it, generate search criteria for more bots, store that data, and then spit out a series of actions. You could do this any number of times, using back end processing to refine bot searches, until you get solid data to base a decision on.

There is no part of Amazon's problems which cant be solved by a good programmer who isn't bogged down in flashy graphics work. It needs good old fashioned procedural processing.



C. Gockel said:


> I think this would be more than some "simple code."


Sure. But its doable by any competent programmer who enjoys a challenge.

I could have done this myself 30 years ago, and would have enjoyed it immensely.

The thing is though, you cant do this with fancy graphical languages. The likelihood is, Amazon doesn't have the right programmers or programming language to do this job properly.

Addressing a couple of other points....

I use a gift card now for all Amazon purchases. Its a lot easier than having a whole heap of small cc transactions every month, with bank fees on each one. Now I buy a gift card with my cc, apply it to my amazon account, and run it down whenever. I usually top up the gift amount a couple of times a year.

I sent off a KDP message the other day, advising them I had a Bookbub coming. Received a very nice message back this morning thanking me for advising them, and wishing me well with it.

I think part of things now is letting KDP know what your promo schedule is.


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## Guest (Oct 22, 2017)

GeneDoucette said:


> I was going to say, what land do you all live in, where gift cards are cheap and plentiful? I would like to move there.
> 
> I don't buy anything on Amazon with a gift card. The notion that it's standard seems utterly alien.


A lot of people I know default to gift cards as gifts these days as a way of just giving people a way to get what they want at a store they like. Gift cards don't cost anything but the amount on them. They sell Amazon gift cards all over the place: CVS, Walgreens, Home Depot, I've even seen them at Walmart.  Both with set amounts or load your own. Amazon itself even started a thing, last year I believe, encouraging people to set up auto reloading gift card balances for themselves, either monthly or when their account goes below a certain amount. Some use it as a way of giving themselves fun money, parents use it for their college kids, etc.

For me, I use Amazon gift cards for myself a few times a year. Pretty much whenever someone gives me cash as a gift, I go over to CVS, get an Amazon gift card with it, and load it into my account. I've also had people give me Amazon gift cards, either digitally or physically, often because people know I read a lot and they think "buying books", they tend to think Amazon or B&N (I get those now and then too).


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

The conversations on this topic usually devolve into a discussion about what kind of system Amazon could design to catch scammers.

While that is well-meaning, I think it's a little moot when Amazon has yet to display any serious desire to stop the scamming. In other words, there's little point arguing about the means when Amazon has yet to display the will.

So instead of getting ahead of ourselves, I'd suggest focusing on how to get Amazon to take this problem seriously, and how to convey to Amazon the level of author anger surrounding this issue, because I'm still not convinced that Amazon is taking this problem seriously enough.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

dgaughran said:


> So instead of getting ahead of ourselves, I'd suggest focusing on how to get Amazon to take this problem seriously, and how to convey to Amazon the level of author anger surrounding this issue, because I'm still not convinced that Amazon is taking this problem seriously enough.


I wonder if Amazon follow Quora?

Someone asked the other day if there was an alternative subscription service to KU. As far as I can tell, it was a reader.

Maybe a small snowball in hell, but I thought it might be the start of something.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

dgaughran said:


> The conversations on this topic usually devolve into a discussion about what kind of system Amazon could design to catch scammers.
> 
> While that is well-meaning, I think it's a little moot when Amazon has yet to display any serious desire to stop the scamming. In other words, there's little point arguing about the means when Amazon has yet to display the will.
> 
> So instead of getting ahead of ourselves, I'd suggest focusing on how to get Amazon to take this problem seriously, and how to convey to Amazon the level of author anger surrounding this issue, because I'm still not convinced that Amazon is taking this problem seriously enough.


We can talk about this until we're blue in the face, but there is nothing we can do with devising ideas how to catch abuse of the system.

We can also talk until we're blue in the face about how Amazon should take it seriously. We can petition Amazon to death but they have shown zero will to do anything about it, and I don't think anything will change that.

We *should* talk about how we can survive (control your own audience and don't reply on Amazon's algorithms. Mailing list, mailing list, mailing list), but I don't see *anyone* talking about that.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I'm as cynical as the next person, but I think we have seen Amazon bow to public pressure before. We may not have been overjoyed with the action taken, but I think we have been able to nudge Amazon into action on occasion. Better than doing nothing, and securing your own independence through mailing lists and whatever else, these things aren't mutually exclusive (and I think everyone talks about mailing lists all the time btw).


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

GeneDoucette said:


> I was going to say, what land do you all live in, where gift cards are cheap and plentiful? I would like to move there.
> 
> I don't buy anything on Amazon with a gift card. The notion that it's standard seems utterly alien.


As has been pointed out, many of the heavy readers on the forum use gift cards to fund their Amazon accounts to avoid myriad small charges on their credit cards. It's also a way to set a budget for their ebook habits. (Pretty sure my co-mod Ann does this...) Amazon even has a way to auto purchase a gift card for your account each month so that you always have one:
https://www.amazon.com/asv/autoreload/ref=asv_reload_create_off
Or to reload when your GC balance runs low.

As for only teens using GCs, as another poster suggested, I haven't been a teen in a very long time, unless we switch to a different base , and my family knows that Amazon GCs are always a good gift. And we just had a birthday party where the multiple adult celebrants, including our granddaughter who just bought a house, received Amazon GCs as gifts.

And, as has also been already pointed out, the settlement with Apple resulted in many people getting a lot of money via GC added to their accounts. We have a thread in Let's Talk Kindle about It.

So, yeah, it's pretty common.

Betsy


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

What's depressing about this whole thread is that the possible whys and hows of every critical issue being discussed are speculation. Intelligent, thoughtful speculation, but speculation nevertheless....because we haven't got anything else to go on, and no leverage to force better or demand accountability. 

Back when I was trad pubbed, I at least knew and understood the various and sundry ways in which my publishers were sc**ing me over--basket accounting (sign or go away), unreasonable reserves against returns, incompetence, not reporting print runs being hidden under new ISBNs with no change in book or cover (you quickly figured out how to keep an eye on that), "selling" the books to a subsidiary in order to pay a significantly smaller percentage to the author, and the ever popular just plain not reporting royalties earned (you could at least hire an accountant for a yearly audit, and they pretty much always found monies owed, sometimes substantial monies). But this...  I love being fully in control of my creations, but I've never felt more at sea on the business side of things. (And starting wide wasn't any better--every platform has its own set of ways to make life difficult.) I don't ever want to go back to trad, but there are times....


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## Guest (Oct 22, 2017)

My Dog's Servant said:


> What's depressing about this whole thread is that the possible whys and hows of every critical issue being discussed are speculation. Intelligent, thoughtful speculation, but speculation nevertheless....because we haven't got anything else to go on, and no leverage to force better or demand accountability. ...........
> .................every platform has its own set of ways to make life difficult......


Yeah! All of this.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

dgaughran said:


> The conversations on this topic usually devolve into a discussion about what kind of system Amazon could design to catch scammers.
> 
> While that is well-meaning, I think it's a little moot when Amazon has yet to display any serious desire to stop the scamming. In other words, t*here's little point arguing about the means when Amazon has yet to display the will.*
> 
> ...




Agreed.

I sent an email about *91* books that were in violation of the TOS. The corporate team VERIFIED that they were in violation of the TOS and gave me the boilerplate "we won't tell you the results of our investigation."

They don't have to. *The books are still up.*

I found more books but there is little point in letting Amazon know. All that does is waste my time.


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## ElHawk (Aug 13, 2012)

David's right: there's no will (yet) at Amazon to seriously fix this issue, and that might be because it hasn't been communicated to them yet in a way they can't ignore.

Whenever KDP has screwed up for me, the only way I've been able to resolve it (after wasting my time going through the various provided channels, which never get me anywhere because nobody in KDP customer service cares) has been to email Jeff Bezos directly.

I would suggest a coordinated email campaign to contact Bezos and alert him to the very serious nature of this problem, how it's affecting customer experience, and how it's affecting Amazon's and KDP's bottom line. If an email from one KDP user will get an actual resolution from a person who will truly listen to what you have to say, and will work to fix the problem, then surely many emails from many users over the course of 24 - 48 hours will draw attention to the problem from higher up the ladder, and we might hope to see Amazon invest some actual time, money, and brain cells in solving this problem.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

boba1823 said:


> A while back, I recall that there seemed to be a fair number of authors in KU who were having trouble with the false positive warnings - probably because they were being targeted (either directly or randomly) by botters scooping up legit KU books.
> 
> From past problems that have been brought up, I gathered the safest approach is: A) Don't offer it for free; botters might hit it. B) Don't put it in KU; botters might hit it. And now, latest development: C) Don't price at 99cents (with a BookBub, at least); botters might hit that too.


Oh for sure, this was an issue with KU before it spread. I just meant to say that the recent cases seem to be correlated to bub.

I think 99c paid is still safe. We have all of one case out of hundreds of bookbubs where a derank occurred. If we start getting more cases, then it's time to panic. But personally I wouldn't be worried on a paid promo (not yet anyway).


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

martysouth said:


> So Amazon is putting it on me to ensure every promo site I use is legit, and I don't know how to do that.


With promo sites, all we can do is our due diligence in sticking only to tried and trusted sites, and checking with other authors (on Kboards or in FB groups, for instance) for feedback on new sites. Beyond that, there's not much we can do. There have been a few sites recently that stated unequivocally on their websites that they complied with Amazon's TOS in every respect - and they lied. It's not easy to tell the good guys from the dubious ones.

What we cannot possibly do, no matter how careful we are, is to prevent any malicious scammer/cybernutter/competitor from buying or downloading our books in dodgy ways. We just can't defend ourselves against that, and if it happens, we can't convince Amazon that we knew nothing about it.

All any of us can do is be careful, keep ourselves squeaky clean and hope for the best, but it's like tiptoeing through a minefield.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Let me just quickly remind everyone that everyone affected only used legitimate, established sites. Some of those affected didn't use any discount sites at all.

Doing even the most extreme levels of due diligence won't necessarily protect you.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

dgaughran said:


> So instead of getting ahead of ourselves, I'd suggest focusing on how to get Amazon to take this problem seriously, and how to convey to Amazon the level of author anger surrounding this issue, because I'm still not convinced that Amazon is taking this problem seriously enough.


Because they don't think there's a problem. And from their end, where they can actually see the data, there may not be a problem. Shady accounts used, derank, simple.

What people want from zon is impossible. They want them to be able to attribute "intent" of the author. Zon will never be able to do that.

So either they let everyone bot because they can't prove the author themselves applied those bots. Or they deal with the bots. Their solution to the false positives is for the punishment to be as weak as possible (deranking).

I'd really like to know what people want zon to do here? How do you ensure you never get a false positive?

It sucks, but that's the world KU has created (and all this bot crap was born out of KU).


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> I'd really like to know what people want zon to do here? How do you ensure you never get a false positive?
> 
> It sucks, but that's the world KU has created (and all this bot crap was born out of KU).


I want them to do 2 things.

They should be proactive in removing anything to do with bots and scammers. Remove the books permanently, delete the accounts they come from, and proactively stop the books being uploaded again. It can all be done with some serious data crunching.

They should shift all KU borrow ranking to a KU ranking chart, so borrows do not impact the paid store at all. The product page for a KU book then has 2 rank sections, one for paid, and one for KU, each with three best cats.

KU must be removed from the paid store, so botting and scamming gains no rank bonus, except in the KU ranking chart. This doesn't mean separate product pages, just more information on them. When you move to the category charts, there will paid, free and KU to choose to look at.

The discrepancies between sales rank and KU rank would then be obvious to readers looking for a book.


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## Thetis (Dec 23, 2015)

ParkerAvrile said:


> I'm not going to hide behind the couch. I have emailed KDP to inform them of the upcoming BookBub featured deal with the title of the book and the date to let them know I expect a spike in sales.
> 
> If you have other effective sources of promo, run them in advance to lift the rank of the book so it won't spike as much. In LGBT, there is really nothing like a BookBub, so I'll do what I can and refuse to panic until there's something to panic about.


I have a BB coming up, too, and I was thinking about doing this. If they respond, I'd love to know what they say...although I'm not sure it will do any good.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> They should be proactive in removing anything to do with bots and scammers. Remove the books permanently, delete the accounts they come from, and proactively stop the books being uploaded again. It can all be done with some serious data crunching.
> 
> They should shift all KU borrow ranking to a KU ranking chart, so borrows do not impact the paid store at all. The product page for a KU book then has 2 rank sections, one for paid, and one for KU, each with three best cats.


I suspect they don't delete accounts because their big fear is they false-positive an actual customer hehe. Can you imagine those headlines? "Amazon banning their own customers". Screwing us is fine, but the customer? They aren't going to risk that; even one false positive is too much on the customer end.

And yes, I agree with you. Breaking otu KU rank or even just removing rank bump from borrow would clean up a lot. But zon isn't going to give up the thing that's driving exclusivity. That's the whole point of KU, to keep content off the other vendors.

So yes, there are things zon could do, but they never will because the pain points don't affect them. Fixing things would actually cause them more pain in terms of their business model.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

Thetis said:


> I have a BB coming up, too, and I was thinking about doing this. If they respond, I'd love to know what they say...although I'm not sure it will do any good.


I just emailed them about my BB promo on Tuesday. Hope it'll prevent them rankstripping it.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

My Dog's Servant said:


> What's depressing about this whole thread is that the possible whys and hows of every critical issue being discussed are speculation. Intelligent, thoughtful speculation, but speculation nevertheless....because we haven't got anything else to go on, and no leverage to force better or demand accountability.


Individually we have no leverage, as a group we do! If we all start unclicking our "Auto-renew" on Kindle Unlimited Amazon will notice and respond--well, at least they will when people like Rosalind James, M.R. Forbes, Michael Anderle (sp?) or others start unchecking.

Kindle Unlimited 2.0 was a direct result of popular authors leaving the program and Unlimited customers calling it "Kindle Limited."


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> I want them to do 2 things.
> 
> They should be proactive in removing anything to do with bots and scammers. Remove the books permanently, delete the accounts they come from, and proactively stop the books being uploaded again. It can all be done with some serious data crunching.
> 
> ...


+

But if they do that, authors who are caught up in this (like possibly the authors David mentioned in his article) won't just have to deal with deranking, but also having their account closed. One of the biggest issues is that Amazon will punish first, then wait for the author to say something. And even when an author contacts Amazon, they are given boilerplate and the run around, if it ever even gets resolved.

If all it takes to get your competitors (perceived competitor) account closed is to target one of their books with bots, things will get very, very ugly fast.

Bestsellers list are only one list. The pop. list also matters, maybe even more since it's easier to access the pop list than the bestseller list and the pop list doesn't cap at 100. The pop list includes free books, as well as KU and paid. It just factors more than just sales to determine the list. Authors botting will still rank high on the pop list, especially with a higher priced book or many reviews.

I'm not against separating the lists, but Amazon will never do it. Separating out free books made sense because free doesn't equal money to Amazon and they don't value it. Separating out KU from paid (which you can already do if you click a button) doesn't benefit them at all. It'll change the bestseller list to look like no KU titles are ranking since KU titles tend to have more borrows than sales. Great boon for wide authors, but it would be detrimental to exclusive authors. If Amazon ever did separate the lists, wanna bet which list would be the default? I doubt it'd be the paid list. Then wide authors have even less visibility with the bestseller lists.

I think people forget that the bestseller list is not the only list that matters. Most of the people I've talked to about how they find books on Amazon don't even know how to access the bestseller lists. Pop list is actually the default if you just go to the category page. You have to specifically look for the bestsellers list or access it via a book's product page, and then only for the top 3 the author is ranking in.

I don't know why people think changing how KU works with get rid of scammers. It won't. They'll just figure out a different way to scam. A book doesn't have to be in KU in order to be scammed to the top, it's just more profitable and easy at the moment.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Our set is not a multi-author set, btw. It's one series co-written by multiple authors under the SAME name. There is one name on the set, it's a bundle of books 1-3 in the series. Just to clarify that since it seems to keep getting called a multi-author set when to a reader (unless they go read the bio, which most don't bother from what I can tell) it looks just like a single-author title. It's all one single series.


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

boba1823 said:


> I would think the sensible thing for Amazon to do would be something like the website Reddit does to prevent rank manipulation for 'likes' (or whatever they call it) on posts:
> 
> Use their fancy algorithmic-whatnots to identify likely bot accounts, and basically just don't count sales/downloads/borrows from those accounts. (And maybe not counting, for ranking purposes, actions from new accounts with less than $50 of purchases, like they do for reviews, or unpaid trial KU accounts.) No deranking, no warning letters, etc., to let on that a (potential) beneficiary of the botting has been caught. Just taking away the benefit of cheating.
> 
> ...


Well, we're listening, and those sound like solid suggestions to me.

I'd tweak the less than fifty dollars one to count membership fees, which I don't think the review one does. Otherwise, someone who uses Amazon mainly for KU would never count in rankings. In such a case, the account still wouldn't register on ranking for five months if that's really all the person did on Amazon, but I suspect most KU users also buy a few things along the way.

I'd also add one feature. Someone earlier mentioned that Amazon can never determine an author's intent. When it comes to botting, that's true. Innocent authors could inadvertently use innocuous looking promo sites that are doing shady stuff behind the scenes, or bots could attack legitimate books to mask their own activities. However, if significant botting is detected on a book, an actual human could examine the book to see if it's really a book and not just gibberish, repeated text, or other obvious scam text. Sure, some authors with legitimate books may be using botting, but a lot of the botted books are obvious garbage. In a case like that, Amazon can judge the author's intent. Removing such books and closing those accounts would also make it harder on the scammers. They couldn't bot any one title enough to trigger an inspection in such a case. I suppose they could keep opening new accounts through which to distribute their gibberish, but an author account requires bank info, right? That's harder to fake than credit card info. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it must be harder to mass produce fake author accounts than it is fake customer accounts.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

C. Gockel said:


> well, at least they will when people like Rosalind James, M.R. Forbes, Michael Anderle (sp?) or others start unchecking.


I've asked Michael Anderle about this. He, like others, has a huge promo budget, knows how to use it effectively, and is doing so well off KU he cant see the problem the rest of us have/had. His page reads across 50 books simply dont show any problem.

Things will need to be noticeably worse before any of these will even wonder about the possibility of thinking about pulling out. Let alone doing it.


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## leonhard (May 11, 2017)

As someone who is about to embark on the self-publishing journey and who has left a 10 year career (at least for now) as a Digital Analyst this summer, I must admit I am flabbergasted to read this thread. For several reasons.

The stories here and other similar stories where Amazon has a shoot first and ask after mentality and punish writers without giving them a chance to reply is simply unacceptable for a company of Amazon's size and power. And I am surprised no media is picking this up.

For many people, people I have gotten to know the last few months, even if in many cases just through podcasts and Twitter, are struggling as writers and in many cases left their job to concentrate on this full time. To take away their livelihood, to remove a rank paid for in advertisement and hard work or to bungle up their bookbub or other advertisement is simply not acceptable.

Imagine this scenario: You have an office job and go to work one day and you can't enter the building, the security guard throws you out. When you come back home there is an automated email that you have been removed from the company and that the pay they owe you is forfeited. Not only that but there is no phone number for HR or your manager and nobody wants to talk to you. Perhaps there is a generic company email where you are told, if lucky, that they will look at it and get back to you in a few days, perhaps. And that you in frustration has to try to find the company's founder's email to contact them in hope for a response...

Amazon is in effect (with their size and market position) the employer of many people. They should act accordingly and take this responsibility very serious. If anyone should suffer due to bots it should be Amazon. They can't pass on the buck to writers.

Some of the minimum requirements that we as writers should be able to expect from Amazon:

* No one writer (new or established) should be barred just because of a spike in sales
* No writer should be barred or stopped without a chance to defend him/herself first
* No automatic deranking or closing of accounts
* For writers Amazon should have a help service where you can get a customer representative on the phone and discuss and possible escalate these kind of issues
* Amazon should carry the burden of proof that their TOC has been breached or something ontowards has happened. It is not the writer who should carry the burden of proof
* Amazon should give writers who pour blood, sweat and tears into products that made Amazon rich the benefit of the doubt

Anything short of this is in my humble opinion not acceptable for a market leader such as Amazon.

Reading this thread, on a personal note, I am very worried that my ambitious plan for advertising my first book, and where I have already found a larger launch team to help me incl. advance readers, that I will be barred because a new book MIGHT shoot up the charts too quick for Amazon's liking.

... like I said, I am flabbergasted about this from Amazon ...


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## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

leonhard said:


> As someone who is about to embark on the self-publishing journey and who has left a 10 year career (at least for now) as a Digital Analyst this summer, I must admit I am flabbergasted to read this thread. For several reasons.
> 
> The stories here and other similar stories where Amazon has a shoot first and ask after mentality and punish writers without giving them a chance to reply is simply unacceptable for a company of Amazon's size and power. And I am surprised no media is picking this up.
> 
> ...


I agree with everything in this post. It's truly shocking and appalling that a company such as Amazon behaves in this way, with total disregard for authors who earn money for them.


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

leonhard said:


> As someone who is about to embark on the self-publishing journey and who has left a 10 year career (at least for now) as a Digital Analyst this summer, I must admit I am flabbergasted to read this thread. For several reasons.
> 
> The stories here and other similar stories where Amazon has a shoot first and ask after mentality and punish writers without giving them a chance to reply is simply unacceptable for a company of Amazon's size and power. And I am surprised no media is picking this up.
> 
> ...


Everyone agrees with you that Amazon should do better. However, your analogy is flawed in one respect: we aren't Amazon employees in any sense. We are vendors trying to sell products in Amazon's store. As such, our rights are fairly limited. In most cases stores can decide not to stock the merchandise from a particular vendor if they want. (Ironically, Amazon found this out the hard way when most stores boycotted Amazon imprint books.)

Do vendors also have discretion in terms of how products are displayed? Yes, so Amazon can control things likes its own algorithms, displays of ranking, etc. The only option we have if we don't like something like that would be to stop selling on Amazon. Since Amazon is the single biggest bookseller, that really wouldn't be a practical course of action.

Amazon is trying to stop scammers, which we all agree are a big problem. Unfortunately, it is doing ineptly up to this point, though it has fixed a few of the earlier loopholes. We need to keep finding ways to encourage Amazon to do better.


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## leonhard (May 11, 2017)

ParkerAvrile said:


> Amazon is not required to carry someone's product or explain why they won't carry someone's product. Amazon is not required to take care of somebody because they quit a job at another company. That's just... can't you see why that's not ever going to happen? It's just not how business works when you're supplying a product to another business.
> 
> You're not an employee. You're a contractor who supplies a product. Workers in jobs have all kinds of rights and benefits, business owners/contractors/suppliers have zero rights and benefits. Amazon is not allowed to take us behind the building and shoot us in the head, but they have no legal requirement to do business with me, with you, with anybody. That isn't going to change.
> 
> I wish more people understood the reality of being self-employed before they quit their jobs. Self-publishing is particularly fragile because the industry is dominated by a near-monopoly.


Legality is one thing. Business ethics is another. I never said that they must carry someones product.
But while they may hold all the cards legally it is (imho) completely unacceptable to just pass the buck to the writers and ban them or de-rank their books just because of an automated system may flag that book/writer.

For many writers Amazon is the only or most important venue for their books and Amazon has done everything they can to scoop up that market position and even though technically they are not employers it is essentially what they are.

The writers are left without any rights and no serious recourse. And that's not how it should be.
They should be sensitive to the power they hold over people's lives. Again there is such a thing as business ethics and you should be able to expect a large company not to exploit a market situation or exploit those that provide the product they live of.

Too much victim-blaming in yours and Bill's post.

Edit: the most aggrevious is how some people pay for marketing campaigns, bookbubs and Amazon essentially can bungle those campaigns without any warning and with the writers bearing the costs for Amazon's shoot first policy.
Imagine a milk company delivering milk to Walmart got their product yanked from the shelves after launching a huge marketing campaign for no particular reason, without any back pay for products already sold and without any period of notice or warning. How is that a fair business practice?


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

I dont think you're going to find much disagreement on the spirit of your post. But even with all the shoulds and completely unacceptables of it, it still comes down to:



leonhard said:


> The writers are left without any rights and no serious recourse.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

Another day on, still no ranking, still no resolution. A mail to Jeff Bezos got us passed to the Executive Customer Team, who have passed us to 'the appropriate team' whoever that might be. We don't know, as they haven't contacted us. We've got some phone calls we can make during business hours tomorrow, but hope is fading.


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## allie f. (Sep 15, 2016)

williammeikle said:


> Another day on, still no ranking, still no resolution. A mail to Jeff Bezos got us passed to the Executive Customer Team, who have passed us to 'the appropriate team' whoever that might be. We don't know, as they haven't contacted us. We've got some phone calls we can make during business hours tomorrow, but hope is fading.


William, I'm on day 11 since my rank was stripped after a Bookbub promo for a free book (wide). I've been through all the steps you've mentioned and... nothing. Only boilerplate responses and no resolution in sight.

I want to thank David and everyone else looking into this situation. It's beyond demoralizing to know you've done nothing wrong but are being treated like a cheater without the option of talking to a real person to defend yourself


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

williammeikle said:


> Another day on, still no ranking, still no resolution. A mail to Jeff Bezos got us passed to the Executive Customer Team, who have passed us to 'the appropriate team' whoever that might be. We don't know, as they haven't contacted us. We've got some phone calls we can make during business hours tomorrow, but hope is fading.


I'm sorry. I know how awful it feels to spend all that money and then have Amazon kick you in the throat without a word of explanation as to why.


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## Bookmonkey (Mar 12, 2014)

It might be helpful to have a charted out list of the books here in a post that have been affected without the title/author - something like: Book 1, KU/non KU, number of reviews, promotions ran, books sold on days one/two/three - and then see if there is some trigger point (like X number of one day sales and few reviews, etc.) that is apparent. Maybe it is a combo of two thresholds and laying out the data will reveal something.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

And just like that, 3 days after stripping the rank, it's back. No explanations, no apology, and most of the benefit of the bookbub 'tail' demolished.

https://www.amazon.com/Veil-Knights-Box-Set-Books-ebook/dp/B06XG3B8VT/


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## allie f. (Sep 15, 2016)

Same here! I just checked and my book has its rank back as do almost all the books I knew of that were deranked.
Let's hope this means Amazon figured out they were the ones in the wrong!


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

allie f. said:


> Same here! I just checked and my book has its rank back as do almost all the books I knew of that were deranked.
> Let's hope this means Amazon figured out they were the ones in the wrong!


Somebody, somewhere, has paid attention to something.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

That's excellent, but don't get too excited just yet. This happened last time they deranked a bunch of books. The ranks came back for a day, and then were stripped again. If your rank is still there in another day, then whoo hoo, you're in the clear. 

Honestly, no matter what is going on here, this is just pathetic store management by zon. 

As for why ranks came back and then were removed again last time... I'm starting to suspect that multiple departments are involved in this. One department deranks, another reranks, another overturns that and deranks. hehe, what insanity.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Ran across this on Electric Speed:

http://www.issendai.com/psychology/sick-systems.html

Stripped of the loaded term "abusive relationship," this is exactly what I meant. Amazon fosters a sick system, at least as far as its indie authors are concerned.


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

How far did you guys drop? When they undeleted my book four days later I went for 5k to 64k and haven't recovered.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

kcmorgan said:


> How far did you guys drop? When they undeleted my book four days later I went for 5k to 64k and haven't recovered.


