# A "general" thread on unethical behaviour by fellow authors



## Mike_Author (Oct 19, 2013)

OK, I feel that "the thread that dare not speak thy name" was ultimately unhelpful as a range of entirely different subjects became conflated.  Inadvertent (or even deliberate) mis-categorisation on Amazon is only tangentially related to outright cheating/unethical behaviour.

I want to start by owning up to something.  After my rant last night in that thread I realised two things.  Firstly, I realised that, as many posters indicated, directly calling out books by name on Amazon is not warranted.  This can trigger the vigilante principle which could result in Goodreads style targeting of books/authors which/who may or may not actually be guilty.  Secondly, as a poster pointed out to me last night, the books in question were actually comedy/satire.  This largely negates my bile-infused rant against authors jumping on profitable niches.  As someone who has one or two comedy/humour books on Amazon, if there is one thing I know for sure it is comedy doesn't sell.

This means that, of all the topics addressed in my rambling post, only the point about stuffing the Editorial Reviews with links to their other books stands.  Lost amongst the Lord of the Flies style melee which ensued last night (albeit in typical Writers Cafe style, with admirable decorum and a relative lack of ad hominem), my question on this point remained unanswered - are we allowed to include links to our other books in the Editorial reviews section?  If this is completely legit and above board I would do it in a heartbeat - even just in terms of creating a level playing field.  However my intuition tells me that Amazon wouldn't be particularly enthused with this - I may be wrong however.

So, I have been thinking about this topic this morning and wanted to pare back everything which is not core to this debate/discussion and just ask a few questions to get a sense of your views on this topic - 

1. Where is the line between keyword optimisation (which is generally agreed to be legit) and keyword stuffing?

2. Where is the line between soliciting reviews (legit - I think) and obtaining fake reviews.  Obviously paying for reviews is categorically NOT ok.  However what about people you know?  If we were to agree that asking your spouse to review your book would not be OK, at what level of familiarity/relationship does this become OK? Someone you casually know in your office?

3. There is a clear schism on this forum between people who think "just get on with writing/worry about your own book/the ethical behaviour of other authors doesn't harm your sales and the second group who think "cheaters should be called out/my sales are being harmed/the reputation of self-publishing is being harmed/quietly abiding by cheating (or ignoring it) is essentially as bad as cheating itself".  Where do you fall or do you sit on the fence, partially agreeing with both?

4. Do you have a book which has been directly and clearly impacted by another author who you believe cheats?  What did you do about it? How did they cheat?

To be honest, as cinisajoy may remember, about 6 months ago I nearly popped a blood vessel over a certain author who was gaming Amazon in the most brazen of ways (book titles were just repeated keywords, each book launched with around 20 five-star reviews by the same people (all of whom only reviewed this authors books or other equally scammy books).  The reason why I nearly went into cardiac arrest was that myself and several other people at least (this author was directly called out on other writing forums and even Reddit) reported this to Amazon however nothing ever happened.  Against this backdrop, I saw a few of the reviews of my own books get removed and was not able to get a satisfactory answer as to why.  However I then took the advice on board and just forgot about it.

Yesterday's thread reminded me of this topic so I went on to Amazon for the first time in ages and found it worse than ever.  Hence I was wondering what other authors thought of this general topic.  Would love to get your thoughts.

By the way, irrespective of this (due to the fact that it is unlikely Amazon will ever change this situation) I will continue to chant the serenity prayer and ignore what other authors are doing.  If I felt that there was a way to influence this issue I would.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

The only behaviour I would call unethical is targeted activities to drag down competing authors: posting and upvoting poor reviews on other authors' books.

Fake reviews on an author's own books and keyword stuffing... bleh. It's tacky and cheap, but potential buyers see through it anyway, so who really cares? It's not as if this tactic has found great success anyway.

I have to admit I can't get too excited about what authors do with their own books. If it's fake, it will look like just that: fake. People will see through it.


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

Patty Jansen said:


> The only behaviour I would call unethical is targeted activities to drag down competing authors: posting and upvoting poor reviews on other authors' books.


+1

Plus I think asking twitter followers to bash/target another author's books should be included as unethical.


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## Mike_Author (Oct 19, 2013)

Patty Jansen said:


> The only behaviour I would call unethical is targeted activities to drag down competing authors: posting and upvoting poor reviews on other authors' books.
> 
> Fake reviews on an author's own books and keyword stuffing... bleh. It's tacky and cheap, but potential buyers see through it anyway, so who really cares? It's not as if this tactic has found great success anyway.
> 
> I have to admit I can't get too excited about what authors do with their own books. If it's fake, it will look like just that: fake. People will see through it.


This is why I created this thread. The very first post has shifted my view on this topic.
Excellent point.


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## Nick Marsden (Jan 28, 2015)

Patty Jansen said:


> The only behaviour I would call unethical is targeted activities to drag down competing authors: posting and upvoting poor reviews on other authors' books.
> 
> Fake reviews on an author's own books and keyword stuffing... bleh. It's tacky and cheap, but potential buyers see through it anyway, so who really cares? It's not as if this tactic has found great success anyway.
> 
> I have to admit I can't get too excited about what authors do with their own books. If it's fake, it will look like just that: fake. People will see through it.


I disagree with this. Some people buy books just by searching and looking at the number of reviews (for social proof). If the reviews are generally good and there are lots of them, the chances of a reader buying a book go up. Then, they have to realize their mistake before 7 day return period or they're hosed. If the reviews are faked or if someone paid for them or they loaded their description/editorial reviews/title with keywords, many readers won't even realize it (okay, they might if the title is loaded. I don't know why people buy books with loaded titles at all, it just looks unprofessional)

It's a numbers game, just like those guys who STILL do the Nigerian Prince email scam. It must still work, or people wouldn't still be doing it.

Bottom line, keyword loading and fake reviews cheat the readers, not so much other authors. Because of this, I think it's *worse* than targeting other authors.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

I don't see a problem with keyword stuffing. Books that people want to read will always go to the top. If people took a moment to look beyond top 100, they'd see there are plenty of books with tons of keywords that are not selling much, so it would be crazy to think everyone who uses a lot of keywords is getting all the sales, is a scammer or stealing visibility from other people's precious little books.   I'm terrible at keywords and usually can't even come up with more than five, but people still find my books somehow. Also, if fake/scam books (real scam, and not certain genres or books some people don't like/don't understand) come up, that's usually because the author is scamming Amazon and getting fake reads/sales to boost their rank and not because readers are mindless robots who are programmed to read anything that appears on bestselling lists.  Some might fall for it, but that's their problem. There was a time when I used to be annoyed when people put keywords in their title, but now I think it can be helpful so people can skip or find books they want just by looking at the title. 

Paid fake reviews are definitely a problem, but family and friends... I don't know about this. Sometimes your family hates your book and they don't mind saying it.   As long as they're honest, I don't see a problem, but if they feel like they have to say only good things, then it's better they don't review the book. 

Depends what kind of unethical behavior is going on and how much it pisses me off.   I was twenty seconds away from reporting someone for abusing a certain feature on Amazon for their own self-centered, self-serving purposes, but then I decided I would just wait for karma.  

My books were never impacted by unethical behavior of other authors, only by unethical behavior of certain people who aren't authors.


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## Guest (Jul 23, 2015)

This is how new I am to this world … I didn't even know "paid fake reviews" was a thing. I noticed some of these promo sites insist on a certain number of reviews with a certain rating, and I wonder what the point of having that requirement is if people are buying reviews??  

I only have five reviews, which means I can't even advertise on some of those promo sites, but I'd rather my five honest reviews anyway. 

The keyword stuffing … I'm only vaguely familiar with it because I just published my second book with KDP and noticed the fine print about the title name. I can't say I'd ever buy a book with a long title that didn't seem to make any sense (unless it were clearly a comedy book so the long confusing title was intentional) … but that's just me.

I don't even know what editorial reviews are and how or why an author would link books in one … right now, being so new to this, I spend most of my time writing and trying to get this series finished so I can work on my next one. I figure learning more about the publishing process and marketing can come later, but nothing is going to happen if I don't get the books written, so I really feel pretty clueless most of the time I poke around KBoards


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

I'm personally of the group who believes that cheaters make us all look bad. I can't tell you how many times I've read, just on this forum, that most reviews are sock puppet and fake. It certainly doesn't help that that one guy who admitted to creating reviews and hiring Fiverr brazenly to post reviews has openly admitted to it on that blog post (can't remember the name of it now). It angers me, because those of us who have NEVER bought a review get lumped in with the scammers. It makes readers look askance at all reviews, if enough scammers do it. 

Plus, the sock puppets inevitably leads to Amazon throwing out the baby with the bathwater, IE taking down legitimate reviews. So, that's another way that fake reviews hurt us all. 

And keyword stuffers? As a reader, I hate 'em. I can't browse categories to save my life. 

And, prior to KU 2.0 being implemented, I would think that it was frustrating for legitimate authors to be sharing the pot with scamlets. I remember, in that same article about the sock puppeting, there was a mention of an author who made $150,000 on scamlets (and before erotica writers howl at this, thinking that I'm referring to them - I'm not. I'm talking about actual scammers who sell Wikipedia articles and things like that). Thank god that was shut down with the institution of KU 2.0. I wasn't in KU 1.0 though, so I wasn't one of the authors who was hurt by this, but anybody who was in KU 1.0 was. 

I therefore do not think that it's as simple as "don't worry about other authors, just worry about yourself," because these scammers are hurting all of our bottom lines. 

Amazon definitely needs to clean up its house.


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## AuthorX (Nov 11, 2014)

One of the big problems with vigilante authors is that they look at other authors books and try to dissect their success. Then, because they do not like the author's book and think that it's not good they think that it's everything from Paid Reviews, to Keyword Stuffing, to being a Scamlet to Cheating.

"No one can possibly like this book! The only possible way it can have such a great ranking and good reviews is because they are keyword stuffing!"

What if the that particular author just has a very strong fan base, a large mailing list, and a group of ARC members that are helping them launch their books with 20 5 star reviews every time? What if those 20 reviews are legitimate because they genuinely like their books? There is no way for you as an outsider to know which scenario is true. Just let it go... Amazon has complex systems in place to detect fraudulent activity as noted by many authors who have been hit for overusing ARC reviewers. If Amazon didn't do anything about it, it's probably because they detected nothing wrong.

As for leaving links in the Editorial Reviews... Who cares? They aren't actually links. They are just text that must be copy and pasted to be used like a link. I have seen this done on countless books that are from high profile authors in the Best Sellers. Is the issue that they got the bright idea to do this or the fact that they put it in the "Editorial Reviews" rather than "From The Author" which would basically appear in a near identical spot. I can tell you that by doing this they aren't going to pull in a mass number of more sales or shoot their rankings up to sky, so why bother worrying about it? As a reader, I think it's great to see people break up their products and series like that. If I don't want to see it, I just scroll down.

I'm not really sure what the problem is... It seems like author on author jealousy. One person thinks that their book is better than the other or that their marketing strategy is more legitimate for some reason, and they want the other author shut down because it doesn't comply with what they are writing and what they are doing personally to get sales.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

anniejocoby said:


> I'm personally of the group who believes that cheaters make us all look bad. I can't tell you how many times I've read, just on this forum, that most reviews are sock puppet and fake. It certainly doesn't help that that one guy who admitted to creating reviews and hiring Fiverr brazenly to post reviews has openly admitted to it on that blog post (can't remember the name of it now). It angers me, because those of us who have NEVER bought a review get lumped in with the scammers. It makes readers look askance at all reviews, if enough scammers do it.
> 
> Plus, the sock puppets inevitably leads to Amazon throwing out the baby with the bathwater, IE taking down legitimate reviews. So, that's another way that fake reviews hurt us all.
> 
> ...


Everything she said, a hundred times over! All of these things reflect on every one of us and it does drive readers away. We really have no idea how much it may be costing us in sales. There is no way to know that.

It reminds of the saying, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." If everyone continues to ignore the people who are abusing the system, the system will eventually fail.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

I think if you see blatant plagiarism and things like that, sure, report it.  I would, anyway.

As for keywords and reviews and stuff, I don't worry about it much. I tend to pay more attention to what successful authors are doing than what scammers are doing, and the two categories don't overlap much. 

I've heard lots of indies say things like being in box sets, having perma-free titles, ARC lists, and stuff like that is "cheating"... so I think the lines can get crossed pretty quickly by people who are somehow offended by the success of other people. So personally, I'd always err on the side of caution when reporting what I think is bad behavior.  Policing other writers is not my job. Writing great books and running my business in a smart way is my job.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Patty Jansen said:


> The only behaviour I would call unethical is targeted activities to drag down competing authors: posting and upvoting poor reviews on other authors' books.


If this is done up front and not from a sock puppet account, this is about the only behaviour which I would indeed call being ethical. Authors are readers as well, they have opinions and they review. They have always done so, and they haven't always been positive in their reviews or opinions either. The examples of the past are legion.

That's fine by me, as long as it is their considered opinion and not an obvious marketing ploy. I'd hate to lose well-written reviews _just to be nice_.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

I don't know if it's against the rules, but I see nothing wrong in linking to your own books in the editorial review bit. I don't know why you would want to though; Author Central shows them all and one only has to click on the author name to get to it. I have also found most of my other books come up in 'also viewed' or 'also bought'. I do, however, have a problem with 'authors' stating in the editorial section that they are 'award winning' when they are no such thing. At least, if they have won an award, they must have been the only entrant.

I have one awards for my writing in a small way, but I wouldn't include it in a book description. It is not the Pulitzer, is it? Any idiot can say they are award winning.


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## Mike_Author (Oct 19, 2013)

By the way, if someone wants to get a sense of how brazen some of this is, just PM and I will send you a link as long as you promise not to post publicly or try any vigilante stuff.  Provided purely for educational purposes in case you have not had the pleasure of seeing some of this stuff on Amazon.

I am assuming this wouldn't contravene our "don't publicly call out a specific book/author" however if Betsy feels that this offer in any ways infringes on this principle I would understand and delete this post.

The reason for the offer is that some authors I speak to are literally in shock after seeing some of this stuff and it completely shifts their position on this topic.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

I'm pretty live and let live. The karma of unethical behavior always haunts people, even if those watching don't see it. A lot of the time, it accumulates until something massive knocks them over.

"Through inaction, nothing is left undone" was the best way I've seen this put, oddly in a Trek book.

There are times when you do need to take action, but taking action always has consequences, especially if your motivation for doing so isn't pure.

For the record, I spent my morning stuffing keywords.    Most of my books are not performing at all, and half the reason was I thought you only got 1 word between each comma. I went back to my website stats, and extracted all the search-words appropriate for each book, and filled the box up. Since their categories don't have sub-categories with specific keywords, it isn't for wider exposure, just to enable the books to be found in searches better. This is called being sensible with a badly designed system, not taking advantage of a loophole. Well, yes its that too, but I feel its acceptable. If Amazon wanted one word between each comma, they wouldn't suggest phrases, and there would be room for twenty keywords at least.

