Crazy doesn’t seem to quite cover what’s been happening lately. If any of you have been following the goings on at in the world of books lately, you might have heard of stuffers, scammers, rank stripping, paid for reviews that are causing the removal of legitimate reviews, and accounts being shut down. And it mostly seems to be happening on Amazon.
Why there? I suspect it’s because they have the largest selection of books online and these criminals feel it’s an easier place to commit their crimes. The more books to choose from, the less likely theirs are to stand out.
Whatever the reason, the attempts to stop these individuals are hurting many writers whose books are in KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited. They’re also hurting a fair number of readers who pay for Kindle Unlimited subscriptions.
Amazon is working hard to stop all of the illegal activities but the bots created to find the scammers sometimes flag innocent authors and readers whose accounts can then be, without warning, closed.
What does that mean? Quite simply, losing an account means losing all of your digital content. Kindles will become dust collectors because all of your books will be gone. And your music and video libraries? Gone too.
Authors risk losing all of that – plus their income. And if that happens, it’s all of their income.
Why?
To provide their books to Kindle Unlimited, authors have to be in KDP Select – meaning they can’t sell their digital books anywhere else. Given all that’s going on right now, it doesn’t make good business sense to do that anymore.
Many have already pulled everything out of Select. Their books will still be available at Amazon, but they’re selling them at the other stores too.
Some are like me though, taking them out a little more slowly. I’ve got about a dozen of my books in the major stores – Barnes & Noble, Google Play, iTunes, Kobo, and Smashwords. I should have five more up in the next week or so, with the to follow by the end of the year. Hopefully.
If you’ve never shopped at the other stores, or your e-reader doesn’t currently support them, you can get free reading apps for all of the bookstores I listed in the last paragraph (link here). With the apps, you’re free to buy and read my books – and any others you want – anywhere you choose.
I’ll still be selling on Amazon – just not exclusively – as will many, many other authors. If you purchase your books there, I encourage you to check a couple of things first. If they’re over 1000 pages and aren’t single author bundles or multi-author boxed sets, they could belong to a book stuffer/scammer. Also, be sure to check the sample pages to make sure you’re getting well written stories. At least until the problems have been resolved.
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Oh! Before I forget, I have an author page on BookBub. I’d love it if you’d follow me there. The link is: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/kristy-k-james.
Photo credit: Pixabay.com
It’s sad that we even need to deal with this stuff. Unethical people have managed to ruin some great things.
They sure have. And I hope by the time Amazon is done with them, others will think twice before attempting anything like it again. 🙁