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How are scammers making millions off Amazon? (And off any author enrolled in Amazon\u2019s KDP Select program?)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy. So say Why does this method result in big bucks? Because of how Amazon has changed the way it pays authors enrolled in KDP Select. Authors know that when Kindle Unlimited was first launched (rather quickly and in direct response to other book subscription services that were just popping up like Scribd and Oyster) we were paid \u201cby the borrow.\u201d It was similar to a sale (on sales, we were paid 70% of list cost on books priced between $2.99 and $9.99) except now we were paid out of a general fund instead of a set percentage. (Like a \u201cpot\u201d or \u201ckitty\u201d \u2013 a communal pool of money \u2013 except in this case, Amazon was the only contributor and authors the recepients.)<\/p>\n But Amazon changed that payment method from \u201cper borrow\u201d to \u201cpages read.\u201d Not pages written, mind you \u2013 but how many pages a reader actually reads.<\/p>\n Except, the problem with this method that\u2019s recently come, shockingly, to light, is that there\u2019s a loophole in the system. Apparently, if you put a link at the beginning of your book to the very back and a reader clicks it \u2013 the author is paid for all those pages<\/strong><\/em>. A full read. Even though a reader just skipped over them.<\/em><\/p>\n Remember when Amazon capped the KENPC count at 3000<\/a>? This is why.<\/p>\n Except Amazon didn\u2019t want us to know one important thing \u2013 they lied to us.<\/p>\n They have no idea how many pages a reader actually reads.<\/p>\n Let me say that again, just so you don\u2019t miss it:<\/p>\n AMAZON HAS NO IDEA HOW MANY PAGES A READER ACTUALLY READS.<\/strong><\/p>\n Wow. A little bit of karma coming back at you with these scammers, Jeff Bezos?<\/p>\n Because Amazon has been scamming authors in the KDP Select program all along.<\/p>\n They decided to pay us by \u201cpages\u201d read, when in fact, they can\u2019t count actual pages read<\/strong>, and they can\u2019t time how long a reader actually takes to read those pages<\/strong> (last time I checked, no one could read 3000 pages in less than two minutes\u2026)<\/p>\n Oh, they can email me and my publishing company that I\u2019m missing a \u201cpage break\u201d at the end of my novel, or threaten to take my book off sale or label it problematic for typos<\/a> (that may or may not actually be typos), or actually take my book off sale (which they recently did – Bear Necessities<\/a> – just<\/em> after a great freebie run, too, while it was on sale for $0.99 – thanks, Amazon!) because I provided bonus content in the front of a book instead of at the back \u2013 but they can\u2019t actually count how many pages a reader reads in a book.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yet\u2026 this is how they have decided to pay authors. Per page read.<\/p>\n See anything wrong with this picture?<\/p>\n I sure do \u2013 and it smells like fraud and class-action lawsuits to me.<\/p>\n How do I know Amazon can\u2019t count how many pages a reader reads?<\/p>\n Because, if Amazon had a way to count how many pages a reader actually reads<\/strong>, a link at the front of the book that took the reader to the very back would result in two pages read.<\/p>\n Just two<\/strong>, not every single page in the book<\/strong>.<\/p>\n But as Dave Koziel and company have proven, that\u2019s not what\u2019s happening. There\u2019s a little loophole in Amazon\u2019s system. When a reader clicks a link at the front of a book that takes them to the end of a 3000 page \u201cbook\u201d \u2013 it gives that author 3000 \u201cpages read.\u201d Not just two.<\/em><\/p>\n If Amazon had a way to count how many pages a reader actually reads<\/strong>, placement of the TOC (table of contents) at the front or back of the document would be irrelevant.<\/p>\n But as this post proves<\/a> (and man, do I feel awful for\u00a0author Walter Jon Williams \u2013 he\u2019s out a hella lot of money because of Amazon\u2019s knee-jerk reactions and lack of planning and forethought) Amazon has suddenly begun removing books from sale that have a TOC at the back of the book<\/strong>. As usual, they decided to shoot first and ask questions later, and damaged legitimate authors in the process, as David Gaughran first pointed out<\/a>.<\/p>\n If Amazon had a way to count how many pages a reader actually reads<\/strong>, placement of \u201cbonus material\u201d (an extra story or book along with the original source material, which many authors have started to do, including myself, in the Kindle Unlimited program) would be irrelevant. You could put it at the front or back of the book, and it wouldn\u2019t matter, because the table of contents tells the reader what\u2019s where, right?<\/p>\n Except the truth is, Amazon is showing us through their actions \u2013 their cap on KENPC, their insistence that the TOC needs to be at the front of a book, and their recent email to me about \u201cbonus\u201d content not being allowed at the front of a book \u2013 that they have no idea how many pages are being read in any given book.