Keywords in names on the other hand, is only justifiable where the name is still short and makes sense. I saw a few of those by accident the other day, and why Amazon puts up with them is beyond me. However, the names themselves imply cr*ppy content, so I'm not all that concerned about them. If it floats someone's boat enough to pay for, good luck to them.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

I believe it bothers us as much as we are concerned.
I write different genres and my Regencies for example are somehow not affected. When I browse the Regency section on Amazon all I ever find are regencies. Of a whole variety, from pure, clean Jane Austen fan fic, to red hot dukes - and tons of them, but none of them bother me at all (thought I wished I could seperate the hot, from the warm and the tepid)
In the contemporary section, the romantic comedy and women's fiction, it is a whole different playing field. It annoys me (Amazon's fault) if I go to all those different categories and the same books are recommended to me, over and over again, and none of those books belong into any of those categories, but into erotica only.
It annoys me for my own reading. As some reader said on the other thread, they have not bought by browsing anymore. I don't do that either and I used to enjoy it.
So, when it comes down to it, I think it is wrong of erotica authors not to mark their books as erotica. I find it particularly unfair towards those erotica authors (yours truly included...) who do claim their works as erotica and accept being in the dungeon, because they play by the rules, while others keyword themselves away into Young Adult, Inspirational, Gardening and Palmistry - okay, we do know sometimes that is Amazon's doing and they have the weirdest category triggers.
I think it would be just as wrong for a non-romantic thriller writer to put their books into romance.
But would I say that's all unethical already? Meeeeh, rather unfair, but well. 

But, as for the 20 page unedited books, I do hope and believe that KU2 will solve that out for the bestsellers list, but I still don't know what they want to do about the "New Release" list, because if some scammer (like the one presented in Hustle Magazine) brings out 20 books a week and there are 50 more people like him, he will own that list. 
They make me furious and spit fire.


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## AllyWho (May 16, 2015)

DashaGLogan said:


> I write different genres and my Regencies for example are somehow not affected. When I browse the Regency section on Amazon all I ever find are regencies.


Regency hasn't escaped the keyword/category stuffing unfortunately. I belong to a Regency Romance FB group and this was a hot topic of discussion today. I won't link the author concerned, but there are a large number of 20 page shorts populating the Regency top lists. They are labelled as "Victorian Regency Romance" (which in itself is wrong, it's Victorian OR Regency, it can't be both!) and it's pretty obvious from the blurb & cover that it is actually contemp billionaire playboy erotica.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

AliceWE said:


> Regency hasn't escaped the keyword/category stuffing unfortunately. I belong to a Regency Romance FB group and this was a hot topic of discussion today. I won't link the author concerned, but there are a large number of 20 page shorts populating the Regency top lists. They are labelled as "Victorian Regency Romance" (which in itself is wrong, it's Victorian OR Regency, it can't be both!) and it's pretty obvious from the blurb & cover that it is actually contemp billionaire playboy erotica.


Oh dear, well they have not crossed my path yet. *tears out hair*


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

It bothers me because people who behave unethically tarnish the reputation of indie writers. I don't want to be associated with unethical behaviour. I think indie writers should be better than that. We're already working against the prejudice that people who can get traditionally published are traditionally published, and that indie authors are second rate.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I do empathize with the position that if one misbehaves, then everyone is painted with the same brush, and for a long time when I first joined these boards, my sense of moral outrage was alarming in many threads. However, then I realized two very important things, one being context and the other being what's the best course of action.

For context, and I am not saying this of ALL indies, but many self-publishers never bother to study the history of publishing. They also never take the time to learn some of the creative tactics publishers have used for decades to promote their books. From one hand washing the other with mass media to get reviews, gaming Bowker reported sales by figuring out which stores were more critical than others and coordinating teams of people to buy a book there, to just straight out lying about who actually wrote a particular book, it's all shady. And I even put Amazon, the publisher, in this shady category. Amazon.com, as the largest market share for ebooks and paperback sales in the US, games their OWN sales ranking system to favor publishers and books that are "in-house." They give Prime First opportunity to 4 Amazon imprint books per month guaranteeing them the top 1-4 spots in the Paid Kindle Store for a week or more. They give sale ranking credit to books borrowed in their KU system (which anecdotally I am seeing that ranking benefit increase since the implementation of pages read), which is a program that requires publishers to be exclusive with Amazon. 

Amazon is not and never has been a level playing field. Capitalism never is. It's always a game of what can you get away with, inside the construct of the rules. Or worse, what's the ROI on breaking the rules vs. the penalty for doing so? And something like putting links in the Author Central part of a book? Amazon cracks down, at worst they just strip out the links. At best, nothing happens and you provided readers interested in your work an easy way to stay aware of everything. Whether or not it's "fair" to other authors or not is a moot point. Because they have to do their own cost-benefit analysis for what they do for their publishing company.

Then this is where things get slippery. What rules should we follow? Where is the line? And again, I think that's up to each publisher individually. No, I personally do not like that borrows are gumming up the visibility opportunities for books not exclusive to Amazon, yes I do feel penalized for being wide. But that is my choice and my job is therefore to go after the benefits of not being exclusive with Amazon to compensate. Now, some things like plagiarism and copyright infringement are NOT a situation of just "well, it's not fair, everyone has advantages and disadvantages to work around." That is theft in my opinion and Amazon has and will shut down accounts engaging in that. 

The other thing I consider is best course of action. We often talk here like we know better than Amazon on how to run Amazon. Yeah, I am not convinced.  I've been here for 4+ years and there's a ton of talent here. If anyone truly had a better way to run such a mass organization like Amazon it would be in the works. There have been some publishers who have made amazing new venues for specific niches of fiction, but no one has yet made the egalitarian place for ebook sales. We all exaggerate when we are upset and feel there is a problem that must be fixed now. 

For example, one thing said over and over again is how no one wants to slog through 20+ pages of keyword stuffed titles to find what they want. I lean my head to one side on that, the bestseller lists are only 5 pages. Add in Hot New Release for a category, and it's 10. Search by a keyword phrase and you might find some "BBW keyword keyword" but there's still a ton of great books there that DO fit the category. When I search the Kindle Store on Amazon.com for "sword and sorcery" all 15 books appear to be appropriately categorized. And on the left side, I can drill my 5,015 results even more by release dates, what other categories they are in (like if I want only sword & sorcery that is King Arthur related, there are 124 results). I don't see the system as being broken overall, if it was, no one would use it.

It's like when we all blast another book selling site as being SOOO ineffectual at search, and just horrible for readers to use . .  . again, ignoring that millions of people still use that site every day to buy books, and toys and games. 

So what's the best course of action to minimize bad search results? 

Well, one thing to do would be to write the Amazon team and explain your concern. "Dear Amazon, As a reader, I am concerned about the number of miscategorized books in my favorite genre. I am noticing a great deal of cozy mysteries in my non-fiction crafting section. I just want knitting patterns, not Grandmas solving crimes with knitting needles." (Yeah, the issue of miscategorization is years old and not only restricted to one type of publisher.) 

As a content creator, you could work with other content creators to continue putting out quality, correctly categorized content. Instead of asking your readers to target and report "bad books" ask them to help you and your friends in the genre to spread the word about your books. This is what happens in my genre, every once in awhile a book or two is published with Mr. Darcy and having nothing to do with JAFF, it was just banking on a keyword. It takes about 3 weeks for the reviews and word-of-mouth in our community to sink such a book into oblivion. No one organizes this, readers are just vigilant for the most part. And the GOOD books are promoted like the dickens!

Anyway, I do understand how frustrating it can feel to think you worked so hard on your project and it's being diminished in returns because of the unethical behavior by other authors. But you will drive yourself crazy trying to play whack-a-mole. Report if you see something clearly not correct, but don't go looking for it. That takes too much time, and we aren't paid by Amazon or anyone else to do that. Plus, if you start a crusade, you never know when the mob might turn against you. And that's another very important part of this, don't ever forget that these other books DO have fans and DO have followings. 

If someone is still a reader in this day and age, they deserve every publisher's respect. No matter what genre is their favorite cup of tea.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

I can only repeat, as long as cheese is in one fridge with yoghurt, butter, milk, even soy milk, lactose free cottage cheese, almond milk, goat mozzarella and so forth, I don't think the categorising would scandalise any diary marketing director. But if suddenly all types of toilet paper were with it in the fridge, he'd complain with the supermarkt owner.


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## Guest (Jul 23, 2015)

Mike, you wrote an over 700-word post addressing this issue.  That’s 700 words that could have been words for a work-in-progress.  However, if authors have the time to be self-appointed vigilantes and also get their books written, then they should go for it.

As for me, I pop into a few threads on these boards and then I get back to my writing.  I’m writing a lot this year, and I don’t have the time to focus on anything other than my work, my readers, and my business. 

To each his or her own.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I do empathize with the position that if one misbehaves, then everyone is painted with the same brush, and for a long time when I first joined these boards, my sense of moral outrage was alarming in many threads. However, then I realized two very important things, one being context and the other being what's the best course of action.
> 
> For context, and I am not saying this of ALL indies, but many self-publishers never bother to study the history of publishing. They also never take the time to learn some of the creative tactics publishers have used for decades to promote their books. From one hand washing the other with mass media to get reviews, gaming Bowker reported sales by figuring out which stores were more critical than others and coordinating teams of people to buy a book there, to just straight out lying about who actually wrote a particular book, it's all shady. And I even put Amazon, the publisher, in this shady category. Amazon.com, as the largest market share for ebooks and paperback sales in the US, games their OWN sales ranking system to favor publishers and books that are "in-house." They give Prime First opportunity to 4 Amazon imprint books per month guaranteeing them the top 1-4 spots in the Paid Kindle Store for a week or more. They give sale ranking credit to books borrowed in their KU system (which anecdotally I am seeing that ranking benefit increase since the implementation of pages read), which is a program that requires publishers to be exclusive with Amazon.
> 
> ...


I completely agree.
Finger pointing and screaming "you play the system" and "you stuffed one keyword too many" and "at them with force" will not solve the issue.
I also think, if you come across something disturbing, use the appropriate button and add your customer comment "Dear Amazon, upon looking for a gardening book, I found this regency novel. Could you please correct this as I find this a hindrance in my search for book that help me grow tomatoes. Thank you."

I don't think we should attempt to get authors banned, every gusto should be served by amazon,customers and suppliers should only ask them politely to get their store and display sorted and improoved.


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## Word Fan (Apr 15, 2015)

Annie B said:


> Policing other writers is not my job. Writing great books and running my business in a smart way is my job.


There is a lot of good sense in this.


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## Word Fan (Apr 15, 2015)

Jealous Unsuccessful Author whines:

_"No one can possibly like this book! The only possible way it can have such a great ranking and good reviews is because they are keyword stuffing!"_

One good answer:



AuthorX said:


> What if the that particular author just has a very strong fan base, a large mailing list, and a group of ARC members that are helping them launch their books with 20 five-star reviews every time? What if those 20 reviews are legitimate because they genuinely like their books?


The answer that Jealous Unsuccessful Author doesn't want to hear:

*What if that person is just a better writer than you are?*


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Elizabeth, I would never ask my readers to target and report books. That's wrong on so many levels. And no one here has suggested we do so. All anyone is asking is what we should do, in the meaning of indies policing ourselves.

What I think is appropriate, and I said it in another thread, is that we, as customers ourselves, calmly and rationally report egregious examples of title stuffing, copyright infringement or content scamming if we see it.

Or, we can wait until the ban hammer comes down, and look at thread after thread of writers come here and on other writer's boards and bemoan the loss of their accounts.

Whatever.

I'm going to do what _my_ ethics demands _I_ do, which is all I have total control over.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Jolie du Pre said:


> Mike, you wrote an over 700-word post addressing this issue. That's 700 words that could have been words for a work-in-progress. However, if authors have the time to be *self-appointed vigilantes* and also get their books written, then they should go for it.
> 
> As for me, I pop into a few threads on these boards and then I get back to my writing. I'm writing a lot this year, and I don't have the time to focus on anything other than my work, my readers, and my business.
> 
> To each his or her own.


"Self-appointed vigilantes"?? An item I saw on yesterday's news about a baby locked in a hot car somehow just flashed into my head.

At what point does honestly reporting things that are blatantly prohibited go from being the "right" thing to do to being vigilantism?

ETA: clarifying that reporting something is _not_ being a vigilante. Going after the offender yourself, that would be a vigilante.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Mike_Author said:


> As someone who has one or two comedy/humour books on Amazon, if there is one thing I know for sure it is comedy doesn't sell.


Speak for yourself. Comedy in book form is quite alive and well.


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## Molly Tomorrow (Jul 22, 2014)

I read a post (can't remember if it was here or not) by someone who considered all forms of marketing unethical because it gives some books an unfair advantage. I suspect everyone here will agree that this view is pretty idiotic. But, "unethical" is a really loaded term, which I think causes a lot of problems. I've read many posts (especially on the official KDP forums, phew can't remember the last time I went there) from people who think it is literally ilegal to do something against the KDP Terms of Service (ToS). In case you're wondering, it isn't (unless that thing is inherently ilegal anyway).

The way I see it is that the ToS is an agreement between Amazon and I. It's up to them to decide if I am breaching it, and whether or not they care, and what action they should take if they do. This is a business, not some kind of amatuer ethics committee. If there is a line, it's up to me to decide if I want to cross it and up to Amazon to decide where that line is and how they will respond if it's crossed.

I don't report other authors out of a professional courtesy and a strong belief in not ******* where I eat. I also don't leave poor reviews for other authors or downvote good reviews or upvote negative reviews, mostly because I'm not a ********. The only case where I would report another author would be blatant plagarism of my own work (although I didn't when it was just the cover and title). If it's another author's work being plagarised I would not report it, I'd just notify the author, because I don't know the full story and it's up to them whether or not they want to pursue it.

This falls under "policing other authors is not my job". Yes I'm a reader as well, and some of this stuff has an impact on me as a reader. But I figure that there are plenty of other readers that aren't authors, and if they want to start a dialogue with Amazon through reports and/or direct contact then they're probably better positioned to do it.

Edit: Another thing I think is worth mentioning is that the ToS is only selectively enforced by Amazon. A lot of stuff in it is only there to protect them in specific circumstances. I do not believe it's intrinsically unethical to do things against the ToS. These aren't moral guidelines and they aren't laws. This isn't suggesting that I (or anyone) should disregard them, just that the narrative around this stuff often affords them this status.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

Word Fan said:


> Jealous Unsuccessful Author whines:
> 
> _"No one can possibly like this book! The only possible way it can have such a great ranking and good reviews is because they are keyword stuffing!"_
> 
> ...


Yes, you are of course correct, but this is not the issue discussed here.
This is not about who sells how much.
This is about malpractice.
I'd want Jonathan Frantzen and Donna Tartt to be taken out of the gardening books as well. Had they put in The Goldfinch (Tomato Helpbook .... ... Regency ... ... ... Erotic World Bestseller Pulitzer Shortlist)


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## Molly Tomorrow (Jul 22, 2014)

Jena H said:


> "Self-appointed vigilantes"?? An item I saw on yesterday's news about a baby locked in a hot car somehow just flashed into my head.
> 
> At what point does honestly reporting things that are blatantly prohibited go from being the "right" thing to do to being vigilantism?


THINGS BEING DISCUSSED IN THIS THREAD <------- somewhere here --------> BABY LOCKED IN HOT CAR


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

I am generally of the "you mind your business, I'll mind mine" mindset with just about everything - work, life, my neighbors etc.  

The problem here is those lines can get blurry with regards to business in that one person's actions might not color people's opinions, but multiple persons' action can as well as inaction from those who stand by.  The Amazon forums are a very good example of this.  It's generally acknowledged that any hostility there against Indie authors is because of other indie authors - people who came there to spam, to rant about their readers, to basically ignore the rules of being a good net citizen so they could scream "Buy my book!" at every thread they could find.  This led a lot of people there to adopt a "say no to self-publishers" attitude.  The actions of the few potentially harm the whole. 

I am not a big fan of those who must ruin it for everyone else.  So I've made it a point to speak out against this sort of behavior.  It's made me enemies, but it's also made me friends as well.  