We were at #240 when we were stripped, and now at #2650 or so. I expect it to drop like a stone though.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

williammeikle said:


> We were at #240 when we were stripped,


I wonder if that's the trigger, crossing the #250 boundary?

What rank did you come up from?


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## firstdraft (Apr 22, 2017)

To be fair to amazon, if I was a retailer and a single product got a temporary sales boost due to a short term promo, I'd dump it from its rank too. Mainly because the promoed item would now be taking the visibility of a more deserving product that will sell more for me post promo anyway.


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

firstdraft said:


> To be fair to amazon, if I was a retailer and a single product got a temporary sales boost due to a short term promo, I'd dump it from its rank too. Mainly because the promoed item would now be taking the visibility of a more deserving product that will sell more for me post promo anyway.


If it was about products that deserve visibility, they'd get rid of all the nonsense spam books taking up space on the charts.

William, (& all those who had ranks restored) glad to see it's back. Will be curious to see if those royalties are paid out, and another question just hit me- is Amazon reporting those sales to the lists (USA Today, NYT)? That could be another big problem, especially for those who have put a ton of money into a list run.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

firstdraft said:


> To be fair to amazon, if I was a retailer and a single product got a temporary sales boost due to a short term promo, I'd dump it from its rank too. Mainly because the promoed item would now be taking the visibility of a more deserving product that will sell more for me post promo anyway.


That would mean they'd have to penalize books (including their imprints) that get internal promotions like Prime First. That will never happen.


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## firstdraft (Apr 22, 2017)

usedtocare said:


> If it was about products that deserve visibility, they'd get rid of all the nonsense spam books taking up space on the charts.


Please link me to the nonsense spam books that are at similar ranks to the pulled bookbubs?

It's a bit ironic that people complain about rank manipulation of "rubbish" books, when in fact that is what they are trying to do themselves.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

firstdraft said:


> Please link me to the nonsense spam books that are at similar ranks to the pulled bookbubs?
> 
> It's a bit ironic that people complain about rank manipulation of "rubbish" books, when in fact that is what they are trying to do themselves.


Do you feel any marketing and advertising is rank manipulation? Should trads not take out ads in papers or magazines or have signings? Should we not send emails to our readers about new books? Should we not buy advertising at all?


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

firstdraft said:


> Please link me to the nonsense spam books that are at similar ranks to the pulled bookbubs?
> 
> It's a bit ironic that people complain about rank manipulation of "rubbish" books, when in fact that is what they are trying to do themselves.


If you think running a sale is the same thing as rank manipulation, I don't know what to tell you.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

firstdraft said:


> To be fair to amazon, if I was a retailer and a single product got a temporary sales boost due to a short term promo, I'd dump it from its rank too. Mainly because the promoed item would now be taking the visibility of a more deserving product that will sell more for me post promo anyway.


Well, this is all part of the commodification trend zon wants to push. I agree with you that hitting top of ranks off 99c is not in anyway similar to hitting it off a $14.99 price tag. A book that can hang out at #500 at $14.99 is way more popular than a book that can promo up to #50 off 99c for a single day.

One of zon's guys in the UK recently made headlines because he told a crowd that authors should lower their prices if they want to sell more books (as if they aren't already low enough!).

The charts are basically a lot of smoke and mirrors and most definitely do not really reflect anything other than a book either had a lot of borrows or a lot of sales; they do not reflect revenue in any way. The sticky #500 $14.99 book is making exponentially more than the promo#50 99c book.


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## firstdraft (Apr 22, 2017)

GeneDoucette said:


> If you think running a sale is the same thing as rank manipulation, I don't know what to tell you.


It's not, people get their money from their sale and then after the sale ranks should return to normal conditions. A lot of people on here act like their sale owes them a high and sustained amazon rank. Promos are abnormal sale events and should be neutralised for any legit ranking system. As a customer I want a ranking that reflects true market demand without flash in the pan promos.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Amazon sales rank considers sales and recency. No one knows the algorithm, but it's easier to maintain a rank that you've had for a while than a new one. So they already consider "flash in the pan" promos.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

firstdraft said:


> It's not, people get their money from their sale and then after the sale ranks should return to normal conditions. A lot of people on here act like their sale owes them a high and sustained amazon rank. Promos are abnormal sale events and should be neutralised for any legit ranking system. As a customer I want a ranking that reflects true market demand without flash in the pan promos.


You want a rank that doesn't reflect how many books are sold, then.


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## firstdraft (Apr 22, 2017)

GeneDoucette said:


> You want a rank that doesn't reflect how many books are sold, then.


I want a rank that represents a fair playing field.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Monique said:


> Amazon sales rank considers sales and recency. No one knows the algorithm, but it's easier to maintain a rank that you've had for a while than a new one. So they already consider "flash in the pan" promos.


I think I sort of know where he's coming from on this. The ranks don't really wipe out the flash in the pan effect, not if its a bookbub. You get tossed into the bub also boughts and get a nice tail that lasts months. So your rank stays elevated all off a single promo. And even if they did, there's so many bubs every day, in essence the top 100 ranks are what, maybe 25% comprised of bubs?

Your rank says nothing about you as an author other than you had a bub.

It's a legit view I think. Someone selling say 20 books consistently day in and day out really should be higher in the rankings than someone who bangs out 2,000 sales in one day off a bub. But zon fires the bub author to the top of the charts, while the consistent seller stays down around 10k in the ranks.

I mean, it is what it is. It's probably a big reason no one really cares about the charts. They don't generate sales. No one actually thinks the top 100 scifi zon books are the best of the best this year in scifi.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

There is no way to limit it without removing advertising and marketing, which can't happen. If that bubbed book doesn't gain an audience, it will fall. It's easier to maintain a rank than to achieve one.

Can you imagine Amazon not rewarding their Prime First books? Those aren't even bought.

Best seller charts to matter. A lot of people browse that way. I know I do. I don't think "gosh, these are the best 100 books" but I think, right now these are popular for a reason, let me see if any appeal to me.


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

As a reader, I used to much prefer when they let me sort by bestselling in infinite. They ended that a few years ago for some reason, but I always found interesting stuff in the 200-500 range and more. There were times I would go through 1000. It was fun. And it was best selling sorted, not popularity. Now? I don't browse at all anymore as for what I read, the top 100 does not represent the genres I read and very often are not even the genres at all, so useless. 

But that is just little ol me.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Monique said:


> There is no way to limit it without removing advertising and marketing, which can't happen. If that bubbed book doesn't gain an audience, it will fall. It's easier to maintain a rank than to achieve one.
> 
> Can you imagine Amazon not rewarding their Prime First books? Those aren't even bought.
> 
> Best seller charts to matter. A lot of people browse that way. I know I do. I don't think "gosh, these are the best 100 books" but I think, right now these are popular for a reason, let me see if any appeal to me.


But that's his point. That the ranks don't reflect quality of any sort; or popularity in the market (outside of that single, isolated day). They reflect a lot of shennanigans (I use that term without any negativity)... whether it's a 99c promo, or Prime stuff, or borrows, etc.

But you are correct, this is not something zon is ever going to change.


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## JulianneQJohnson (Nov 12, 2016)

leonhard said:


> Legality is one thing. Business ethics is another. I never said that they must carry someones product.
> But while they may hold all the cards legally it is (imho) completely unacceptable to just pass the buck to the writers and ban them or de-rank their books just because of an automated system may flag that book/writer.
> 
> For many writers Amazon is the only or most important venue for their books and Amazon has done everything they can to scoop up that market position and even though technically they are not employers it is essentially what they are.
> ...


I have to disagree. Explaining the difference between an employee and a vendor is not in any way "victim blaming." We are vendors with Amazon, not employees. Working in the Arts, even in the written arts, is always unpredictable. Theatres close, art gallery's decide to go in a new direction, and a bookstore--even one as large as Amazon--may decide to stop carrying your books. Whether or not your art is your only source of income is not their issue. You are not their employee.

That said, I feel two ways about this situation. I am absolutely horrified that legit writers are getting caught in bot nets meant for scammers without having a clear and consistent manner in which to get the issue addressed by someone at Amazon who can look into the situation and get it sorted. I am also quite aware that Amazon is trying to sift out the scammers, which everyone desperately wants done.

I think it is a necessary evil that Amazon will catch some authors in their scammer nets who don't belong there. It is unfortunate, but true. This isn't the only business where people trying to game the system cause trouble for legit business people. However, there should be a clear-cut manner for a writer to address the situation when that happens. This whole send an email out into the ether and hope it gets to someone who knows how to deal with the situation just isn't cutting it. These generic and vague form email responses are not doing anything. It is absolutely true that scammers can target legit authors to try to hide their activity. Someone at the wheel needs to check out each case and make a judgement call based on the individual situation.

I only started self-publishing this year and I am all in with Amazon. I dream of the day I can get a Bookbub. It's my grail. At the same time, I'm afraid. I'm afraid of using this very powerful and legitimate promotional tool because I might get mistaken for a scammer. I've know legit folks who have been caught in the scammer web. I know folks that informed Amazon about their upcoming Bookbub ahead of time and it still got caught in all this crap.

Amazon is a gigantic bookstore. They can afford to lose a certain amount of authors but they cannot afford to have authors in general afraid to sell with them.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

firstdraft said:


> I want a rank that represents a fair playing field.


If I discount a book and tell people about the discount, and they go buy the book, and my rank improves because more people are buying the book, that's not fair or unfair, that's just how the marketplace works. If I go into CVS and discover a certain shampoo is on sale 2 for 1, that's not unfair to all the other shampoos on the shelf.

Or, let's look at it another way. What would a fair playing field look like? We all pick a price for our books and never change that price? Or is the fair/unfair line a more than 50% discount? Or is 'fair' a marketplace with no sales rank whatsoever?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Seneca42 said:


> But that's his point. That the ranks don't reflect quality of any sort; or popularity in the market (outside of that single, isolated day). They reflect a lot of shennanigans (I use that term without any negativity)... whether it's a 99c promo, or Prime stuff, or borrows, etc.
> 
> But you are correct, this is not something zon is ever going to change.


What does reflect quality in an open marketplace? I dunno.

The BS list reflects sales at a given moment in time. That's all is does or claims to do.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

GeneDoucette said:


> Or, let's look at it another way. What would a fair playing field look like? We all pick a price for our books and never change that price? Or is the fair/unfair line a more than 50% discount? Or is 'fair' a marketplace with no sales rank whatsoever?


Well this isn't impossible to imagine a solution to. Promo books would be in a promo section  Just like a book that goes free gets punted over to the free list, then returns to paid once it's no longer free. Same concept, just applied to discounted books. When it moves back to paid it could get a certain % rank bump like they use to do with free.

I know it does get a bit silly when you tease it out. You'd have a paid (ie. regular price) list, a free list, an "on sale" list, a KU list, a prime list. But as silly as that might be, I'm not sure it's any sillier than putting all those books in the same ranking system... assuming the ranking system is designed to reflect some kind of authentic popularity with readers (which it's clearly not designed to do, it's just a metric to measure units moved, which sometimes reflect genuine popularity and other times reflects promos, or bots, or various other things).


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## AmandaLutterman (Oct 3, 2017)

Monique said:


> There is no way to limit it without removing advertising and marketing, which can't happen. If that bubbed book doesn't gain an audience, it will fall. It's easier to maintain a rank than to achieve one.
> 
> Can you imagine Amazon not rewarding their Prime First books? Those aren't even bought.
> 
> Best seller charts to matter. A lot of people browse that way. I know I do. I don't think "gosh, these are the best 100 books" but I think, right now these are popular for a reason, let me see if any appeal to me.


This right here! I do exactly the same thing several times a week. I look at the best sellers for Top 100 Free books and if any appeal to me, I grab them. 
Sometimes they're crap, but sometimes they are really amazing! 
I remember stumbling across Marie Hall's box set for her adult fairy tales. I inhaled the entire series, buying all the rest of the books in the series. It was a fantastic find, because of the Best Sellers list.
I've also had awful duds. I won't name names, because everyone has their individual kinks, but there was an awful story that involved painful fisting and rape that was just, no, will NEVER be for me!!! 
You can never really judge a book by it's cover OR it's blurb. But for free, I'm willing to give just about anything in the genres I like to read a chance!


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> Well this isn't impossible to imagine a solution to. Promo books would be in a promo section  Just like a book that goes free gets punted over to the free list, then returns to paid once it's no longer free. Same concept, just applied to discounted books. When it moves back to paid it could get a certain % rank bump like they use to do with free.
> 
> I know it does get a bit silly when you tease it out. You'd have a paid (ie. regular price) list, a free list, an "on sale" list, a KU list, a prime list. But as silly as that might be, I'm not sure it's any sillier than putting all those books in the same ranking system... assuming the ranking system is designed to reflect some kind of authentic popularity with readers (which it's clearly not designed to do, it's just a metric to measure units moved, which sometimes reflect genuine popularity and other times reflects promos, or bots, or various other things).


The problem I have is that it's impossible to define "promo books". All a promo book is from the vendor perspective is a book with a changed price. I could change the price of one of my books to $0.99 and leave it that way for a day or a year. When does it stop being a promo and that starts being the regular price for the book?


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## kspen (Aug 12, 2017)

I don't imagine that it's an accident that Amazon's rank algorithm creates a lot of volatility. It's to their benefit that people see different books each time they check the lists, and that necessarily means that there are books on the list which aren't really bestsellers in the grand scheme of things.

If Amazon wanted to nullify the effects of a big promotion -- and it's not clear to me why they would -- all they'd have to do is tweak their algorithms to give less weight to recent sales activity. I don't see why they would bypass such an obvious solution which would affect 100% of the targeted books in favor of randomly taking actions against just a few of the books in a manner which could potentially get them sued.


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

GeneDoucette said:


> The problem I have is that it's impossible to define "promo books". All a promo book is from the vendor perspective is a book with a changed price. I could change the price of one of my books to $0.99 and leave it that way for a day or a year. When does it stop being a promo and that starts being the regular price for the book?


hehe, you just described the issue with the entire zon store, forget ebooks!

I recently installed a chrome plugin that creates a historical pricing graph on any given zon product page. Very eye-opening the level of bs going on through the entire zon store. Vendors merely jack their price up 25%, then lower it 25% and say it's on sale for 25%. But when you see the historical pricing you realize that's not a sale, it's the regular price; but zon promotes it as 25% off.

I've mostly stopped shopping at zon becasue of this silliness. I can't trust anything I'm seeing.

So there's no solution, but I do understand where the poster was coming from, nothing is really what it seems on zon.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

P.J. Post said:


> Rank = sales = visibility ~ promotions and marketing and business models and strategy and past performance. Quality isn't necessarily represented in any of it. The rank will never be a reflection of the best books available at any given moment. It will always be a reflection of the best marketed and promoted books at any given moment.


Oh i don't know. I think there are lots of ways you could radically change what the top charts look like.

* remove borrow bumps and use pages read bumps
* tie rank bump to revenue (so a $9.99 book gets 10x the rank bump of a 99c book)
* Give rank bonuses to consistently selling books (for instance, a book with 10 sales a day for 30 days straight would get a greater rank bump than a book that sold 300 copies in one day). 
* break out the ranks into the various segregated markets (I really like Tim's idea of a separate rank for KU books).

Nothing would be perfect, but there are other combinations of ranking methods that could produce a very different "look" to the store.

Right now, the current method favors heavily: KU Books, Prime books and Bub books. So no surprise, that's what the charts reflect.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> hehe, you just described the issue with the entire zon store, forget ebooks!
> 
> I recently installed a chrome plugin that creates a historical pricing graph on any given zon product page. Very eye-opening the level of bs going on through the entire zon store. Vendors merely jack their price up 25%, then lower it 25% and say it's on sale for 25%. But when you see the historical pricing you realize that's not a sale, it's the regular price; but zon promotes it as 25% off.
> 
> ...


I read something the other day about how JC Penney tried an honest pricing approach one time. They stopped having sales and specials, and it failed miserably. The thing is, they weren't running real sales in the first place, they were jacking up 'regular' prices and then offering sales specials that were actually markdowns to the pre-marked-up price. So when they stopped doing that, what they were really doing was offering everything at their imaginary 'sales' prices all the time.

It didn't work, nobody liked it, people lost jobs, and they went back to the patently deceptive practice they still employ.

This isn't an Amazon problem, it's a common tactic in all sorts of industries.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

GeneDoucette said:


> You want a rank that doesn't reflect how many books are sold, then.


Maybe a rank that takes price into account--money spent on that book, in other words?


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> Well this isn't impossible to imagine a solution to. Promo books would be in a promo section  Just like a book that goes free gets punted over to the free list, then returns to paid once it's no longer free. Same concept, just applied to discounted books. When it moves back to paid it could get a certain % rank bump like they use to do with free.
> 
> I know it does get a bit silly when you tease it out. You'd have a paid (ie. regular price) list, a free list, an "on sale" list, a KU list, a prime list. But as silly as that might be


Not silly. I like this a lot.

On each product page, the rank section is going to be a lot bigger, but for those who care, its good purchase choice information.



GeneDoucette said:


> The problem I have is that it's impossible to define "promo books". All a promo book is from the vendor perspective is a book with a changed price. I could change the price of one of my books to $0.99 and leave it that way for a day or a year. When does it stop being a promo and that starts being the regular price for the book?


So a minor change to the upload function. They add in a permanent price, and not allow it to be changed for 90 days. They put a discounted price next to it, which can be changed any time. On the product page, they display both. If the discount remains unchanged for 30 days, the regular price changes to the discount price, and then cant be changed for 90 days.



kspen said:


> If Amazon wanted to nullify the effects of a big promotion -- and it's not clear to me why they would -- all they'd have to do is tweak their algorithms to give less weight to recent sales activity.


They already have. But not at the big promo level, at the better than yesterday level. They already do something which stops you having 2 good days in a row, unless you are promoing both days evenly.

The days of promoing a good day, or having a good release, followed by a continuing growth upward through natural means, are long gone. You get one good, then you crash, then you pick up, have a better day, and crash again. This is deliberate manipulation by Amazon.



Seneca42 said:


> Oh i don't know. I think there are lots of ways you could radically change what the top charts look like.
> 
> * remove borrow bumps and use pages read bumps
> * tie rank bump to revenue (so a $9.99 book gets 10x the rank bump of a 99c book)
> ...


Again, this.

The trouble with pages read rank is it encourages the scammers even more. It also encourages longer books. More so than is happening now.

But if you tied pages read rank to sales income, that would completely nullify KU scamming as far as ranks go. Maybe you dont even need to do this. As long as KU remains in the paid store, KU rank is modified by sales data. So those getting huge borrows, but no sales, get very little actual rank.



GeneDoucette said:


> I read something the other day about how JC Penney tried an honest pricing approach one time. They stopped having sales and specials, and it failed miserably. The thing is, they weren't running real sales in the first place, they were jacking up 'regular' prices and then offering sales specials that were actually markdowns to the pre-marked-up price. So when they stopped doing that, what they were really doing was offering everything at their imaginary 'sales' prices all the time.
> It didn't work, nobody liked it, people lost jobs, and they went back to the patently deceptive practice they still employ.
> This isn't an Amazon problem, it's a common tactic in all sorts of industries.


One of electronics stores does this as well. As soon as I worked it out, I stopped even going there. They took over a store I did go to, so I stopped going there as well.

It might be a common tactic, but it doesn't fool everyone.


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## AlexVDW (Oct 23, 2017)

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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> One of electronics stores does this as well. As soon as I worked it out, I stopped even going there. They took over a store I did go to, so I stopped going there as well.
> 
> It might be a common tactic, but it doesn't fool everyone.


More importantly, and while I understand Gene's point, this didn't use to be what zon did. It's one thing if it was always their practice. But it wasn't.

You use to be able to go on zon and sales were sales and they were always the lowest price by a large margin on regular priced items. Now, sales aren't ever really sales and they aren't even the lowest half the time now. My local vendors (mind you I live in a city) are as cheap as zon, or cheaper when they have sales.

For zon, using these tactics like everyone else is not going to bode well for them. I know in the US zon is beloved, but I really don't think they are anymore in other places. They certainly aren't in Canada (it's not that people hate them, just that they are quickly becoming 2nd or 3rd choice... basically the vendor to go to when you can't find what you are looking for locally... but even then, pricing is still often better buying directly from source vendors, versus on zon where the product gets marked up, especially on the .ca site).

I honestly think there are a lot of things, both in ebooks and otherwise, zon could be doing to return to their glory days. Why they aren't doing these things is the interesting question.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> I honestly think there are a lot of things, both in ebooks and otherwise, zon could be doing to return to their glory days. Why they aren't doing these things is the interesting question.


Indeed.

I dont shop Amazon for anything but kindle books. Apart from most things being too expensive, the majority wont ship to Australia, or if they do, the shipping is more expensive than the item.

Easier and cheaper to buy from Asian Ebay, where most of the shipping is free.

As for Kindle books, I use an Ipad Mini to read with, so the thought process to change over to ibooks or even kobo has begun.


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> I honestly think there are a lot of things, both in ebooks and otherwise, zon could be doing to return to their glory days. Why they aren't doing these things is the interesting question.


Why? Because in their 'glory days' they were operating at a loss. Consistently. Over many years. What they were doing was never sustainable. Bezos story was that he was creating a whole new world of commerce and shopping. That has some validity. As does the view that he was just trying to create an old fashioned monopoly by undercutting everyone else until he forced all the smaller retail players out of business. The truth is likely in between. At any rate, no one should expect that the days when Amazon was lean and hungry to please its suppliers as well as its customers are going to return. It gets most of its money from cloud computing these days. I doubt it's going to invest a lot of time, money or effort in dealing with the concerns of Indie authors.


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

firstdraft said:


> Please link me to the nonsense spam books that are at similar ranks to the pulled bookbubs?
> 
> It's a bit ironic that people complain about rank manipulation of "rubbish" books, when in fact that is what they are trying to do themselves.


Please do a board search yourself and you will find multiple threads where we have discussed this, where you will find links to those books.

The Amazon bestseller lists are an hourly snapshot of book sales/borrows. It has nothing to do with anyone's perception of what is fair or deserving.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> Oh i don't know. I think there are lots of ways you could radically change what the top charts look like.
> 
> * remove borrow bumps and use pages read bumps
> * tie rank bump to revenue (so a $9.99 book gets 10x the rank bump of a 99c book)
> ...


And how would ANY of those suggestions stop the scammers? It would simply give them better ranking and visibility. The latest round of Fake books that are being botted are higher priced. (between $5 and $9).


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

dianapersaud said:


> And how would ANY of those suggestions stop the scammers? It would simply give them better ranking and visibility. The latest round of Fake books that are being botted are higher priced. (between $5 and $9).


A KU only rank structure completely removes KU ranking from the paid store, and completely removes KU rank manipulation from the paid store.

It wont change their rank in the KU store, but it will completely remove any incentive scammers have for manipulating ranks in the paid store.

The fact a book has #200 rank in the KU store, but #1,000,000+ in the sales store, should tell people immediately there is something very wrong with it.

I call that significant.


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## firstdraft (Apr 22, 2017)

usedtocare said:


> Please do a board search yourself and you will find multiple threads where we have discussed this, where you will find links to those books.
> 
> The Anazon bestseller lists are an hourly snapshot of book sales/borrows. It has nothing to do with anyone's perception of what is fair or deserving.


I literally can't see any books of what you say. There is one thread which had one book make the top 100 and had its ranked stripped. Please link me to a current book, high in the charts, that is a scam that hasn't had its rank stripped.

Edit: If what you say is true, you should easily be able to find scam books at a high ranking at any time. From what I see scams get picked up and removed pretty quick and botted books get stripped of rank quick. Please, link me with evidence from a book an amazon right now if that is not the case.


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

firstdraft said:


> To be fair to amazon, if I was a retailer and a single product got a temporary sales boost due to a short term promo, I'd dump it from its rank too. Mainly because the promoed item would now be taking the visibility of a more deserving product that will sell more for me post promo anyway.


Sure, this is a viewpoint that _sounds_ plausible on the surface. After all, who _wouldn't_ want a "more deserving product" to get the visibility, especially one that "will sell more"? 

Of course, in the real world, any gain in visibility doesn't = sales _just because_, and any gain in visibility that doesn't = sales is subsequently lost. Either the product performs, or it doesn't, on its own merit.

And a book that had a successful promotion doesn't "deserve" the visibility the promotion generates? 

Sorry, your criteria for determining which book deserves more or which book will sell more doesn't actually exist.


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

firstdraft said:


> I literally can't see any books of what you say. There is one thread which had one book make the top 100 and had its ranked stripped. Please link me to a current book, high in the charts, that is a scam that hasn't had its rank stripped.
> 
> Edit: If what you say is true, you should easily be able to find scam books at a high ranking at any time. From what I see scams get picked up and removed pretty quick and botted books get stripped of rank quick. Please, link me with evidence from a book an amazon right now if that is not the case.


Like I said, start reading. There are plenty of recent threads on this topic. I don't have the time or inclination to search through old posts for you; if you want to see the discussions, you'll have to wade through them.


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## firstdraft (Apr 22, 2017)

crow.bar.beer said:


> Sure, this is a viewpoint that _sounds_ plausible on the surface. After all, who _wouldn't_ want a "more deserving product" to get the visibility, especially one that "will sell more"?
> 
> Of course, in the real world, any gain in visibility doesn't = sales _just because_, and any gain in visibility that doesn't = sales is subsequently lost. Either the product performs, or it doesn't, on its own merit.
> 
> ...


Ranking is only a small part of what causes a book to sell. I don't care too much about the ranking system, I'm just saying which ever book a bookbub promo bumps out of the list is still gonna out sell the bookbub at its new found rank and would outsell it more if it had its old rank. And as a seller I'd want to maxime profits, so as soon as the bookbub spike ended, I'd have no problem of stripping its rank to books that will sell more after. If the bookbud spike came with a big tail then sure I'd happily keep its rank though.

Bookbub users can have their temp rank boost before their books go back to collect dust though. I just think its funny that people act like rank is going to turn their book into a profit machine.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> A KU only rank structure completely removes KU ranking from the paid store, and completely removes KU rank manipulation from the paid store.
> 
> It wont change their rank in the KU store, but it will completely remove any incentive scammers have for manipulating ranks in the paid store.
> 
> ...


Customers aren't going to compare the KU rank with the paid rank. Only Authors do that.

And you're forgetting that some genres (like Romance) have more borrows than buys. Romance (and erotica) shouldn't be punished because of the scammers.

A person who has a KU subscription is only going to look at KU books. They don't care whether the book is botted or garbage or not. They just return it and get another one.

When I'm deciding on whether to buy or borrow a book, RANK has very little to do with my decision. It's the cover that catches my eye and then the pitch.


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## firstdraft (Apr 22, 2017)

usedtocare said:


> Like I said, start reading. There are plenty of recent threads on this topic. I don't have the time or inclination to search through old posts for you; if you want to see the discussions, you'll have to wade through them.


For the most part those threads talk about low rank KU manipulation. And currently they just read like hearsay with nothing currently relevant. Without links to current books your statements hold zero weight.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

firstdraft said:


> For the most part those threads talk about low rank KU manipulation. And currently they just read like hearsay with nothing currently relevant. Without links to current books your statements hold zero weight.


I'm really impressed that you managed to read all 37 pages of this thread in 8 minutes

https://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=253302.175


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

firstdraft said:


> Ranking is only a small part of what causes a book to sell. I don't care too much about the ranking system, I'm just saying which ever book a bookbub promo bumps out of the list is still gonna out sell the bookbub at its new found rank and would outsell it more if it had its old rank.


How do you know that?



> And as a seller I'd want to maxime profits, so as soon as the bookbub spike ended, I'd have no problem of stripping its rank to books that will sell more after. If the bookbud spike came with a big tail then sure I'd happily keep its rank though.