<\/strong><\/p>\n All they know is where a reader STOPS reading.<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s all they can actually calculate.<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s why a TOC needs to be at the front (because TOC defaults as the \u201cstart\u201d point of a book, and if it\u2019s at the back and a reader goes to the TOC, an author has just been given credit for a full read even if the reader didn\u2019t read the book) and why they are no longer allowing \u201cbonus\u201d content at the front of a book.<\/p>\n Oh, and in case you\u2019re wondering, there are legitimate, non-scammy reasons to put a TOC at the back or bonus material at the front. The TOC (especially if a book is long or a boxed set) takes up valuable real estate in the \u201cLook Inside\u201d feature or \u201cSample\u201d on Amazon. Placing it at the back avoids that issue.<\/p>\n And the logic behind putting \u201cbonus\u201d material at the front?<\/p>\n Well, this is how I explained it to Amazon in my letter to them:<\/p>\n I had a very legitimate reason for putting the bonus book\/content at the front of this title.<\/em><\/p>\n The last time I put a bonus book at the end of the book, I had reviews complaining that the original title ended at “50%” – and they thought it was much longer, because the bonus book was taking up real estate at the back of the original text.<\/em><\/p>\n In this case, I put the bonus book up front (and labeled it clearly on the title page and in the table of contents) so that when the reader finished the main book, it would be near 100% and they would understand they’d reached the end, and wouldn’t feel “cheated\u201d or \u201cripped off.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n It’s easy to look at a Table of Contents (TOC) and navigate to the book they purchased.<\/em><\/p>\n You see, I was under the assumption that, since Amazon is paying us by PAGES READ, that you, at Amazon, actually had a way of knowing HOW MANY PAGES A READER ACTUALLY READ.<\/em><\/p>\n I assumed, since it would be fraudulent otherwise, per our contract in publishing with you, that since you were paying us by pages read, if a reader skipped over a book in the table of contents, we wouldn’t actually be paid for those pages. So that putting bonus content at the beginning of a book would be no big deal, no harm, no foul.<\/em><\/p>\n Apparently, that isn’t the case. And you never told us that. As a matter of fact, you, personally, (rep\u2019s name redacted), lied to me and said that skipping to the end of a book would NOT result in a full-read. We emailed about this and talked about it on the phone when KU 1.0 was originally rolled out, and you assured me that yes, Amazon had a way of tracking the pages a reader actually read, with time spent on each page.<\/em><\/p>\n Turns out, Amazon hasn’t been able to correctly count pages read since the very beginning, even though that’s exactly how you’re paying us.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n If you think this isn’t fraud, and that there aren’t authors out there already talking about a class action lawsuit, you’d be very, very wrong. There are a lot of wealthy authors out there who are beyond furious about this new information.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I suggest you plug this leak as fast as you can and make some apologies and remuneration for it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n And restore my book to published status immediately – and its rank as well, since you took it off-sale for a reason that shouldn’t have been a problem or caused an issue if you hadn’t lied to authors about your ability to actually count the pages you were oh-so-generously paying us less than half-a-penny for.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n On my part, it was completely unintentional. I was directly told that skipping over content in a book would not result in pages read. But that was clearly a lie.<\/strong><\/p>\n I thought I was creating a better<\/em> customer experience (kind of like Walter Jon Williams and his TOC placement) when in fact I was unknowingly using a tactic commonly utilized by scammers.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, it\u2019s not the only scammer tactic I unwittingly adopted.<\/p>\n You see, I have a link at the front of my books in my table of contents (I happen to place my TOC up front, so I dodged that particular bullet) that leads to the back and a link to sign up to my mailing list. I incentivize signing up to the list by offering readers five free reads. I\u2019ve been doing this for years.<\/em><\/p>\n The thing is, I had no idea that doing this resulted in a full read in Kindle Unlimited. Because Amazon specifically told me directly that \u201cskipping pages\u201d wouldn\u2019t work \u2013 that they could count pages read \u2013 and linking to the back page would not<\/em> result in a full read!<\/p>\n I’ve been “cheating” and didn’t even know it was cheating. I wasn’t complicit in a scam but I’ll sure be blamed for it if Amazon shoots first and asks questions later. (And as we know, they usually do\u2026) Especially since I write erotica and my name is The problem is, Amazon has been throwing the baby out with the bath water by taking books off sale for having a TOC at the back of the book or bonus content in the front. As David Gaughran first pointed out, real authors are being hurt by Amazon\u2019s attempts to plug up a leak that shouldn\u2019t have existed in the first place. <\/strong><\/p>\n And I’m afraid it isn’t going to end there, folks.