However, I'm also aware how easily things can snowball too.  One moment someone is writing a blog post decrying people treating their customers like crap, and the next it becomes a crusade to the point where they're so busy looking for bad behavior that they're ignoring their own fledgling career.  I try to always keep that in mind.  I'm here to write books and entertain, not be the author police.  As a result, for me it becomes a case of if I see something happening that I don't agree with I'll speak up (or report it if warranted), but I don't put on a Batman costume every night and go out patrolling for "bad guys".


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## William_Stadler (Nov 8, 2013)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> But you will drive yourself crazy trying to play whack-a-mole.


Very good point.

The truth is that Amazon is flooded with keyword stuffers and fake reviews. Heck, last I checked, Game of Thrones was listed in Action & Adventure. As a fan of Song of Ice and Fire, I'd hardly call it action and adventure. There's very little adventure to it. Some purists may disagree, but this is not a debate on GRRM.

Do I think it's right to keyword stuff? No. But really, a lot of times books that shouldn't be in a category will end up sinking anyway. Every now and then you'll get an anomaly that sticks, but this isn't particularly the norm. And frankly, some keywords are a bit vague. For instance, Amazon has a category called "Myths and Legends." Well that could really be anything. Just add a tinge of a myth in your historical romance, and you could throw it in that category, technically speaking.

So I don't really think "cheaters" are getting an unfair advantage. In fact, sometimes keywords shift books where they shouldn't be. I've had a few books get tossed into a category that I hadn't prompted, so I had to go back and adjust my keywords just to pull those books out.

My point is that I don't think there is a measurable unfair advantage for keyword stuffers.

I'd say the same is true for fake reviews. I imagine that a book would have to have 50+ reviews to even be respected by a reader anyway, and more power to the person who can shuck and jive to pull in 50 fake reviews. Typically, I've seen the number of fake reviews in the 1-30 range, and along with those fake reviews I've seen a matching sales ranking in the upper hundred thousands. Point: fake reviews aren't giving indie's the edge.

The real problem are the trolls--the ones who seek out indie books and write poor reviews having never read the book. Readers see the poor rating and back away. And how do you know if a troll is in fact a troll? Well, click on a poor reviewer and follow their other reviews, and you be the judge.

And for the record, please stop cheating.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Molly Tomorrow said:


> I read a post (can't remember if it was here or not) by someonAnother thing I think is worth mentioning is that the ToS is only selectively enforced by Amazon. A lot of stuff in it is only there to protect them in specific circumstances. I do not believe it's intrinsically unethical to do things against the ToS. These aren't moral guidelines and they aren't laws. This isn't suggesting that I (or anyone) should disregard them, just that the narrative around this stuff often affords them this status.


Excellent point.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> Excellent point.


Errm, I thought it was part of a business contract which is legally binding and they could sue my shoes off?


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> Errm, I thought it was part of a business contract which is legally binding and they could sue my shoes off?


Non sequitur.


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

Mike_Author said:


> As someone who has one or two comedy/humour books on Amazon, if there is one thing I know for sure it is comedy doesn't sell.


My best-seller is my humorous novel (admittedly in the UK). 

(sorry about the side-track. OK carry-on)


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

Patty Jansen said:


> Fake reviews on an author's own books and keyword stuffing... bleh. It's tacky and cheap, but *potential buyers see through it anyway,* so who really cares? It's not as if this tactic has found great success anyway.


Not sure about that. The browsing reader knows little about what goes on 'behind the scenes'. My friends have been shocked and bewildered when I've told them about fake reviews etc. I've also given talks about ebook publishing and elicited gasps of shock and surprise. They take all the reviews at face value and would see no reason for anyone to fake a review.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> Non sequitur.


Sorry, I'm just a European who thinks Americans sue each other for everything all the time.


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## xandy3 (Jun 13, 2010)

Annie B said:


> I think if you see blatant plagiarism and things like that, sure, report it. I would, anyway.
> 
> As for keywords and reviews and stuff, I don't worry about it much. I tend to pay more attention to what successful authors are doing than what scammers are doing, and the two categories don't overlap much.
> 
> I've heard lots of indies say things like being in box sets, having perma-free titles, ARC lists, and stuff like that is "cheating"... so I think the lines can get crossed pretty quickly by people who are somehow offended by the success of other people. So personally, I'd always err on the side of caution when reporting what I think is bad behavior. Policing other writers is not my job. Writing great books and running my business in a smart way is my job.


^^ All of that. Plus I'd make 100% sure that I had _proof_ of an author plagiarizing or committing any other atrocity.

Amazon deletes reviews if they think they're by someone you know personally anyways, regardless of anybody reporting it.

I had reported somebody in the past for using a sock puppet to attack another author and her books, and even attack other reviewers who left positive reviews (myself included, back when I still wrote reviews). But, it was pretty extreme and the sockpuppet was actually attacking the author's character and using profanity.

I fear stuff like this will lead Amazon to cut the review policy; that would be a shame because I buy a lot of products other than just books. I check reviews to make sure I get what I pay for. I'd hate to see the reviews of electronics disappear, thus leading me to buy a device that doesn't work properly.


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

Doglover said:


> I have one awards for my writing in a small way, but I wouldn't include it in a book description. It is not the Pulitzer, is it? Any idiot can say they are award winning.


According to an advertising website (could be BookBub) awards do indeed influence readers to buy.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> Sorry, I'm just a European who thinks Americans sue each other for everything all the time.


Again, not sure what that has to do with this discussion, but feel free to be misinformed.


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## Amy Corwin (Jan 3, 2011)

> I'd say the same is true for fake reviews. I imagine that a book would have to have 50+ reviews to even be respected by a reader anyway, and more power to the person who can shuck and jive to pull in 50 fake reviews. Typically, I've seen the number of fake reviews in the 1-30 range, and along with those fake reviews I've seen a matching sales ranking in the upper hundred thousands. Point: fake reviews aren't giving indie's the edge.
> 
> The real problem are the trolls--the ones who seek out indie books and write poor reviews having never read the book. Readers see the poor rating and back away. And how do you know if a troll is in fact a troll? Well, click on a poor reviewer and follow their other reviews, and you be the judge.


Speaking as a reader, I could not care less if there are more than five or six reviews. To me, anything above twenty is a waste and I pay no attention to it whatsoever, mostly because I only read a few reviews in each star category to get a feel for what may be in the book (looking for things like present tense *yuck*, heavy sensuality, language, that sort of thing. I don't mind a little of each, but not "mass quantities").

Other than that, I could not care less if there are ten reviews or 10,000. I do find that I tend NOT to like books that are really popular, so maybe I'm weird. But anything above 20 reviews is just a waste. As long as there are 1 or 2 reviews, I'm okay with it. Sometimes, I'll even go for a book with no reviews! 

So the 50 or above 50 thing is, for me as a reader, simply not true. For me.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> Again, not sure what that has to do with this discussion, but feel free to be misinformed.


Well, I believed that by accepting The TERMS of my KDP contract with amazon, I have an obligation to abide by the terms I agreed to.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

DashaGLogan said:


> Well, I believed that by accepting The TERMS of my KDP contract with amazon, I have an obligation to abide by the terms I agreed to.


Same here. That being said, I think one would be blind to not acknowledge that they can be somewhat flighty in their enforcement of said terms. The flip side being, if you're going to take the chance and bend/break some of those rules, know the risk you're taking, and don't come whining if Amazon decides to make an example of you.


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## Guest (Jul 23, 2015)

*1. Where is the line between keyword optimisation (which is generally agreed to be legit) and keyword stuffing?*

I say there is no line and have at it. Until Amazon stops putting Paranormal Romance in the Horror category, killing visibility for authors in that genre, anything otherwise is of minor account. But I can definitely see authors of certain genres being angry with romance titles filling up the top spots that don't belong there.

*2. Where is the line between soliciting reviews (legit - I think) and obtaining fake reviews. Obviously paying for reviews is categorically NOT ok. However what about people you know? If we were to agree that asking your spouse to review your book would not be OK, at what level of familiarity/relationship does this become OK? Someone you casually know in your office?*

You shouldn't ask anyone you know in real life to review your book on Amazon. Obviously if one does it, nothing will happen, but if you get 50 friends to review your book and they write reviews that are biased readers will notice and get upset if the review can be considered false advertising.

No harm in putting 'please review my book' in the back of your books, or even doing a 'call to action' for readers on facebook, asking your fans to help out. But stay away from people you know in the real world who just review your book because they know you.

*3. There is a clear schism on this forum between people who think "just get on with writing/worry about your own book/the ethical behaviour of other authors doesn't harm your sales and the second group who think "cheaters should be called out/my sales are being harmed/the reputation of self-publishing is being harmed/quietly abiding by cheating (or ignoring it) is essentially as bad as cheating itself". Where do you fall or do you sit on the fence, partially agreeing with both?*

No, I agree with the former. Mind your own business and stop trying to mess with people.

*4. Do you have a book which has been directly and clearly impacted by another author who you believe cheats? What did you do about it? How did they cheat?*

Not to my knowledge.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

swolf said:


> Excellent point.


Swolf may not remember, but for a looong time I was in the "if it's against the ToS then YOu are in the wrong," I have since come to the experience and wisdom level that most ToS are draconian limitations of liability with no equal circumstance of negotiation that are used as a cover the larger corporation's butt if a problem should arise. That's why most "violations" do not bother Amazon at all. My permafree IS a violation. Everyone's permafree is a violation because the ToS does not allow us to price lower elsewhere without matching on Amazon. Now, we all have emails from KDP staff that they don't enforce that, but there have been very real concerns that too many free books would result in a change in Amazon's "blind eye" position. Nope. They made a FREE only bestseller list.

You work with Zon long enough you really start to see their motivations are never altruisitc or about a moral high ground, they're about the bottom line. And once you know your adversary's motivation for action or inaction, it becomes very easy to figure out what's going to make them act and what will not.

I have endured a more powerful author's frenzied readers campaigning against my books based on her frequently sharing HER opinion on matters. Why? Because my subtitles are Pride & Prejudice Variation (this author thinks she invented that), my prices dare to be higher than hers, and I write in a series. At one point, I could count on 20-40 readers coming over and downvoting every 5 star review I got and giving me unverified reviews that are one stars. They didn't realize their Public Wishlists said their real names and we were all a part of the same reader groups on Facebook for our genre. I let it go, kept doing my thing. But then other authors in my circle of friends started to be targeted due to association with me, and I blogged about it. I blogged about the fact that I literally watched so many bad reviews come in on a particular book, some even wondering why I even continued to write when clearly everyone HATES books like mine. 8 1-star reviews in a 48 hours period, over 700 sales that first week with less than 10 returns. (it had a preorder). Who do I listen to, 8 readers, many who didn't even buy the book, or 690?

My blog post got a ton of traction because I was FAR from the only author ever targeted by certain authors and readers who felt they owned JAFF. Suddenly, not only did many of those 1-star reviews go away, the backlash against my books stopped. It sopped for abunch of other authors too. I still sell just as I always have. I probably did lose and gain readers by being public about it, nothing is ever without consequences. And it was NEVER "this author is horrible, go down vote her books" type of call. No. It was the author regularly sharing her opinion that all novels should be $X dollars or that only books a certain page length are worthwhile to the genre, or that series are never liked by readers. It was always a subtle message regularly put out on a discussion board knowing readers would be influenced.

So any way that's been my experience and growth on this issue and why I now err on the side of do no harm rather than feel I am called to report books.


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## Bbates024 (Nov 3, 2014)

Gosh, I was on fiver yesterday looking at bknights just thinking about getting my .99 cent book a little love and was shocked at how many people offer to review books for 5 bucks. 

I wonder where is the line on something like that, is it if they actually read the book, cause there are plenty of larger companies that charge more than 5 for a review. 

I guess I'd just never do it the last thing I ever want is for someone to make my books tainted. At least then if you ever get accused of something you will always know that you never did something unethical.

Anyways I try to stay out of people's business if I can. For me, it just isn't worth the hassle. As a reader, I have reported books for title's like Horror,fantasy,shifter,magic,stuff. Seriously you aren't even trying to hide it and Amazon can't catch all of them alone. I think people who write well do not resort to that kind of tactics to sell books.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> Well, I believed that by accepting The TERMS of my KDP contract with amazon, I have an obligation to abide by the terms I agreed to.


Yes, you have a legal obligation. The question here is whether or not it would be unethical to break those rules, especially in an arena where Amazon doesn't seem to be too concerned with enforcing some of them.

Then there's also the question of whether or not you have an obligation to ensure others are abiding by the terms too.


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## RaeC (Aug 20, 2013)

Sometimes I think these 'concerns' are less about what's healthy for the industry and what makes indies look good, and more about disliking particular tactics not meant to attract the type of reader who will buy _your _book. That's how I felt about the 'fairness' arguments concerning KU1 too.

If there's clear, unequivocally unethical behavior, I see nothing wrong with reporting fast and free. Anything in the gray area, or just superficially irritating because it doesn't attract the right type of reader (ie you or your fans)...c'mon.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Swolf may not remember, but for a looong time I was in the "if it's against the ToS then YOu are in the wrong," I have since come to the experience and wisdom level that most ToS are draconian limitations of liability with no equal circumstance of negotiation that are used as a cover the larger corporation's butt if a problem should arise. That's why most "violations" do not bother Amazon at all. My permafree IS a violation. Everyone's permafree is a violation because the ToS does not allow us to price lower elsewhere without matching on Amazon. Now, we all have emails from KDP staff that they don't enforce that, but there have been very real concerns that too many free books would result in a change in Amazon's "blind eye" position. Nope. They made a FREE only bestseller list.


I not only remember that discussion, I participated in it. Permafree is an excellent example of a 'violation' of the ToS that someone would be hard-pressed to describe as unethical. (Although some have tried.)


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

Rick Gualtieri said:


> Same here. That being said, I think one would be blind to not acknowledge that they can be somewhat flighty in their enforcement of said terms. The flip side being, if you're going to take the chance and bend/break some of those rules, know the risk you're taking, and don't come whining if Amazon decides to make an example of you.
> 
> I, for one, have very little sympathy for the "Amazon banned me because I purposely broke one rule" threads that pop up from time to time.


Well, they may be flighty enforcing, but I still signed.
I would also note that we all have contracts with the European SRL, Mexico, Japan, etc. 
There will possibly be a EU law prohibiting even the display of 18+ Material before 8pm - if such changes come, I don't want to be responsible for Amazon being dragged to the Khadi over my wrongly categorized book.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

As a reader, I DESPISE miscategorization in all caps. I hate seeing paranormal romance in every category. At least with Sword and Sorcery I can find that style of fantasy again. Before that category, I had just given up.

The point of categories is the READER. As long as keywords and manipulation means that I get my books before the right reader, within expectations, then all is good. When my manipulations mean that I put my books into the wrong categories, which makes readers frustrated, then I do a disservice to the reader.


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

Nick Marsden said:


> I disagree with this. Some people buy books just by searching and looking at the number of reviews (for social proof). If the reviews are generally good and there are lots of them, the chances of a reader buying a book go up. Then, they have to realize their mistake before 7 day return period or they're hosed. If the reviews are faked or if someone paid for them or they loaded their description/editorial reviews/title with keywords, many readers won't even realize it (okay, they might if the title is loaded. I don't know why people buy books with loaded titles at all, it just looks unprofessional)
> 
> It's a numbers game, just like those guys who STILL do the Nigerian Prince email scam. It must still work, or people wouldn't still be doing it.
> 
> Bottom line, keyword loading and fake reviews cheat the readers, not so much other authors. Because of this, I think it's *worse* than targeting other authors.


Right, but when a hundred people all leave 1 star reviews after being tricked by the 20 fake 5 stars, the problem is self correcting. Scams that are nothing more than scams never work for long. Readers get wise. Amazon gets wise (see KU 2.0).