Whether or not a book comes off a promotion "with a big tail" is determined by how well it is selling, which determines whether or not its holds its rank. You're contradicting yourself.



> Bookbub users can have their temp rank boost before their books go back to collect dust though. I just think its funny that people act like rank is going to turn their book into a profit machine.


Yeah, all that evidence of Bookbub earning authors exponentially more money is funny.


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## firstdraft (Apr 22, 2017)

williammeikle said:


> I'm really impressed that you managed to read all 37 pages of this thread in 8 minutes
> 
> https://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=253302.175


I'm really impressed that no one can link me to a current book abusing the system at high rank.


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

firstdraft said:


> For the most part those threads talk about low rank KU manipulation. And currently they just read like hearsay with nothing currently relevant. Without links to current books your statements hold zero weight.


Without you being willing to do research to back up your assumptions, your statements hold zero weight. Research it or don't research it, that's on you. The info is here in numerous long threads; no one is required to hand feed it to you. There is no reason to derail this thread further discussing a topic that already has numerous very long threads.



dianapersaud said:


> Customers aren't going to compare the KU rank with the paid rank. Only Authors do that.
> 
> And you're forgetting that some genres (like Romance) have more borrows than buys. Romance (and erotica) shouldn't be punished because of the scammers.


Agree, 100% ^^.

Customers (those who are not authors, or those who are not involved in the industry) generally don't care about all the things authors _think_ they should care about.


----------



## firstdraft (Apr 22, 2017)

usedtocare said:


> Without you being willing to do research to back up your assumptions, your statements hold zero weight. Research it or don't research it, that's on you. The info is here in numerous long threads; no one is required to hand feed it to you.


I have researched and all I see is blind hysteria over the odd scam that amazon catches anyway. Carrying on blaming the 0.001% of books that are scammers and amazon for your perceived less than ideal market place.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

firstdraft said:


> I have researched and all I see is blind hysteria over the odd scam that amazon catches anyway. Carrying on blaming the 0.001% of books that are scammers and amazon for your perceived less than ideal market place.


This thread, which I started, is not about a scam, neither is it 'blind hysteria'. It's a real problem.

_Edited. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


----------



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

firstdraft said:


> I have researched and all I see is blind hysteria over the odd scam that amazon catches anyway. Carrying on blaming the 0.001% of books that are scammers and amazon for your perceived less than ideal market place.


I'd ask for a link to verify your claim that 0.001% of books are scammers, but I can do that myself. 
Carry on.



williammeikle said:


> I'm really impressed that you managed to read all 37 pages of this thread in 8 minutes
> 
> https://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=253302.175


Hey, William, not sure if you saw my question earlier (I know, this is a very long thread!). Have you or any of your co-authors had any word about if sales royalties, KU royalties, or sales reported to major lists (USAT, NYT) will be affected? I know in the past authors have reported being stripped of KU page reads. 
Also curious if anyone has received any sort of detailed explanation from Amazon now that the ranks have been restored?


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

usedtocare said:


> Hey, William, not sure if you saw my question earlier (I know, this is a very long thread!). Have you or any of your co-authors had any word about if sales royalties, KU royalties, or sales reported to major lists (USAT, NYT) will be affected? I know in the past authors have reported being stripped of KU page reads.
> Also curious if anyone has received any sort of detailed explanation from Amazon now that the ranks have been restored?


Nope, nothing at all from Amazon yet, apart from the fact that they'll be in touch 'by the 24th'... still waiting.


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

williammeikle said:


> Nope, nothing at all from Amazon yet, apart from the fact that they'll be in touch 'by the 24th'... still waiting.


Thank you. I will stay tuned. Glad the rank has been restored, but still concerned about the implications for the rest of it for your group of authors and anyone else affected this way.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

firstdraft said:


> I'm really impressed that no one can link me to a current book abusing the system at high rank.


There is nothing more tiresome than someone arriving completely uninformed to a debate and telling everyone else they are wrong, and demanding information that has been put into public domain repeatedly, over an extended period.

If you are unaware of the issues, I recommend doing some reading. You will find plenty of examples on my blog, including current ones in the comments of my last piece which are at the top of the Contemporary Romance charts engaging in pretty obvious stuffing. Romance is full of it right now, including at the top of the charts. The free charts are regularly hit with botted books, plagiarized books, stuffed books, you name it. The paid charts have had clickfarmed books hit #1 twice this summer, and lots getting close.

In all cases, Amazon only did something when a stink was kicked up either on Facebook or Twitter or here or my blog, etc. I've been tracking this issue for a long time and I haven't seen Amazon do much proactively.

You simply aren't paying attention.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

One example should suffice to illustrate my point: I wrote this post when a clickfarmed book was at #1. Amazon did nothing until the public outcry after my post. Another book hit #1 the week before using similar means, and Amazon did nothing about that until my post: https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/scammers-break-the-kindle-store/

So the idea that Amazon proactively catches this stuff anyway and the outcry is pointless is demonstrably false - as proven again by the authors who were rank stripped incorrectly for weeks and weeks, until we made some noise about it publicly over the weekend.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Hey peeps ... instead of arguing and conjecturing why don't we try to help our fellow authors out? This could be anyone of us until this issue gets worked out.

I posted the box set to Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CGockelWrites/posts/756589221202526

And I put it in my box set newsletter. Let's stop sniping at each other and start _helping_ each other.


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

C. Gockel said:


> Hey peeps ... instead of arguing and conjecturing why don't we try to help our fellow authors out? This could be anyone of us until this issue gets worked out.
> 
> I posted the box set to Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CGockelWrites/posts/756589221202526
> 
> And I put it in my box set newsletter. Let's stop sniping at each other and start _helping_ each other.


Done. Thanks for the suggestion.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

C. Gockel said:


> Hey peeps ... instead of arguing and conjecturing why don't we try to help our fellow authors out? This could be anyone of us until this issue gets worked out.
> 
> I posted the box set to Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CGockelWrites/posts/756589221202526
> 
> And I put it in my box set newsletter. Let's stop sniping at each other and start _helping_ each other.


Thank you, Carolynn. It really is appreciated.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Sarah Shaw said:


> Done. Thanks for the suggestion.


Yay!



D-C said:


> Thank you, Carolynn. It really is appreciated.


It could happen to any of us. I'm happy to help.


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

firstdraft said:


> Without links to current books your statements hold zero weight.


Their words hold weight because they've been a valuable member of this community for several years. Being disrespectful does nothing to bolster your argument.

OP and others affected--I'm glad you've gotten your rank back, though I know it's a bit too little too late. I hope enough stink is raised that Amazon takes a hard look at this.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

Amazon's reply just in... it's not very helpful. 

"We detected that purchases or borrows of your book(s) are originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. We take activities that could jeopardize the experience of our readers and other authors seriously and may temporarily remove sales rank while we investigate."

They already told us that 5 days ago. This is not news.

"The sales rank(s) of your book(s), Veil Knights Box Set #1: Books 1-3 (ASIN: B06XG3B8VT) is now available"

Yes, we can see that.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

williammeikle said:


> Amazon's reply just in... it's not very helpful.


The freebie authors received similar messages. I've been tweeting about it here if anyone wants to amplify: https://twitter.com/DavidGaughran/status/922514553388392449


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

dgaughran said:


> The freebie authors received similar messages. I've been tweeting about it here if anyone wants to amplify: https://twitter.com/DavidGaughran/status/922514553388392449


We've got a strongly worded letter heading to Bezos, the Executive Customer rep, and the guy who sent us that boilerplate response, telling them their reply is not acceptable. We'll see if we get anywhere.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

We also got a bland "Sorry this happened, but we're not going to do anything," email from Bookbub that will be getting a strong reply, given that their service was the only one we used during the promotion and given Amazon's accusations of wrongdoing.


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## devalong (Aug 28, 2014)

williammeikle said:


> Amazon's reply just in... it's not very helpful.
> 
> "We detected that purchases or borrows of your book(s) are originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. We take activities that could jeopardize the experience of our readers and other authors seriously and may temporarily remove sales rank while we investigate."


So...are they saying that they now consider Bookbub to be an "attempt to manipulate sales rank"?


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

Amazon rank strips books being promoted by Bookbub and now people are claiming paid promotion is rank manipulation that should be punished. /sighs

If Jeff Bezos punched a baby in the face, the next day people would blame babies for having faces.


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

devalong said:


> So...are they saying that they now consider Bookbub to be an "attempt to manipulate sales rank"?


In case there is any confusion, I just wanted to say we were composing our comments at the same time, and I didn't mean you were the one saying that.


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## Gone Girl (Mar 7, 2015)

We miss you, Harvey Chute.


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

williammeikle said:


> Amazon's reply just in... it's not very helpful.
> 
> "We detected that purchases or borrows of your book(s) are originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. We take activities that could jeopardize the experience of our readers and other authors seriously and may temporarily remove sales rank while we investigate."
> 
> ...


Beyond irresponsible on Amazon's part. So they state they are aware of "accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank", yet instead of banning those accounts from purchasing or borrowing books, they let those accounts keep operating? Of course the operators of "accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank" are going to keep downloading as many books as they can to muddle the waters between what is being botted and what is not.

If they truly wanted to solve the problem, they would shut down those "accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank". I feel like they let these bot accounts stay active for the sole purpose of trying to "catch" authors using the bot services. Yet individuals running the bot accounts have discovered if they target random bestsellers, Amazon will no longer be able to distinguish legitimate promoted books from botted books. The more legitimate books they download, the more they deflect attention, and the less chance there is that botted books will get caught.

Way to go, Amazon.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

kcmorgan said:


> Amazon rank strips books being promoted by Bookbub and now people are claiming paid promotion is rank manipulation that should be punished. /sighs
> 
> If Jeff Bezos punched a baby in the face, the next day people would blame babies for having faces.


Well, why DID that baby have a face? And why didn't the parent email Jeff Bezos ahead of time to warn him the baby was going to have its face in the way of his fist? Some parents are so irresponsible.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

LilyBLily said:


> That pretty much ends my interest in ever advertising with BookBub. They should be freaking out at this threat to their business--and at least pretending to their clients that they care. And someone at BookBub should have a phone number to call to talk to someone at Amazon and get somewhere.
> 
> Kafkaesque in the extreme. And remember, Kafka thought he was writing comedy.


Bookbub doesn't care because it will be a while before this hits their bottom line. When enough authors are accused of rank manipulation and word spreads and people STOP applying for Book bubs, then they might try and do something about it. By then it will be too late because their reputation will be tarnished.

It's a shame they aren't more proactive but...laziness while the money is rolling in.


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## nikkykaye (Sep 24, 2016)

My book is still rank-less after one month. Wondering if maybe today is a good day to contact ECR? Then I can cite examples of books whose ranks are being restored under similar conditions?

Advice? I have a new release next week (first one in three months) I don’t want Amazon to shit down my account or then strip THAT new book because the launch goes “too well.”


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## PDSinger (May 15, 2014)

boba1823 said:


> I would think the sensible thing for Amazon to do would be something like the website Reddit does to prevent rank manipulation for 'likes' (or whatever they call it) on posts:
> 
> Use their fancy algorithmic-whatnots to identify likely bot accounts, and basically just don't *count sales/downloads/borrows from those accounts*. (And maybe not counting, for ranking purposes, actions from new accounts with less than $50 of purchases, like they do for reviews, or *unpaid trial KU accounts.)* No deranking, no warning letters, etc., to let on that a (potential) beneficiary of the botting has been caught. Just taking away the benefit of cheating.


This is what stands out to me. Quit counting reads, "reads", and borrows from accounts that aren't providing revenue. Kobo does it for their subscription service, says so right in the TOS, no payment for reads on a trial account. And pull the teeth on the known bot accounts.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Thanks to all for refusing to post links to suspect books. 

FYI, to newer members: except in the occasional case where a particular situation has become notorious and is being openly discussed all over, we ask posters keep links to books and/or authors suspected of wrong-doing off the forum. Same goes for other specific identifying information.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

boba1823 said:


> If so.. that isn't something that Bookbub could stop, or really even help out with. I guess they could contact Amazon to say "So-and-so had a Boobbub feature, that's all we know." But if Amazon is going to stay tight-lipped with the actual author, I suspect they aren't going to be any more open with a third party.


Agreed. This has nothing to do with bub. They should be kept in the loop just so they can monitor the situation, but I'm not sure why anyone would expect them to do something with zon. Bub's only "action option" is to go nuclear on zon, and they aren't going to do that off one or two issues. Now this starts happening every time there's a bub, you never know, they might.

If bub had any power at the moment I'm sure they'd use it. I can't imagine they like the insinuation in the market that using bub is dangerous.

Anyway, this is all 100% on zon's plate. Really zon should have to compensate the authors for their lost bub. No one should be mad at anyone other than zon.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

These are my thoughts as well. Amazon, if you're reading this thread, please pay attention to this!



usedtocare said:


> *So Amazon state they are aware of "accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank", yet instead of banning those accounts from purchasing or borrowing books, they let those accounts keep operating?*
> 
> *Of course the operators of "accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank" are going to keep downloading as many books as they can to muddy the waters between what is being botted and what is not. *
> 
> *If Amazon truly wanted to solve the problem, they would shut down those "accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank".*


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

No further response as of yet to our follow up mails with Amazon. Given their record, we might never hear another word.


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## Windvein (Sep 26, 2012)

Has this been reported? I'm seeing rank. Hope it sticks around. This is on .com:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,966 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

    #5 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers & Suspense > Supernatural > Psychics
    #7 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers & Suspense > Supernatural > Werewolves & Shifters
    #8 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Suspense > Paranormal > Psychics


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

Windvein said:


> Has this been reported? I'm seeing rank. Hope it sticks around. This is on .com:
> 
> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,966 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
> 
> ...


I mentioned back up the thread a bit yesterday that we'd got our rank back.


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

dianapersaud said:


> Bookbub doesn't care because it will be a while before this hits their bottom line. When enough authors are accused of rank manipulation and word spreads and people STOP applying for Book bubs, then they might try and do something about it. By then it will be too late because their reputation will be tarnished.
> 
> It's a shame they aren't more proactive but...laziness while the money is rolling in.


I don't know... This makes me worry that Bookbub may be focusing more on trads and moving away from promoting indies. I've seen more and more trads recently in the genres I follow. It actually makes sense for them to prefer trads- not only is Amazon much less likely to challenge a trad publisher in this way but since their prices tend to be so much higher the bookbub deal looks that much more attractive to readers. Hoping I'm wrong...


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

williammeikle said:


> No further response as of yet to our follow up mails with Amazon. Given their record, we might never hear another word.


Amazon have now replied with a 'thank you for your comments. We like comments, but won't do anything about them' mail that didn't address any of our concerns. One of those 'Go away and leave us alone' ones.


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

boba1823 said:


> If so.. that isn't something that Bookbub could stop, or really even help out with. I guess they could contact Amazon to say "So-and-so had a* Boobbub* feature, that's all we know." But if Amazon is going to stay tight-lipped with the actual author, I suspect they aren't going to be any more open with a third party.


Let's hope it doesn't come to that!


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2017)

Readers actually want more indies

You wrote



> I've seen more and more trads recently in the genres I follow.
> 
> That's actually what made me unsubscribe from Book Bub. But I'm probably in the minority among readers in that.


If you keep an eye on

- what promotion sites are growing fastest
- which promotion sites are advertising the most
- which promotion sites offer the most indie authors

and factor in those three data points, you'll actually get a straight up ratio

Fastest Growth is

1) Dependent on number of indie author offers
2) Amount of advertising for readers
3) Other factors like ease of use and virality

However, #1 is 'number of indie authors offers'

********
People want NEW and Reasonable Prices and Quality and they also want to help out Indie Authors - because Indie Authors are the only ones giving them reasonable quality books at low prices and low prices on their new releases

******

Seriously, go check out some of the fastest growing promotion sites and see how many indie authors they have. Most are 70%+ indie

If you look only at one or two of the large ones that are spending tons of money on advertising and/or using author pages like mechanisms to have authors do the work for them
then you'll draw the wrong conclusions

Look at the passion people have around indie bands and indie movies

Readers have similar attitudes. The only thing better than the next Stephen King book is finding the next Stephen King. Every reader, somewhere in their hearts, is looking for that, and many are actively looking

Take a look at Wattpad and their 50 million+ readers - that's another data point that people want to find the next great writer in their genre, actually more than the current great authors in their genre. Because it gives a sense of belonging and happiness to be one of the first to discover something amazing


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Okay, this doesn't really have anything to do with this thread, but in reading here how unresponsive Amazon is to complaints: I just ran into a wall with formatting a book for Pronoun, and I emailed them. They responded promptly, specific to my book, and gave me the exact correct answer (I hadn't known that Pronoun's formatter turns underlined words into centered block text --it was them not me!! ). I bet Pronoun doesn't have a fraction of the resources that Amazon does yet they are responsive to authors. So, I don't think I really buy any excuses regarding Amazon on their non-helpfulness.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

loraininflorida said:


> I bet Pronoun doesn't have a fraction of the resources that Amazon does yet they are responsive to authors. So, I don't think I really buy any excuses regarding Amazon on their non-helpfulness.


Amazon has over 350,000 employees. They are the 8th largest corporate employer in the world. My head just hurts thinking about how difficult it must be to make changes to anything.

When a company reaches that size, I don't care how much they tout customer service mantras, you become a bureaucracy and everything becomes about processes far removed from the front lines. It's unavoidable. And that's really all everyone here is bumping up against... a bureaucracy.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Seneca42 said:


> Amazon has over 350,000 employees. They are the 8th largest corporate employer in the world. My head just hurts thinking about how difficult it must be to make changes to anything.
> 
> When a company reaches that size, I don't care how much they tout customer service mantras, you become a bureaucracy and everything becomes about processes far removed from the front lines. It's unavoidable. And that's really all everyone here is bumping up against... a bureaucracy.


And they're looking to build a second headquarters, lol. The monster grows two heads.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

I think we've reached the end of the line. 

Amazon's latest response, which we think is their last word, is that it's up to us as authors to ensure that any services we use, including Bookbub, are using legitimate practices and not attempting to manipulate Kindle rankings. Otherwise we're liable to get our ranking pulled, and possibly lose our account altogether.

It makes us wary of even using Bookbub again.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I've emailed my contact again - I'll let you know.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

So the bottom line is not to use bookbub anymore? Without visibility, what's the point other than a bunch of one day downloads?


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## Allyson J. (Nov 26, 2014)

My books get picked up from time to time by random promo sites. I don't book them, and I only find out they've ran if I'm tagged of FB or twitter, or something. How are we supposed to control who downloads our books? That's not realistic. Anyone can find a book that's free/99c/doing well on the charts and pop it into their newsletter. _Anyone_ can bot _any_ book. How do we protect ourselves from something we cannot possibly control!?


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Martitalbott said:


> So the bottom line is not to use bookbub anymore? Without visibility, what's the point other than a bunch of one day downloads?


Sellthrough to the rest of your series?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Cassie Leigh said:


> Sellthrough to the rest of your series?


Yup, I was under the distinct impression that was the primary point of a Bookbub. Sell or give away a metric crap-tonne of books and get people to buy the rest of your books.


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## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


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## C.F. (Jan 6, 2011)

Allyson J. said:


> My books get picked up from time to time by random promo sites. I don't book them, and I only find out they've ran if I'm tagged of FB or twitter, or something. How are we supposed to control who downloads our books? That's not realistic. Anyone can find a book that's free/99c/doing well on the charts and pop it into their newsletter. _Anyone_ can bot _any_ book. How do we protect ourselves from something we cannot possibly control!?


^^^^Yep. Any time one of my books goes free, a lot of sites pick it up. Same with countdown deals.

Amazon wants to hold us accountable for things that we have zero control over all so they don't have to be bothered closing fraudulent accounts...

Or admit that they can't detect fraudulent accounts...

Or deal with the CS nightmare it will be when they start closing the accounts of legitimate customers. Much easier and better PR wise to screw over authors than customers.


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## allie f. (Sep 15, 2016)

williammeikle said:


> I think we've reached the end of the line.
> 
> Amazon's latest response, which we think is their last word, is that it's up to us as authors to ensure that any services we use, including Bookbub, are using legitimate practices and not attempting to manipulate Kindle rankings. Otherwise we're liable to get our ranking pulled, and possibly lose our account altogether.
> 
> It makes us wary of even using Bookbub again.


Yep, I got the same response, basically telling me that it doesn't matter if an author did something wrong or not, he/she will always be held responsible for any suspicious activity even if he/she had absolutely nothing to do with it.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the logic of it all.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Cassie Leigh said:


> Sellthrough to the rest of your series?


Sure, but it used to be that a Bookbub raised my book to the top 100 and it stayed there for a few extra days getting more downloads. With a stripped rank, then that can't happen. I'm greedy. I want my money's worth.


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

Martitalbott said:


> Sure, but it used to be that a Bookbub raised my book to the top 100 and it stayed there for a few extra days getting more downloads. With a stripped rank, then that can't happen. I'm greedy. I want my money's worth.


Some of those Bookbub's cost a month's rent. Wanting the full value of what you paid for when dropping a crapton of money isn't greed, it's a sense of fairness.


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## allie f. (Sep 15, 2016)

kcmorgan said:


> Some of those Bookbub's cost a month's rent. Wanting the full value of what you paid for when dropping a crapton of money isn't greed, it's a sense of fairness.


Absolutely this! Amazon is robbing us and then tells us it's our fault.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

allie f. said:


> Yep, I got the same response, basically telling me that it doesn't matter if an author did something wrong or not, he/she will always be held responsible for any suspicious activity even if he/she had absolutely nothing to do with it.
> 
> I'm still trying to wrap my head around the logic of it all.


Maybe Amazon views books as fungible. If so, then they won't care what books people buy as log as they buy something. If the ones at the top get thwacked for no (fair) reason, it probably doesn't really hurt Amazon as long as the other books that then rise to fill the top spots are close enough in quality that the customers don't go shop elsewhere. I think it is probably logical from Amazon's perspective. False positives in bot detection may not hurt them as much as false negatives would. From an honest author's perspective, it seems unfair, but I don't think Amazon cares enough to fix it. "Amazon" is of course a collection of people, and, even if they do care individually, I can't see which person would be able to put the effort into making this fair for authors at the expense of working on a more immediately profitable goal. Unless there were some giant banner on the wall reading "Fairness before profit!" it could be a career-limiting move to put your efforts there, I think. If it were to come down as a decree from the top, then maybe it could actually happen. In the past Jeff Bezos has appeared to light some fires under people to fix KDP issues, but I am not sure he sees this one as a problem. If he doesn't, then I think that in order to justify (internally within Amazon) working hard on it, someone would have to have a convincing argument as to how happy authors equate to profits for Amazon. It seems to me like a place driven by a ruthless quest for efficiency, and that seems like the enemy of difficult side tasks like fixing this bot thing the right way.

I hope someone cleverer than I am has a solution. I already figured out that KU was a bad idea because of this kind of thing, but now even paid books are getting hit, so there doesn't seem to be any safe place aside from obscurity.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

allie f. said:


> Absolutely this! Amazon is robbing us and then tells us it's our fault.


They do not want you advertiing/promoting your books outside of AMS. If you take that as a premise, almost everything they do or don't do in this context gets explained.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> They do not want you advertiing/promoting your books outside of AMS. If you take that as a premise, almost everything they do or don't do in this context gets explained.


Yes.

In all the various threads here about the way things have changed in the last year, I dont recall someone actually pointing at AMS like this and tagging it as the biggest evil perpetrated so far.

Everything changed with AMS's introduction, and Amazon are making it damned hard for everyone who doesn't use AMS.

As far as I can see, those spending multi-thousands of dollars a month advertising on AMS, are doing very well.

Those of us who gave up on AMS as a sick joke costing us too much money for zero return, are doing very badly in comparison. And this is entirely because Amazon are manipulating the ranking system to push those not AMS'ing down.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Modi Gliani said:


> They do not want you advertiing/promoting your books outside of AMS. If you take that as a premise, almost everything they do or don't do in this context gets explained.


Unfortunately, this makes a lot of sense.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

TimothyEllis said:


> Yes.
> 
> In all the various threads here about the way things have changed in the last year, I dont recall someone actually pointing at AMS like this and tagging it as the biggest evil perpetrated so far.
> 
> ...


I'm assuming this includes the new ads on your book's page? It used to only be also boughts. Now the also boughts are mixed in with a bunch of sponsored ads that don't even match my books. It's highly frustrating. In the meantime, it's good that we're all discussing this so we can figure out how to adapt.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Rosie A. said:


> I'm assuming this includes the new ads on your book's page?


Yes.

The AMS Ads Learning thread explains it pretty well:
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,246899.0.html


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

Wow, finally


1 million times this: 
They do not want you advertising/promoting your books outside of AMS. If you take that as a premise, almost everything they do or don't do in this context gets explained.


thank you for finally seeing this

***********


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

Imagine a huge Robot/Machine designed with one agenda: make money. The Machine constantly analyzes its input and constantly tells the people who serve it (Amazon employees/execs/humans) what to do. Sometimes the people who serve the Machine don't even know why they're doing something. They do it because they're told to do it by the Machine. Everything gets monetized. The Machine gets all the data and says to itself why the hell am I allowing the authors of books to advertise/promote their books with external services when I have my own service called AMS and the authors could be paying me instead of paying someone else to advertise/promote their books. The Machine is a monster that knows everything and has only one objective: make money. The Machine started out some years ago with nothing except one man with a degree in computer science. He designed the Machine to grow itself and the Machine now brings in $100 billion a year in revenue. It's a fallacy to think Amazon is merely a collection of people. Amazon is a huge Robot/Machine served by people and everyone, especially outside author/suppliers, is expendable. Welcome to the 21st century. You think this is scary? You ain't seen nothing yet.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

williammeikle said:


> I think we've reached the end of the line.
> 
> Amazon's latest response, which we think is their last word, is that it's up to us as authors to ensure that any services we use, including Bookbub, are using legitimate practices and not attempting to manipulate Kindle rankings. Otherwise we're liable to get our ranking pulled, and possibly lose our account altogether.
> 
> It makes us wary of even using Bookbub again.


Wait... If it's up to authors to ensure that any service they use is using legitimate practices and not attempting to manipulate shit... then doesnt that mean authors should stop using... Amazon?


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## Avis Black (Jun 12, 2012)

TimothyEllis said:


> Everything changed with AMS's introduction, and Amazon are making it damned hard for everyone who doesn't use AMS.
> 
> As far as I can see, those spending multi-thousands of dollars a month advertising on AMS, are doing very well.
> 
> Those of us who gave up on AMS as a sick joke costing us too much money for zero return, are doing very badly in comparison. And this is entirely because Amazon are manipulating the ranking system to push those not AMS'ing down.


If this is true, it's potentially disastrous for Amazon. Let's say the next 50 Shades of Grey appears because a book is gaining a lot of natural sales momentum, but the author refuses to buy any Amazon ads. So Amazon's algos suppress visibility of the book. Yet the title is selling very well on other retailers, and hits #1 on Apple, Kobo, Google Play, and Nook. Because people aren't finding it on Amazon, the sales money goes to Amazon's competitors. Not only will Amazon end up with egg on its face for missing out on making a pile of cash, it'll get into trouble when questions are asked about why it's deliberately suppressing a big, successful title.

If the book happens to contain any controversial sociopolitical content, look out. Amazon's going to be accused of bigotry. At the very least, Amazon will earn the scorn of the entire publishing industry. It might end up in legal trouble, too. Could a successful author sue Amazon for damages by charging it with restraint of trade? Maybe. There are so many ways this can go wrong that Amazon really shouldn't try it.