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Are links from the front of the book to the very back going to be next in Amazon\u2019s line of fire? Could be.<\/p>\n The irony is, many people do what I do \u2013 put a link in the TOC to a mailing list with a free read to sign up. Many of those originally had their TOC at the back of their books \u2013 but now Amazon is forcing them to put their TOC at the front. In effect, forcing them to have a link now at the front of their book to their mailing list\u2026 which leads to the back of their book, and would result in a \u201cfull read\u201d if a reader clicks that link.<\/p>\n Doh.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know how Amazon will close this particular loophole, but I know what I\u2019m doing this week. *sigh* Time to reformat my Kindle Unlimited books and take out the link to free content at the back and put that content somewhere up front. It\u2019s not \u201cWIN A KINDLE FIRE\u201d click-bait \u2013 it\u2019s a legitimate offer \u2013 but I\u2019m sure Amazon will see what they want to see. Their logic is “about what you’d expect.”<\/p>\n It\u2019s better to get out of the way of a potential nuclear explosion if you know it\u2019s coming than sit around and wait for it to happen \u2013 at least that\u2019s my philosophy. And the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So if Amazon\u2019s reaction to this KU 2.0 problem so far is any indication, I\u2019d suggest you follow my lead and clean up those \u201clinks to the back of the book\u201d now before they nuke your stuff.<\/p>\n The thing is, all of this cleanup was preventable. There was no reason to implement such a flawed program like Kindle Unlimited in the first place. Amazon certainly could have predicted the original \u201cloophole\u201d in KU 1.0 that they attempted to close with KU 2.0.<\/p>\n Remember when short books were all the rage in KU 1.0? That was because every borrow that was read to 10% paid out around $1.30 each (well, at last count, the amount kept going down every month\u2026) Erotica writers were hit hard when Amazon switched to the \u201cpaid per page read\u201d scenario, because erotica authors have always written in short-form. What we were once being paid $2.09 (70% of $2.99) per sale for (before Kindle Unlimited came along) became $1.30 per borrow in KU 1.0. When KU 2.0 was implemented, we were then being paid about $0.15 per read-through.<\/p>\n Ouch.<\/p>\n But the real scammers in KU 1.0 weren\u2019t erotica authors (who simply benefited from the per-borrow payout by doing what we\u2019d always done – \u00a0 writing short stories) the real scammers put gibberish inside a book and made them so short that by simply opening the book on your Kindle, that first page would count as 10% of the book and result in a paid borrow.<\/p>\n Cha-ching!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Are you telling me Amazon couldn\u2019t have foreseen that?<\/p>\n If so, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.<\/p>\n Then KU 2.0 came along to \u201cfix\u201d the issues\/loopholes\/leaks of the \u201cscamphlets\u201d in KU 1.0. Amazon went to a \u201cpay per pages read\u201d scenario. It\u2019s ironic that their solution to stem the money they were bleeding in the first Kindle Unlimited version was increased exponentially in the next one.<\/p>\n In KU 2.0, they weren\u2019t paying out $1.30 a borrow to scammers who created their little \u201cscamplets\u201d and borrowed them in their little circles anymore. (Or to those nasty erotica writers who\u2019ve always written short stories for readers who want to buy them\u2026 they clearly deserved to be punished for their dirty minds and \u201cselling sex\u201d in the first place, right? \/end sarcasm)<\/p>\n That\u2019s great, but\u2026 before the KENPC cap was very recently instituted, the pages you could get paid for per-read were unlimited.<\/strong> Which meant that anyone could release a \u201cbook\u201d of unlimited length in KDP Select (these scammers are putting garbage in their books \u2013 foreign translations, articles from Wikipedia, just words for words\u2019 sake) then put a link at the front of that book that jumped to the back \u2013\u00a0 and voila. A $100 download in one click. <\/strong>I’m not kidding. I know authors who have told me they’ve seen these scammers bragging about getting that much per-read before the KENPC cap.<\/p>\n Even when they put the KENPC cap of 3000 on it, with the payout last month at $0.0041 per page read, that meant the maximum payout was $12.30 per download. Still not too shabby. Especially if you have lots of scammer friends to borrow your book and just click a link to read to the end – and push up your rank in the process.<\/p>\n KU 2.0 is far worse, in terms of scamming and money lost, than KU 1.0 ever was.