It's great to champion the cause of the readers and all, but they have been dealing with this type of thing since they started buying books. What book (or movie, album, etc.) doesn't try to "trick" buyers by focusing on its positives. Hell, the movie Norbit can legitimately paste an "Academy Award Winning" sticker on its cover. Do you think people will automatically lump it in with Schindler's List?


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Voelker58 said:


> Right, but when a hundred people all leave 1 star reviews after being tricked by the 20 fake 5 stars, the problem is self correcting. Scams that are nothing more than scams never work for long. Readers get wise. Amazon gets wise (see KU 2.0).


Agreed to a point. I definitely think that in many cases these issues are self-correcting with time. I've seen it happen, where a book that launched with blatant padded reviews eventually had reality catch up to it.

The problem there being that by the time reality did catch up, that author had most likely made bank.

So, long term I really don't worry much about this. Short term, though, it ticks me off to see it happen.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> I not only remember that discussion, I participated in it. Permafree is an excellent example of a 'violation' of the ToS that someone would be hard-pressed to describe as unethical. (Although some have tried.)


There are people whose permafrees have not been accepted and they had to raise their price again.
There are countries where it is illegal (yes, not only TOS offense), to offer books for different prices. 
You can still get into trouble over a permafree.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> There are people whose permafrees have not been accepted and they had to raise their price again.
> There are countries where it is illegal (yes, not only TOS offense), to offer books for different prices.
> You can still get into trouble over a permafree.


Yes, Amazon decides which books they want to price-match. Again, not sure how that applies to the ethics of the situation.

And I'd be curious to find out more about those countries. So if two different companies offer a book at different prices, they're both charged with a crime? Could you give me an example of that happening? (Again, not sure how it applies to this discussion, but I'm curious.)


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Voelker58 said:


> Right, but when a hundred people all leave 1 star reviews after being tricked by the 20 fake 5 stars, the problem is self correcting. Scams that are nothing more than scams never work for long. Readers get wise. Amazon gets wise (see KU 2.0).
> 
> It's great to champion the cause of the readers and all, but they have been dealing with this type of thing since they started buying books. What book (or movie, album, etc.) doesn't try to "trick" buyers by focusing on its positives. Hell, the movie Norbit can legitimately paste an "Academy Award Winning" sticker on its cover. Do you think people will automatically lump it in with Schindler's List?


Meanwhile, a whole lot of paying customers have wasted their time and money on junk. The self-correction phenomenon is cold comfort, and it's not a load that should be left to anonymous others to bear. If more writers reported, fewer of their customers would waste their time and money on junk. The garbage is, after all, the biggest problem with Amazon. Search any topic and 5% to 50% of the results will be garbage.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> Yes, Amazon decides which books they want to price-match. Again, not sure how that applies to the ethics of the situation.
> 
> And I'd be curious to find out more about those countries. So if two different companies offer a book at different prices, they're both charged with a crime? Could you give me an example of that happening? (Again, not sure how it applies to this discussion, but I'm curious.)


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price_agreement

It applies to this discussion, because above permafrees were mentioned as TOS violations - which as was put, might be unethical, but not illegal. Well, depends on where you sell.

Or read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Law


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## William_Stadler (Nov 8, 2013)

Amy Corwin said:


> So the 50 or above 50 thing is, for me as a reader, simply not true. For me.


I wish there were more readers like you. Then I might actually have a readership haha.

That said, I'm such a hypocrite, because I tend to read books with a lot of reviews.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

What I generally mean to say is, that what some consider a non-unethical disregard of Amazon TOS may turn into law-breaking because some country you never even check your sales reports for, like Netherlands, suddenly changes a law and you, almost innocent gamer, will be the first to get blamed, so I don't think it is wise to advise people not to take the TOS seriously, even if you don't feel unethical.


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

Douglas Milewski said:


> As a reader, I DESPISE miscategorization in all caps. I hate seeing paranormal romance in every category. At least with Sword and Sorcery I can find that style of fantasy again. Before that category, I had just given up.
> 
> The point of categories is the READER. As long as keywords and manipulation means that I get my books before the right reader, within expectations, then all is good. When my manipulations mean that I put my books into the wrong categories, which makes readers frustrated, then I do a disservice to the reader.


I TOTALLY agree about intentional abuse. People who stuff titles and keywords with things that aren't even in the books suck.

But the real issue is that Amazon categories are just bad.

Case in point: Let's say, hypothetically, that someone writes a Dragon Shifter Romance. That is a very hot niche in shifter romance right now. Perfectly legit thing to write about. No one would ever argue that.

Readers will be searching for it. Lots of readers.

So the writer puts a dragon on the cover. Dragon in the title. Uses dragons as a keyword. This helps the readers who are looking for dragon shifter books immensely, by making it easier to find the book they want to read.

AMAZON decides dragons belong in Sword and Sorcery (not a bad assumption), so they stick books with dragon titles and keywords in Sword and Sorcery. Does her book belong there? By Amazon's reasoning, yes.

*HERE IS THE BIG THING EVERYONE SEEMS TO BE GETTING WRONG IN THIS DEBATE:
*
Does it help her to have her book there? *NO*.

None of her prospective readers are looking there.

Any Sword and Sorcery fan who stumbles on in there is more likely to leave a bad review, since it is not like the other books there.

No one actually gives a crap about ranking in smaller subgenres. This is a NYT BESTSELLING AUTHOR. She is not going to put "#1 in amazon sword and sorcery" on her covers.

It hurts the visibility of other authors. Yep. I'm going out on a limb to say this author would not want to intentionally hurt the rankings or visibility of another author. I am basing this on the fact that romance authors tend to work together and look out for each other. They realize there are plenty of readers out there, and drawing them in helps everyone. It is not one author against another. It is all authors against the ease of turning on the tv, or playing a video game, or just browsing the internet instead of reading a book. Romance authors get the idea that a rising tide raises all ships. That is why, while so many authors in other genres are snarking at each other and trying to bring each other down, romance authors are busy cross-promoting, doing box sets, pioneering new methods, and working together to DOMINATE the charts.

You want to know why PNR books are "cluttering" so many charts? Because people read the @#$% out of it!

Maybe its time to stop whining that the dragon shifter books are taking up "your" spots on "your" chart, and start thanking some of these powerhouse authors for putting some extra eyes on some under appreciated categories!!


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## xandy3 (Jun 13, 2010)

William_Stadler said:


> I wish there were more readers like you. Then I might actually have a readership haha.
> 
> That said, I'm such a hypocrite, because I tend to read books with a lot of reviews.


As a reader, I never look at reviews. I just read the sample. If I like it and want to read more, I buy it. 
I just assume reviews are other people's opinions, and what someone else likes I may not and vice versa.

However, there's one (trad pub) book that I sincerely regretted buying. I _wish _ that I had read the reviews, and seen that it's not the type of book I had hoped it was.  
Also, I should mention this was a paperback rather than an ebook.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price_agreement


That's an agreement between publishers and booksellers, not a law. And the one example given, was eventually deemed illegal.



DashaGLogan said:


> Or read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Law


That law means that the bookseller can't discount more than 5% below the publisher's price. With self-publishing, we're the publishers. That law doesn't stop me from setting my price differently with different book sellers.



DashaGLogan said:


> It applies to this discussion, because above permafrees were mentioned as TOS violations - which as was put, might be unethical, but not illegal. Well, depends on where you sell.


Neither of those have anything to do with permafree, or this discussion.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> What I generally mean to say is, that what some consider a non-unethical disregard of Amazon TOS may turn into law-breaking because some country you never even check your sales reports for, like Netherlands, suddenly changes a law and you, almost innocent gamer, will be the first to get blamed, so I don't think it is wise to advise people not to take the TOS seriously, even if you don't feel unethical.


Stop spreading misinformation.


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## Guest (Jul 23, 2015)

Unethical behavior is, ultimately, any behavior that if allowed to reach a critical mass can break the system. Or, for those of you that studied philosophical ethics, adopt no position that you would not want to see adopted universally. 

It is easy to say, for example, that buying reviews is "not a big deal." It is easy to say that until the volume of paid for reviews reaches a critical mass and completely destroys the usefulness of the review system in general. Buying reviews created an "arms race" that forced upwards the number of reviews an author needs to actually make a dent in Amazon's algorithms. Buying reviews negatively impacts the ability of people to get advertising with companies that require X number of reviews with Y rating. Buying reviews has caused readers to stop trusting ALL reviews and view any positive review with suspicion. We have reached a point where readers can no longer trust the reviews they read, thus making reviews less valuable now than they once were. 

This is the principle I live by. Would I want everyone to engage in the behavior that I myself am considering? What would be the ramifications of everyone engaging in the course of action I am considering? You can not look at a behavior in a vacuum. You need to look at it with a wider lens because, if left to fester, small negative actions can grow and have widespread consequences. 

Sometimes people use "gaming" the system to condemn a position they simply don't like. But gaming the system means using the system in a way that it was not designed. I might quibble with someone over whether or not a book is contemporary fantasy or urban fantasy, but that is a literary discussion about the nuances of the genres. And if I think a book is contemporary fantasy but the author decides to categorize it as urban fantasy based on her understanding of the genre, that is simply a disagreement. Not an ethical issue. The person isn't engaging in a behavior to deliberately "do" something against the way the system is designed. The person is acting based on her understanding of genre. 

If, on the other hand, uses the keyword "sweet romance" for their erotica in order to try to hide it from Amazon's adult filters, that is an unethical gaming of the system. The author is engaging in a flagrant behavior, for her personal benefit, to avoid mechanisms in the system. If one person does it, it isn't a big deal. But if a critical mass of erotica authors do this, it breaks search for readers looking for sweet romances and harms the authors of those books. 

Whether or not Amazon enforces its own TOS is not relevant to a discussion of whether or not an action is ethical. Enforcement of a law is not the same thing as whether or not something is or isn't ethical. It sure as heck wasn't ethical when my sister-in-law's boyfriend tried to kill her by ramming the car through the front window of the house. The fact that the prosecutor's office decided not to proceed with formal changes and just gave him a  driving citation doesn't suddenly make driving the car through the window ethical. So Amazon's enforcement is a separate topic.

Whether or not it is "self correcting" is also not the issue. As the "self-correcting" process, eventually, may actually harm more than it helps. In the case of fake reviews, again as example, if the "self correction" is that a bunch of people get tricked into buying the book and then leave one star reviews, all that means is that A: A bunch of people were cheated out of their money and B. people are going to start judging all positive reviews as potentially fake. This isn't exactly a positive self-correction. 

There is another thread where someone asked a question about putting author names in keywords (i.e. if you are a horror writer, putting Stephen King) in your keyword choices. Is that ethical? Well, what happens to search if ALL HORROR AUTHORS start to include "Stephen King" in their keywords? If your thought process is "Well, I don't expect everyone to do it. Just me" then the behavior is unethical: you are adopting a selfish policy to circumvent the way the system works but you don't want others to do the same. You are "gaming" the system for personal benefit, and doing so in such a way that if a critical volume of people followed your actions it would break the system for everyone.

Ethics is more than a dictionary definition. It is about thinking through how your individual actions impact the greater community.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Unethical behavior is, ultimately, any behavior that if allowed to reach a critical mass can break the system. Or, for those of you that studied philosophical ethics, adopt no position that you would not want to see adopted universally.... (lots more deleted to save space)


And once more I must bemoan the lack of a "like" button in this forum. Well said.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> That's an agreement between publishers, not a law. And the one example given, was eventually deemed illegal.
> 
> That law means that the bookseller can't discount more than 5% below the publisher's price. With self-publishing, we're the publishers. That law doesn't stop me from setting my price differently with different book sellers.
> 
> Neither of those have anything to do with permafree, or this discussion.


It is good to see somebody understanding it all so much better and explaining to me what is relevant in this discussion. I must thank you.
As a European author, I am constantly reminded by all my sellers that the book prices may not differ from one shop to the next, but I am sure, your expertise tops theirs.
This is what the Permafree Mail from Amazon in Germany reads like: 
"Unsere Nutzungsbedingungen erfordern, dass Sie uns einen Listenpreis bereitstellen, der den Listenpreis (inkl. Mwst.) anderer Vertriebskanäle nicht übersteigt. Zudem fordert das Gesetz in einigen Ländern selbe Listenpreise für alle Vertriebskanäle. "
It says the law requires the same list price on all sales channels in various countries.


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## Guest (Jul 23, 2015)

Voelker58 said:


> I TOTALLY agree about intentional abuse. People who stuff titles and keywords with things that aren't even in the books suck.
> 
> But the real issue is that Amazon categories are just bad.
> 
> ...


I was a horror author who made nothing and crossed over into paranormal romance and made a living. I wrote some of these dragon type books. Not sure if they were in sword and sorcery or not, but if they were, I never got any bad reviews as a result of that. More importantly, I can scan the horror charts and point to many highly star rated books there who are also not suffering from being in that category. NO, Readers are NOT becoming aware of niche genres as the result of Parnanormal Romance books dumped there. More likely, readers of said niche genre scan and skip over the obvious offenders of the category.

The one that really gets my gripe of course is the ones listed in horror for no explicit reason I can imagine. Right there on the top 10 horror authors page I see THREE paranormal romance authors who have no business being there. I mean, I have zero ideas why the authors would want their books there, but it is infinitely discouraging to the true authors of the genre.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Unethical behavior is, ultimately, any behavior that if allowed to reach a critical mass can break the system. Or, for those of you that studied philosophical ethics, adopt no position that you would not want to see adopted universally.
> 
> It is easy to say, for example, that buying reviews is "not a big deal." It is easy to say that until the volume of paid for reviews reaches a critical mass and completely destroys the usefulness of the review system in general. Buying reviews created an "arms race" that forced upwards the number of reviews an author needs to actually make a dent in Amazon's algorithms. Buying reviews negatively impacts the ability of people to get advertising with companies that require X number of reviews with Y rating. Buying reviews has caused readers to stop trusting ALL reviews and view any positive review with suspicion. We have reached a point where readers can no longer trust the reviews they read, thus making reviews less valuable now than they once were.
> 
> This is the principle I live by. Would I want everyone to engage in the behavior that I myself am considering? What would be the ramifications of everyone engaging in the course of action I am considering? You can not look at a behavior in a vacuum. You need to look at it with a wider lens because, if left to fester, small negative actions can grow and have widespread consequences.


I disagree with that definition of unethical. Something can be unethical on its own, like buying fake reviews, without having to extrapolate it out to the consequences of everyone doing it. I don't have to think about 'what if everyone did it?' when determining if plagiarism is unethical. What if everyone put their books in the same category? Say Fiction. The result of that would certainly make Amazon's categorization functionality useless for readers, but that wouldn't mean that each person placing their fiction book in the Fiction category would be acting unethically.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Sometimes people use "gaming" the system to condemn a position they simply don't like. But gaming the system means using the system in a way that it was not designed. I might quibble with someone over whether or not a book is contemporary fantasy or urban fantasy, but that is a literary discussion about the nuances of the genres. And if I think a book is contemporary fantasy but the author decides to categorize it as urban fantasy based on her understanding of the genre, that is simply a disagreement. Not an ethical issue. The person isn't engaging in a behavior to deliberately "do" something against the way the system is designed. The person is acting based on her understanding of genre.
> 
> If, on the other hand, uses the keyword "sweet romance" for their erotica in order to try to hide it from Amazon's adult filters, that is an unethical gaming of the system. The author is engaging in a flagrant behavior, for her personal benefit, to avoid mechanisms in the system. If one person does it, it isn't a big deal. But if a critical mass of erotica authors do this, it breaks search for readers looking for sweet romances and harms the authors of those books.