Not a winning position at all.


----------



## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

LilyBLily said:


> Not true.
> 
> AMS won't take my money. It won't take other people's money, either. I've been using these ads for a year and attempts to scale up often simply do not happen. Mark Dawson tested it months ago, throwing very serious amounts of money at AMS, and his ad money did not get spent. He then tried lots of ads with small dollar bids with more success, but no fortune as a result. Trying 100 ads with tiny bids doesn't work if you bid against your own titles in multiple Sponsored Products ads because AMS appears to disable all but one of the ads at a time. It also simply stops displaying ads after a random period of time. Product Display ads are more of an unknown at present, but in my tests I couldn't get any traction. I barely was able to spend $10 of my $200 bid. This is not the way to get all my ad budget.
> 
> So I don't think this theory about trying to force us all to use AMS ads exclusively holds water. It's to Amazon's advantage to let us bring sales to its website through whatever means we authors can devise. A sale garnered without any effort/expense expended is the best kind of sale.


I hear you. But machines are only as logical as the people who design and use them. Which is why machines can be frightening.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Modi Gliani said:


> It's a fallacy to think Amazon is merely a collection of people. Amazon is a huge Robot/Machine served by people and everyone, especially outside author/suppliers, is expendable. Welcome to the 21st century. You think this is scary? You ain't seen nothing yet.


100% agree. This is not a human operation. If that's not clear to people by now, it never will be. Show me a single instance of something approximating an actual intelligible human response to this situation. There has never been one. Even the executive customer representative interactions that we've heard about are almost nonsensical. What the ECR says rarely turns out to be an accurate reflection of what is going on.

Today a blatant botter (two actually) was in the top 100 scifi. One book, a single fake review, horrible cover, horrific writing in the look inside. A monkey could see it was a botted book. Yet, it's still sitting at #2k in all paid. *There is NO human even looking at the top 100 of the major categories on a daily basis.*

From Bezos' perspective, this is what zon wants. All these issues we have are just kinks to work out with the algo. We're all essentially in a beta program that we don't know is in beta phase; we think it's finished when it's not.

If you start to view zon through the perspective that it's not humans running the system, it's a f'ing idiotic AI system, then a lot of things start to make sense. At best a human might occasionally step in and reverse some action the AI system has taken, but even then I doubt they even know whether it's right or wrong to reverse it, merely that the situation seems like it might cause trouble for them so they reverse it.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

LilyBLily said:


> AMS won't take my money.


This, btw, is one of the things that tells me this market is saturated to an ungodly degree. AMS would take your money, but the 72 pages of ads (so 360 book ads) on millions of books are already loaded up.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Avis Black said:


> If this is true, it's potentially disastrous for Amazon. Let's say the next 50 Shades of Grey appears because a book is gaining a lot of natural sales momentum, but the author refuses to buy any Amazon ads. So Amazon's algos suppress visibility of the book. Yet the title is selling very well on other retailers, and hits #1 on Apple, Kobo, Google Play, and Nook. Because people aren't finding it on Amazon, the sales money goes to Amazon's competitors. Not only will Amazon end up with egg on its face for missing out on making a pile of cash, it'll get into trouble when questions are asked about why it's deliberately suppressing a big, successful title.
> 
> If the book happens to contain any controversial sociopolitical content, look out. Amazon's going to be accused of bigotry. At the very least, Amazon will earn the scorn of the entire publishing industry. It might end up in legal trouble, too. Could a successful author sue Amazon for damages by charging it with restraint of trade? Maybe. There are so many ways this can go wrong that Amazon really shouldn't try it.
> 
> Not a winning position at all.


Amazon is not noted for thinking through their ideas properly.

All I can say is, Bring this on! Its exactly the time for the next 50 Shades of Gravy to launch, and if it does so without AMS ads, and Amazon suppress it like they do everyone else who doesn't use AMS, then maybe it has a chance to explode wide, and leave Amazon looking stupid.



LilyBLily said:


> Not true.
> AMS won't take my money. It won't take other people's money, either.


It's not about the money.

It's all about you being exclusive to Amazon.



Modi Gliani said:


> I hear you. But machines are only as logical as the people who design and use them. Which is why machines can be frightening.


Yes.



Seneca42 said:


> 100% agree. This is not a human operation. If that's not clear to people by now, it never will be. Show me a single instance of something approximating an actual intelligible human response to this situation. There has never been one. Even the executive customer representative interactions that we've heard about are almost nonsensical. What the ECR says rarely turns out to be an accurate reflection of what is going on.
> 
> Today a blatant botter (two actually) was in the top 100 scifi. One book, a single fake review, horrible cover, horrific writing in the look inside. A monkey could see it was a botted book. Yet, it's still sitting at #2k in all paid. *There is NO human even looking at the top 100 of the major categories on a daily basis.*
> 
> ...


I wouldn't even call this an AI.

Amazon have a collection of dumb bots they are trying to convince people is an AI.

An AI is capable of self-correcting.

What Amazon has is nothing like this. Each bot has a job. It has no idea what the other bots do, and it has no way of knowing what it is doing is actually wrong. And 2 bots may actually be at cross-purposes with each other, because they were written by different parts of Amazon who dont actually talk to each other.

So lets not dignify what Amazon has by calling it an AI.

Its a dumb computer system, where people have given away their own control to something incapable of making a rational decision.



Seneca42 said:


> This, btw, is one of the things that tells me this market is saturated to an ungodly degree. AMS would take your money, but the 72 pages of ads (so 360 book ads) on millions of books are already loaded up.


And there's that.

*Has anyone thought AMS ads might be paying to keep KU running? *Just a thought.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

LilyBLily said:


> ...
> AMS won't take my money. It won't take other people's money, either. I've been using these ads for a year and attempts to scale up often simply do not happen.
> ...


Amazon is taking someone's money if not yours. I think this just means that they are more confident that they can get a click on someone else's ad than on yours. I believe they only charge for clicks, so your offer to pay them doesn't do them any good if they can't find the right person who will click on your ad. I think they just have insufficient click traffic to burn through everybody's budgets. Maybe it actually speaks well of AMS that they don't simply invent imaginary clicks to take all of our money.

I may be wrong, but I would think that under the Pareto principle, a very tiny fraction of ads get almost all of the clicks and therefore the only reason Amazon even bothers with other ads is to gather data to figure out which ads make up that tiny fraction of big earners. Hence they will almost stop the impressions once they have decided an ad is not going to be a big earner for them. If someone *does* get a big earner, they are likely to set a very high budget once they see the $$$ coming in, so Amazon won't likely stop showing those for budget cap reasons. If I am correct about that, then your budget and mine are pretty irrelevant to Amazon.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Nathan Elliott said:


> Hence they will almost stop the impressions once they have decided an ad is not going to be a big earner for them. If someone *does* get a big earner, they are likely to set a very high budget once they see the $$$ coming in, so Amazon won't likely stop showing those for budget cap reasons. If I am correct about that, then your budget and mine are pretty irrelevant to Amazon.


You are correct. That's why a new ad on a new release will get a TON of impressions for about 4 days and then stop. It's the system saying "oh something shiny and new, let's see if people will click on it."


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> *Has anyone thought AMS ads might be paying to keep KU running? *Just a thought.


well let's do some simple speculative math.

Low estimate:
* 1,000 authors using AMS, spending $5 a day. $1.8M in revenue annually (obviously you can play with this number, for instance 2,000 authors spending $2.50 a day or some spending $10 and others spending $1 with an average of $5; so we're just talking an average estimate here)

Medium estimate
* 5,000 authors using AMS, spending $5 a day. $9.1M in revenue

High estimate
* 5,000 authors using AMS, spending $10 a day. $18.2M in revenue.

But who knows, maybe even my high estimate is low (maybe there are 10,000 authors using AMS). And maybe my daily spend estimate is low also, maybe it's more like $10.

Either way, sure, AMS could easily be generating as much revenue as the KU pot itself.  AMS could be contributing to the pot. But the pot is what, about $200M+ annually? So it's likely a small percentage.


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## Charmaine (Jul 20, 2012)

This may have been mentioned in the thread already, but I think this may simply be Amazon trying to target scammer books. I think the bot was simply created to pull _any_ book that had a large, sudden increase in rank. They're probably finally responding since scammers are now getting onto the Top100 with books previously ranked in the 300,000-700,000s.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> well let's do some simple speculative math.


No, you're math is too simple.

You're talking about authors spending $300 a month, or less.

There are authors who spend $2000 plus per month, on a single book promo. Some spend $10,000 plus a month.

The math cant be done on averages around petty small change.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

TimothyEllis said:


> No, you're math is too simple.
> 
> You're talking about authors spending $300 a month, or less.
> 
> ...


I think this is correct. Clicks per ad likely follow something like a Pareto curve and the most active ads will have unbelievably high spends compared to what us small fry can scale our ads up to. I think the estimates are all way too low. This is why Amazon tries to find these exceptional ads in the haystack.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

I would like to add to my remarks that despite their gloom I am not a neo-Luddite. In fact, I am pro machines. But unfortunately there will be many catastrophes before humans learn to use machines  without harm to themselves. Meanwhile the advanced machines produced by advanced technology will remain dangerous.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Nathan Elliott said:


> I think this is correct. Clicks per ad likely follow something like a Pareto curve and the most active ads will have unbelievably high spends compared to what us small fry can scale our ads up to. I think the estimates are all way too low. This is why Amazon tries to find these exceptional ads in the haystack.


Yep the more I think about, my high is probably very low hehe. That's what I get for posting when half awake.

Makes you wonder just how much AMS brings in a year. If the annual KU pot is $200M+... could AMS be generating $50M of that?


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

So if Amazon knows an account is a botter, and that botter attacks Amazon through our book, Amazon then strips our book's rank and justifies this by saying it's _our_ fault the botter attacked Amazon? Sheesh, that makes as much sense as Amazon telling us it's ok for them not to pay us for our pages read in Page Flip because that non-payment isn't "material" to us. Why is Amazon treating us this way? Indies brought in $900,000,000 to the book industry last year, we are not chump change. I can't believe this is all incompetence, Amazon sold more than 70 billion dollars worth of stuff last year, they are not idiots. What's really going on? There's got to be method to the madness somewhere.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

loraininflorida said:


> What's really going on?


To borrow from I, Robot:

That detective, is the right question.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

The get-authors-to-only-use-AMS idea doesn't make sense to me. Amazon wants to expand its reach by constantly bringing more people to the site. Advertising to people who are already within the ecosystem isn't useless because it can encourage more spending and deepen their dependence, but Amazon is going to want to bring in fresh blood too. Only outside advertising reaches people who aren't already using the site.

I think Amazon has realized there's no solution to scamming/botting that fits into KDP's budget. They don't want to get rid of KU or free/cheap books, which is the only low-cost solution, so they're offloading all the responsibility onto us.

I think we're going to have to pool information about advertising sites/techniques aggressively so that we can keep on top of which ones seem to trigger bad reactions from Amazon. Even doing that, this situation sounds awfully difficult to navigate.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Becca Mills said:


> I think we're going to have to pool information about advertising sites/techniques aggressively so that we can keep on top of which ones seem to trigger bad reactions from Amazon. Even doing that, this situation sounds awfully difficult to navigate.


We probably need a sticky thread specifically for that.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

TimothyEllis said:


> We probably need a sticky thread specifically for that.


So, what happens when the answer becomes "all of them?" Cause the bots are coming from inside the (Amazon) house??


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

loraininflorida said:


> Why is Amazon treating us this way?


Because they can. From their perspective, this is amazon's party, and if you don't like the music playing, you can get the F out.  If they find someone spilled beer on the carpet and you happen to be standing near that spot, they'll toss your butt to the curb. If they find out later you weren't the one that spilled the beer, they'll let you back into the party.. but don't expect them to apologize, in fact, they expect you to thank them for letting you back in.

This is *their* party, not yours.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> Because they can. From their perspective, this is amazon's party, and if you don't like the music playing, you can get the F out.  If they find someone spilled beer on the carpet and you happen to be standing near that spot, they'll toss your butt to the curb. If they find out later you weren't the one that spilled the beer, they'll let you back into the party.. but don't expect them to apologize, in fact, they expect you to thank them for letting you back in.
> 
> This is *their* party, not yours.


Their disco/night club you mean. The bouncers throw you out because you got knocked down by someone else's argument, and they throw you out because they assume you threw a punch before getting knocked down.

Suddenly the image of the night club in Matrix 3 comes to mind. I guess that makes amazon the french speaking dude. And Amazon owns all the guns.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Seneca42 said:


> Because they can. From their perspective, this is amazon's party, and if you don't like the music playing, you can get the F out.  If they find someone spilled beer on the carpet and you happen to be standing near that spot, they'll toss your butt to the curb. If they find out later you weren't the one that spilled the beer, they'll let you back into the party.. but don't expect them to apologize, in fact, they expect you to thank them for letting you back in.
> 
> This is *their* party, not yours.


In my experience, corporations don't do things just because they "can" . They do something because they think it benefits them, usually financialy. It's how Amazon thinks this will benefit them financially that I can't figure.


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

It seems there is actually an upside to having very few sales


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

TwistedTales said:


> Every cloud has its silver lining.


If only the silver was in the form of cascading coins


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

A reminder:

*BookBub is NOT the problem here. *Only some of the affected authors used BookBub and lots and lots more use BookBub every single day without issue.

The affected authors all used different promo sites. *Some used NONE* (just advertised on FB or just to their lists or whatever).

I keep stating this, but it seems to get lost in the noise. I've reviewed all the marketing that all the affected authors used (the ones that contacted me at least - almost 20 of them) and t*here is NO COMMON THREAD* other than all the books targeted were visible in the Amazon charts. That's it.

Sorry for the all caps, it really needs to be underlined again and again and again.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

dgaughran said:


> *there is NO COMMON THREAD* other than all the books targeted were visible in the Amazon charts. That's it.


Which made them easy for third-parties to target with botting activity.


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## CABarrett (Feb 23, 2017)

dgaughran said:


> I keep stating this, but it seems to get lost in the noise. I've reviewed all the marketing that all the affected authors used (the ones that contacted me at least - almost 20 of them) and t*here is NO COMMON THREAD* other than all the books targeted were visible in the Amazon charts. That's it.


I agree with Cassie. It really looks as if the most plausible scenario is that botting accounts are trying to obfusticate their efforts by finding books with no connection to their fraud. This isn't just their strategy in KU click scams - trying to disguise a fake account with random activity happens on all the major websites I've used. Just look at the reddit bots that repost scraped comments, the nonsense procedurally-generated product reviews, or the comments section of any unprotected WordPress account. It's not pretty, but this is the state of the internet.

So it is terrifying that Amazon does not have a plan to deal with this extremely common scenario other than blaming the victim.

Any visibility is vulnerability.

We must keep petitioning Amazon through every channel to re-evaluate their response.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Cassie Leigh said:


> Which made them easy for third-parties to target with botting activity.


That's my theory. As I said in my post, I only see two real possibilities:

1. Amazon's fraud detection system has gone awry and has randomly flagged these books.
2. These books were deliberately targeted (either as cover, or scammers testing the thresholds etc.).

Does Amazon even know? Does Amazon even care to find out? I really don't know.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Amazon's approach to the victims is completely crazy. It's like someone stealing your car and then using it in a bank heist, and the police then arresting you for the robbery.

(And throwing you in jail without a trial.)


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

loraininflorida said:


> In my experience, corporations don't do things just because they "can" . They do something because they think it benefits them, usually financialy. It's how Amazon thinks this will benefit them financially that I can't figure.


Amazon isn't doing anything though, the algo is. There is no human looking at these books saying "we need to derank this one.". The algo does it, and then you have to fight to get a human to give a crap and look into the situation and then give a crap to actually argue up the chain that the algo made a mistake.

And companies implement dumb processes all the time. While we're experiencing damage, for all you know recent algo changes resulting in zon requiring only 20 people for what use to take 200 people. Just because it looks broken to us doesn't mean they see it that way in the big picture.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

LilyBLily said:


> But if your gun is used in a robbery, you can be prosecuted unless you can prove your gun had previously been stolen.


Not remotely pedantic.


----------



## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

1) This:



> I keep stating this, but it seems to get lost in the noise. I've reviewed all the marketing that all the affected authors used (the ones that contacted me at least - almost 20 of them) and there is NO COMMON THREAD other than all the books targeted were visible in the Amazon charts. That's it.


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

1b) It's ALL ABOUT VISIBILITY

The Top 100 Lists and the Top 100 Lists in each genre are - What Readers Should Buy, they are not 'what readers are actually buying'

Take a good box set from indies that is discounted to $0.99 and is currently at #5,345

Meanwhile a standalone book in the same genre, of comparable quality of writing (perhaps a bit higher) and somewhat well established author, is at #234. While price is $8.99

So, it's selling perhaps 5 times more
And it's price is 9 times more

So are we saying that it's 45 times better at selling? Demand is 45 times more?

No, that's impossible. If equal number of people were shown a box set at $0.99 and a standalone book at $8.99, the ratio of sales would be at least 1:1 and most probably in favor of the box set

So how then can the $8.99 book sell 45 times better

First Factor: It is getting a lot more visibility
Second Factor: Perhaps the lists are Top Grossing Lists where a $8.99 book gets 9 times the credit for a sale that a $0.99 book gets
Third Factor: Perhaps there are other tweaks and not just 'Remove some books if they hit Top 100 list' tweaks. We know the Pages Read issue exists. How many such things are done smoothly and elegantly in a way that it's hard to notice

Pages Read and Rank Removal are two very inelegant solutions. Talk to ANYONE who knows algorithms. There are lots and lots of subtle ways to make tweaks and reduce sales a bit or make them seem slightly less. and you combine those and suddenly you can make sure that any one who becomes a threat can be held back and/or slowed down

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

3) Basically, the dream was

Every ebook in the world sold at $9.99, sold only through The One Store to RUle Them All, and 65% cut to The Store. 
Note: 65% was the original cut and only after Apple entered the market did existing stores like Kindle, Sony, Nook switch to 30%/35%.

So 65% of ALL BOOK SALES

that was the dream. That's why investment into ereading, ereaders, reading tablets, wireless delivery instantly

3b) Reality is

You break down the walls and it's not just the conquering army that has a free shot at Rome. So do the Barbarians who were waiting at the fringes

The Wolfshead General surveys the scene - his army has burnt down all 7 concentric walls protecting Rome from Carthage and the Gauls and other Barbarians
In the northeastern horizon his eye catches a torch far off in the distance. then another, and another. Soon there are tens of thousands of torches
He turns to his advisor and says - What are those torches?
His advisor says - Lord General, those are the Northern Barbarian Tribes
The Wolfshead General thinks for a few minutes and then asks his advisor - We've just fought Rome's armies. My soldiers are weary and we do not know how these Barbarians fight or how many they are or what war strategies they will use. What will we do if these Northern Barbarians attack?
His advisor says - Lord General, this is why I had beseeched you to not burn down the walls

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

4) I can guarantee you that when drawing up grand plans of $9.99 for every ebook in the world, and all ebooks, and all through One Store, no one in that room every conceived of things like

- free book promotions being able to get 40,000 downloads
Please Note that in 2012 and early 2013 you could get that many downloads just from curated picks on Pixel of Ink and eReader News Today
- Box Sets with 10 books all bundled together for $0.99. There is literally no standalone book on the planet that can compete against that IN A FAIR FIGHT
- Authors using First in Series Free so efficiently that first Amanda Hocking and then other Indie Authors like John Locke had #1 in the store and 3 of the Top 10 spots

There are lots of strategies that are possible because there are no more walls

The only walls left are in authors' heads
And the wall of Discovery - which would be very quickly fixed/solved if either

There were a fair market with proper counting i.e. no allowance for things like - If box set reaches Top 100 then yank its sales rank
OR
The natural rise of Book Discovery Companies was not being impeded in a multitude of ways

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

5) Authors are not realizing that Book Discovery Companies are also being attacked in numerous ways. Now, finally with Pages Read issue and Rank Removed issue you are seeing some of the things being done via algorithms

If the million+ reader companies in 2012 (ENT, POI) had not (under the forced nature of affiliate money rules) switched to very few free books a day, they would be 10 million+ each now. Bookbub is already 10 million. We're 5.1 million and adding 1 million+ a year. Many other sites that are now 500K to 1 Million would be in 1 Million to 10 Million range

that means that instead of 1 site with 10 million and another site with 5.1 million you'd have 5 to 10 sites with 10 million+ readers and another 5 to 10 with 1 million to 9 million readers. You would have 8 to 10 times more discovery. So you would not just be able to hit Top 100 for a few days. You could stay in Top 100 for MONTHS

Let this sink in: Instead of have somewhere between 20 million to 30 million readers on Books Discovery Sites, there would be somewhere between 50 million and 100 million readers on discovery sites
Imagine if your top 10 book discovery site options could all generate 1,000 to 5,000 sales each

There would not be any store any more, because everything would be dictated by the discovery companies

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

6) The removal/hiding of lower priced books also prevents indies from tapping into the international markets

With $0.99 books your market is actually Billions of Readers

Market for $9.99 books is just 100 to 200 million readers

Plus readers would buy a lot more $0.99 books

So Rank Removal doesn't just hurt you in the US, it hurts you massively internationally because readers there just can't afford $9.99 books

In fact, many of those markets would be 90% to 100% indie. If your purchasing power is 1/4th then the choice isn't $0.99 or $9.99, it's $4 or $40.

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

7) The common issue is - These books got VISIBILITY in the Amazon Charts

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

8. Now consider if the barbarians take over Rome

Where will the money be, because $0.99 and $2.99 books aren't going to generate much cut for stores, especially if there is competition and stores start offering 80% revenues to authors, instead of 35% of $0.99

Money will be in

Services to Authors
Promotion for Authors. Because in a competitive environment stores might get just 10% to 20% of revenues (rest going to authors). However, those authors - what do they do? They usually turn around and take the 80% they get (or currently 35% to 65%) and promptly re-invest
So why not go for 20-30% cut from revenues and then get as much of the rest as possible as marketing. The ideal state is

You give store 20% to 30% cut as 'their share'
You give store another 60-70% as 'marketing costs'

So store gets 80% to 100% of what readers pay

THAT IS THE END GAME

Because the market is shifting to total domination by indies (connect the dots - look at all the stuff being done to keep out the barbarians and how most of it is falling - to the point that store has to resort to straight out yanking sales ranks - like we're in Venezuela or something)

So - very little money per book sale AND book sales shift to lower priced books
So - ONLY SOLUTION is that you try and get 80% to 90% of what readers pay

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

The next step after that would be coming after service providers like cover designers and editors and it would be done in the guise of 'Quality Control'

right now the excuse is 'Bots'
Yeah, it's totally OK to kill off discovery for authors because - BOTS BOTS BOTS

Then the guise would be Quality Control
Your book can only be taken if it is high quality, so it must be cover, editing, etc. all done from Company X, which happens to be subsidiary of the Store

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

9) Here's a simple exercise

Go check out the Top 20 books in your genre. Look at the covers, the writing, etc. the reviews, how well known the author is

Now consider - This author based on rank and price is selling X times more than you

Example: If his rank means he's selling 5 times more
And if his price is $8.99 and your price is $2.99 he's selling 3 times more

So 15 times more

Are his books 15 times better?

No, that's pretty much guaranteed

So only reason he's selling 15 times more is VISIBILITY

If you with your $2.99 book had same visibility as his $8.99 book you might be very surprised to find who sells more
At $0.99 I can guarantee you'd sell more than almost every well known author selling at $8.99

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

10) Now consider authors' attitude towards Book Discovery companies

You know Pages Read issue
You know Rank being Yanked issue

Do you seriously think things like this are not being done against Book Discovery companies?

It seems magical doesn't it

first all the small promo sites became ineffective
Then medium promo sites become less effective
then Ku Pages read issue meant books discovery companies lost one set of customers because pages read money went down
Now even Bookbub is seeing rank being yanked

What an amazing coincidence that this starts happening exactly in parallel with the realization that money in books is shifting to lower priced books and getting 20-30% isn't enough and people need/want to take 80-90% of money readers pay. 20-30% as their cut, and another 60% as 'marketing'

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

11) It's all about visibility

Because that is the ONLY wall remaining

Right now a lot of authors are responding with disbelief and some are mocking authors/people who are pointing out what's happening. Those are defence mechanisms. Much easier to say BOTS BOTS BOTS than to realize that Discovery is being completely wiped out

If there is just one store, or if there is just one discovery company, then authors will be giving 80% to 90% of what readers pay to it. that's just reality.

So you need to start playing chess or go, and not checkers. Think about your future and also think about what VISIBILITY and DISCOVERY Channels you will use in the Future

If Bookbub can push your book to the Top 100, and if SOME OTHER PARTY is yanking the sales rank, then it's disconcerting to see authors so blind that they are thinking

a) Bookbub is at fault
b) Bookbub can do anything about it

You have to support Bookbub. Perhaps it's asking too much that you support all Books Discovery companies because you'd much rather blame them than see reality. But with Bookbub's size you MUST SEE REALITY NOW

If you don't wake up now and don't fight for things then you can kiss Top 100 spots for indie authors goodbye - at least for a few years. No other site is close in terms of raw sales generated. Even stacking isn't working any more. So what option do you have if you let this Rank Yanking happen to Bookbub?

Remember, the conditions that created Bookbub are sort of impossible in today's environment

You notice rank yanking when it's happening in Top 100

what about things like that happening at lower ranks and/or even before promotion kicks in
You are noticing - sales are lower for promotion sites
Are you noticing - why/how are they lower?

Magically, ALL promotion sites are seeing fewer sales. That is an incredibly fortuitous thing isn't it, for someone who wishes that all marketing money flew to them instead

there are lots of things being done that aren't being noticed because most authors are not tech savvy

The obvious modifications (pages read, yank ranking) are actually a very good sign. The subtle stuff is not enough now to keep indies from taking over so Extreme things have to be tried out

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

12) I can't think of any market or any country where you could take a product that made its way into Top 100 on merit, and it was just removed. Like, just disappeared into the ether

That's a fundamental breach of the social contract - both with readers and with authors

Social Contract with Readers - we'll show you the best books and the bestselling books and what other readers are buying
Authors - you get a shot at the table and if by quality/strategy/marketing you can take a top spot then you get to keep it (not have it yanked)

You cannot just take a book that hit the top 100 on legitimate sales and DISAPPEAR IT

You can hide behind BOTS all you like. Please be aware that if you keep hiding behind BOTS and Don't See Reality As It Is (versus how you wish it were) you won't have to worry about Books hitting Top 100 being yanked. Because no indie author book will hit Top 100 any more - perhaps not for a few years, perhaps not for a long time


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

dgaughran said:


> That's my theory. As I said in my post, I only see two real possibilities:
> 
> 1. Amazon's fraud detection system has gone awry and has randomly flagged these books.
> 2. These books were deliberately targeted (either as cover, or scammers testing the thresholds etc.).
> ...


I agree with David's theory. It's one or both of these things. Likely both.



> It's how Amazon thinks this will benefit them financially that I can't figure.


If they can get a bot to work to their satisfaction, they don't have to hire and train people. If some honest folk get hurt in the process, well, it's not like there's much they can do about it. For every one that leaves KU/Amazon, at least a dozen sign up. Win-win.

Guilty until proven... until Amazon decides to let you back in.


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## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

WasAnn said:


> We are now nothing more than Vendors of cheap goods that they have millions of other sources for. This is our reality. We are paperclips.


'now'?   we always 'were'!!!