<\/strong><\/p>\n Guess you should have just continued paying out for those dirty erotica shorts, Amazon\u2026 \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n Amazon\u2019s continued \u201cfix\u201d to these problems are like putting a Band-Aid on a bleeding artery. Because guys like Dave Koziel aren\u2019t just making money off Amazon. He\u2019s making money off selling this method to other scammers and telling them how to make money scamming, too. And the more they scam, the more money they take out of the \u201cpot.”<\/p>\n Check this link out<\/a>. Apparently a 15-year-old mentee of Dave Koziel made $64,000 in a month. That’s not a typo.<\/p>\n Do I think this kid wrote all those words? Not if he’s following Dave’s advice, he’s not.<\/p>\n I’m posting the screen shots here, just in case the link gets removed. (You never know…)<\/p>\n Quoted on those images, Dave Koziel says: “A screen shot I got earlier from my mentee and coaching student @justin8600 For those of you who don’t know what this is it’s a report from Amazon that shows you your actual royalty payments from the Kindle store. Take a close look at these numbers and you’ll see how much money he is actually getting paid this month from Amazon. Did I mention he’s only 15? A lot of you may look at this and think it’s fake. How can a 15 year old possibly make $70,000+ in a month online from selling ebooks on Amazon? The world is changing and fast. Opportunities are out there to make money and a lot of it! It doesn’t matter how old you are, where you came from, what your circumstances are etc.”<\/p>\n Authors and readers \u2013\u00a0 does this make you angry? It should. You\u2019ve been lied to and cheated, not just by the scammers, but by Amazon. Primarily Amazon, really. Scammers suck, but they’re like cockroaches. They do what they do. They go where the food is, right?<\/p>\n They’re on Amazon because that’s where the money is. \u00a0Whose fault is that? Scammers are exploiting a loophole that was created by Amazon’s short-sightedness and could have been prevented by Amazon in the first place.<\/p>\n The scammers are scammers – and they’re providing a poor customer experience to be sure – but Amazon bears the brunt of the blame here, let’s not lose sight of that.<\/p>\n If Amazon\u2019s focus is \u201ccustomer-centric\u201d then their Kindle Unlimited program is a giant fail. KU 1.0 was called \u201cKink Unlimited\u201d because authors (many who hadn\u2019t started out writing erotica) jumped on the erotica shorts bandwagon and the market was flooded with them.<\/p>\n But KU 2.0 is now being called \u201cKrap Unlimited\u201d because of all of these crappy scam-books that claim to have great content, but really only contain a bunch of garbage and a click-bait link up front to take readers to the end, so the \u201cauthor\u201d of the book can get paid for all of those pages.<\/p>\n And when readers find these word-salad books, do they think, \u201cOh geez, a scammer, what a jerk?\u201d No. They think, \u201cWelp, everything they say about self-publishing and indies is true \u2013 their books suck!\u201d<\/p>\n Thanks, Amazon, for perpetuating that<\/em> myth. :\/<\/p>\n And while the readers have to wade through crap (and boy, do they \u2013 I thought keyword stuffed titles weren\u2019t allowed, Amazon?) authors are getting hit the hardest under KU 2.0. Not only are we getting paid less than half a cent per-page-read, these junk-books are forcing legitimate authors to split the \u201cglobal fund\u201d\/pot with the scammers. The rate we\u2019re being paid per page just keeps dropping.<\/p>\n Gee, I wonder why?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look, shall we:<\/p>\n We can thank the scammers – and Amazon – for that.<\/p>\n And here are some more numbers for you.<\/p>\n Amazon claimed recently that pages read were up by 25%. But I know that I\u00a0<\/em>didn\u2019t see a pages-read increase of 25%. Did you? I bet you didn\u2019t. Want to know why?<\/p>\n Because those pages read were click-bait scammer reads, that\u2019s why.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t prove it \u2013 but other authors have speculated as much, and I believe they\u2019re right.<\/p>\n Take a look at this graph. (Courtesy of my author friend, Michelle Keep<\/a> – she’s awesome BTW, smart as a whip, and writes great books – and provides amazing services to authors – check her out!)<\/p>\ndigital entrepreneurs<\/del> scammers like Dave Koziel<\/a> \u2013 who admits to outsourcing his material, he\u2019s not an actual writer or anything. You see, all you have to do it just upload “books” stuffed to the gills with anything, even unrelated material (romance books, cookbooks, South Beach diet books, foreign language texts, any and everything you\u2019ve got at your disposal) then use a click-bait link at the front of the book (something like \u201cClick here to win a Kindle Fire!\u201d) to take the reader directly to the very back. A German blog<\/a> has detailed these tactics as well, although it seems the German Amazon store (much smaller than the U.S. one) is cracking down on this now.<\/p>\n
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\nmud<\/del> Selena Kitt. I\u2019m guilty already by default. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n![\"screenshotb\"](\"\/wp-content\/files\/screenshotb.jpg\")
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