Yes, if someone is placing their erotica book in 'sweet romance', they're miscategorizing it, because the definition of sweet romance excludes erotica. However, the reality is, not many erotica authors are doing that. What they're doing is placing their erotica books in the romance category, because they've realized that yes, they can escape the Erotica category (not the adult filter) and all of its restrictions. Not only that, they've realized that already existing romances blur the line between romance and erotica, and what's already in there isn't much different from what they're writing. So if a book with explicit sex has romantic themes, is it really unethical to place it in the Romance category? I don't think so.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Whether or not Amazon enforces its own TOS is not relevant to a discussion of whether or not an action is ethical. Enforcement of a law is not the same thing as whether or not something is or isn't ethical. It sure as heck wasn't ethical when my sister-in-law's boyfriend tried to kill her by ramming the car through the front window of the house. The fact that the prosecutor's office decided not to proceed with formal changes and just gave him a driving citation doesn't suddenly make driving the car through the window ethical. So Amazon's enforcement is a separate topic.


It's completely relevant. The ToS is an agreement between Amazon and writers. If Amazon shows no concern about heeding one of their own rules, why is it unethical for us to do the same? The ToS states that we can't price lower on other platforms. Does that make everyone in permafree unethical? Certainly not, since Amazon themselves awards those people with price matching and places on their free bestseller lists.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Ethics is more than a dictionary definition. It is about thinking through how your individual actions impact the greater community.


No, that's the socialist's definition of ethics. And it completely ignores human nature.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> It is good to see somebody understanding it all so much better and explaining to me what is relevant in this discussion. I must thank you.
> As a European author, I am constantly reminded by all my sellers that the book prices may not differ from one shop to the next, but I am sure, your expertise tops theirs.
> This is what the Permafree Mail from Amazon in Germany reads like:
> "Unsere Nutzungsbedingungen erfordern, dass Sie uns einen Listenpreis bereitstellen, der den Listenpreis (inkl. Mwst.) anderer Vertriebskanale nicht übersteigt. Zudem fordert das Gesetz in einigen Landern selbe Listenpreise für alle Vertriebskanale. "
> It says the law requires the same list price on all sales channels in various countries.


I'm just reading the links you gave me:



> A fixed book price agreement (FBPA) is a form of resale price maintenance applied to books. It commonly takes the form of *an agreement between publishers and booksellers* which set the prices at which books were to be sold to the public.





> Lang Law is the informal name given to French law number 81-766, from 10 August 1981, relating to book prices. The law establishes a fixed price for books sold in France, limiting price discounts on them. The law is named after Jack Lang, the French Minister of Culture at the time.
> 
> The Lang Law works as follows:
> ◾The publisher decides on a price for its book and prints it on the back
> ◾*Booksellers are not allowed to sell a book for a discount of more than 5% below the publisher's price*.


Sorry, but I can read with comprehension, and that's what they say. If you can't comprehend it, then I'm certainly going to mistrust any anecdotal information you bring to this discussion.


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## Guest (Jul 23, 2015)

swolf said:


> I disagree with that definition of unethical. Something can be unethical on its own, like buying fake reviews, without having to extrapolate it out to the consequences of everyone doing it. I don't have to think about 'what if everyone did it?' when determining if plagiarism is unethical. What if everyone put their books in the same category? Say Fiction. The result of that would certainly make Amazon's categorization functionality useless for readers, but that wouldn't mean that each person placing their fiction book in the Fiction category would be acting unethically.


I think you are confusing ethics with morals. Ethics are a social mechanism. Morals are an internal construct. It is possible for a person's ethics to conflict with a person's morals. Morally there are things I am personally not comfortable with that I still believe other consenting adults have a legal right to do. I have friends who are swingers. I personally would never engage in that lifestyle, but ethically so long as everyone involved is a consenting adult I wouldn't push for legislation to outlaw the practice. I personally don't do drugs, but what another person chooses to put in his or her body isn't any concern to me. Moral issues only become ethical issues when they trigger a social mechanism. If you want to smoke a little wacky weed on the weekend, that isn't a problem. If you spoke weed and then get behind the wheel of a car and risk doing actual harm to other human beings, now you've crossed over from an internal "moral" decision to an ethical one.



> Yes, if someone is placing their erotica book in 'sweet romance', they're miscategorizing it, because the definition of sweet romance excludes erotica. However, the reality is, not many erotica authors are doing that. What they're doing is placing their erotica books in the romance category, because they've realized that yes, they can escape the Erotica category (not the adult filter) and all of its restrictions. Not only that, they've realized that already existing romances blur the line between romance and erotica, and what's already in there isn't much different from what they're writing. So if a book with explicit sex has romantic themes, is it really unethical to place it in the Romance category? I don't think so.


An erotica can also be a romance, and if it is both there is no reason to not put the book in both categories. But if an erotica is NOT a romance, and you are only putting it in romance to avoid a filter, then you are engaging in an action that can potentially break the system. I'm not going to turn this into a thread on genre definitions, because that isn't the point. IF a book is BOTH erotica and romance then the author should of course put the book in both so readers can find it. IF the book is NOT a romance and the author is putting it there just to be sneaky, then the answer is the action is unethical. The author is not acting in good faith, is using the system in a way that it was not intended, and if everyone did it (i.e. every erotica author put there books in romance whether they were romance or not) it causes problems for the customer.

To separate the ethical issue from genre: Let's say you sell beer. And for the sake of example, you are selling beer on Amazon. Amazon puts a mechanism in place to only allow your beer products to appear in searches for customers who are verified to be 21 or older. This means lots of people don't see your product in search, because they never verified their age with Amazon. You decide to stop placing your beer under the beer category, and instead list it under soda so that it appears in general searches. And hey, you get away with it! And you start selling more beer. Other beer sellers realize you are doing this, and now they do it as well. Now suddenly the soda category is full of beer products. People looking for soda are finding beer brands on the soda bestseller list. Parents start complaining because their kids are buying beer on Amazon even though Amazon says they have the beer products behind an age verified filter.



> It's completely relevant. The ToS is an agreement between Amazon and writers. If Amazon shows no concern about heeding one of their own rules, why is it unethical for us to do the same? The ToS states that we can't price lower on other platforms. Does that make everyone in permafree unethical? Certainly not, since Amazon themselves awards those people with price matching and places on their free bestseller lists.


Enforcement of a rule doesn't change anything. A bunch of drunk executivesallegedly made racist comments to Native American students, poured beer on them, and were propositioning the girls. The prosecutor only decided to press charges against one of the men, and that was for a disorderly conduct. The fact that only one man was charged doesn't mean it is acceptable to make racist comments at Native American students, pour beer on them, and proposition little girls. It means the prosecutor either didn't have enough evidence to move forward with criminal charges, or was himself racist, or had his hands tied by someone else to prevent more aggressive prosecution. The lack of enforcement doesn't make the alleged activities suddenly ethical.

Further, I never said "violating the TOS is inherently unethical." The TOS itself is only an explanation of how Amazon expects the site to work and some "we're covering our backside" language to protect them from lawsuits. It is their house, they can chose to ignore their own rules if they want to. If I invite you into my home under the condition that you don't wear shoes on the carpet, I can chose to enforce or not enforce that edict because it is MY HOME. If I allow Dasha to wear shoes, I still reserve the right to throw you out if you do. Because it is my house. And if you want to enter my house you agree to my rules. If I decide to be a hypocrite and not follow my own rules, well, that doesn't change anything. You still can't wear shoes on my carpet. 

Of course, me being a hypocrite would be unethical, but the poor behavior of one person doesn't mitigate the poor behavior of another. Or as my mother always said, "If everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you jump?"


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> I have zero ideas why the authors would want their books there, but it is infinitely discouraging to the true authors of the genre.


First, I was trying to point out that most of the time, the authors don't want to be there. You said it yourself, you're not even sure if your dragon books ended up in fantasy. If you have vampires, werewolves, ghosts, demons etc. in your PNR, you might end up in horror. Just like dragons might get you put in sword and sorcery.

Second, have you read the books? Some PNR does play up the scary aspect. Maybe they are not so miscategorized.

Third, and most important, who made you the judge of who qualifies as a "true" author of the genre? I seem to recall seeing Dean Koontz's last book floating around the romance charts as well as horror. But I guess he doesn't count, since he is a "true" author?

Do I really think PNR books are helping sales of the random subgenres they end up in? Not much. I'm sure there have been a few books purchased because of it. I also don't think they are really hurting the sales of the other books there. Do I think authors are getting bad reviews from being in the wrong categories? I am 100% certain of that. Maybe not enough to really hurt the average of a book that has 100+ reviews, but no one enjoys getting bad reviews.

Again, the real problem is more with amazon's category system in the first place. If they just let authors choose, we wouldn't have this issue, and the obvious scammers would be easier to deal with.

It doesn't help a legit author to be in the wrong categories. And manipulating the system to chart in genres that don't have any eyes on them anyway is just dumb.


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## Guest (Jul 23, 2015)

_[link and identifying info removed by moderator]_

Now, I may be oblivious, but until it unproved otherwise to me - the author has selected horror as a main category. They aren't there because of some random keyword. The keywords are to do with subgenres, not anything outside what you categorized.


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## Mxz (Jan 17, 2015)

William_Stadler said:


> The real problem are the trolls--the ones who seek out indie books and write poor reviews having never read the book. Readers see the poor rating and back away. And how do you know if a troll is in fact a troll? Well, click on a poor reviewer and follow their other reviews, and you be the judge.


I agree. Amazon is so focused on removing the false positive reviews that they don't even care about false negative reviews. For people who are just starting and don't have many fans or reviews, it immensely hurts. If people look at the lists where the star rating is the only thing that is mentioned, and if they go by ratings to quickly weed out books, the book will be ignored.


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

swolf said:


> I not only remember that discussion, I participated in it. Permafree is an excellent example of a 'violation' of the ToS that someone would be hard-pressed to describe as unethical. (Although some have tried.)


Wait - I can have a permafree on Amazon ?   Has anyone ever been disbarred for having a permafree?


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> Wait - I can have a permafree on Amazon ?   Has anyone ever been disbarred for having a permafree?


It's another case of selective enforcement. Seems the vast majority of folks can get a permafree on Amazon no problem, but every so often you'll hear of someone getting the "you have 5 days to fix this" nastygram.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> I think you are confusing ethics with morals. Ethics are a social mechanism. Morals are an internal construct. It is possible for a person's ethics to conflict with a person's morals. Morally there are things I am personally not comfortable with that I still believe other consenting adults have a legal right to do. I have friends who are swingers. I personally would never engage in that lifestyle, but ethically so long as everyone involved is a consenting adult I wouldn't push for legislation to outlaw the practice. I personally don't do drugs, but what another person chooses to put in his or her body isn't any concern to me. Moral issues only become ethical issues when they trigger a social mechanism. If you want to smoke a little wacky weed on the weekend, that isn't a problem. If you spoke weed and then get behind the wheel of a car and risk doing actual harm to other human beings, now you've crossed over from an internal "moral" decision to an ethical one.


No, I posted the definition of ethical. You're the one who tried to change it into something else.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> An erotica can also be a romance, and if it is both there is no reason to not put the book in both categories. But if an erotica is NOT a romance, and you are only putting it in romance to avoid a filter, then you are engaging in an action that can potentially break the system. I'm not going to turn this into a thread on genre definitions, because that isn't the point. IF a book is BOTH erotica and romance then the author should of course put the book in both so readers can find it. IF the book is NOT a romance and the author is putting it there just to be sneaky, then the answer is the action is unethical. The author is not acting in good faith, is using the system in a way that it was not intended, and if everyone did it (i.e. every erotica author put there books in romance whether they were romance or not) it causes problems for the customer.


There are different shades, both to romance and erotica. It's not always a clear-cut choice like you're making it out to be. You make think someone is being unethical based on your opinions of what romance and erotica are. Someone else may disagree.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> To separate the ethical issue from genre: Let's say you sell beer. And for the sake of example, you are selling beer on Amazon. Amazon puts a mechanism in place to only allow your beer products to appear in searches for customers who are verified to be 21 or older. This means lots of people don't see your product in search, because they never verified their age with Amazon. You decide to stop placing your beer under the beer category, and instead list it under soda so that it appears in general searches. And hey, you get away with it! And you start selling more beer. Other beer sellers realize you are doing this, and now they do it as well. Now suddenly the soda category is full of beer products. People looking for soda are finding beer brands on the soda bestseller list. Parents start complaining because their kids are buying beer on Amazon even though Amazon says they have the beer products behind an age verified filter.


Once again, you're attempting to make something clear-cut when, in reality, it isn't. We can all pretty much determine what beer is. And we can all agree on who's over 21. So in that situation, it's a clear violation. But with books, both the content and the category mean different things to different people.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Enforcement of a rule doesn't change anything. A bunch of drunk executivesallegedly made racist comments to Native American students, poured beer on them, and were propositioning the girls. The prosecutor only decided to press charges against one of the men, and that was for a disorderly conduct. The fact that only one man was charged doesn't mean it is acceptable to make racist comments at Native American students, pour beer on them, and proposition little girls. It means the prosecutor either didn't have enough evidence to move forward with criminal charges, or was himself racist, or had his hands tied by someone else to prevent more aggressive prosecution. The lack of enforcement doesn't make the alleged activities suddenly ethical.


You're comparing apples and oranges by trying to compare a business agreement to laws. With laws, a prosecutor is bound by duty to enforce them (unless they work for Obama's Justice department.) With a business agreement, it's up to the those involved to determine when someone steps out of line.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Further, I never said "violating the TOS is inherently unethical." The TOS itself is only an explanation of how Amazon expects the site to work and some "we're covering our backside" language to protect them from lawsuits. It is their house, they can chose to ignore their own rules if they want to. If I invite you into my home under the condition that you don't wear shoes on the carpet, I can chose to enforce or not enforce that edict because it is MY HOME. If I allow Dasha to wear shoes, I still reserve the right to throw you out if you do. Because it is my house. And if you want to enter my house you agree to my rules. If I decide to be a hypocrite and not follow my own rules, well, that doesn't change anything. You still can't wear shoes on my carpet.
> 
> Of course, me being a hypocrite would be unethical, but the poor behavior of one person doesn't mitigate the poor behavior of another. Or as my mother always said, "If everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you jump?"


And again, me not wearing shoes would break your rules, but it wouldn't be unethical.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

I agree that Amazon's category have problems. There's no real way to "vote" a book out of a category.

The thing about categories is that when a category become useless, then readers don't find what they want. That means that the readers drop out of the discovery system, which makes both reader and writer suffer. I agree that there are books that are challenging to categorize, but you can usually see why they're hard. Some books just blatantly don't belong in certain lists, even with generous understanding. As a writer, I have to take my knocks, but as a reader, I have a sacred right to whine.


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

Danni said:


> Spend less time policing other people and more time writing. It does wonders for stress levels and keeps you focused on your own path to success.


^^^^^This!!!


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Permafree is SPECIFICALLY provisioned for in the Pricing Policy, which is part and parcel of the T&C/TOS. There is no question of ethics regarding permafree since it does NOT violate the TOS. Other pricing manipulations trying to take advantage of price-matching terms, however, are/can be/may be ethically questionable.
__________

A miscategorized book isn't going to drive more eyes to that category nor lead to sales if the audience for the book isn't browsing that category. If it's a book selling well enough in the store to be prominent on the lists for a miscategorized genre, then, IMO, that book is unfairly taking away high-visibility spots for other books competing equally hard for ranks. Especially on New Release or Bestseller lists where the number of spots available is a finite 100. For properly categorized books hanging at #101 or #102, or even on Page 2 at #21 or #22 or on the New Release list at #4 or #5 where they miss being face-out, loss of visibility means potential loss of actual sales. The Girl on the Train could be categorized in Nonfiction Transportation and be #1 there whether it sold a single book to a NF Transportation fan or not. But having it there would mean one less spot on the BS list and on the Top-Rated list for books that belong there. So I do think _intentional _miscategorization is an ethical breach that harms other books/authors. I also see it as "gaming."