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

WasAnn said:


> That second level is probably wrong as often as it is right, but here's the point. It's a work in progress and it makes ZERO impact to Amazon's bottom line even if it's 75% wrong. Sure, they'll tune it to make it better, but it doesn't matter even one bit if it takes a year and sweeps a wide swath through indie ranks.


So here's what I'm 95% sure has happened.

In 2016 they banned authors. That resulted in some newspaper articles that many here may not have seen, but they were out there. In Calgary the biggest newspaper in that city did a story on an author who was banned yet swore had done nothing wrong.

So the moment the press gets involved, that brings in the corporate communications / media relations / public relations division. They got involved and clearly told the KDP people "stop it you idiots, you're making us look horrible in the press."

They stopped. The botting resumed and got even worse. So this time instead of banning, they are deranking. This ensures that no one can go to the media and say that zon shut down their publishing career. Zon can just say "no we didn't, their book is still for sale on the store. We deranked them due to inappropriate behavior."

I believe they are so concerned about bad press that they won't even kick a book out of KU for fear of it. They just don't know which author will be the one that gets a giant newspaper article done, so they leave botters in KU even.

Will a reporter waste their time on the nuances of the situation if the author is still for sale and in KU? Hell no they won't.

So that's the paradigm zon is moving forward with right now. Cover their butts with the press by simply deranking, and let the algo go while irrespective of false-positives, because the punishment (deranking) isn't something the press will care about. And as for authors... if anyone thinks zon cares in the least whether they are inconveniencing you or causing you stress or worry... I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

boba1823 said:


> Noob question:
> 
> What, if anything, does deranking do beyond removing a book from the charts?
> 
> Does the book still show up in also-boughts? Do Amazon's algorithms still recommend it to people (assuming it was being recommended in the first place)? Assuming that the rank is eventually restored, do sales keep counting toward (future) rank?


This is covered in detail in the post and in numerous comments, but, in short: rank-stripping removes you from all of the charts, various other visibility spots on Amazon, stops your book getting recommended on-site and by email - essentially your book becomes undiscoverable. Sure, if people are brought directly to your page they can still buy the book, but it's essentially invisible to new readers.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

Beautiful Beautiful



> I think the people who say the AMS theory doesn't make sense are not considering a key possibility. It may not make sense with AMS as it exists now, but it's pretty unlikely that advertising with Amazon will continue to look like exactly what it looks like now. They may be planning to roll out a BookBub style advertising option in the future, and they're trying to make it problematic for authors to advertise on any email newsletter that they (Amazon) don't own. If they make authors question whether we can use any newsletter service, and then suddenly they come out with their own, authors will be relieved and go, "Finally! One we can be sure we can use without Amazon going after us!" and Amazon wins.
> 
> Also, while it's true that Amazon makes money from people clicking on books in BookBub newsletters, their competitors also make money. And since gaining a monopoly on book distribution is pretty clearly one of Amazon's goals, it seems entirely reasonable that they're willing to miss out on that money for now if it helps them get all the book money in the future. Amazon plans long term, and this looks like a long term plan.


1) Yes, first Amazon tried to take everyone in GoodReads and force a Bookbub style operation out of that

See Here: https://the-digital-reader.com/2016/05/17/move-over-bookbub-fussy-librarian-goodreads-is-getting-into-ebook-discounts/

GoodReads people started getting auto-enrolled etc.

2) Very soon after that (within a month) affiliate program was ended for certain companies that were existing newsletter promotion companies i.e. eReaderIQ, PixelOfInk etc.

See Here: https://the-digital-reader.com/2016/06/15/amazon-brings-the-hammer-down-on-discount-ebook-sites/

what a remarkable coincidence, eh

3) So they have tried this and will try this again

4) In Nov/Dec 2016 they launched AMS Ads (I might have time off by a bit). So again, another clear attempt to REPLACE existing marketing avenues

and magically end 2016 early 2017 is when lots of newsletter sites started becoming less effective. What a remarkable set of coincidences. Email saturation set in for ALL newsletter promotion companies at the perfect right time to allow AMS Ads to try and create a foothold

*********

5) The amount of money earned is very disproportionate

Let's take an author who writes a book and then sells it and promotes it

What the author pays

Cover - $250
Editing - $500
Proofreading - $150
Distributor - Perhaps a fixed fee of $500. Perhaps a cut of sales
Store - 35% of sales to 65% of sales (if discounted)
Marketing - Perhaps $300 to $1,000. If book sells then some percentage of ongoing revenues

What does the store have to do for its cut?

eInk Kindle development
R&D
Customer support
KDP maintenance
Kindle Fire Tablet development
wireless costs for ebook delivery
etc.
etc.

So store is doing nearly all the investment and work in infrastructure and R&D

And Marketing/Discovery Companies are doing - just gathering readers looking for cheap and free books. Orders of magnitude easier and orders of magnitude cheaper

And yet, Marketing/Discovery companies will be making as much or more than store. 
Because (and you can check this yourself from your own expenses) 
Services cost most
Marketing costs 2nd most
Store Cut is 3rd

If you are selling a lot then often Marketing costs will become #1

There will be exceptions, however, many many authors put back a large percentage of earnings into marketing

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

6) so the store

bought land
built a great big store
spends tons of money on infrastructure and upkeep and wireless stores in people's hands (kindles and tablets)

And all the marketers do is set up their little stalls on the roads on which readers walk to the store
and CONTROL what gets bought
And take a lot of money which the store probably thinks has the store's name written on it

Think of the huge amounts of investment it has made into breaking down the walls around Publishing
And now it sees all these little stalls and service companies flourishing and being profitable while the store has to worry about paying all the infrastructure bills and R&D and more

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

7) Imagine if you spent 2002/2003 to 2017 building up an ebook store and ereading devices and then you find

We are getting 10% of the pie (because costs are high for R&D and infrastructure and from their 35% cut on $3 to $10 and 65% cut on below $2.99, the store is probably only left with 10% cut of book price as their share)

Author Services companies are getting 30% of the pie
Marketing Companies are getting 20% of the pie

A part of you has to be thinking - We are doing all the work. We did all the groundwork. and we're making half of what these marketing companies are making. And 1/3rd of what services companies are making

that isn't fair. FIFTEEN years of working on eInk Kindles and Kindle Store and now we're getting 10% of the pie

How do we get more?

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

 That is what we are seeing here

We've thought a lot about building a store. Analyzed and researched every store you can imagine - physical ones, ebook, app, movie, music, digital products
We've done a lot of research on building a store and how stores work etc. and the craziest thing is

There is absolutely no way you can make a store and control profits UNTIL AND UNLESS you control the services side i.e. services like covers and editing AND services like marketing
If you don't make it bullet-proof, It's basically an invitation for marketing companies and service companies to take over your ecosystem

You do all the work and whoever can control marketing channels and service channels will make the money

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

9) If you think of creating a store and ecosystem and making ebooks mainstream as writing a book

The Store is facing the prospect of WRITING A BOOK EVERYONE WANTS and then getting 10% of royalties (after removing costs and R&D) when they thought they'd get 65%

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

10) At the same time there is a very real threat

The people who take control of Discovery can not just turn the store into dumb terminals getting only 10% of the pie

They can remove them completely

If you have 10 to 20 million readers visiting you each month, why not just open your own store??

Now, that the store did anticipate and hence the lack of support for ePub and the proprietary DRM etc.

However, the threat remains

At some point the marketing companies might say - We have 20% of the pie. But we're sick and tired of all these Rank-Yanks and Delays and it's time to just build our own store. We take a 20% cut and give 80% to authors and authors anyways will come back and give us half of that back. so instead of 20% of the pie we can have 60%

If you build it from the marketing side then you can have 60% of the pie

Imagine how the people who spent 15 years on this feel when they go from their dream of 65% of the pie to ZERO and the stall owners, who did hardly any work at all - no hardware, no software, no R&D - these stall owners take over and start making 60%

I hope the thrust of the argument is clear

On one hand is - Destroy existing marketing channels. Then increase share of the pie (after reducing R&D and infrastructure costs) from 10% to 30%. Destroy service companies and increase share of the pie from 30% to 50%. 50% and Everything is Awesome

On the other hand - Let marketing companies become bigger and get share of pie cut to 10%. Then marketing companies launch their own stores and they are making 60% of the pie while you are making ZERO. 15 long hard years of fighting to take over the future of books and the dream of 65% of all the money readers spend on books. And you're left with a T-Shirt that says - We could have had 65%, but we burnt down all the walls

*********************
In some ways it's inevitable. Store sealed its fate when it burnt down all the walls and left itself with no weapons other than the illusions that there are still walls

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

The Biggest Thing: If you build it from the marketing side then you can have 60% of the pie. SIXTY @#$# PERCENT

Which is why Bookbub has the skeleton of a store ALREADY in place, with Author Pages and all their lists for various genres etc. Take a look around. The only thing missing is the Buy button

Imagine the look on The Temporarily Biggest Site's face if someone else were not just to become the new biggest store, they also figured out a way to get a 60% Cut of what Readers Pay

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

My hypothesis is that the 'Yank the Rank of this Top 100 Book' has everything to do with the threat of this immensely painful situation of ending up with ZERO percent of what readers pay
And absolutely nothing to do with bots

The Store makes tablets and eink readers and voice activated speakers and Amazon Web Services. The Store's sister company builds rockets. And you think they can't handle some bots? really? It isn't rocket science


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

The AMS only theory makes no sense at all.

I'm with David. I should get a t-shirt made up that says that.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Puddleduck said:


> But again, it's not an AMS only theory. It's an Amazon only theory. And from Amazon's perspective, related to long-term goals, it makes perfect sense.


It doesn't though. Not given the evidence we have right now.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Puddleduck said:


> The evidence that I've seen shows that Amazon wants as much of the market as it can get, and wants to control as much as possible how people access the things they buy. We have many years' worth of evidence to see how Amazon operates. Bigger, more market share, wrap people up more and more into the Amazon bubble, this is their way of operating. I think the evidence absolutely supports the idea that they want to control not only all e-book marketing, but also all e-book distribution and consumption.


That's unrelated to the topic of what's currently occurring, imo.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

If Amazon were "going after BB", which isn't the case, why would they do it this way? Why would they target only a tiny fraction of books that use the service? Why would they target non-BB advertised books? 

Answer: They wouldn't.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Puddleduck said:


> I don't think it is. The topic is about Amazon doing something negative to an author as a result of the author using BookBub. People theorize that this is a way of Amazon going after BookBub. Since BB is the biggest and most important newsletter marketing outlet for authors of this kind, and is pretty much undeniably legit, Amazon going after BB seems like Amazon going after all such companies. Which leads to guesses why that might be. And what that might mean for authors in the future.


But David recently reminded us that Bookbub is not a common element, nor is any promo site. It also happened to people who just contacted their own mailing lists -- no paid promo at all. So, either Amazon's trying to identify books that are rising suspiciously and is getting false positives up the wazoo, or botters are targeting books that are rising as a way of spreading the dirt -- because Amazon will find it much hard to identify the truly filthy if everyone's dirtied up a little.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Becca Mills said:


> But David recently reminded us that Bookbub is not a common element, nor is any promo site. It also happened to people who just contacted their own mailing lists -- no paid promo at all. So, either Amazon's trying to identify books that are rising suspiciously and is getting false positives up the wazoo, or botters are targeting books that are rising as a way of spreading the dirt -- because Amazon will find it much hard to identify the truly filthy if everyone's dirtied up a little.


This.


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## Berries (Feb 5, 2015)

I just have to chime in on one part of this... Amazon's own imprints (i.e., 47North, Montlake, Lake Union, Thomas & Mercer, etc.) regularly use BookBub when running promotions for their authors, so the theory that Amazon is targeting BookBub goes out the window.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

Berries said:


> I just have to chime in on one part of this... Amazon's own imprints (i.e., 47North, Montlake, Lake Union, Thomas & Mercer, etc.) regularly use BookBub when running promotions for their authors, so the theory that Amazon is targeting BookBub goes out the window.


You and the others who say the AMS idea "makes no sense" assume there are rational humans involved. Not so. It's the Machine that does what it's told with algos that are insufficient to provide protection to honest authors who trigger the flagging. When the flag is triggered, the machine takes action.

I once had an email from zon asking me to prove I had permission to use the work of a certain author. The author? Jane Austen. I had to provide information that Jane Austen was dead and everything she ever wrote was in the public domain. No human had looked at anything. The email was sent to me by the Machine.

Very often we all get emails from real zon people and we complain about lack of transparency. But the reality is they often don't know themselves the source of the problem because it was the machine that was triggered to do something to you and not a rational human.

When you publish a book, no human looks at it except for the person who does the manual Look Inside (if the book is in English), and after that the buyers and readers and the people who merely look at the product page. If the book is in Russian, for example, the Look Inside is done by the Machine and the book may be on sale with no human ever having looked at it. (That is why scammers use books in Russian).

The Machine is run mostly by algos, and if an algo triggers something and the Machine hits you with a hammer, you may have a tough time getting justice because the humans have been told to let the Machine have its way unless it's a very special circumstance.

There is no way any bookselling operation can offer millions of books for sale or borrowing without nearly everything done by a machine and thus nearly everything never looked at by a human and with often harmful consequences for author/publishers.

At the present time, the idea that makes the most sense is that some human in zon who knows very little about books thinks killing off outside advertising/promotion of KDP books to drive the business to AMS is a good idea and has instructed the engineers to get the appropriate algos into the Machine.

This company could not exist and hardly ever does anything with the Machine, and that has to be the first premise if we are to understand how it operates and how the operation affects authors.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Berries said:


> I just have to chime in on one part of this... Amazon's own imprints (i.e., 47North, Montlake, Lake Union, Thomas & Mercer, etc.) regularly use BookBub when running promotions for their authors, so the theory that Amazon is targeting BookBub goes out the window.


It's not out the window. I mean, it's conjecture, but not entirely implausible.

The notion that companies can both work together and compete against each other is common, it's called coopetition.

And as far as conjecture goes, it's not that crazy. There was no problem with bubs in the past. Since bub has slanted heavily towards wide books, suddenly bub authors are having problems.

Look at it the other way, if they were all "hugs and kisses" with bookbub, then when a book gets flagged they would look to see if it was a bub that day and leave it alone.

Also a little suspicious we've got very suspect behavior of KU books crashing the top of charts and unless they hit #1 zon seems to leave them alone.

At best I think the algo has been set to be tripped more easily on non-KU books than KU books.


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## Avis Black (Jun 12, 2012)

ireaderreview said:


> Which is why Bookbub has the skeleton of a store ALREADY in place, with Author Pages and all their lists for various genres etc. Take a look around. The only thing missing is the Buy button


That's a very interesting notion. BB has a large number of readers hooked into their ecosystem already, as well a whole set of business relationships in place with trad publishers who are used to working directly with BB for promotions by now. I wouldn't be surprised if one or more trad publishers quietly suggested to BB that the latter set up a store partially with the notion of undercutting Amazon and making it no longer the place to go for books. Trad publishers periodically get ticked off at Amazon and might like an alternative.

So BB would start taking delivery of trad books directly from mainstream publishers for retail sale, then add in indies. But BB would need a very good search engine, and a lot of readers willing to review. However, BB has been sending out emails titled, 'Have you read this book?' and trying to get ratings for them. The latter looks like they're trying to set up a database of already rated books for when the site goes live. Their Connect with Friends feature looks like the start of book reading groups and maybe a Goodreads-type feature.

Definitely looks like you're onto something there.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Puddleduck said:


> Whether or not the theory is correct doesn't really make it irrelevant to this discussion. Disagreeing that it could be a factor is fine. Saying, "I don't agree that it's a factor so it shouldn't be a part of this discussion," is going too far when obviously a number of other people _do _think it may be related.


I'm not sure if this was directed at me or Becca or just in general but I'm not trying to tell people what they can or cannot discuss. I'm just saying that I don't think the theory is the answer to what currently ails us (the rank stripping).


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

boba1823 said:


> Ah, now this is some very interesting stuff.
> 
> At the end of the day, my top question in relation to issues like this is always "Okay, so what can we do - right now - to avoid getting squashed?"
> 
> ...


All interesting thoughts but we just don't know. They do wack KU books, just that it seems to take a lot of reporting and public awareness of the botting for them to act. The algo doesn't seem to be catching them, it's books being reported and seemingly a human looking into it. Whereas non-KU books it's the exact opposite, no one is reporting these books and some (a very small minority we should note) are getting wacked.

I still don't think there's a huge concern on the paid side (yet). A handful of books have been dinged and most seem to have gotten their ranks back. I do believe there's a confluence of algo factors which lined up for certain books that triggered a deranking; I doubt it's just one thing (like a rapid rise in sales).

My gut says KU does provide protective factors, but that doesn't make KU appealing, if anything it makes it less so. If you're in KU the last thing you want are other KU authors grabbing all the reads via bot ranking.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

This - As an example, the Amazon search has recently started showing me the Audible version of a book as the default format when I search using the main search bar

It's made it almost impossible to find good paper books because half the spots in the Non fiction paper book bestseller lists are now taken up by audiobooks. I've NEVER bought an audiobook from Amazon. So not sure why it insists on showing me audiobooks in bestseller lists. And also kindle versions in the Book lists

This actually ties in to what I discuss later

Amazon really really really are wedded to the notion that they can dictate customer behavior. Like they really really think that by using X, Y, Z they can convince a customer to buy a book the customer does not want to buy

Perhaps they are right, because they convert better than any other online store

***************
1) This is a very good point:



> The "Amazon wants to destroy all other marketers" theory is a good one, but the problem I see is that the customer experience trying to find a book to buy on the Amazon site is hideous. The newsletters that tout books by categories actually do their job, costing Amazon nothing, while Amazon lets any sort of irrelevant dreck commandeer every category. And that definitely includes AMS ads and trad pub-purchased ads that appear on Amazon pages where--if you are a human--you see they clearly do not belong.


1b) think of the ideal state for the store as

EVERYONE keeps sending the store traffic
The Store is able to route that traffic to buy what the store wants those people to buy

1c) Think of it as

The back shelf books stay the back shelf books. However, they keep generating traffic that is sent to front shelf and to other sections

Everything is fine until the back shelf indie authors start thinking they can take over the bestseller lists
The discovery sites start thinking they can dictate the bestseller lists

***
that is the stage at which we are. Store has suddenly realized these little fish are piranha and letting them grow unchecked is dangerous to the store's long term plans

I honestly don't know whether promotion sites are viewed as piranha or indie authors who are becoming big as viewed as piranha
However, the moves are definitely targeting one or both

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

2) Working with a company doesn't mean good intentions
Tech world is notorious - sometimes there are two companies cooperating while also trying to stab each other in the back

It's called

frenemy
embrace and destroy
coopetition (mentioned earlier etc.)

All the very big tech companies love to do embrace and destroy i.e. partner up, learn the technology, copy the technology, destroy the company

At some level Amazon wants not just to get rid of Bookbub but also to understand WHY it works. And then replicate it. So there will be lots of on-the-surface cooperation and understanding of the processes etc. Then either it gets marked as subsidiary (like Zappos or Diapers.com) or acquisition for the people or something else

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

3) Yeah, Bookbub have been building elements of a store for a long time

My guess is that there was some behind the scenes arrangement. That in parallel with weakening POI and ENT the store was building up Bookbub. With assigned quota for store imprints. As a sort of outside the Store, but not really outside the Store, marketing machine. Strict rules on how many books from indies, how many from trad pub etc. But then Bookbub went rogue and started focusing more on wide and its own plans
So Bookbub had hands tied about what they could do, but they were building a store as a backup plan

Even now, if you look carefully there are 2 promotion sites whose results are completely unaffected while everyone else, including Bookbub, is seeing oddities

So another round of behind the scenes arrangements - What better way to make everyone else seem bad and slow down the biggest threats, than to keep TWO promo sites intact and build them up, while weakening everyone else

I really do think Store is trying to create a infinite recursion loop where

Every 2 Years - they pump up one or two promotion sites. While going after the current biggest 2 sites
Then rinse and repeat

So that no promotion site can become very big

In the last round they made the mistake of making everything very clear
So now all the promotion sites are wary. and now the store has to resort to extreme things to stop promotion sites. They can no longer do embrace/befriend and destroy

Take all the sites that are growing up now
- they see Rank being removed
- they see Pages Read issue
- they see rank delays being done
- they see promotion sites getting kicked out of affiliate program

So now all the sites know they have to be self dependent and wary

Just like indie authors are becoming stronger and more 'independent' we have discovery companies also realizing they can't dependent on one store or the store

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

4) Plausible Deniability

All manipulations that are done will be done to a percentage - between 5% and 25%

It is enough to cause doubt and fear
It makes it tougher to prove manipulation is being done

If they drop everything, then it's evidence
If they drop 10%, then it's randomness

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

5) I think the biggest thing is it's very hard to understand non-logical patterns of thinking

As humans we have very strong reciprocation instincts and also social rules and norms
So if an issue like Pages Read came up and if it were one person making the decision, that issue could never exist. That person's brain would literally fry if he tried to not consider the negative effects on some many people from such an issue. He'd be compelled to fix it - or his name would be mud forever

A company can create rules to avoid things like the social contract and reciprocation and the golden rule
Like how you read about companies calculating costs of fixing an error versus cost of just doing payments to people injured by the error. That sort of thinking,. Humans can't really live with that (except the evil ones). However, companies can rationalize that

With a very large company the 'ethics' and 'DNA' are determined based on the people who start it, the culture that is created, the priorities

So you're talking about a company that is

- looking to grow
- looking to expand control
- looking to increase its share price
- has so many different priorities
- a few changing priorities
etc. etc.

And a lot of that doesn't have rules

A lot of authors here are looking at it as

I'm sure the intentions are good And then trying to find a rationalization for the behavior (rank yanking) that has good intentions (preventing bots)

It might be good intentions
it might be no intentions
it might be intentions that are good for the company but not good for authors

Sometimes there aren't even intentions. Sometimes it's just a long term movement towards a particular vision of how the store should be. The best vision to achieve the company's goals

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

6) The key thing is that there's not really any way to protect against what's happening. Because the moves that 'protect' you in the short term, put you in a really tight spot in the long term

One key thing with many tech companies, and especially the store, is that they are delusional about the level of control they can have over humans. They absolutely 100% believe that

They can get readers to buy the books they want them to buy
they can get authors to do exactly what they want and/or commoditize
that authors are fungible or can be made close to fungible
that books are fungible or can be made into layers/levels with many of the levels fungible

we'll just create this market and everyone will forget their own intrinsic motivations and do what best suits us
Of course, it never works that way

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

In a strange sort of way - the more control you hand over the more they will try to make sure you do well. the more you align with their vision of the store, the more they will give you visibility and other rewards

And at the same time
the more control you hand over the higher the risk you are taking and the more dependent on the store you are becoming

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

Basically the store is breaking down

Readers want high quality books at reasonable prices
Indie authors are supplying them

The store thinks it can reprogram everyone's minds and convince readers to buy high priced books instead and convince indie authors to give up their pricing advantages

The store is like a stubborn mule
All the evidence is saying - go with what readers are asking for, but the mule has decided $4.99 and $7.99 and $8.99 and $9.99 books for everyone, with the occasional $2.99 deal

Actually that's the crux of everything. The store is like a stubborn mule. All the data is saying - put your money on indies and on what readers are asking for, but the mule is refusing to listen


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

Monique said:


> I'm not sure if this was directed at me or Becca or just in general but I'm not trying to tell people what they can or cannot discuss. I'm just saying that I don't think the theory is the answer to what currently ails us (the rank stripping).


The counterargument to the theory seems to be that it would hurt Amazon to do such and such. I won't do it, but it's easy enough to make a list of all the thiings that Amazon does that hurt Amazon.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

LilyBLily said:


> What happens next? Authors will remove their books from Amazon, or Bookbub and the others will suppress the Amazon buy link and encourage potential buyers to buy from another store.


the latter is where we are heading if zon is poking bub.

There are other bub books that have had issues that aren't discussed here. I saw one last week that had "book currently unavailable" for the first 6 hours of its bub in the US (the international stores were fine).

But zon screws up its own KCD's as well. So who really knows how much of this is intent and how much of it is simply a flaky system. I'm leaning towards a weighted algo that trips easier on wide books.

Ultimately, something big has to happen in the industry soon though. Otherwise everyone should just pack up and go home and let zon rule the roost.


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## MTM (Aug 9, 2011)

ireaderreview said:


> Even now, if you look carefully there are 2 promotion sites whose results are completely unaffected while everyone else, including Bookbub, is seeing oddities


 Which two promotion sites?


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2017)

this is not going to happen - let zon rule the roost. 

I know it seems store has total control etc - however, it's very tenuous

They say - in a relationship an ultimatum is a sign of weakness, not strength

Similarly, Disappearing the Ranking of a $0.99 box set that reaches the Top 100 isn't a show of strength. It's a show of weakness


I can't even put into words how big of a deal it is. The store has lost control to the point that it has to resort to DISAPPEARING a book from the Top 100. Think about it. When is the last time you've seen something like this done in any bestseller list??

Because the 'Bestsellers Illusion' lasts only as long as everyone believes it actually is a bestseller list
If books are being magically disappeared from it, then - is the rest of the list valid? We know one valid book was disappeared. were there others? What about non deserving books being put in

It removes the credibility of the bestseller list
What about every genre Bestseller list? How many books were disappeared from there?

What about books that were disappeared and author didn't notice?
What about cases where this was done on a smaller scale?

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

Let me explain it this way

There's a big promo site. It advertises - 'free books from ny times bestseller lists'

people sign up. they get list of 5 free books and 20 deals

some of them buy deals

However, EVERYONE is being lured in via Free
and 5% are buying deals, rest aren't

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

Store is doing a GIANT version of that

The readers are coming mostly for high value books at reasonable prices (cheap books, free books)

Store is showing them mostly high priced books and getting some sales of the high priced books

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

It's sort of a struggle between

What readers want to buy

what the store wants to sell

* readers win that every time. At the moment they are not, according to what the bestseller lists show

what the store does as genius is that it's getting everyone to send them traffic and then it's using social proof and pre selection to make some of that traffic believe that high priced books are the 'bestsellers' and buy those

***********
And bestsellers lists also magically seem to have a lot of these high priced books

If one $0.99 box set has been DISAPPEARED
how many more have been?

how many have been kept out of the Top 100 using various tweaks?

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

Once the 'This is an actual Bestseller list' illusion is destroyed you open up so many cans of worms


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

I have not fully read all of the comments, but I want to point out that when people focus on what cut Amazon is keeping of the ebook sales, they are probably overlooking a much more important consideration of Amazon's...  I think Jeff Bezos ultimately wanted everyone to have a Kindle and to learn to shop on it.  eBooks were a good way to accomplish that.  Now people buy EVERYTHING from Amazon, not just ebooks.  I don't think Amazon relies on ebook incomes very heavily at all.  I think eBooks were a way into everyone's life and a way for Amazon to get started doing what they excel at, namely offering everything under the sun in an efficient way that conventional stores could not match.  Now I don't think Amazon is a book store any longer.  (And now that everyone has a mobile device of some sort to visit Amazon's web site with, the kindle itself isn't as important to Amazon any more either, I believe.)  I don't have numbers handy, but I think the vast majority of their income is from AWS and goods other than ebooks.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

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


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

PhoenixS said:


> Not to get too far off-tangent with this, but we were noticing this several months ago even. There might have been a change since, but we were finding then that any FREE ebook, if it had an audio counterpart, had its audio version coming up as the default in searches. A seeming suppression of the free versions. Only if there were no audio version did the ebook version display as the default.


I have noticed this as well. That seems overly aggressive to me, actively interfering with a customer finding what they are searching for by title.

This may not have the desired effect. Rather than discourage me from using permafree, it is discouraging me from considering future audio productions. Having the first ebook in a series not even appear when someone searches for it by title is a nonstarter.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

I'm waiting to see if Bookbub move to offer a non-Amazon bub, for those wide authors scared of getting dinged like this.

Maybe we should suggest it.

If the major promo sites started excluding Amazon from their promos, or giving the Author the ability to exclude them, it might make Amazon sit up and ask why.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

TimothyEllis said:


> I'm waiting to see if Bookbub move to offer a non-Amazon bub, for those wide authors scared of getting dinged like this.
> 
> Maybe we should suggest it.
> 
> If the major promo sites started excluding Amazon from their promos, or giving the Author the ability to exclude them, it might make Amazon sit up and ask why.


How about if we stop listing our audio files on Amazon, Audible and iTunes and only go through a place like Authors Republic to get into the other outlets? Maybe that would get their attention. For me the income is about half ACX channels and half Authors Republic channels. I think I might be willing to give up half of audio so as to actually have ebooks show up when people search for them. Unless this is some kind of temporary thing.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

TimothyEllis said:


> I'm waiting to see if Bookbub move to offer a non-Amazon bub, for those wide authors scared of getting dinged like this.
> 
> Maybe we should suggest it.
> 
> If the major promo sites started excluding Amazon from their promos, or giving the Author the ability to exclude them, it might make Amazon sit up and ask why.


Bub should just increase their promo slots to two books a day, or three per day. That would then swamp the crap out of zon's charts. By month end it would be all zon books taking up the top 100.

That would teach zon to mess with them.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

ParkerAvrile said:


> I wonder if anyone will be buying Kindles in the future. I have several but when they die, they're not getting replaced. The Kindle is a transitional technology that will eventually go out of use. They are too slow, painfully so at times for me, and their only advantage vs. the phone is long battery life. To shop for anything but the most popular books on Kindle is an utterly miserable experience compared to the phone, tablet, or laptop.
> 
> With Android and the Samsung Galaxy S8 we are already back to the days where we can read anywhere, even the tub, because this phone survives immersion. No need for a Kindle just use the Kindle app. Plus the phone or tablet can do many other useful things the Kindle can't. A single purpose device can be limiting in a multi purpose world.


I will give up my Kindle when they pry it out of my cold dead fingers. I don't find it slow...but also, lighter, longer battery life, better in sunshine. I have hundreds of books on mine, no need to shop on it. I buy on my computer or iPad and send to the device. And the latest Oasis is waterproof, though I don't read in the tub.

I don't browse Amazon much for books...I find most of my books here on KBoards, either finding authors interesting through their posts or by recommendations in the Book Corner. I go straight to the book and buy it. *shrug* Different strokes--which is why they have apps as well as Kindles.

Betsy


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Seneca42 said:


> Bub should just increase their promo slots to two books a day, or three per day. That would then swamp the crap out of zon's charts. By month end it would be all zon books taking up the top 100.
> 
> That would teach zon to mess with them.


I think BB should be doing that already.

But they work on the basis of readers requesting most of the genres, and 2 or more per genre makes a very long email, and the dont want that long an email.

Its my gripe with them. I only want scifi-fant, and an email with 2 books on it is pretty useless for me. Amazon sends out emails with 10.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I will give up my Kindle when they pry it out of my cold dead fingers.


Book idea!

The moderators of a popular book forum start turning up dead, with their Kindles missing. Their fingers appear to be broken as if the kindle was pryed out of them post mortem.

A high tech combat suit has gone missing from a research lab.

Can Inspector ? figure out the connection?


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I will give up my Kindle when they pry it out of my cold dead fingers. I don't find it slow...but also, lighter, longer battery life, better in sunshine. I have hundreds of books on mine, no need to shop on it. I buy on my computer or iPad and send to the device. And the latest Oasis is waterproof, though I don't read in the tub.
> 
> I don't browse Amazon much for books...I find most of my books here on KBoards, either finding authors interesting through their posts or by recommendations in the Book Corner. I go straight to the book and buy it. *shrug* Different strokes--which is why they have apps as well as Kindles.
> 
> Betsy


Yep, I'll give up my kindles when I am 6 feet under. Its either a kindle, or I can't read books. I been there, right before I got my first kindle, it was not a happy place. I have tablets, phone, but I cannot read books on them. Just can't. My eyes hurt like the devil after a short time. I know we are not alone in this or there wouldn't be new kindles.

Its actually faster for me to buy a book on my kindle than it is on my phone app. K1 was slow, but that was in 2008. the new kindles aren't slow at all.

Kindle is 10 years old now, its demise has been predicted for just about that long.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

They say reading tablets and phones before bed is bad for your sleep, too, and who wants that? I can't stand reading on a glowy screen. Hurts my eyes. I didn't read ebooks until a friend of mine gave me her old Paperwhite and I looooove that thing.

On the note of BookBub emails, you know what drives me nuts? I subscribe to four categories: Young Adult, Supernatural Suspense, Fantasy, and Paranormal Romance. YA often gets two books and none of those other categories do. Whyyyyyyy.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Atunah said:


> Yep, I'll give up my kindles when I am 6 feet under. Its either a kindle, or I can't read books.
> 
> Kindle is 10 years old now, its demise has been predicted for just about that long.





Betsy the Quilter said:


> I will give up my Kindle when they pry it out of my cold dead fingers.


^^^ I'm with them. Kindle owner since 2008, e-ink only, no Fires, tablets, or apps for reading. It is my most important and prized material possession. Will Kindles eventually go the way of stone tablets and papyrus? Sure, but not anytime soon.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

I still have and regularly use a Kindle Keyboard, as well as several of the more modern tablet Kindles.    They're the best thing that happened to me as a reader.  And, probably, as a writer, even if it gets kinda discouraging sometimes.

(I should've added that I have no problem side-loading and don't tend to buy from my devices.)


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

TimothyEllis said:


> I'm waiting to see if Bookbub move to offer a non-Amazon bub, for those wide authors scared of getting dinged like this.
> 
> Maybe we should suggest it.
> 
> If the major promo sites started excluding Amazon from their promos, or giving the Author the ability to exclude them, it might make Amazon sit up and ask why.


Technically, you can already do that. You just unclick Amazon when you submit, just like you can unclick US when you just want to be considered for International. But, unlike International, you pay the same price with or without Amazon. Which makes a positive ROI much more difficult. They may in the future offer some kind of discount for non-Amazon submissions. They didn't always offer two different regions for prices.


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## Guest (Oct 27, 2017)

Monique said:


> The AMS only theory makes no sense at all.


Amazon ads bring in a billion a year and growing. It would be interesting to know what portion of that billion comes from indie authors.

https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-now-1-billion-ad-business/


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Tilly said:


> Amazon ads bring in a billion a year and growing. It would be interesting to know what portion of that billion comes from indie authors.
> 
> https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-now-1-billion-ad-business/


While we'll never know the numbers, it's probably safe to assume the percentage increase is inline. So a 58% increase in author AMS activity. If the baseline to get results out of AMS used to be around 25c, if we slap a nice little 58% increase on that, it's probably now more like 40c.

Which is yet another little metric to add to my saturation theory.

Maybe I'm just in a mood today, but zon is starting to scare me.  I mean, this level of market dominance (forget books, I mean across the board) is nuts.

It's depressing to find myself rooting for walmart to step in and start throwing some haymakers in the e-commerce space.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Yep, also rooting for Walmart. And for Bookbub to open a store.


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## Athena Grayson (Apr 4, 2011)

ireaderreview said:


> This - As an example, the Amazon search has recently started showing me the Audible version of a book as the default format when I search using the main search bar
> 
> It's made it almost impossible to find good paper books because half the spots in the Non fiction paper book bestseller lists are now taken up by audiobooks. I've NEVER bought an audiobook from Amazon. So not sure why it insists on showing me audiobooks in bestseller lists. And also kindle versions in the Book lists
> 
> ...


There's the plot for your next thriller series, but it runs along the edge of Occam's Razor. It's waaay too complicated and relies on the idea that pricing is the most critical element in bookselling. It's not. I will pay 8.99 for the next book out from the author I care about, but offer me twenty books from authors I don't know, and I'd be hard-pressed to spend 99 cents. Amazon knows this because it has all my buying history for that store. Now I might spend that buck, but it'd be an impulse buy and I would be equally hard-pressed to open those twenty books and start reading them in the next year or so. Amazon knows this, too, I am certain. Whether they use the data to track page reads or not. In fact, cheap books is hardly a new idea. A hundred years ago, people made bank on dime novels and after that, pulp fiction put a lot of food on a lot of plates. 99-cent books are nothing new, and Harlequin/Gold Eagle/Mills & Boon made a century's worth of an empire on the backs of 1.99, 2.99, and 3.99 books, most sold extra-cheap via their subscription services. NONE of this is new territory.

Amazon, put bluntly, can do whatever it wants. It is the 800-lb gorilla and its momentum is such that you really can't rely on "customers will do X" because it's passed the event horizon for customer influence. Look at Walmart, if you are in the US. 99% of Walmarts are poorly-stocked, their prices are nowhere near the "guaranteed lowest," and in half an acre of checkout lines, you still only have two registers open. Name-brand items purchased there are of a demonstrably different quality as those purchased elsewhere in many cases (this is documented), the displays look like they've been through a tornado, and there's never anyone around to help you in the departments. All these things add up to a poor customer service experience, but they've been going on for *years* and people are still going to Walmarts, a lot of them because there's no other choice anymore. People will put up with all sorts of crap in exchange for thinking they're getting a deal, and Amazon also knows this. KU is full of fake books and scamphlets, but people put up with it because it feels like you're getting free books, even if there's a "tsunami of crap" to sort through to find them.

People still fly United, because they want the cheap airline tickets enough to play the odds that they won't get randomly beaten up and thrown off the plane. Authors still flock to KU because the chance of you getting beat up is worth the algo-boost and secondary income for pagereads.

If Amazon wanted Bookbub, they'd buy Bookbub like they bought Goodreads. Amazon cares a lot less about selling books to customers and a lot more about gathering data on customers (and selling that data back to vendors trapped in their ecosystem). Books are widgets, sku numbers, and items. Data is evergreen and adds to itself as time goes by. Amazon does not care about telling readers what to read, it cares about showing customers things they've shown interest in.

Amazon also knows that books make bank when sold between 2.99 and 14.99. That's why it set its largest royalty rate in that range. A 20-book 99-cent box set isn't selling a book for 99 cents, it's selling twenty titles for a nickel apiece. Box sets have been in the Zon's crosshairs for some time now, thanks to overuse and...shenanigans which are outside the scope of this thread. My guess is that there's movement to discourage or eliminate the bundling of books into box sets. Theoretically, why would you need to borrow a box set if you are a KU reader and can get all the books separately for the same "price" of your monthly subscription fee?

You're also leaving out a critically-significant hole in the information: Amazon has stated they're developing their own version of the NYT list. There is little doubt in my mind that it won't be hand-curated if there's a way to do it with algos. If I were Zon, looking to generate a bestseller list that wasn't just a popularity contest or a pay-to-play job, I'd be looking to develop algos that could disregard or minimize advertisement boosts, or separate out organic sales from ad-prompted ones.

There's a lot more going on here than any of us know.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Athena Grayson said:


> There's a lot more going on here than any of us know.


All good points.

here's the thing that just doesn't sit right with me. Zon is a money maker, it doesn't need to push its own agenda over the customer experience. Yet, it's clear they do. They most definitely give a massive visibility advantage to KU books and a supernova advantage to Amazon Imprints via Prime (and associated rank bump for what is essentially a free book). These books are almost never the best books in the store, not by a long shot.

So if zon is all about the customer experience, why are they pushing lower quality over higher quality books into spots of visibility?

The only answer that makes sense to me is they are looking to corner the market. Any book that isn't "100% zon" gets second-class treatment, regardless of how interested readers might be in it. I genuinely believe that if zon could, they'd kick everyone off the store who is wide. But the press, and likely antitrust, issues that would come from that would be too much so they don't.

But the notion that they wouldn't extend their in-house logic to all kinds of other areas, include bookbub books that are wide, isn't that much of a stretch.

Anyway, I agree that there is a LOT going on that we aren't privy to.

But the customer experience in terms of finding books has turn to crap, that much is obvious.


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## Guest (Oct 28, 2017)

Your arguments are irrelevant.

"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos becomes the world's richest person (again) as stock surge adds $10bn to his fortune
Amazon's share price surged after earnings figures from Whole Foods
The company's sales are due to rise even more as the holiday season approaches"


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Aside from it not making sense in ten other different ways, if Amazon really wanted to take down BookBub, then why are its imprints buying ads there all the time?

Really, this makes no sense at all if you spend half a second thinking about it.

Amazon doesn't want everyone to just use AMS. That makes no sense! AMS only exists *on Amazon* it doesn't bring people to the store. BookBub (and ENT and the rest) all do.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

dgaughran said:


> Amazon doesn't want everyone to just use AMS. That makes no sense! AMS only exists *on Amazon* it doesn't bring people to the store. BookBub (and ENT and the rest) all do.


It does if Amazon have already decided all who are coming have come, and have figured the remaining 20% of the market is irrelevant.

In which case, they dont need BB or any of the others, and sabotaging them for authors isn't actually going to hurt Amazon at all.

And of course, this could simply be the actions of one part of Amazon not talking to the other parts.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Why would they "sabotage" authors who didn't even use BB? Most of those affected didn't use BB. Some used no ad sites at all.

This theory doesn't survive any basic scrutiny. It's preposterous, quite frankly.


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

dgaughran said:


> Why would they "sabotage" authors who didn't even use BB? Most of those affected didn't use BB. Some used no ad sites at all.
> 
> This theory doesn't survive any basic scrutiny. It's preposterous, quite frankly.


I admit, my first, knee jerk reaction was that Amazon was going after Bookbub, but I think you're right. It doesn't make sense.

So how is this for a next theory? Amazon has taken note of the scams but doesn't want to spend the time, money and effort to really do much about them. So they've got a new algorithm that simply rank strips any time it sees a big jump in sales on an older title (say, outside the first 30 or 60 days). Then they take a second, cursory look, perhaps involving a real person this time. How does this stack up against the evidence you've collected? David? Phoenix?


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I see two plausible theories, not necessarily exclusive:

1. Amazon has a fraud detection system - not unlike what you have suggested - that is generating false positives.

2. These books were deliberately targeted, possibly by scammers looking to muddy the waters or test the fences.

But whatever the cause - and I think we are a little too focused on that - the effects have been terrible for the writers affected. Some of these authors were rank-stripped four or five weeks ago and are yet to get their ranks back. And of course in many cases this rank-stripping happened during a promo, where advertising was purchased - in some cases several hundred dollars worth of promo.

So these authors are not only innocent of any wrongdoing, they are seriously out of pocket. And Amazon isn't just failing to apologize - it's refusing to engage on the matter at all, with me, with them, with anyone.

I'm glad RWA is collecting information now, I think the campaign needs to be taken to the next level. The current situation is just abominable. Even for the handful of authors who got their rank back, Amazon is still blaming them for what happened, and threatening account-level action (i.e. possible termination) if it happens again.

Which is something they can't control, obviously.

People's livelihoods are at stake. I think we all need to take this situation very seriously and think about how we can get Amazon to recognize our concerns and change course. It's fun to talk down all the angles and speculate about this or that, but this is a real, live situation that is unfolding that we should be paying a lot of attention to.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

dgaughran said:


> People's livelihoods are at stake. I think we all need to take this situation very seriously and think about how we can get Amazon to recognize our concerns and change course. It's fun to talk down all the angles and speculate about this or that, but this is a real, live situation that is unfolding that we should be paying a lot of attention to.


One way - and it's not a perfect way - to mitigate the situation would be for authors who have upcoming promos to contact Amazon in advance expressing their concerns. So if they get targeted by spammers or caught by Amazon's fraud detection systems, and are subsequently rank-stripped, at least they'll have email proof that they warned Amazon this could happen.

Obviously, the wording of the email to Amazon would be all important.


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

dgaughran said:


> I see two plausible theories, not necessarily exclusive:
> 
> 1. Amazon has a fraud detection system - not unlike what you have suggested - that is generating false positives.
> 
> ...


I'm late to this due to a long vacation, so I haven't read it all.

The only thing I want to say is that Amazon imprints use bookbub from time to time, at least those 270 ebooks published via the kindle scout campaigns use them for definite.

So my guestimate is that this is a glitch or an anomoly in their fraud detection and not deliberate, or Amazon would be shooting themselves in the foot?

If you are building data, then I would suggest you contact kindle scout and notify them of the situation regarding the book ranks in question. While they may not reply, a few backsides might twitch at their end and no doubt a flurry of phone calls after they look at their own data on these promotions. After all kindle scout or the imprint who do the publishing are paying for these promotions to boost rank the same as us, as are trad publishers.

Another thing would be to contact bookbub and to notify them of your findings as this would seriously effect their continued profitability if this became the norm as indie author pull out of using their services. I would think they would have better access to Amazon data to see if this is in fact a major problem set to become the norm. (that is not meant to minimise the problem for those affected)

I think you would get better results from these actions as both parties mentioned above would have a far better chance of getting to the crux of the problem if there is one that is widespread as they will have the ear of the powers that be, rather than as someone who I would think Amazon consider to be a pain in the butt for rightly pointing out very publicly their shortcomings.

Like I said, I havent read the posts, so forgive me if I am not fully up tp date on the situation.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

TimothyEllis said:


> It does if Amazon have already decided all who are coming have come, and have figured the remaining 20% of the market is irrelevant.


Said no business, ever. Customers die off. They stop coming for a myriad of reasons. New customers are the future. There must always be new customers. Jeff Bezos has always played the long game.

Betsy


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

@Decon

Just to clarify: I'm not hypothesizing that Amazon is deliberately targeting other authors, but that third parties are, for reasons speculated at here (in short, creating cover or testing the fences): 

Personally, I can't see any plausible alternatives to that theory, or the idea that the fraud detection system is malfunctioning. An argument can be made for either. And only Amazon will know - if it ever cares to find out.


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

Colin said:


> One way - and it's not a perfect way - to mitigate the situation would be for authors who have upcoming promos to contact Amazon in advance expressing their concerns. So if they get targeted by spammers or caught by Amazon's fraud detection systems, and are subsequently rank-stripped, at least they'll have email proof that they warned Amazon this could happen.
> 
> Obviously, the wording of the email to Amazon would be all important.


I've seen this mentioned up thread and have serious concerns about it. On one hand, is it just giving them a heads-up so that Amazon can target you? Or is it better just to do nothing and hope you don't attract Amazon scam bots with your next promo run?

As for proof, I don't see Amazon listening to anything we say if they decide to rank strip, including any previous email communications; they haven't given any specific proof or allowed any of the currently affected authors to defend themselves in any way. They have universally refused to state what specific promo services are engaging in alleged "rank manipulation". If they decide to rank strip a book, I have zero faith that they would take our preemptive warnings into consideration and be like, "Oh, this author told us she was doing a BookBub, better not rank strip this one". Some of the authors who have been affected by this are under contract with Amazon imprints; if they're not listening to, providing any specific explanation to, or allowing their own contracted authors to defend themselves, I doubt they'll give any of the rest of us any consideration.



dgaughran said:


> I'm glad RWA is collecting information now, I think the campaign needs to be taken to the next level. The current situation is just abominable. Even for the handful of authors who got their rank back, Amazon is still blaming them for what happened, and threatening account-level action (i.e. possible termination) if it happens again.
> 
> Which is something they can't control, obviously.
> 
> People's livelihoods are at stake. I think we all need to take this situation very seriously and think about how we can get Amazon to recognize our concerns and change course. It's fun to talk down all the angles and speculate about this or that, but this is a real, live situation that is unfolding that we should be paying a lot of attention to.


100% Yes ^^
Glad RWA is getting involved. Personally, I'm starting to move books out of KU. With page read payouts steadily decreasing, and the current mess going on, it is just not safe to rely so heavily on one distributor.

And I'm putting on my tin-foil hat when I say this, but I'm gonna say it anyway: I've noticed a severe crash in page reads since this all came out, starting with when I first mentioned it in various online forums and after I reported a book & posted about how it was miscatergorized and had the "N" word in the description. I reported it twice and nothing was done; after I posted about it on FB, suddenly the book was removed from the erroneous category, but the offensive word is still in the description.

Do I think Amazon watches this forum? Yes, absolutely. A few months ago I posted here on KBoards about an issue (which I had not emailed KDP about yet), and within a few hours of my post, _an Amazon rep emailed me at my author address about the issue_. The rep stated they understood I was having an issue and wanted to know if I needed their help to resolve it. Creepy, yes, but I replied politely & then never heard anything back.

Which is exactly why it is so frustrating that authors are getting generic emails and being brushed off; Amazon knows what is going on, they monitor these boards daily. If they have manpower to monitor these boards & take the time to personally follow up with authors who didn't even contact them, why can't they allocate any kind of personal intervention in the rank-stripping situation?

Frustrating all around. I know Amazon won't care if I leave KU and my earnings are just a pittance to them, but to me, it's my livelihood. It's a shame it has come to this point.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

ebbrown said:


> I've seen this mentioned up thread and have serious concerns about it. On one hand, is it just giving them a heads-up so that Amazon can target you? Or is it better just to do nothing and hope you don't attract Amazon scam bots with your next promo run?


I agree. It's potentially a double edged sword. I'm Just trying to explore ways of _not_ getting caught up in the promo/scamming sh*tstorm.

:--)


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I don't consent


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

dgaughran said:


> This theory doesn't survive any basic scrutiny. It's preposterous, quite frankly.


Most of this thread is preposterous, particularly the conjecture.

Your theories are the most reasonable of the lot.


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## Guest (Oct 28, 2017)

This:



> And I'm putting on my tin-foil hat when I say this, but I'm gonna say it anyway: I've noticed a severe crash in page reads since this all came out, starting with when I first mentioned it in various online forums and after I reported a book & posted about how it was miscatergorized and had the "N" word in the description. I reported it twice and nothing was done; after I posted about it on FB, suddenly the book was removed from the erroneous category, but the offensive word is still in the description.
> 
> Do I think Amazon watches this forum? Yes, absolutely. A few months ago I posted here on KBoards about an issue (which I had not emailed KDP about yet), and within a few hours of my post, an Amazon rep emailed me at my author address about the issue. The rep stated they understood I was having an issue and wanted to know if I needed their help to resolve it. Creepy, yes, but I replied politely & then never heard anything back.


At some point it all moves from tin foil hat and conspiracy theory to

reality

****
Personally I would have thought Pages Read issue would have convinced most authors

Now this 'Book hit Top 100 and Rank was stripped' issue is another impossible to avoid sign that the store is adamant on keeping tight control on things, by any means possible

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

I have a simple question for all authors here

If it so happens that in the next 3 to 9 months this starts happening to 50% to 90% of books that hit the Top 100 in paid books and 40% to 70% of books that hit the Top 100 in a particular genre

At that point what would you say

A) Oh, it's algorithm glitches. False positives

Or

B) It's actually part of a strategy to take complete control of Visibility and hence of advertising dollars and of what books get seen by readers

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

A lot of people on the book promotion side didn't realize it either. When free books were made 'persona non grata' a lot of promotion site people thought, rather naively, that their readers would switch to reading $0.99 books instead. Many of those sites lost 50% to 75% of their readers. But they had to hang on to affiliate income. Then in 2016, when they were weak, they got kicked out of the affiliate program ENTIRELY. So for the promise of affiliate money they sacrificed readers, and then when they had fewer readers, they got kicked out entirely

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

So, at what point do you say - If X% of books hitting the Top 100 start getting their ranks yanked, then we'll stop believing the 'glitch in the algorithm' theory and start believing something else?

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

Personally I see this as a test - They are testing whether authors are actually going to do something or if authors are going to keep coming up with rationalizations
If they see authors are happy to make rationalizations then they'll start yanking rank for everyone who hits Top 100. It's really that simple

So you should establish at what X you will actually take some action
At 25% books losing rank
At 50%
At 100%?

Never?

You can't say - People's livelihood depends on it.
And at the same time say - I'm sure it's just a glitch in the algorithm

I remember one lady from the affiliate forum who was a single mother and affiliate income was her main source of income and it got yanked when the store said - no more free book mentions. At that time Amazon gave 8 days notice. So there were a few hundred people whose livelihood depended on promoting free kindle books and helping the store gain ebook market share, and they got 8 days to find another livelihood

So I don't really see the store worrying about what happens to its partners' livelihoods. It didn't care when yanking the rug from under the affiliates who helped it get to 90% market share ( at that time) in ebooks. I don't see it now

At what point does it stop being 'a glitch in the algorithms'?

If 25% of books get yanked?
If 50%?
100%

never?

I'd love to know what your answer is - what is the X at which you stop believing in glitches and false positives?


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

I think amazon will continue to do what they've been doing all along - crush or buy out anyone who gets in their way. 

To the posters wringing their hands and saying that amazon doesn't care about us - they've never cared. 

They didn't care when they destroyed short and novella incomes with KU2.

They didn't care when they killed off the erotica boom and dungeoned books.

They didn't care when they stole anywhere from 5-70% of page reads last year.

They didn't care about page flip not being able to read pages and authors losing income.

They didn't care about stuffers and scammers taking a huge payout from the pot and all stars bonus.

They don't care about destroying careers and peoples incomes now. 

They are doing what they always do - breaking eggs to make their omelette and there are always more eggs.


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## C. Rysalis (Feb 26, 2015)

I'm starting to believe no actual bot accounts are involved, and that Amazon's new fraud detection system hiccups whenever a book experiences a sudden surge in sales.

Because if there were actual bot accounts, and Amazon knew who they are, they could be shut down easily.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

dgaughran said:


> Really, this makes no sense at all if you spend half a second thinking about it.


Five years from now... where can i find a book? Only place is amazon. Guess I'll spend 4 hours searching through books and the plethora of ads amazon shows me during that time that entince me to buy purple dildos and usb fans for my computer.

Zon doesn't need to drive traffic to its site through bb, it already has the traffic. BB is basically a curation mechanism, not a mechanism by which people realize "OMG, who are these amazon guys who sell books. I've never heard of them before."


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Do you really believe Amazon doesn't want *any* referral traffic. That they feel they have "enough" customers and don't want any more? They seriously don't want other people to pay to drive traffic to their site to buy purple dildos? 

And, if so, they've decided to derank a tiny fraction of one websites referrals and are covering their tracks by doing to random others in the first step to walling off their site from any pesky new business?


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Monique said:


> Do you really believe Amazon doesn't want *any* referral traffic. That they feel they have "enough" customers and don't want any more? They seriously don't want other people to pay to drive traffic to their site to buy purple dildos?
> 
> And, if so, they've decided to derank a tiny fraction of one websites referrals and are covering their tracks by doing to random others in the first step to walling off their site from any pesky new business?


Do I really think they are implementing a full-scale kill everyone strategy as you describe above? No, I don't. I should have been clearer on that I guess.

Do I think they might tweak the algo to treat non-KU books differently than KU books? Hell yes.

Do I think zon in anyway thinks Bookbub is essential to its success? Not in the least. Not even at the quantum-level of scale. If bookbub disappeared tomorrow zon sales wouldn't suffer in the least. In fact, it would be their competitors who suffered far more from the lack of visibility.

You guys keep thinking zon has this super-structured evil plan to take over the world. I don't think they think that way. I think they just make sure the game is always weighted in their favor. Bub wants to start pushing wide books more, okay, F you bub, we'll tweak our algos to hammer some of your books if they behave in the least bit odd.