The erotica authors trying to stay out of the dungeon is, I think, a different behavior than the folk intentionally miscategorizing their books to try to capitalize on visibility in smaller and/or simply multiple subcats. It's no less unethical or gamey to my mind, just saying the intent is different even if the results are the same.

I've written to KDP Customer Service asking for clarification on some of the points of the TOC. The last such correspondence I had (for a pricing question I'd seen others "getting away with"), I got one email telling me the behavior in question was absolutely against TOS and would likely result in my account being shut down were I to engage in it. The second mail told me that it was not against policy and it was OK to engage in such behavior. I escalated for a third mail that I could document to ensure there would be no repercussions if I engaged in said behavior. The third mail was carefully worded to say it was highly suggested I not engage in such behavior but that if I did, Amazon was at their discretion to basically either honor what I was attempting to do or to remove the title from sale.

Sometimes Amazon does something about the behaviors. Serial republishing to keep a book on the New Release list for, well, forever in some cases, it seemed like, was halted when the option to enter publish date was taken out of the hands of the authors. So, yay, a win there. Only then Amazon turns around and rewards some of the authors engaging most successfully in the very same behavior it's trying to curtail by giving them feature spots, KDDs and, in some cases, publishing contracts.

I feel like I'm at that ethical crossroad myself. And I've been tempted to go to the dark side many times. My resolve is constantly hammered at, begging to be worn away, one stuffed keyword, one price match ploy at a time. It would be easy to smack down that voice of seduction if Amazon was consistently and doggedly punishing such behaviors. But the blind eye it turns and the rewards others seem to earn via unethical behavior and/or outright gaming, weakens that resolve day by day. If the rest of the track team is blood doping and I'm not, how do I compete with that? It's certainly a day-to-day struggle... Stupid conscience.


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## xandy3 (Jun 13, 2010)

Regarding categorization: Sometimes it's Amazon's fault, not the authors.  When I first released my suspense/action story I was dismayed to see it show up in erotica the first few weeks after publication.  The book has ZERO erotic content.  It's a story about an assassin. Yet because there are several books in that genre with the same title as mine, it unfortunately was stuck there.   

I fought long and hard to get them to list it in the right category; continually emailed Amazon and double and tripple checked my own keywords and categories selected.  Like I said, it took a few weeks for them to correct it.  

Of course I'm in no way saying that all miscategorized books were subjected to the same Amazon error as mine was, but it's possible that some of them were.  

Just saying.


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> [citation and identifying info about book removed. -moderator]
> 
> Now, I may be oblivious, but until it unproved otherwise to me - the author has selected horror as a main category. They aren't there because of some random keyword. The keywords are to do with subgenres, not anything outside what you categorized.


First, poor form to link to the book. You may want to take that down before the mods do it for you.

Second, that book is in horror/comedy. A girl goes to a mysterious ranch where there is more than meets the eye and people may be turning into some kind of monsters? That fits the bill in my book. Maybe not yours. Don't read it. But also don't begrudge the author for thinking that is where their book belongs. It is _[ranking removed by mod]_ paid in the entire Kindle store. People must like it. I doubt it is getting, nor does it need, any boost from being on the Horror charts.

As you can see from my signature, I write the kinds of books that most people would probably put in that category. I get it. Horror is hard. And when the already limited spots at the top are taken up by stuff that you feel doesn't have the right to be there, that can be tough. But it is not a reflection on you or your work. Make it a goal to knock the pretenders out of that spot!


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

Confession  .  
I've gamed the system in my local bookshop by rearranging the shelf so that my book faces out  . I've also searched for my book on the computer at the library and left it so that the next person using the computer will see it. And - I leave my books out at the library so that readers will see it on the table and the librarian will have to keep returning it to the shelf and therefore remember it (hopefully) if readers ever ask for such a book. Should I be shamed out of KBoards   Or is this just a good marketing ploy


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> Should I be shamed out of KBoards


No, but your librarian is probably waiting for you under your bed.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

@phoenix, you have said it perfectky.


@Rick: somehow the expression "your librarien" makes me feel uncomfortable and excited at the same time. If you see a book called "your librarien" in all the unsuitable categories there are, I've gone over.


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## xandy3 (Jun 13, 2010)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> Confession .
> I've gamed the system in my local bookshop by rearranging the shelf so that my book faces out . I've also searched for my book on the computer at the library and left it so that the next person using the computer will see it. And - I leave my books out at the library so that readers will see it on the table and the librarian will have to keep returning it to the shelf and therefore remember it (hopefully) if readers ever ask for such a book. Should I be shamed out of KBoards  Or is this just a good marketing ploy


I've gone into Target and searched for my book on the display Kindles & Nooks, and left my book on there for the next customers to see.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

xandy3 said:


> I've gone into Target and searched for my book on the display Kindles & Nooks, and left my book on there for the next customers to see.


I just did that in the Apple Store.
They're on to me now. I see guys in blue shirts.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> Confession .
> I've gamed the system in my local bookshop by rearranging the shelf so that my book faces out . I've also searched for my book on the computer at the library and left it so that the next person using the computer will see it. And - I leave my books out at the library so that readers will see it on the table and the librarian will have to keep returning it to the shelf and therefore remember it (hopefully) if readers ever ask for such a book. Should I be shamed out of KBoards  Or is this just a good marketing ploy


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

ShaneJeffery said:


> I was a horror author who made nothing and crossed over into paranormal romance and made a living. I wrote some of these dragon type books. Not sure if they were in sword and sorcery or not, but if they were, I never got any bad reviews as a result of that. More importantly, I can scan the horror charts and point to many highly star rated books there who are also not suffering from being in that category. NO, Readers are NOT becoming aware of niche genres as the result of Parnanormal Romance books dumped there. More likely, readers of said niche genre scan and skip over the obvious offenders of the category.
> 
> The one that really gets my gripe of course is the ones listed in horror for no explicit reason I can imagine. Right there on the top 10 horror authors page I see THREE paranormal romance authors who have no business being there. I mean, I have zero ideas why the authors would want their books there, but it is infinitely discouraging to the true authors of the genre.


You can end up in horror for using the keyword "ghost." I have paranormal characters who talk to ghosts and I've ended up in horror because of it. I certainly never picked horror as a category or word. My grim reaper books end up there, too, and the only thing akin to horror in those books is the way they talk to one another. Amazon's bots pick up on keywords like "ghost," "paranormal" and "witch" and automatically dump it into horror. That's not anyone being unethical. It's a weird glitch.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

swolf said:


> That's an agreement between publishers and booksellers, not a law. And the one example given, was eventually deemed illegal.
> 
> That law means that the bookseller can't discount more than 5% below the publisher's price. With self-publishing, we're the publishers. That law doesn't stop me from setting my price differently with different book sellers.
> 
> Neither of those have anything to do with permafree, or this discussion.


The so-called net book agreement was struck down in the UK, but similar laws continue to exist in Germany and many other European countries. Like me, Dasha is German, so please believe us that we know the applicable laws in our country better than you do.

And yes, this does have something to do with permafree (and therefore tangentially with this discussion), because you can achieve permafree on Amazon only via pricematching and pricematching means offering a book for different prices at different stores, which is actually illegal in Germany and some other countries. So German indie writers have to break the law in order to get a permafree. Ditto for sales, since we're not allowed to discount a book within the first 18 month post publication. Now some German indie authors run sales and have permafrees anyway. Amazon doesn't care and so far no one has been sued, but that doesn't mean that no one will be sued, especially since the publishers' and booksellers' association which polices the fixed book price law is such a big fan of Amazon and indies - NOT. So yeah, for some of us permafree or sales are risks we'd rather not run, which means we're automatically handicapped for adhering to the laws of our country.

Does this make permafrees unethical for authors residing in countries without fixed book price laws? No, it doesn't, especially since Amazon has no interest in policing permafrees. But I wouldn't be sad to either see permafrees go or - better yet - for Amazon and other vendors to allow us to choose free as a price directly.

As for keyword stuffing and miscategorisation, as Shayne and Phoenix said, a miscategorised popular book in a small category actually does hurt the books which belong into that category, since e.g. a massively popular shifter romance in the sword and sorcery category will likely outsell anything else in that category and thus hog the top spot, taking away visibility from actual sword and sorcery books, even if no one browsing for sword and sorcery actually buys the shifter romance. For example, there is a subcategory called thrillers ---> pulp which is intended for new pulp and for reprints of classic pulp fiction. However, the top 20 or so of that subcategory were generally taken up by bog-standard thrillers which have nothing whatsoever to so with pulp (and yes, I know cause I read at least one of them), with actual pulp new or old only showing up on the second page. Does this annoy me as the author of a new pulp series? You bet it does.

However, I don't believe in reporting miscategorised books except in really blatant cases (erotica in children's books), because it's difficult to tell if we're dealing with a case of malicious miscategorisation or with an author who simply doesn't know what genre X is or with a book that's difficult to classify, so the closest genre will have to do, or with a book that accidentally got stuffed into the wrong category due to a keyword that's perfectly appropriate for the book (e.g. dragon shifters in sword and sorcery). I've had books show up in weird categories as well. For example, one of mine was stuffed into the media tie-in category due to using the keyword "television".

In the end, a lot of these issues are the direct or indirect result of Amazon's policies, e.g. if people weren't forced to use keywords to get into certain categories, but could choose them directly, keyword stuffing would be cut down. If erotica wasn't at risk of adult dungeoning and Amazon had a better "adult search" system, erotica authors wouldn't try to put their books into other categories.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

CoraBuhlert said:


> The so-called net book agreement was struck down in the UK, but similar laws continue to exist in Germany and many other European countries. Like me, Dasha is German, so please believe us that we know the applicable laws in our country better than you do.
> 
> And yes, this does have something to do with permafree (and therefore tangentially with this discussion), because you can achieve permafree on Amazon only via pricematching and pricematching means offering a book for different prices at different stores, which is actually illegal in Germany and some other countries. So German indie writers have to break the law in order to get a permafree. Ditto for sales, since we're not allowed to discount a book within the first 18 month post publication. Now some German indie authors run sales and have permafrees anyway. Amazon doesn't care and so far no one has been sued, but that doesn't mean that no one will be sued, especially since the publishers' and booksellers' association which polices the fixed book price law is such a big fan of Amazon and indies - NOT. So yeah, for some of us permafree or sales are risks we'd rather not run, which means we're automatically handicapped for adhering to the laws of our country.


What I wrote was based upon the links she provided. As I said up front, I'd be interested in seeing these laws.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Here is the full text of the German fixed book price law. Only in German, alas.

There is also a pretty good English language summary in this article written by former German secretary of culture Michael Naumann, though you'll have to ignore some "Amazon is evil" and "Germany has a vibrant culture of indie bookstores" (yes, but only if you live in certain cities and read certain genres) rhetoric.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> You work with Zon long enough you really start to see their motivations are never altruisitc or about a moral high ground, they're about the bottom line. And once you know your adversary's motivation for action or inaction, it becomes very easy to figure out what's going to make them act and what will not.
> 
> I have endured a more powerful author's frenzied readers campaigning against my books based on her frequently sharing HER opinion on matters. Why? Because my subtitles are Pride & Prejudice Variation (this author thinks she invented that), my prices dare to be higher than hers, and I write in a series. At one point, I could count on 20-40 readers coming over and downvoting every 5 star review I got and giving me unverified reviews that are one stars. They didn't realize their Public Wishlists said their real names and we were all a part of the same reader groups on Facebook for our genre. I let it go, kept doing my thing. But then other authors in my circle of friends started to be targeted due to association with me, and I blogged about it. I blogged about the fact that I literally watched so many bad reviews come in on a particular book, some even wondering why I even continued to write when clearly everyone HATES books like mine. 8 1-star reviews in a 48 hours period, over 700 sales that first week with less than 10 returns. (it had a preorder). Who do I listen to, 8 readers, many who didn't even buy the book, or 690?
> 
> ...


I'm happy that Amazon is taking a good look at reviews and limiting them to verified purchases. My review rankings have gotten better since they've removed some of the drive bys.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> What I wrote was based upon the links she provided. As I said up front, I'd be interested in seeing these laws.


In both the links I provided it says that similar laws are still existing in several European countries. Those were the best English texts I could provide ad hoc.
Nevermind. Peace.
I believe the only reason why the book price matching currently goes through is because the Germans cannot decide whether an ebook is a book or a telemedium (since mo porn before 10) and whether an ASIN mobi is a different edition than an Epub.
Let's all just hope nobody in the EU (the Scandinavians are pretty good at such stuff for example) decides to go on a sudden crusade, because then all of the unethical, maybe ethical, socially acceptable cheating could backfire on all of us.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> Wait - I can have a permafree on Amazon ?   Has anyone ever been disbarred for having a permafree?


Since it is Amazon who matches the price to nil in order to make it permafree, I don't see how it can be construed as a violation of anything. They match the price to the price you have in other places as free, because they always match to a lower price. How can that be a violation of their terms? As long as the book isn't in select, it is not against anything as far as I can see.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

Doglover said:


> Since it is Amazon who matches the price to nil in order to make it permafree, I don't see how it can be construed as a violation of anything. They match the price to the price you have in other places as free, because they always match to a lower price. How can that be a violation of their terms? As long as the book isn't in select, it is not against anything as far as I can see.


They don't disbar, they send a 5 day Email.
If you won't raise the price on other channels.... Etc.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

DashaGLogan said:


> They don't disbar, they send a 5 day Email.
> If you won't raise the price on other channels.... Etc.


The easy solution would be to cease offering these books on Amazon.de and instead offer them directly as free on some other retailer instead for customers from Germany.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> In both the links I provided it says that similar laws are still existing in several European countries. Those were the best English texts I could provide ad hoc.
> Nevermind. Peace.
> I believe the only reason why the book price matching currently goes through is because the Germans cannot decide whether an ebook is a book or a telemedium (since mo porn before 10) and whether an ASIN mobi is a different edition than an Epub.
> Let's all just hope nobody in the EU (the Scandinavians are pretty good at such stuff for example) decides to go on a sudden crusade, because then all of the unethical, maybe ethical, socially acceptable cheating could backfire on all of us.


Neither of the links you provided said what you claimed they said. If you think they do, then explain it.

I make very little money in Europe anyway, so I don't care what they do. If there ever was a 'crackdown', or whatever you think will happen, it will just result in less books being available to European readers.

And no matter how many times you say it, pricing your book differently in different places isn't cheating. Not even close.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

#1 the Terms and Conditions on the KDP site change all the time. Originally there was no call out on the Pricing Page for free books, and even what IS there, notice they do not use the language "List Price" but instead as part of a promotion, when it is "List Price" we are required to maintain across all channels at least not allowing Amazon to have a HIGHER List Price.

#2 anyone who discusses specific terms of the Terms and Condition or shares for example even their sales figures could be nailed under Section 7 regarding Amazon Confidential Information. All data, including sales, reviews, and customer information is under the umbrella "Amazon Confidential Information"

#3 COULD is not the same as WILL. Any of us in this thread or elsewhere COULD be found to be in violation of the Termas and COnditions on the whim of objectionable content. What is objectionable content? Amazon decides.

#4 And you don't get to take Amazon to court, you agreed to go to arbitration for any disputes.