But again, I'm not saying I *know* this to be the case. Merely that the possibility is by no means ludicrous the way some seem to think.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Seneca42 said:


> Do I think they might tweak the algo to treat non-KU books differently than KU books? Hell yes.


Oh, they do, but that's not what's happening here since both KU and non-KU books have been stripped.



> Do I think zon in anyway thinks Bookbub is essential to its success? Not in the least. Not even at the quantum-level of scale. If bookbub disappeared tomorrow zon sales wouldn't suffer in the least. In fact, it would be their competitors who suffered far more from the lack of visibility.


Essential? No. No one said or implied that. Just that there seems to be a belief by some that Amazon is *actively* targeting them.



> You guys keep thinking zon has this super-structured evil plan to take over the world. I don't think they think that way. I think they just make sure the game is always weighted in their favor. Bub wants to start pushing wide books more, okay, F you bub, we'll tweak our algos to hammer some of your books if they behave in the least bit odd.


LOL. Who are you guys? Because it's not me. I never said anything like that. I do think Amazon wants to take over the world but it's not an evil plan. It's just a dominate all sectors way of doing business. They have fingers in just about every pie on the planet.

As to Bub going with more non-KU books, do you really think Amazon sees this tiny shift and actively goes after a small (to them) site over it? Even if we pretend that's so, why are they also going after other sites that don't discriminate at all or individual authors who are in KU and only sent to their own list? Surely, you can see this is where this theory falls apart.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Monique said:


> Oh, they do, but that's not what's happening here since both KU and non-KU books have been stripped.
> 
> As to Bub going with more non-KU books, do you really think Amazon sees this tiny shift and actively goes after a small (to them) site over it? Even if we pretend that's so, why are they also going after other sites that don't discriminate at all or individual authors who are in KU and only sent to their own list? Surely, you can see this is where this theory falls apart.


I haven't heard of those examples. The recent ones were all bub books. If there are more i'd re-evaluate and perhaps have a different view on the situation. I think david has mentioned it's more widespread than bub, but I don't know what books have been hit other than the bubs.

The KU's who have been hit, almost all that I know of were clearly botting.


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## C.F. (Jan 6, 2011)

Monique said:


> They seriously don't want other people to pay to drive traffic to their site to buy purple dildos?


Monique, the Zon has asked me to tell you to stop referring people to their site to buy purple dildos. They would like to keep their stock of purple dildos a secret that only their existing purple dildo customer base knows about. They do not need or want any more purple dildo customers. Thank you for your understanding.

And thank you for this opportunity to gratuitously use the phrase "purple dildo."  (Substitute anything for "purple dildo" and this still sounds ridiculous, but not as fun.)


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)




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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

hehe amazon has a category for "best selling dildos" hehe. 

And now I can help but remember the scene from fight club.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

ebbrown said:


> Which is exactly why it is so frustrating that authors are getting generic emails and being brushed off; Amazon knows what is going on, they monitor these boards daily. If they have manpower to monitor these boards & take the time to personally follow up with authors who didn't even contact them, why can't they allocate any kind of personal intervention in the rank-stripping situation?


I suspect it's the same kind of thing I noticed when I was the victim of a copyright scam a few years ago: Amazon doesn't want to get into adjudicating individual cases or disputes. They see that as an endless employee time suck, and perhaps as legally riskier than an absolutist, no-exceptions response. They'd much rather to push the situations off onto the smaller players and say, "You solve it" (in this case, "You figure out how to keep your book bot-free"). I'd hazard a guess that they'd accept the inevitability of damaging some innocent people rather than put themselves in a position of having to figure out who is lying and who is telling the truth when they have a hundred authors saying, "I didn't pay anyone to bot my book!" They may make things right for some people, on a case by case basis, and they'll probably try to improve the algorithm, if this is a false-positives problem. But setting up some consistent mechanism authors can turn to? I really don't think they want to get into that. It's an eggshells and omelettes thing.

My $.02, which is probably worth more like what a KU page is worth, but anyway.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> I'd hazard a guess that they'd accept the inevitability of damaging some innocent people rather than put themselves in a position of having to figure out who is lying and who is telling the truth when they have a hundred authors saying, "I didn't pay anyone to bot my book!" They may make things right for some people, on a case by case basis, and they'll probably try to improve the algorithm, if this is a false-positives problem. But setting up some consistent mechanism authors can turn to? I really don't think they want to get into that. It's an eggshells and omelettes thing.


This is the heart of the dilemma. Everyone who who gets sucked into the maw of a penalty-inducing algo is going to swear up and down that they're innocent. Some will be telling the truth and some will be lying, and no one can tell the difference. There's just no way to prove it one way or the other. Amazon wisely doesn't try to work it out. It's like insurance companies who don't waste time and money trying to work out who drove into whom. They just pay the claims and move on. So some innocent people lose their no-claims bonus? Tough. It's not fair, but then life's not fair.

This particular issue isn't Bookbub-specific, and it isn't KU-specific, either, but I agree with those who say that the KU honeypot has brought us to this point. It's just too scammer friendly. I'm glad that Amazon is at least trying to address the problems, even if a few innocent authors are getting caught up in the machinery.

My own view is that KU is just too easy to get into at the moment. Why not restrict admission to (say) no more than 3000 KENP put into KU per author per month? Very few legit authors would be affected, but it would at least stamp out the perpetual republishers, who unpublish and republish their bundles repeatedly.


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

Monique said:


> Do you really believe Amazon doesn't want *any* referral traffic. That they feel they have "enough" customers and don't want any more? They seriously don't want other people to pay to drive traffic to their site to buy purple dildos?
> 
> And, if so, they've decided to derank a tiny fraction of one websites referrals and are covering their tracks by doing to random others in the first step to walling off their site from any pesky new business?


I know, right? It's utterly ridiculous that anyone believes this (that Amazon doesn't want referral traffic). I mean, c'mon. Think like a business person, not like an emo writer with a hip pocket full of conspiracies, folks.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

SevenDays said:


> I know, right? It's utterly ridiculous that anyone believes this (that Amazon doesn't want referral traffic). I mean, c'mon. Think like a business person, not like an emo writer with a hip pocket full of conspiracies, folks.


And yet they close people's affiliate accounts over sending them paid traffic. Why would they be upset over someone buying ads aimed at their book on Amazon? I don't understand it, but they do sometimes act like they don't want the traffic. They must have a reason, but it escapes me. The only thing that makes any sense to me is the "we'd like you to be spending your money only in AMS" idea. But I don't completely believe that.


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## Guest (Oct 29, 2017)

SevenDays said:


> Think like a business person, not like an emo writer with a hip pocket full of conspiracies, folks.


No, thank you. Readers want writers to be emo writers and not business people. It's Amazon's job to think like business people and be transparent enough so that a hundred thousand emo writers who supply the content of KDP don't get rattled. If it's true that they monitor this forum, their neglect is doubly atrocious.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Nathan Elliott said:


> And yet they close people's affiliate accounts over sending them paid traffic.


Amazon close people's affiliate accounts when they break the TOS by putting links in mailouts and other places they're not supposed to.


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## Harmonious (Mar 4, 2011)

My BookBub promo was partly screwed today by Amazon not reducing two international price points despite them being shown as reduced on my KDP Dashboard. I reduced my (non KU) price in good time, several days before the promo, to be safe.  I checked .co.uk, .au sales pages and I checked iBooks etc, but I only double checked the other territories on my KDP Dashboard, which showed the correct price reductions. I did not go to Amazon India sales page, I did not go to Amazon Canada sales page, which I should have done. Amazon have got back to my request (marked urgent, ha!) saying they'll get in touch with their technical bods and sort it by next Wednesday, BookBub have pulled the ad in those territories of course, and my reputation has a blot there. Totally my bad for not checking more thoroughly (and incidentally all other international territories had reduced), but with all that's going on thought it worth mentioning...


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## Guest (Oct 29, 2017)

Harmonious, sorry to hear Amazon screwed up your price points in some international countries

Kindle readers for the most part are patient, and also used to Amazon screwing up pricing. So hopefully it won't affect your reputation there. Canada we have a lot of readers and I can assure you Canadians in general are very understanding (I'm Canadian too)

Amazon screws up pricing for promotions quite regularly, and most steady customers/readers would be aware of it and accommodating of it
Also many promotions are time limited and readers often run into them when they are over. That's another thing that makes them more accomodating
****

thanks for the data point.
this is another thing to look for - and thankfully this is not something that can be hidden behind 'combating botters' type possibilities

things to look for

- is your rank yanked?
- is the tail suddenly much less than it used to be?
- did rank start moving only 8 to 16 hours after email went out, instead of immediately as it should?
- were there pricing mistakes just as rank was spiking?
- were there pricing mistakes in some countries?
- was your book put in a smaller list like Werewolf Romance (just a hypothetical example) instead of a big list like Shifter Romance
- was book not showing in poplist?
- were searches not showing your book during promotion?
- did rank freeze strangely with same rank for 8 to 12 hours, even though sales were consistent and rank should have continued to grow?
- did rank experience a dip in first few hours after promotion, almost contrary to the fact that sales just increased
- did sales not show up until a few days later, and consistent with that there was no jump initially though there should have been

etc
etc
etc

It's not going to be 100% absolute - things will be gradual

This:


> They must have a reason, but it escapes me. The only thing that makes any sense to me is the "we'd like you to be spending your money only in AMS" idea. But I don't completely believe that.


Yes, the thing that makes sense is - we'd like you to be spending your money only in AMS

And yes, we need lots of data points to establish a pattern and rule out other things like

- fighting bots
- false positives by an algorithm
- glitches
- one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing

***

It's worth keeping an eye out for what things are being done (rank yanking, messing up price, messing up price in different territories, tail disappearing) and seeing if the frequency of it increases

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

When store started doing 4 hour delays for some promotion sites, everyone on the promotion site side thought 'this is a subtle thing' and 'Store being Store'. NO ONE thought - they might increase delays

Now it's 8 to 16 hour delays for some promotion sites, and for some books 1 day delays
And new things like tail disappearing and rank being yanked and book not showing up in some bestseller lists (it'll show up in an obscure list, instead of being shown in main Paranormal Romance list). Things like this are being done consistently for over a year now. Next time you promote keep an eye out yourself

If you're in touch with people on the book promotion site talk to them. Everyone is wary of saying anything because then manipulations for them will be increased a lot more. However, we are approaching a breaking point because now extreme things like disappearing of ranks is being done

Again, look to see if the frequency increases

Store is using algorithms to try and exert control
Authors are using strategy i.e. box sets, 1st book free, things like coop promotions and instafreebie
Promotion Sites that are surviving through this are developing new strategies. For example, when rank delays became 8 to 16 hours we figured out only way to survive was to grow faster -
we really didn't know if it would work. However, it did and we tripled Daily Add Rate and hit 1 Million+ New Net Readers a Year. So that fast growth balances out rank delays. however, we're sure this Christmas store will introduce new tweaks - every year Easter and Christmas is when there are tweaks. Keep an eye out and you'll see what I mean. This year, they are a bit worried because they also did some tweaks on Hurricane Irma week

So store is doing things that aren't really giving them any new readers or any new strategy, whereas authors are developing new strategies and adding more readers, and promotion sites are also developing new strategies and adding more readers

So store has painted itself into a corner and it'll have to do more and more extreme things to balance out the stronger strategies and higher readerships developed by other people in the ecosystem

You tilt things against authors and promotion sites and it actually makes them STRONGER if they can survive
So then store has to tilt things a bit more. And they became even stronger
So now store is at same strength level as mid 2012 (albeit with the monster of KU). However, authors and promotion sites are significantly stronger
So now the tilting is so obvious that even people who want to stay blissfully ignorant and believe everything is 100% fair in the store are getting shocked into realizing something is off

Observe HOW OFTEN the manipulations are done. That's the only way to rule out all the other suggested possibilities like 'it's just a glitch' and 'it's just being done for combating botters'

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

Imagine everyone is playing a golf game and authors and promotion sites are being started off with a 10 stroke penalty. Over time some authors and some promotion sites become really good and are able to overcome that 10 stroke penalty

the people organizing the game are in a quandry - how do we rig the game? these people have become so good that they are even overcoming their 10 stroke penalty

Rank being yanked is an extreme reaction - it's equivalent to the golf game organizers saying - If you overcome your 10 stroke penalty and take the lead, we'll just disqualify you on a technicality

So, it's a sign of things breaking down. Even the 10 stroke penalty isn't enough now

However, what do the organizers do when more and more people start overcoming the 10 stroke penalty?


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Lydniz said:


> Amazon close people's affiliate accounts when they break the TOS by putting links in mailouts and other places they're not supposed to.


Sure, but they also allegedly close them for buying ads like AdWords that go to an Amazon product page. That is against TOS, but I do not understand why they choose to prohibit it. I do understand about the email prohibition, I think. I assume they don't want to be viewed as being responsible for spam. Maybe there is some similar reason why they don't want paid traffic to use the affiliate tag. Maybe in some sense motivating an affiliate to buy ads might make Amazon potentially liable for something. I dunno. It just seemed at first glance to be counter intuitive that they would object to people paying to send them traffic. With email there are laws that the mailer might be violating and Amazon probably wants to be clear of that. Maybe if an affiliate made a false or misleading ad, that might somehow open Amazon up to legal trouble because of the affiliate relationship? If that is possible, then it might not be that they object to the traffic, just that they don't want to get into trouble for the affiliates' behavior. But I am not clear on why an Adwords ad would be different in this regard from any other incoming link which could potentially break some law. Doesn't matter. It is Amazon's program, so they can do what they want.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

ireaderreview said:


> this is another thing to look for - and thankfully this is not something that can be hidden behind 'combating botters' type possibilities
> 
> things to look for
> 
> ...


Many of the above "things to look out for" occurred during promotions I had well beyond a year ago.


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## Guest (Oct 29, 2017)

Has it occurred to anyone that there might be a rogue element within Amazon that is working with the scammers? They have dozens of programmers in there, they could be doing anything....


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

TobiasRoote said:


> Has it occurred to anyone that there might be a rogue element within Amazon that is working with the scammers? They have dozens of programmers in there, they could be doing anything....


Yes. It's all the work of the Scamazon Geek Squad, working in cahoots with the BookBubian Nerd Brigade.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

TobiasRoote said:


> Has it occurred to anyone that there might be a rogue element within Amazon that is working with the scammers? They have dozens of programmers in there, they could be doing anything....


Hail Hydra!


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

Whether you think zon is intentionally sabotaging people, the algo chokes now and then or people are botting and getting caught... can we all agree at least that this is NOT what self-publishing should be about and that the zon store is a right awful mess?


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Anarchist said:


> Hail Hydra!


Hee!


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## Alpaca Lou (Mar 14, 2016)

TobiasRoote said:


> Has it occurred to anyone that there might be a rogue element within Amazon that is working with the scammers? They have dozens of programmers in there, they could be doing anything....


A conspiracy between rogue programmers and scammers is *extremely* unlikely.

The simple explanation is, in my opinion, what's going on here. They're trying out new anti-scammer algorithms, and innocent authors are getting caught along with real scammers.


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## Guest (Oct 30, 2017)

Alpaca Lou said:


> A conspiracy between rogue programmers and scammers is *extremely* unlikely.
> 
> The simple explanation is, in my opinion, what's going on here. They're trying out new anti-scammer algorithms, and innocent authors are getting caught along with real scammers.


Yeah! I really mustn't forget my smilie faces


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## Guest (Oct 31, 2017)

That's interesting -



> Many of the above "things to look out for" occurred during promotions I had well beyond a year ago.


Since how long have you been seeing these?

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

OK, so we have been seeing all this magical stuff happen only after in Jan 2017 we came out and revealed we actually have 4.1 million readers

Before that it was just slight rank delays (4 to 8 hours early 2016, then 8 hours to 16 hours in end 2016)

****


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## Harmonious (Mar 4, 2011)

ParkerAvrile said:


> Now I wish I had said something, but I thought it was something weird with my account, because I've had a price glitch on an international stores before in 2016 and, when I phoned them, the tech guy I talked to claimed he had never seen that issue before. So I thought it was rare or something about my account only.


Sorry it happened to you, too, ParkerAvrile, most likely a rare technical problem but as well to know about it. But BookBub have been brilliant, they realise the non change of price wasn't my fault and that what the KDP dashboard says should be what the sales page says, so they'll re-run those territories in future when the issue is resolved. I'm still waiting days later for that to happen. Note to self, don't put URGENT on requests...


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## VayneLine (Mar 3, 2017)

I read a few pages and am confused, is this just one or two guys complaining?  If so its unfortunate but no reason to act like there is some big conspiracy.  Skipping through the pages it doesnt look like this is a wide spread issue.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

VayneLine said:


> I read a few pages and am confused, is this just one or two guys complaining? If so its unfortunate but no reason to act like there is some big conspiracy. Skipping through the pages it doesnt look like this is a wide spread issue.


Probably should read the thread before making hugely incorrect generalizations. This is a big issue that has affected lots and lots of authors for months now.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

VayneLine said:


> I read a few pages and am confused, is this just one or two guys complaining? If so its unfortunate but no reason to act like there is some big conspiracy. Skipping through the pages it doesnt look like this is a wide spread issue.


Yeah, it's obviously just one or two guys complaining for 21 pages, like we do. Please try reading before posting. It's a wide spread issue.


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## DonovanJeremiah (Oct 14, 2017)

We're all sock puppets here.


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## RD (Dec 19, 2015)

I posted about this in another thread, but I'll go for it here too. 

I spent about $30 on ads for my new release 11 days ago and did 3-4 NL swaps spaced out. 

I'm in KU and the majority of my income from 2 books has always been page reads, to the point I can pay most of my bills with it some months. Now, this new release, it has netted over half the all-time page reads I've ever accumulated in only a few days time. 8 months and 2 books versus 1 book and a few days. HALF.  Sales are better than ever too, but the page reads are really shocking and suspicious. 

The good part is my subscriber sign up rate compared to my best book is exactly 14x more. So, people are really signing up for this thing by comparison. I'm hoping its simply a matter of popularity and not suspicious activity or a combination of the two. Hope its real and worth being excited over.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

That sounds a bit nerve-wracking!


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## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

RD said:


> I posted about this in another thread, but I'll go for it here too.
> 
> I spent about $30 on ads for my new release 11 days ago and did 3-4 NL swaps spaced out.
> 
> ...


It makes me so sad that we've become scared of success 

In regards to your specific situation, it could always just be one book taking off. It's the right time of year for it. It's hard to get more of a sense of how likely that is without more information, though (eg is this book 3 in a series? What genre? What are the total number of page reads we're talking about - before and after? What are your sales looking like of the new release? Are you seeing flow through with increased page reads of your other books? Etc)


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## K&#039;Sennia Visitor (Jan 14, 2014)

I just read through all 21 pages in 2 days. Reading Kboards can feel like an Olympic sport sometimes.  

*hugs to everyone who have lost ranks and had promos ruined* That's awful and terrible and not good at all. (shakes head) 

I think I'm in the camp that says these are growing pains for amazon's eventual takeover for all book visibility. But I don't know for sure, of course. David makes a lot of really great points, but I agree with Books Butterfly, too. 

  I also would like to thank Betsy the Quilter for telling me about the new waterproof Oasis! I still don't own a Kindle, but when I get my savings account up to $300, I'm buying that one.


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## RD (Dec 19, 2015)

MelanieCellier said:


> It makes me so sad that we've become scared of success
> 
> In regards to your specific situation, it could always just be one book taking off. It's the right time of year for it. It's hard to get more of a sense of how likely that is without more information, though (eg is this book 3 in a series? What genre? What are the total number of page reads we're talking about - before and after? What are your sales looking like of the new release? Are you seeing flow through with increased page reads of your other books? Etc)


Thanks. This book the first book in a series. I understand what you're saying. I've come to the conclusion in the last day that it's legit. The traffic on my website, emails, and signs up are unprecedented just like the sales/page reads. It just sort of freaked me out because its like I'm running a bookbub everyday but I'm not.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I've just blogged about this topic again. Author Kristi Belcamino was just rank stripped for a third time. You can read the whole sorry saga here: 

Note:


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

No way will I run anything free until this is resolved.


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## My_Txxxx_a$$_Left_Too (Feb 13, 2014)

Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.


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## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

dgaughran said:


> I've just blogged about this topic again. Author Kristi Belcamino was just rank stripped for a third time. You can read the whole sorry saga here:
> 
> Note:
> 
> ...





WasAnn said:


> I finally gave up on the nearly two years of tracking I've been doing on the scammers and the incidental impacts to indies. I wrote a long response on your blog, but the upshot is: We are treated like lesser beings.
> 
> That's the bottom line. Of all the tradpubs I've tracked, their problems are sorted within hours while an indie can wind up on the trouble list and experience repeated issues.
> 
> ...


I am so discouraged by all of this. The lack of transparency - or even the ability to have a coherent conversation with an actual human being - is beyond ridiculous. But I have no idea how anything will ever change.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

RD said:


> I've come to the conclusion in the last day that it's legit.


Agreed. You wrote in a popular genre, priced at 99 cents, have a strong cover and book title, and good reviews. All of that can explain what you're seeing on that title.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

MonkeyScribe said:


> No way will I run anything free until this is resolved.


I had a free BB on 28 Nov and it went just fine.

Caveats:

--The book had been permafree for almost 2 months by then so there was track record
--Being permafree, it was wide and not KU or exclusive
--I'd already run smaller promos during that time
--I'm middling-biggish for the last 5 years by indie standards so perhaps I'm whitelisted (?). ECR seems to know my name anyway, from communications I've made with them
--I stacked some promos in the days leading up to the BB in order to smooth out the spike
--I sent Amz Support an email just after midnight of the day of the BB mentioning it, in case there was short-term rank-stripping involved.

I didn't notice any rank-stripping at all, not even for a few hours. That doesn't prove anything conclusively, but it does mean it's possible to get a 25K download spike with no problems.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2018)

I had a free Bookbub in mid-October. Title is wide but NOT permafree. I made it free for the promo. I had over 20k downloads, the title had a huge spike in activity going from a 6-figure paid rank to a top 10 free rank. It was never rank stripped during the promo. Whatever is going on is not across the board, nor is it triggered by Bookbub in every case.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2018)

As a mere observer, I suggest the following:

1. Amazon provides public ranking stats to help customers make choices.

2. If a ranking temporarily spikes because of a temporary promotion, and the customer does not know it's a transient spike, the spike is deceptive for the customer.

3. Therefore AZ will eliminate the spike from the product page in order not to deceive customers about how the book is actually doing in comparison to other titles.

4. AZ has no interest in stopping people from promoting their books. They just don't want temporary promotions to temporarily deceive customers who are not aware that the high spiked ranking is only temporary.

5. They are blanking rankings that are transient spikes, not always successfully, in order not to deceive customers unaware of transient promotions, spikes, etc., and that is all that is going on here.

6. The ideal for AZ would be promotions that permanently increase ranking for sales or downloads. Then the ranking has value to the customer. A TRANSIENT RANKING BECAUSE OF A TRANSIENT PROMOTION HAS NO VALUE TO THE CUSTOMER AND CAN BE DECEPTIVE, and that is the story here.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Modi Gliani said:


> As a mere observer, I suggest the following:
> 
> 1. Amazon provides public ranking stats to help customers make choices.
> 
> ...


This is seductive deductive reasoning, but completely wrong on the evidence.

Amazon has never had a problem with spikes before. In fact, they've been so liberal about spikes that whole ecosystems have grown up around spikes and super-concentrated promos in order to rocket up temporarily. The scammy ecosystems existed alongside the non-scammy for years. YEARS.

It's only when the scams started hurting customers and the squawking got loud enough that Amazon started taking action. Now, we see collateral damage, but that's what it is--collateral, not intended, because Amazon isn't willing to spend the man-hours needed for an eyes-on solution. Instead, they're doing what makes sense for their bottom line: automate the solution and hand-handle the complaints from authors this generates. It's the same kind of solution that leads car companies to only issue a recall if a manufacturing mistake generates too many deaths and lawsuits. Nobody believes the car companies intend to kill people, but they do make callous decisions about how "small" a problem is worth spending millions on.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2018)

Modi Gliani said:


> 3. Therefore AZ will eliminate the spike from the product page in order not to deceive customers about how the book is actually doing in comparison to other titles.


Except this is demonstrably false. I, and others, have stated that Bookbub promo books are NOT being ranked stripped. In my case it was a huge spike as the book had a "bad" 6-figure paid ranking and shot to #6 in the free store.

Whatever is going on, it is more than a promo spike. I suspect there are other factors at play, but Amazon isn't saying what they are.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2018)

Tilly said:


> Except this is demonstrably false. I, and others, have stated that Bookbub promo books are NOT being ranked stripped. In my case it was a huge spike as the book had a "bad" 6-figure paid ranking and shot to #6 in the free store.
> 
> Whatever is going on, it is more than a promo spike. I suspect there are other factors at play, but Amazon isn't saying what they are.


You are assuming the AZ algos work perfectly. They don't. "Demonstrably false" is false itself.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Modi Gliani said:


> You are assuming the AZ algos work perfectly. They don't. "Demonstrably false" is false itself.


Nope. Only one false case makes a statement false. "Amazon does this" is made false by one case where Amazon doesn't do this. "The shirt is clean" is made false by one stain.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2018)

In addition, the AZ algos may calculate an average ranking over a long period, in which case some spikes may not change the average enough to warrant blanking the ranking on the product page. So new titles may be more vulnerable to stripping than older titles. In general, I suggest always assuming that "customer experience" is always the modus operandi of Amazon. Authors may want a temporary spike in order to get temporary sales, but AZ doesn't care about that.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2018)

David VanDyke said:


> Nope. Only one false case makes a statement false. "Amazon does this" is made false by one case where Amazon doesn't do this. "The shirt is clean" is made false by one stain.


Your "logic" ignores the essence of what I am saying.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Modi Gliani said:


> In addition, the AZ algos may calculate an average ranking over a long period, in which case some spikes may not change the average enough to warrant blanking the ranking on the product page. So new titles may be more vulnerable to stripping than older titles. In general, I suggest always assuming that "customer experience" is always the modus operandi of Amazon. Authors may want a temporary spike in order to get temporary sales, but AZ doesn't care about that.


The way the algos calculate ranking is well known. There's no need to speculate. You're speculating and building logic chains that go against the plain evidence. That's all well and good for thought experiments and late-night bull sessions at the conventions, but hopefully won't mislead some of the folks who come here looking for solid answers rather than speculations.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2018)

David VanDyke said:


> The way the algos calculate ranking is well known. There's no need to speculate. You're speculating and building logic chains that go against the plain evidence. That's all well and good for thought experiments and late-night bull sessions at the conventions, but hopefully won't mislead some of the folks who come here looking for solid answers rather than speculations.


The idea that "customer experience" is a prime operating concern in Amazon is not a speculation. And that is the essence of what I have said. As for "solid answers", so far I haven't seen any. With no transparency how can there be solid answers?


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> 3. Therefore AZ will eliminate the spike from the product page in order not to deceive customers about how the book is actually doing in comparison to other titles.
> 
> 4. AZ has no interest in stopping people from promoting their books. They just don't want temporary promotions to temporarily deceive customers who are not aware that the high spiked ranking is only temporary.
> 
> 5. They are blanking rankings that are transient spikes, not always successfully, in order not to deceive customers unaware of transient promotions, spikes, etc., and that is all that is going on here.


Except, if you read the blog post, they stripped her rank as soon as she made the book free, before the promotion began. That is not reacting to a "transient spike" that might "deceive" a customer.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2018)

Dragovian said:


> Except, if you read the blog post, they stripped her rank as soon as she made the book free, before the promotion began. That is not reacting to a "transient spike" that might "deceive" a customer.


It's reacting to a promotion that might deceive the customer.

Anyway, I suggest a focus on my point: Ranking spikes are of no value to the customer and can be deceptive to the customer. And that is the ultimate reason for temporary rank stripping by Amazon.


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## leonhard (May 11, 2017)

Modi - are you suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?

You are forgetting or disregarding some main things here. Authors are getting threatening letters about possible closure of their accounts and live in fear of getting their livelihood taken away from them.

It is easy to sit there and post stuff like any ranking spike is not in the customer's interest, but the ball is in Amazon's court. Where does any of this break their TOS. How does this explain they sell ads on their own site if they don't want promotions? 
They can easily divulge what is going on and what we are allowed to do and not do.

Nothing of what you write makes sense to me ...


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2018)

Deceiving customers is the essential basis of all American advertising and many people think it's fine. Amazon has turned the idea on its head, which is part of the reason for its success. I suggest the question that should be addressed here is whether ranking spikes can deceive customers.


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## leonhard (May 11, 2017)

No. Amazon's lack of communication, lack of clarity, random hitting on select authors, algorithms that appear faulty are all good topics. What you suggest is out of topic.

AND you disregarded most of what I wrote..


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## leonhard (May 11, 2017)

dgaughran said:


> I've just blogged about this topic again. Author Kristi Belcamino was just rank stripped for a third time. You can read the whole sorry saga here: https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2018/01/02/new-year-old-problem-innocent-author-rank-stripped-for-third-time/
> 
> Note:
> 
> ...


I just want to say your blogpost really hits the nail on the head. Well done, David! And thanks for writing it !

_edited; PM if you have questions -- Ann_


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2018)

leonhard said:


> Modi - are you suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?
> 
> You are forgetting or disregarding some main things here. Authors are getting threatening letters about possible closure of their accounts and live in fear of getting their livelihood taken away from them.
> 
> ...


I did not say they don't want promotions. They don't want promotions that produce transient spikes that may deceive customers.

I agree that KDP authors are being treated by Amazon like garbage. It's the customers that AZ cares about, and not their KDP suppliers, which are ultimately replaceable almost at once. KDP authors are replaceable. Trade pubs are in general not so replaceable, especially the big pubs.


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2018)

If your ranking is based on a temporary sale and you're asking the customer to pay full price, you're deceiving the customer with a lie.

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


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2018)

LilyBLily said:


> I don't agree. The temporary rank usually accompanies a temporary price--a sale price. Then the rank drops (numbers get higher) and the price goes back to normal. Or maybe the price stays low and the rank slowly deteriorates. In either case, there's no deception. If enough people download a free or 99-cent book, that's social proof--which as we know is a huge motivator for people to buy books. It's also sales proof--the book is selling.
> 
> I ought to know. I've just launched a difficult book at 99 cents. I took out a lot of ads but got an anemic response. If my book were a more popular type of read I would have gotten many more sales--again, social and sales proof: people wanting the book. It is quite possible to spend many hundreds or even thousands of dollars and still not produce the ranking boost at question here if no one wants the book.
> 
> ...


The problem is there is a lag. The ranking does not decline at once when the sale ends. So for a time, customers land on the product page, see a high rank, and think the book is popular at the full price. They are being deceived. What I am suggesting is that Amazon is merely protecting the customer by not showing the ranking during the promotion commotion. The author's intent is not the issue. The issue is the consequence for the customer. As a customer, if I see a screwdriver priced at $5.00 with a high ranking, I don't want the ranking to be based on a temporary sale yesterday of $0.99. Stripping the rank during and shortly after a low price promotion protects the customer. Sales are fine for promotion, but if you provide ranking stats to the customer, sales can distort the rankings seriously. That is the issue. The customer needs to know the popularity at the full price and not merely the popularity at the sale price. IMHO


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

Modi Gliani said:


> The problem is there is a lag. The ranking does not decline at once when the sale ends. So for a time, customers land on the product page, see a high rank, and think the book is popular at the full price. They are being deceived. What I am suggesting is that Amazon is merely protecting the customer by not showing the ranking during the promotion commotion. The author's intent is not the issue. The issue is the consequence for the customer. As a customer, if I see a screwdriver priced at $5.00 with a high ranking, I don't want the ranking to be based on a temporary sale yesterday of $0.99. Stripping the rank during and shortly after a low price promotion protects the customer. Sales are fine for promotion, but if you provide ranking stats to the customer, sales can distort the rankings seriously. That is the issue. The customer needs to know the popularity at the full price and not merely the popularity at the sale price. IMHO


Except the rank stripping is the exception rather than the rule. It happens one out of every 1,000 times. So, if Amazon was trying to do what you're suggesting, why wouldn't it happen regularly?


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2018)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Except the rank stripping is the exception rather than the rule. It happens one out of every 1,000 times. So, if Amazon was trying to do what you're suggesting, why wouldn't it happen regularly?


We can assume it happens when the algos catch it. Or when a human eyeballs it. Whatever. It seems to me the simplest explanation for what's going is that Amazon is trying to protect the customer. I think that makes more sense than any conspiracy theory. What I don't like is Amazon's lack of transparency for authors. They think they are protecting their business by playing their cards close to their chest, but in truth I think they are ruining it. They could easily put out a few sentences explaining what is going on, instead they insist on a fetish for secrecy.


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

Modi Gliani said:


> We can assume it happens when the algos catch it. Or when a human eyeballs it. Whatever. It seems to me the simplest explanation for what's going is that Amazon is trying to protect the customer. I think that makes more sense than any conspiracy theory. What I don't like is Amazon's lack of transparency for authors. They think they are protecting their business by playing their cards close to their chest, but in truth I think they are ruining it. They could easily put out a few sentences explaining what is going on, instead they insist on a fetish for secrecy.


So you think Amazon created a program to catch rank spikes and it only works on one out of every 1,000 spikes? That doesn't seem feasible to me.


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2018)

As far as the incidence of stripping is concerned: If a current ordinary ranking is based on a long history of sales, a sudden spike will not change the average ranking by much. That is just arithmetic. But if it's a new book or  a book with only a short  sales history, a spike can radically change the average ranking for that book. So I would like to know what is the difference in the incidence of stripping between new releases and old releases? In general, I'm not trying to make trouble here. What I'm suggesting is that given a puzzle like this one, I think it is best to start with the simplest possible explanation first. In science it's called Occam's Razor.


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

Modi Gliani said:


> As far as the incidence of stripping is concerned: If a current ordinary ranking is based on a long history of sales, a sudden spike will not change the average ranking by much. That is just arithmetic. But if it's a new book or book with only a short sales history, a spike can radically change the average ranking for that book. So I would like to know what is the difference in the incidence of stripping between new releases and old releases? In general, I'm not trying to make trouble here. What I'm suggesting is that given a puzzle like this one, I think it is best to start with the simplest possible explanation first. In science it's called Occam's Razor.


Oh, please. It's happened on new and old books alike. It's a glitch, which is why it only happens on rare occasions. Somehow a random few trigger the bots and then it takes forever to get human eyes on the problem to fix it. It's not by design. I don't see how anyone could possibly think it's by design.


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2018)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Oh, please. It's happened on new and old books alike. It's a glitch, which is why it only happens on rare occasions. Somehow a random few trigger the bots and then it takes forever to get human eyes on the problem to fix it. It's not by design. I don't see how anyone could possibly think it's by design.


All right, it's an algo glitch. And you agree the AZ intent is to protect the customer?


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

Modi Gliani said:


> All right, it's an algo glitch. And you agree the AZ intent is to protect the customer?


Amazon only cares about the customer. They don't care about content providers.


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2018)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Amazon only cares about the customer. They don't care about content providers.


Wonderful. And what is it they are protecting the customer from except a deceptive ranking? Promotion is fine. If you promote at the full price, you will have no trouble. If you promote at a sale price, AZ may step in and protect the customer by blanking the ranking.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

I must admit, I'm having trouble seeing any deception to the customer from a book's ranking. I can safely say I've never thought, "Ooh, this book is at #67, it must be good," and bought it. Generally I'll buy a book if it's cheap _and_ I like the look of it.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Look, I don't like huge corps any more than anyone else. However, there can be no doubt of the following:

1. Scammers have botted their way to the top of the charts in the past (and are probably still doing so)
2. Scammers have transgressed the TOS on a regular basis to scam money out of the KU pot and from customers and will continue to do so as long as there are loopholes and cracks in the system they can exploit.

That is enough to force Amazon to respond, in some way. 

When addressing problems, Amazon has been known to use a steamroller when a sledgehammer will do. Some innocent folks will get / have been caught up in their attempt to prevent scammers. 

Amazon's business model is premised on automating as much as possible to reduce costs. It has likely set up a system of algorithms to detect scamming and automated responses to particular inquiries. Algorithms are only as good as the instructions. GIGO remember (garbage in / garbage out). 

Yes, it's bad business from our point of view as suppliers to use canned responses and algorithms to deal with scamming, but from Amazon's point of view, it is efficient and deals with the problem well enough to get by.

Unfortunately, it does not solve the problem (because there are always new cracks and loopholes and scammers willing to exploit them) but it does make it look like the problem is being addressed.

I don't think it's Amazon trying to discourage all external promotion. It's Amazon trying to discourage suppliers from using external promotion that uses black and grey hat techniques to gain rank or sales.

They aren't responsible for our bad choices. People have relied on promoters promising a certain number of downloads or rank or sales. Some of those promoters are not to be trusted because they are relying on scam methods such as botting to get rank and sales.

What is an indie author to do?

You're taking a risk every time you use an external promoter. Most people can do so without any concern but it is a risk.

Amazon will only change when it makes monetary or PR sense for them to do so. 

It sucks, but that's why it's good to always hedge your bets when it comes to your own business practices. CYA in other words.


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

Modi Gliani said:


> Wonderful. And what is it they are protecting the customer from except a deceptive ranking? Promotion is fine. If you promote at the full price, you will have no trouble. If you promote at a sale price, AZ may step in and protect the customer by blanking the ranking.


People have had their ranks stripped from promoting at full price, too. Your argument would make sense if everyone who had a book on sale had their rank stripped when promoting. Less than one percent of people are being hit, though. That means it's a glitch. Amazon is looking for scammers and getting them most of the time. Some of the time, though, they're getting people just using innocent promotions. It's obvious that you're not grasping what's going on here. Amazon wants everyone to promote their stuff because then they get money, too. If they were doing what you're suggesting thousands of people a day would be getting their ranks stripped and that's not happening. Why? If you're hypothesis is correct, why is it only the one in a thousand even though Amazon should be nabbing thousands of people on a daily basis under what you're suggesting?

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


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Sales and promotions of sales are the backbone of the consumer industry. Some people only buy on sale. I am one of them who tries to maximize my purchases of products on sale.

There is nothing wrong with sales and promotion of sales!

A 99c eBook, if in high demand, can make someone a millionaire.

Likewise, a 99c eBook if not in high demand, can sit there and barely move.

It's NOT scamming or cheating to have sales and promote those sales.

Amazon's recent actions are the result of its (ham fisted) attempts to address real scamming -- bot-driven sales and downloads, scamphlets and stuffed books and link-scamming KU.

NOT any attempt to thwart our attempts to use sales to promote our products. When we make money, Amazon makes money. They want us to make money. They just want it to be done in a way that doesn't cause a bad customer experience. 

ETA: I'm not defending Amazon here. I'm trying to fight the tendency to slide into conspiracy thinking about what is happening with Amazon rank stripping. 

Don't assume malice when simple incompetence will suffice.


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2018)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> People have had their ranks stripped from promoting at full price, too. Your argument would make sense if everyone who had a book on sale had their rank stripped when promoting. Less than one percent of people are being hit, though. That means it's a glitch. Amazon is looking for scammers and getting them most of the time. Some of the time, though, they're getting people just using innocent promotions. It's obvious that you're not grasping what's going on here. Amazon wants everyone to promote their stuff because then they get money, too. If they were doing what you're suggesting thousands of people a day would be getting their ranks stripped and that's not happening. Why? If you're hypothesis is correct, why is it only the one in a thousand even though Amazon should be nabbing thousands of people on a daily basis under what you're suggesting?
> 
> _Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


Are you saying thousands of people are doing Bookbubs or something similar?

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


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

Modi Gliani said:


> Are you saying thousands of people are doing Bookbubs or something similar?


Yes.

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


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2018)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Yes.
> 
> _Edited quoted material. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


And the evidence for that?


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Modi Gliani said:


> Are you saying thousands of people are doing Bookbubs or something similar?


Sorry to be crass, but where have you been?

Bookbub runs a full slate of promotions EVERY SINGLE DAY. There are dozens of categories and a number of choices in each category EVERY SINGLE DAY. There are dozens of other legitimate book promotion companies that run promotions EVERY SINGLE DAY both price promotions and free promotions.

Every day, Amazon makes scads of money off these promotions, because they are usually books that are not moving a lot of copies and need a boost.

It is known...

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


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Modi Gliani said:


> And the evidence for that?


https://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals/recommended


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

Modi Gliani said:


> And the evidence for that?


Well, you could look at the BookBub emails ... and the ENT emails ... and the Robin Reads emails ... and the KND, BookGorilla, Ebook Soda, Freebooksy, Bargain Books, OHFB, I Love Vampires, etc. emails. Then you could look at all the ad stacker lists, talk to the people doing newsletter swaps, hang around Bookfunnel and Instafreebie and look at what they're doing, you could look at the free and paid lists for ideas on who is running extensive Facebook advertising pushes (although finding those ads is obviously problematic if you're not part of the audience makeup).

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


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

Modi Gliani said:


> And the evidence for that?


I'm always amazed when someone is this uneducated about the business they're apparently part of.


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2018)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Well, you could look at the BookBub emails ... and the ENT emails ... and the Robin Reads emails ... and the KND, BookGorilla, Ebook Soda, Freebooksy, Bargain Books, OHFB, I Love Vampires, etc. emails. Then you could look at all the ad stacker lists, talk to the people doing newsletter swaps, hang around Bookfunnel and Instafreebie and look at what they're doing, you could look at the free and paid lists for ideas on who is running extensive Facebook advertising pushes (although finding those ads is obviously problematic if you're not part of the audience makeup).


We are not talking about free promotions. A free promotion from outside should not be allowed to influence ranking for paid sales. I can't get into Bookbub to look at the URL someone offered. Question: Take the Romance category, for example. On any one day how many Bookbub promos at .99 or above are in place during that day?


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## LadyG (Sep 3, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> A free promotion from outside should not be allowed to influence ranking for paid sales.


Free books _are _ranked separately from paid sales.


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

Modi Gliani said:


> We are not talking about free promotions. A free promotion from outside should not be allowed to influence ranking for paid sales. I can't get into Bookbub to look at the URL someone offered. Question: Take the Romance category, for example. On any one day how many Bookbub promos at .99 or above are in place during that day?


i have no idea what you're even saying now. I'm not sure you do either.


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## CBB (Nov 14, 2017)

dgaughran said:


> I've just blogged about this topic again. Author Kristi Belcamino was just rank stripped for a third time. You can read the whole sorry saga here: https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2018/01/02/new-year-old-problem-innocent-author-rank-stripped-for-third-time/
> 
> Note:
> 
> ...


This is scary for us newbies. To read this was the third time this happened to her, and it was PRIOR to any promotion being run. It was as soon as she put it free. What if she hadn't planned any real promotion? What if she just decided to use it as a loss leader? What if.. what if.. what if.. is all we seem to be left with now. Guessing and speculating based on statistics that are hard to track.

I have been quietly observing the multitude of threads on this topic and it sucks that innocent authors are being caught up in this. I understand that it's merely amazon attempting to catch scammers (more than likely a glitch in the algos), I just wish there was a bit more transparency on their part. But asking for that is like asking for a unicorn for Christmas, it's just never going to happen.


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2018)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> i have no idea what you're even saying now. I'm not sure you do either.


Enough said. Have a nice day.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

If Amazon had even the tiniest interest in 'protecting' customers from books that aren't actually popular but relying on advertising ad gimmicks...

Then why in the seven interlocking hells is almost every incentive Amazon offers for exclusivity something that 'artificially' inflates rank? Free and discount days do what all promos do. KU explicitly is unfairly weighed in terms of rank and algos.


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2018)

Vaalingrade said:


> If Amazon had even the tiniest interest in 'protecting' customers from books that aren't actually popular but relying on advertising ad gimmicks...
> 
> Then why in the seven interlocking hells is almost every incentive Amazon offers for exclusivity something that 'artificially' inflates rank? Free and discount days do what all promos do. KU explicitly is unfairly weighed in terms of rank and algos.


AZ free and discount days do not produce enormous spikes of sales involving hundreds or maybe thousands of sales in one day. The same is true for AMS advertising. Again, the problem is the spike and the lag in the ranking coming down and that the customer is not aware of the spike and thinks the high ranking is a measure of popularity at full price. Authors who do Bookbubs to manipulate a high ranking and take advantage of it in sales at regular prices are essentially scamming the system. So Amazon strips the ranking to prevent the scam.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Modi Gliani said:


> AZ free and discount days do not produce enormous spikes of sales involving hundreds or maybe thousands of sales in one day. The same is true for AMS advertising. Again, the problem is the spike and the lag in the ranking coming down and that the customer is not aware of the spike and thinks the high ranking is a measure of popularity at full price. Authors who do Bookbubs to manipulate a high ranking and take advantage of it in sales at regular prices are essentially scamming the system. So Amazon strips the ranking to prevent the scam.


No.


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2018)

Modi Gliani said:


> Authors who do Bookbubs to manipulate a high ranking and take advantage of it in sales at regular prices are essentially scamming the system. So Amazon strips the ranking to prevent the scam.


For someone who claimed to not even know what Bookbub was, you're making a lot of sweeping FALSE statements about the authors who use their site and the results. You have been told multiple times Amazon does NOT rank strip every book that uses a Bookbub, RobinReads, FreeBooksy, ENT or similar promo. As I pointed out I had a free Bookbub in October that resulted in a massive spike and 20,000+ downloads. If Amazon is rank stripping everyone as you claim, why wasn't my title rank stripped?

As already pointed out, the incident of rank stripping might only be something like 1 out of every 1,000 promos run by authors. It's not across the board. Something is going on that is triggering the automated process.



Modi Gliani said:


> AZ free and discount days do not produce enormous spikes of sales involving hundreds or maybe thousands of sales in one day.


If you are referring to using Amazon's free days, then again you are wrong. I've run both Bookbub and other types of promos on KU titles, using free days that have resulted in several thousand downloads and that particular KU title was NEVER rank stripped.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Modi Gliani said:


> AZ free and discount days do not produce enormous spikes of sales involving hundreds or maybe thousands of sales in one day.


That is literally the point in having them. You use them, then promote the hell out of them.

I'm curious as to why you think they exist if there isn't the potential to produce sales spikes.



> Again, the problem is the spike and the lag in the ranking coming down and that the customer is not aware of the spike and thinks the high ranking is a measure of popularity at full price.


And what about the KU long-term rank manipulation?



> Authors who do Bookbubs to manipulate a high ranking and take advantage of it in sales at regular prices are essentially scamming the system. So Amazon strips the ranking to prevent the scam.


That scam is called ADVERTISING. Like that is the sole point of advertising. You're taking a shot to try and get momentum. This is true whether you're selling books or soda or movies.

And again, Amazon keeps giving people tools to do the exact thing you're calling a scam as well as DIRECTLY MANIPULATING THE RANKS as they see fit.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Locking temporarily to catch up.

ETA: Reopening, with a reminder for all that sometimes it's enough to articulate your own position clearly, accepting that the person(s) you're arguing against will not be convinced, but that others will benefit from the evidence you've offered. In other words, sometimes you just gotta let people be wrong on the internet.

Okay, carry on. This is an important thread, obviously.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Modi Gliani said:


> AZ free and discount days do not produce enormous spikes of sales involving hundreds or maybe thousands of sales in one day. The same is true for AMS advertising. Again, the problem is the spike and the lag in the ranking coming down and that the customer is not aware of the spike and thinks the high ranking is a measure of popularity at full price. Authors who do Bookbubs to manipulate a high ranking and take advantage of it in sales at regular prices are essentially scamming the system. So Amazon strips the ranking to prevent the scam.


Modi, given that somewhere between dozens and hundreds of KBoards authors have advertised on Bookbub, not to mention the thousands who've advertised on all the other promotion sites, the above essentially labels vast numbers of your fellow forum members _scammers_. We don't tolerate name-calling here. No more of this sort of language, please.


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2018)

Becca Mills said:


> Modi, given that somewhere between dozens and hundreds of KBoards authors have advertised on Bookbub, not to mention the thousands who've advertised on all the other promotion sites, the above essentially labels vast numbers of your fellow forum members _scammers_. We don't tolerate name-calling here. No more of this sort of language, please.


I am talking about authors who do Bookbubs at a low price to manipulate a high ranking and take advantage of it in sales at regular prices. What should we call this manipulation?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Modi Gliani said:


> I am talking about authors who do Bookbubs at a low price to manipulate a high ranking and take advantage of it in sales at regular prices. What should we call this manipulation?


Advertising. Every company does it.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Modi Gliani said:


> I am talking about authors who do Bookbubs at a low price to manipulate a high ranking and take advantage of it in sales at regular prices. What should we call this manipulation?


Not "manipulation," which is pejorative. In general, I think you've made your point. Others disagree. Plenty of other threads out there.


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2018)

Patty Jansen said:


> Advertising. Every company does it.


Not every company does it. It is not just advertising. As a customer who buys books at Amazon, I am being fooled into thinking a book has a high ranking at $4.99 while in reality it's high ranking is only at $0.99.

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


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## LadyG (Sep 3, 2015)

Modi Gliani said:


> Not every company does it. It is not just advertising. As a customer who buys books at Amazon, I am being fooled into thinking a book has a high ranking at $4.99 while in reality it's high ranking is only at $0.99.
> 
> _Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


It's no different than a grocery store that runs a sale on one particular brand of potato chips, resulting in that one spot on the shelf being cleared. Is that creating a lie that there is a demand for that brand of potato chips? Is it a scam that is going to make customers think, "wow, I don't usually like that brand, but everyone else is buying it so it MUST be good"? Or is it .... Oh, what's the word I'm looking for here? Oh, yeah: ADVERTISING.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Modi Gliani said:


> Not every company does it. It is not just advertising. As a customer who buys books at Amazon, I am being fooled into thinking a book has a high ranking at $4.99 while in reality it's high ranking is only at $0.99.


Books don't stay at a high ranking unless they can still maintain sales at that higher price. If it's such an issue for you personally, wait a couple days to buy any book with a high rank that interests you.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Modi, you may not participate further in this thread.

Everyone else, let's move on.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Modi Gliani said:


> Not every company does it. It is not just advertising. As a customer who buys books at Amazon, I am being fooled into thinking a book has a high ranking at $4.99 while in reality it's high ranking is only at $0.99.
> 
> _Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


Here's what I don't think you understand.

You don't understand how rank happens.

It happens in two ways:

- via algorithm love, as in Amazon algorithms see that your book is selling (for whatever reason) and then tries to sell it to even more people based on those people who have already bought. This is done using Big Data.

- via promotions, as in the author (or Amazon itself) promotes the book to potential readers, which means the potential readers have the opportunity to purchase or download it.

That's it.

As I understand it, every book gets that first crack at the new release list and if initial customers see a book and click on the product page and buy, the algorithms learn that customers actually are interested in the book. Amazon algorithms then take over and start to sell the book to the appropriate customers based on category, key words and on those customers who have already bought the book.

If a book doesn't sell during it's launch, for whatever reason (bad cover, boring blurb, bad preview, wrong keywords, etc., no promotion) the Amazon algorithms will ignore the book because it has no idea who to sell it to.

An author can step in and promote the book, using Amazon advertising, or external advertising, and if the Amazon algorithms see the book selling, it will analyze those customers who bought it and then try to sell it to other customers like those.

Amazon wants to sell books. It wants to sell the right book to the right person. It figures that out by the algorithms and by analyzing the data it collects on who sees a book, who clicks on the cover, who visits the product page, and who clicks on the preview and who purchases or downloads the book.

Sometimes, this happens solely internally via the Amazon algorithms. Those are books that have fantastic covers, compelling blurbs and the right keywords, and they take off "organically" vs. via promotion. It does happen. My fourth book had no paid launch promotion but it sold organically. Most books today need some kind of paid promotion at launch to get initial algorithm attention and then regular promos so that the book stays visible.

Personally, I think this is Amazon's goal. To get us to pay to find the book's audience. That's why I suspect they introduced AMS. They could see that authors were using external promotion sites to get visibility and decided they wanted a piece of that action.

So a Bookbub 99c or free book promo is intended to get the book greater visibility on Amazon.

You seem to be assuming that when a book ranks high because of a free promo that it is somehow deceptive to the customer who sees its increased rank. It has that increased rank because a lot of customers downloaded the book or bought it at the sale price.

None of those readers had to download or purchase that book at the low price or free. They did it voluntarily. It's not deceptive.

It used to be that when you ran a free book promotion, and the free book increased in rank, when you changed back to paid, your rank would remain and you'd make some extra money from that increased rank. Not anymore. Now, when your book goes back to paid, usually it's back to where it was before -- or even worse.  It could rank even worse than before the free promo.

FYI: the paid and free lists are completely different.

Using Bookbub is not unethical or deceptive. Readers wait for Bookbub emails every day so they can find discount eBooks. It's like readers at the bookstore who only shop the price reduced and discount bins. It's the same with Amazon internal promos. Amazon selects books to promote based on a number of factors. Readers wait for those emails as well. It's all promotion, paid or internal, and it's all just business as usual for the consumer product industry.

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


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Modi Gliani said:


> Not every company does it. It is not just advertising. As a customer who buys books at Amazon, I am being fooled into thinking a book has a high ranking at $4.99 while in reality it's high ranking is only at $0.99.
> _Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


If only Amazon put the price right there beside the book cover.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Folks, Modi's no longer on the thread to defend his views. Let's move on now.


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## raminar_dixon (Aug 26, 2013)

I may be able to offer a bit of data on this issue. Hopefully it is helpful in some way.

-Over the course of 2017 I handled at least _some_ of the marketing and promotion for over 600 different books through my Book Rank/Promo Stacker service. Nearly all of those books made their category top 100 for at least one day. I'd say around 150-200 of them made the Kindle Store Top 100. Not a single client reported any sort of rank-stripping to me over that time.

-These books were from nearly all genres - romance, thrillers, mystery, fantasy, non-fiction, etc.

-Most of the books were brand new and had no rank at all when promotions began.

-About half of the books that had a rank when promos started were ranked above 100k.

-Only a handful of books had a rank above 500k when promotions started.

-Budget and overall success were directly proportional to each other, though some books did better than others, as expected.

-The venues I used for these clients are on my list, and consisted of Bookbub, ENT, and many others. AFAIK, none of the venues utilize any sort of automated "botting" or other artificial means to increase sales, downloads, or pagereads.


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## Trina Lee (May 4, 2011)

Not sure if this info is helpful in any way but at the end of December I ran an ENT on a free series starter. It got 1000 immediate downloads and broke into the top 300 in the free store. Nothing happened. No rank stripping or weird stuff. Then yesterday I ran no ads at all but AMS, increasing my AMS daily budget by a measly buck, got a few extra downloads of the book (30 in total to be exact) and had my rank stripped for a few hours. Then it returned. 

So I don't know. Whatever is causing Amazon to rank strip books, it seems pretty random. *shrug*


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