Maybe some of you will never agree that the Terms and Conditions are not a compass to determine ethical behavior, but at least read it thoroughly.  And about laws in other countries, just because something is a law doesn't make it ethical. I feel for the authors in other countries who must risk breaking their laws to compete with authors in less strict jurisdictions.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> Neither of the links you provided said what you claimed they said. If you think they do, then explain it.
> 
> I make very little money in Europe anyway, so I don't care what they do. If there ever was a 'crackdown', or whatever you think will happen, it will just result in less books being available to European readers.
> 
> And no matter how many times you say it, pricing your book differently in different places isn't cheating. Not even close.


I never said that - I said it was not wise to tell people that the TOS are not relevant because they aren't the law. Because in some areas of the world they are the law - and how much you sell does not enter into the equation at all - and I don't mean you personally.
As for what is written in the links, in the Lang Law Link it says: "Similar Fixed Book Price Laws exist in other countries, namely Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain."

In the other link it says: "A related case is the existence of a fixed book price law (FBPL), where the book prices are kept fixed by law. An example of an FBPL is the current Lang Law in France.

An FBPA/FBPL, with various provisos, has existed in some developed countries since the beginning of the twentieth century. It remains in force in roughly half the countries of the European Union as well as in some other countries."

Feel free to read again.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Maybe some of you will never agree that the Terms and Conditions are not a compass to determine ethical behavior, but at least read it thoroughly. And about laws in other countries, just because something is a law doesn't make it ethical. I feel for the authors in other countries who must risk breaking their laws to compete with authors in less strict jurisdictions.


It involves you too, if your books are on sale in the de, es, nl stores

My argument is not that I find those things unethical - what I find wrong and unethical is to claim more or less on this public forum that a disregard of Amazon's TOS is sort of okay and you won't get into trouble for it.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> I never said that - I said it was not wise to tell people that the TOS are not relevant because they aren't the law. Because in some areas of the world they are the law - and how much you sell does not enter into the equation at all - and I don't mean you personally.
> As for what is written in the links, in the Lang Law Link it says: "Similar Fixed Book Price Laws exist in other countries, namely Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain."
> 
> In the other link it says: "A related case is the existence of a fixed book price law (FBPL), where the book prices are kept fixed by law. An example of an FBPL is the current Lang Law in France.
> ...


I asked you for links to the laws, so you gave me links that mention the laws exist, with no details explaining what they are?

Thanks.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> It involves you too, if your books are on sale in the de, es, nl stores
> 
> My argument is not that I find those things unethical - what I find wrong and unethical is to claim more or less on this public forum that a disregard of Amazon's TOS is sort of okay and you won't get into trouble for it.


Give us examples of people getting in trouble for it, whatever that means. How am I going to get into 'trouble' based on other countries' laws?


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> I asked you for links to the laws, so you gave me links that mention the laws exist, with no details explaining what they are?
> 
> Thanks.


Sorry, but there is a link to the law on the wikipedia page, in French, and the German link has already been provided.

_Edited. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> Give us examples of people getting in trouble for it, whatever that means. How am I going to get into 'trouble' based on other countries' laws?


Well, say "you" as an erotica author do no mark your book as such and the German law of "no dsiplaying of
pornographic material before 10pm" becomes applicable. Amazon will have to apply a filter. If "you" have not adhered to marking "your" book as porn and it is seen on German soil in any shop from where you can order, Amazon has committed a crime. And who's fault is it "yours" because "you" pretended not to be erotica. And the German Publishing Association will be after Amazon like sharks.
Of course they will warn you, but they might also decide to simply go on a great general hunt and disbar anybody - and we are not talking about selling, but about displaying. 
Crazy, I know.
I'm not saying "Woe you, you will all be forever disbarred", I'm only saying don't claim it is risk free to ignore the TOS. All of us have agreed that we have a contract with all international sub-companies.
I'm using the price law as an example.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> Sorry, but there is a link to the law on the wikipedia page, in French, and the German link has already been provided.
> I thought an intelligent, educated and cyberversed person like you might be able to take it from there.


So, let's recap. I asked you to provide a link to the laws you were talking about, and you gave me a link to an agreement between publishers. Then you gave me a link to a French law (which was on the first link you gave me) that doesn't do what you claim it does. Now your claim is that the link to the _actual_ law is somewhere on there, but it's in French.

Thanks, you've been very helpful.

_Edited. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> So, let's recap. I asked you to provide a link to the laws you were talking about, and you gave me a link to an agreement between publishers. Then you gave me a link to a French law (which was on the first link you gave me) that doesn't do what you claim it does. Now your claim is that the link to the _actual_ law is somewhere on there, but it's in French.
> 
> Thanks, you've been very helpful.
> 
> And I doubt that much thought went into it.


I doubt you can read because the French law says exactly what I claim it says. Here you have it in full.
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006068716&dateTexte=20090602


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> What, now you wanted the original you don't want to tear it apart?


Translation:

"Retailers must charge an effective price for sales to the public between 95% and 100% of the price fixed by the publisher or importer."

That's the same as the Lang Law. So, explain to me, the publisher of my books, how I can break that law, when it's a limitation on the retailers, not the publishers?


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> Translation:
> 
> "Retailers must charge an effective price for sales to the public between 95% and 100% of the price fixed by the publisher or importer."
> 
> That's the same as the Lang Law. So, explain to me, the publisher of my books, how I can break that law, when it's a limitation on the retailers, not the publishers?


Because as a publisher you have to set ONE price and then the retailer is responsible. Amazon relies on you to set your price yourself and to set the price the same as it is on Itunes etc. If you do a permafree, THEY are breaking the law, if they don't change the price too, but they can according to TOS also decide to simply kick you out because you did not adhere. You as a publisher are by law required to set one price only.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> Because as a publisher you have to set ONE price and then the retailer is responsible.


The law you linked to does not say that.



DashaGLogan said:


> Amazon relies on you to set your price yourself and to set the price the same as it is on Itunes etc. If you do a permafree, THEY are breaking the law, if they don't change the price too, but they can according to TOS also decide to simply kick you out because you did not adhere.


How are they breaking the law when they're selling the book at the price the publisher set for the book?



DashaGLogan said:


> You as a publisher are by law required to set one price only.


 Not according to the law you posted. Got another one?


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

It does, very first sentence:
Toute personne physique ou morale qui édite ou importe des livres est tenue de fixer, pour les livres qu'elle édite ou importe, un prix de vente au public.

Every person or institution that publishes or imports books has to fix a price for all books they publish or Import to go into public sale.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

The purpose of that law is clear. It's to stop retailers from undercutting each other by forcing them to keep close to the price set by the publisher. Makes sense (in a European overbearing government kind of way.)

But it's not doing what you're claiming it's doing.  Perhaps in the world of paper books, where every book is stamped with the same price. But even then, I see nothing in the actual law that forces publishers to set one price for a book and stick to it. It's a limitation on retailers, not publishers.

Maybe there's another law that forces publishers to have consistent prices. But this isn't it.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

In 2011 it was enforced for ebooks also.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> The purpose of that law is clear. It's to stop retailers from undercutting each other by forcing them to keep close to the price set by the publisher. Makes sense (in a European overbearing government kind of way.)
> 
> But it's not doing what you're claiming it's doing. Perhaps in the world of paper books, where every book is stamped with the same price. But even then, I see nothing in the actual law that forces publishers to set one price for a book and stick to it. It's a limitation on retailers, not publishers.
> 
> Maybe there's another law that forces publishers to have consistent prices. But this isn't it.


It does "éditer" in French is not edit, but publish. A publisher in french is an "éditeur"


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

DashaGLogan said:


> It does, very first sentence:
> Toute personne physique ou morale qui edite ou importe des livres est tenue de fixer, pour les livres qu'elle edite ou importe, un prix de vente au public.
> 
> Every person or institution that publishes or imports books has to fix a price for all books they publish or Import to go into public sale.


Okay, I missed that. That clears that up. Thank you. (Would've helped if that was your first response yesterday.)

Now, back to the ethics of the issue. Why is it unethical to set a price on other venues to zero, for the purpose of price-matching, when your goal is to have all the prices the same? Which would satisfy the European laws.

When you do that, Amazon has two choices: Either price-match, or tell you to change it on those other venues to match Amazon's price, or they'll remove the book from their shelves.

Either one of those options satisfies the European law. So there's nothing unethical about it.


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## DashaGLogan (Jan 30, 2014)

swolf said:


> Okay, I missed that. That clears that up. Thank you. (Would've helped if that was your first response yesterday.)
> 
> Now, back to the ethics of the issue. Why is it unethical to set a price on other venues to zero, for the purpose of price-matching, when your goal is to have all the prices the same? Which would satisfy the European laws.
> 
> ...


Suit yourself.


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

Doglover said:


> Since it is Amazon who matches the price to nil in order to make it permafree, I don't see how it can be construed as a violation of anything. They match the price to the price you have in other places as free, because they always match to a lower price. How can that be a violation of their terms? As long as the book isn't in select, it is not against anything as far as I can see.


All my books are in Select so I don't sell elsewhere, so it looks like I can never have a permafree .


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

At least a few people have mentioned others getting warning emails from Amazon about their books being free on other retailers. That happens if you lower the price to some point above 0, not if you make it free. 

For example, if you set your price to .99 on B&N while it's still $2.99 on Amazon, you're going to get a warning letter. Amazon's bots want to price match, and $2.99 draws a 70% royalty while the matched price of .99 isn't supposed to. They will warn you to fix that. If you make it free elsewhere, they don't send a warning letter. They typically price match, though sometimes it takes longer than expected or requires a couple of polite requests directly to Amazon.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

swolf said:


> Now, back to the ethics of the issue. Why is it unethical to set a price on other venues to zero, for the purpose of price-matching, when your goal is to have all the prices the same? Which would satisfy the European laws.
> 
> When you do that, Amazon has two choices: Either price-match, or tell you to change it on those other venues to match Amazon's price, or they'll remove the book from their shelves.
> 
> Either one of those options satisfies the European law. So there's nothing unethical about it.


Stop making sense. You know you could derail this whole thread if you keep it up.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Shelley K said:


> If you make it free elsewhere, they don't send a warning letter. They typically price match, though sometimes it takes longer than expected or requires a couple of polite requests directly to Amazon.


Or, as I did, you could receive an email from Ammy telling you it's their prerogative to price match to free, and they won't at this time. So they keep selling it for money for several months after, even though you've sent several requests to price match to free.


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## Shelley K (Sep 19, 2011)

Lisa Grace said:


> Or, as I did, you could receive an email from Ammy telling you it's their prerogative to price match to free, and they won't at this time. So they keep selling it for money for several months after, even though you've sent several requests to price match to free.


Yeah, that's why I said typically. I have heard of a few people who never could could get a book to go free, including you. Most get it to go through eventually, though.


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## horrordude1973 (Sep 20, 2014)

Fussing over someone else "cheating" the system with their books requires way too much time or energy than I'd ever care to spend on them. Most of these scams are short lived as Amazon is always changing things up anyway.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Like Phoenix, I sometimes wonder why I bother to do the "right" thing, since Amazon is iffy on enforcing their own rules. Why not do things to get more sales? Why not buy good reviews. Why not categorize erotica in whatever genre category I can? To be honest, I could use more sales. KUv2 is killing me (metaphorically speaking).

But as much as tell myself that everybody does it, Amazon will only care when it suits them, and readers might buy my books, I don't. Because like Julie, I believe that when something hits critical mass, it's going to be bad for all of us. Once Amazon gets enough complaints about erotica in gardening, or London tour books, or fly fishing guides, the ban hammer is going to come down hard, and people whose books were put in the wrong categories BY AMAZON, are going to get hurt.

So, I'll keep on chugging along, doing what I feel is right for me and my career, and I'll hope like heck that I'm not a bit of collateral damage when the feces hits the rotating cooling unit blades.


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## Mike_Author (Oct 19, 2013)

swolf said:


> I not only remember that discussion, I participated in it. Permafree is an excellent example of a 'violation' of the ToS that someone would be hard-pressed to describe as unethical. (Although some have tried.)


I first read this sentence and thought "ah old Swolf is up to it again" and then paused, only to realise you bring up a point which lies exactly in that "zone of nuance" (hmm..sounds like a book idea...brb) I was talking about.

I first read that and thought "surely you are having a lend - people think permafree is unethical? (btw...I will would love it if you could show me an example of this so I can get a better understanding). Then I realised that these are the grey areas where this thread has potential value.

This baked my noodle for a few reasons. I have never used permafree but always thought it was an elegant solution to Amazon's desire not to have their store filled with free books, hence the restrictions on permanently free books.

However then Julie mentioned the concept around "using something which is not how it was intended" (to paraphrase). Clearly permafree is in this category. However why doesn't Amazon enforce this? If this isn't how they designed the system, why not enforce it? I have never heard a satisfactory answer for this apparent loophole.

So does permafree adversely impact the system?
Does permafree unfairly advantage those that use it, while others, feeling it is against the rules, not use it and therefore are at a disadvantage?
Therefore, is permafree different to buying fake reviews? Why?

It is not often I find myself unable to answer questions like this but this is one case.

As someone who is both Buddhist (a very poor one at that however) and works managing commercial strategy (using basic game theory most of the time), the concept of karma (ie - cause and effect) and game theory (like a decision tree with decision nodes and chance nodes) overlap. So in my personal life I try to work under the principle of (this may seem oxymoronic) "altruistic self-interest". By this I mean that, if you map out your own behaviour along a potential chain of cause and effect, acting without harming (ie - disadvantaging, in the case at hand) is ultimately in your own best interest.

So I may go out and buy 20 fake reviews, however not only will it ensure I potentially get angry customers who feel duped, it also breaks the system if everyone does the same thing (eg - Julie's example).

So, after writing this, I have sat and thought about permafree for a few minutes and have decided that this is an example (perhaps an exception even) where using a system in a way it wasn't intended is ok. If every author did this, Amazon still gets their income on the sequels, customers get a free book and authors get an important marketing tool. In this sense, permafree is nothing more than the age old free food sample in the supermarket.

I have a few more points but once again my son has rudely interrupted and reminded me I am umpiring his junior AFL footy game in 15 minutes.


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## Mike_Author (Oct 19, 2013)

Danni said:


> Spend less time policing other people and more time writing. It does wonders for stress levels and keeps you focused on your own path to success.


Exactly - same goes for littering. If I am walking up the street of my home and someone throws rubbish down on the footpath outside my home I just ignore it. My entire street is now full of empty beer cans and old pizza boxes but you should see my bedroom - not a fleck of dust anywhere! I used to pick up the rubbish on my street or ask people not to litter, but it was costing me a bomb in homeopath/Bach flower essence consults just so I could relax!

My only issue now is that the litter has attracted vermin and I can't seem to get them out of my house now. Oh, and there is an old refrigerator blocking my driveway so I can't get to work. I have had to up my dose of Gelsemium Sempervirens (30x) (which, ironically, as it is homeopathic, meant that I just mixed it with more water to dilute) just to keep the old "stress wolf" from the door.


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

Mike_Author said:


> Exactly - same goes for littering.


Because those two things are exactly the same.

Do you pull people over for speeding, too? Solve murders? Issue parking tickets? Because it sounds like where you live, if you don't "police" everyone, no one will! 
If only there were some sort of organization whose job it was to "police" things.


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

People will only '*get away with things they are allowed to'.*

If one person is getting away with something whether it's illegal, immoral or unethical and it's to their advantage, then when others see it they will likely follow.


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## Mike_Author (Oct 19, 2013)

Voelker58 said:


> Because those two things are exactly the same.
> 
> Do you pull people over for speeding, too? Solve murders? Issue parking tickets? Because it sounds like where you live, if you don't "police" everyone, no one will!
> If only there were some sort of organization whose job it was to "police" things.


Oh dear...

I have a long term, self-imposed rule of never using a "facepalm" emoticon or the equivalent Captain Picard meme to the same effect. But lordy, you are making it darn hard to resist...must...be...strong...

In attempting to mount a rebuttal you have actually reinforced my point and said exactly what I should have said in my last (yes, disappointingly facetious) post.
You have highlighted one of the core issues here which perfectly represents why this topic has been so passionately debated.

So, let me use your example to continue the analogy. Your point is that this is exactly what we have police for. The point which I, and others coming from this side of the debate have been trying to point out is that, it is impossible for police to patrol every street at all times. I literally had to re-read your post several times to make sure I actually read it correctly. Because police are not omnipresent, a well-functioning modern society also requires its citizens to take a degree of social responsibility to both act within the rules and to also ensure that, where possible, they are willing to help enforce the rules via social pressure. I am not sure which country you are living in or whether your country has a different system than mine, however here in Australia, if you see some dingbat chuck rubbish on the ground, you either tell them to pick it up, or, if they are bigger/meaner looking than me (which is basically everyone, considering my complete lack of general manliness) I timidly pick it up after them.

Or, to use a similar, yet more analogous example to your policing example, in Australia we have the "Neighbourhood Watch" program. People put stickers on their front door to let kids know they have a safe haven in the event that they are in danger, plus to also demonstrate a kind of "social contract" where we say, as a community, that we will keep an eye out for crime and immediately report to either the police or the Neighbourhood Watch car which drives around in our local area, looking for any criminal activity.

This also highlights another error of logic in your post. To use the Neighbourhood Watch example again, no one is "handing out speeding tickets" or directly apprehending criminals themselves. They are keeping a watch out so that they can call the police if necessary.

And this is why your analogy is meaningless in the context of this discussion. We are not talking about arresting people or handing out speeding tickets. We are talking about whether, in the interests of the community (self-publishing), we should be reporting suspicious activity (or even whether we should be obliged to do our part, in the interests of other authors) to the police (Amazon).

This is why many people feel we should, because if Amazon is the police, clearly there are a huge number of streets for them to police, so they are going to miss a lot of activity which is against the best interests of the citizens of this community. To call on this analogy one last time - the reason myself and others have a bee in our bonnet about this is because we are now regularly seeing people littering, spraying graffiti and stealing stuff from our backyard (plagiarism, in case this analogy was not clear).

The real issue here, and the greatest source of interesting nuance, is a) whether authors completely turn a blind eye or not, and b) what would be the appropriate threshold for contacting the police? We would all agree that it would be counterproductive to call the police because you saw someone driving 1km/h over the speed limit. I am fairly certain that we would all call the police if we heard sounds of someone possibly being murdered next door. Somewhere in the middle of those two extremes lies a grey zone. Exactly which kinds of activities sit within this zone is the most useful part of this discussion.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Voelker58 said:


> Because those two things are exactly the same.
> 
> Do you pull people over for speeding, too? Solve murders? Issue parking tickets? Because it sounds like where you live, if you don't "police" everyone, no one will!
> If only there were some sort of organization whose job it was to "police" things.


Well, there is a reason the police have a special number people can call to report such things. Because they expect people to call to report such things.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

vlmain said:


> Well, there is a reason the police have a special number people can call to report such things. Because they expect people to call to report such things.


Exactly. Amazon has buttons to report things. If they didn't expect people to use them, they wouldn't be there.

As writers and customers we can ignore these things, but sooner or later Amazon is going to reach their limit, and then we'll all suffer. And these boards will be full of posts from people crying about whatever punishment Amazon doled out, because why? Why? They hadn't done anything wrong!

I'm pretty sure Amazon can tell, for example, if someone was miscategorized by mistake, or if they used every keyword they could fit into 400 characters to get their erotica into some category where it would rank and get sales. I saw one just yesterday that had one of the longest lists of categories I'd ever seen, 90% of which the book didn't come close to belonging in. (And, no, I didn't report it because I got called away to the phone and accidentally exited the tab.) There's going to come a point where enough customers complaining about a book being in the wrong place makes Amazon take a look, and then keywords will disappear just like tags did, just as the "Like" button did. The review process is going to take forever, because a system will be put in place where some bot categorizes books based on what words show up in the content, and nobody is going to be happy then.


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

Wow. Just wow.

I know how society works. That was my point.

But there is a difference between being a good citizen and taking the law into your own hands.

What I am tired of seeing is people who think is is their job to right all of the wrongs in the publishing industry.

Using a report button to help improve everyone's browsing experience is truly a noble calling.

*Calling out authors by name, linking to their books, asking your social media following to take action against them* - that would be much closer to the real world equivalent of vigilantism. That *is not acceptable* in my book. In fact, I find it just as reprehensible as the "crimes" these Amazon Neighborhood Watchdogs are protecting us from.

I appreciate the concern that I may have misunderstood. I know what straw man argument is. I learned not to use them in middle school english class. I get that we were all exaggerating to prove a point, and to try, however unsuccessfully, to be funny in the process.

Here are some truths, as I see them, put forth without unnecessary embellishment:

No one thinks Amazon will fall apart if a book ends up in the wrong category.

No one thinks it is right to manipulate the system in unfairly in your favor.

Everyone, apparently, has a different view on how to handle the transgressions. From "it's not my concern" to "let's get the torches and pitchforks!"

No one will EVER convince anyone to change their opinion.

The main reason for the internet is for people to argue with people they will never meet in real like in order to make themselves sound intelligent.

You are all very smart, and very pretty. Now go write a book!!


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## Guest (Jul 25, 2015)

Voelker58 said:


> Wow. Just wow.
> 
> I know how society works. That was my point.
> 
> ...


Yeah, there's nothing wrong with me linking to a book, if it's to show someone what they're talking about, which it appears we are afraid of.

Of course, I don't care about going after such authors in a negative light, this is about criticizing amazon's system. I saw one author post here that a simple keyword chucked her books in horror, and now she's one of the top best selling horror authors .........

Doesn't seem right to me. And I saw Mr. Voekler try to argue the ambiguity of the book I posted a link to, as if maybe it was horror when seen in a certain light. ... Can I even have a conversation with people anymore..? There's only insanity behind that claim. Book was clearly romance, but I'm not accusing the author of anything - just - Amazon are screwed in the head if that's a horror bestseller. Sorry, and Sorry it's such an unpopular opinion to have. I'm not even a horror author anymore, but I am a horror reader. So sad to see even horror authors themselves defend romance authors stealing their visibility.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

There have been reports . . . . I just got back from a week away and am expecting guests for dinner . . . . and Betsy's at a quilt exhibition.

So maybe later this evening, or in the morning, one of us will have a chance to review things and possibly re-open.

Until then . . . . have a cold beverage of your choice and maybe log off the 'puter and see what the real people in your life are up to. 

_I'm going to reopen this thread now after review and discussion with Ann...

As far as links go, no matter the intent, our experience has been that posting links of specific authors' works as examples of unethical behavior or as examples of miscategorization, inappropriate keywords or other issues, frequently results in a rash of reports on the book cited, whether that was the poster's intent or not. People reading the forum see this and get the wrong impression. Which is why our policy about links has evolved as a corollary to WHOA (What Happens On Amazon stays on Amazon. A link to a specific book is NOT needed, in most cases, to discuss a general problem and thus will likely be removed.

I hope this clarifies things. I don't see any need for specific examples in a "general" thread on unethical behavior.

Please keep it civil.

Betsy & Ann_


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Unless something directly harms someone else, as in physically, personally harms them or actually steals existing valuables from them, there is no reason for vigilantism.

Neighbourhood watches in the oh so nice area I live in have gone ahead and informed everyone of a sex offender on the sex offender list taking up residence here. Within a few weeks he was shunned, treated badly in the local shops and eventually beaten up by a couple of youngsters. To within an inch of his life, I may add, and the guy is well over 70. The reason why he was on said sex offender list is that he had taken a drunken, public leak where some biddy reported him and an overachieving young police officer dragged out the whole affair. Great stuff. Terribly dangerous.

The pettiness of vigilants of any order is enough for me to despise most such organisations and any do-gooders who can't tell real problems from imagined or artifartsy ones.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

I don't think reporting TOS violations as one comes across them as vigilantism. That would be taking things too far, as was done in Nik's example. (Things like a single occasion of public urination shouldn't even be a sex crime. Continuing to do so would indicate some form of sexual deviance, however.)

We shouldn't be harsh about it, or get all up in Amazon's face -- "That author is ruining my book sales! Burn the witch!" -- but a simple report of violations may curb the issue, or at least make Amazon aware that things are increasingly showing up so they can take action before it becomes a huge issue and we get changes to rules that affect us all.

I'm sure some authors are doing these sorts of things because they're reading about them in how to sell on Kindle books, or certain types of websites, and they innocently think it's okay -- after all, someone makes good money, and authors they've heard of do it, or the trad pubs do it, etc. -- but as we've already seen, using subtitles for keywords, for example is getting to be a huge problem. When the top of lists are full of things like this, or other things that have been discussed here, it's only a matter of time before Amazon reacts, and they tend to nuke the ground, rather than send a gently-worded telegram.


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## AltMe (May 18, 2015)

she-la-ti-da said:


> it's only a matter of time before Amazon reacts, and they tend to nuke the ground, rather than send a gently-worded telegram.


That's the main danger.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

OK, stepping in.

Just as a call to action about an author's book on Amazon is inappropriate here, so is a call to action against so-called "vigilantes."  Such a discussion will result in this thread being locked again.

Betsy
KB Mod


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

*facepalm* Again, I don't get the use of the word _vigilante_ or _vigilantism._ If a reader sees something that he/she believes is against TOS and reports it to Amazon, as requested, that is NOT vigilantism.

Purposely searching out violations and acting against authors personally (spamming a FB page, mass downvoting of reviews, etc.)..... THAT is vigilantism. But simply reporting an instance of TOS violation when noticed-- is not.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Boyd said:


> My apologies, didn't intend it to sound quite like a call to action. (Un-Caffeinated) But a general, "what to do?" like, if you were targeted or somebody is making enough of a ruckus to have a reaction that had Amazon cracking down on erotica? As an industry, is it a grin and bear it? Sorry, I'm getting caffeine in me now... just pointing out recent examples, but over the course of the past couple years I'm sure we can cite other examples; "Goodreads bullies" etc.


To have a discussion of what, as a group, should be done about someone deemed "unethical" isn't that, well...kind of like being vigilantes? If an author feels that he or she has been targeted by someone, that's kind of between the two parties. I think reaching out is appropriate. Other than that, it becomes war and seldom helps either side.

Betsy


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## Monie (Oct 4, 2014)

This is an interesting discussion. All I have to add is that when I first got an ereader I would search for books on Amazon using list and keywords but purchase on Nook.  Now Amazon list and keyword search had become useless to me. 

It's too much to weed through in every category and I consider myself a diverse reader.  I can't use Amazon for e-books period unless I use the also brought but that gets tedious. 

I wonder if this is the reason that Bookbub works  so well.  It saves readers the hassle of searching Amazon for something new to race but delivering list to their inbox?


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Jena H said:


> *facepalm* Again, I don't get the use of the word _vigilante_ or _vigilantism._ If a reader sees something that he/she believes is against TOS and reports it to Amazon, as requested, that is NOT vigilantism.


No, that would be just an informing rat.

If you read about how thousands of people ended up in concentration camps or prisons and gulags, in Nazi Germany, France, East Germany, Russia pre-Perestroika (and probably post at the moment again), or the McCarthy era in the USA, you'll find this riddled with exactly what you consider acceptable. Those who ratted on Jews, anarchists, anti-communists, communists, homosexuals and so on, all also had the then current laws on their sides. In those cases it cost lives, here it is just everyday snitching. It's the exact same mentality, though, which is why I find it absolutely not to my tastes.

It is Amazon's playground, Amazon has to do the policing and does it quite obviously. It's in my opinion no one else's business to play snitch or policeman or the vigilante rider. If there's a concrete harm being done, yes of course. But preemptively? In the stead of Amazon? 

When Amazon rolls out their reactions, do you really believe they'd be deterred for one second by what _you good citizens of Amazonia _did?


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Nic said:


> No, that would be just an informing rat.
> 
> If you read about how thousands of people ended up in concentration camps or prisons and gulags, in Nazi Germany, France, East Germany, Russia pre-Perestroika (and probably post at the moment again), or the McCarthy era in the USA, you'll find this riddled with exactly what you consider acceptable. Those who ratted on Jews, anarchists, anti-communists, communists, homosexuals and so on, all also had the then current laws on their sides. In those cases it cost lives, here it is just everyday snitching. It's the exact same mentality, though, which is why I find it absolutely not to my tastes.
> 
> ...


I hope your 'comparison' isn't aimed at me or my comment because I find it off-base to say the least. But I respect that you have your opinions.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Jena H said:


> I hope your 'comparison' isn't aimed at me or my comment because I find it off-base to say the least. But I respect that you have your opinions.


If I quote you I obviously mean you.


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## Molly Tomorrow (Jul 22, 2014)

Jena H said:


> *facepalm* Again, I don't get the use of the word _vigilante_ or _vigilantism._ If a reader sees something that he/she believes is against TOS and reports it to Amazon, as requested, that is NOT vigilantism.


Where does Amazon request people report TOS violations?


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Voelker58 said:


> But there is a difference between being a good citizen and taking the law into your own hands.
> 
> What I am tired of seeing is people who think is is their job to right all of the wrongs in the publishing industry.
> 
> Using a report button to help improve everyone's browsing experience is truly a noble calling.


You have a problem with me hitting a report button Amazon installed to allow me help improve my browsing experience? Should I just tolerate a poor browsing experience because, well...why?

Oh yeah, what about editing my search history? Should I remove the books I accidentally clicked on or should I leave them in?



Nic said:


> No, that would be just an informing rat.
> 
> If you read about how thousands of people ended up in concentration camps or prisons and gulags, in Nazi Germany, France, East Germany, Russia pre-Perestroika (and probably post at the moment again), or the McCarthy era in the USA, you'll find this riddled with exactly what you consider acceptable. Those who ratted on Jews, anarchists, anti-communists, communists, homosexuals and so on, all also had the then current laws on their sides. In those cases it cost lives, here it is just everyday snitching. It's the exact same mentality, though, which is why I find it absolutely not to my tastes.
> 
> ...


&#8230;because having your scamlets removed from Amazon is the same as being turned into forced labour, starved, and then gassed. Good comparison.

I must admit, however, that I do report books now again. I sleep well, too. It doesn't feel at all like killing Jews, anarchists, or homosexuals. Maybe I'm just cold hearted. If it's any comfort to you, Amazon has done nothing (as far as I know) about those books so far.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

Molly Tomorrow said:


> Where does Amazon request people report TOS violations?


Under "Product Description"
Amazon gives readers the ability to "give feedback on images".

And at the very bottom of the page, there are 4 options for contacting Amazon:
-Help/contact customer care
-Report poor quality or formatting
-Report content as Inappropriate
-Violates copyright

Those are the things Amazon are concerned about.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

dianapersaud said:


> Those are the things Amazon are concerned about.


That's not the same as requesting it. It's just an option and clearly geared to the actually affected party. Not an author playing sheriff.



WHDean said:


> ...because having your scamlets removed from Amazon is the same as being turned into forced labour, starved, and then gassed. Good comparison.


It's the same basic mindset, whether you feel comfortable with that or not.

And I hope you weren't addressing me with "having your scamlets removed", because I would take exception with the insinuation that I do anything of that sort.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Hi,

We tried.  But this thread has degenerated into name calling, comparisons to Nazi Germany and taking offense.  Locked and staying locked.

Betsy
KB Mod


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