Kristi Belcamino is really being messed around by Amazon. Yesterday morning, she was rank-stripped for the third time, and it appears to be happening every time she puts a book free – even before she hits the promo sites or moves up the charts.
This post is from 2 January 2018. It has not been updated except to clean up broken links but the comments remain open.
Back in September, Kristi was one of the unfortunate (and innocent) authors who were unfairly rank-stripped by Amazon for several weeks. She had a BookBub promotion which catapulted her up to #3 in the Free charts on September 18, was then rank-stripped, and didn’t have the sanction lifted until October 22 – over one month later.
Along with all the other authors I wrote about in October’s post Amazon’s Hall of Spinning Knives, Kristi received the standard form letter about rank manipulation from Amazon KDP’s Compliance team, regarding her book Blessed are the Peacemakers.
Hello,
We detected that purchases or borrows of your book(s) are originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. As a result, your sales rank will not be visible until we determine this activity has ceased.
While we fully support the efforts of our publishers to promote their books, we take activities that jeopardize the experience of our readers and other authors seriously. Please be aware that you are responsible for ensuring the strategies used to promote your books comply with our Terms and Conditions. We encourage you to thoroughly review any marketing services employed for promotional purposes.
You may email us at [redacted] with any questions.
Thanks for publishing with Amazon KDP.
Regards,
[Name Withheld]
Kindle Direct Publishing
Kristi did as anyone would in this situation and asked for more information, as she was confused and didn’t understand what she had done wrong. But Amazon refused to engage meaningfully on this, or to provide any evidence for its claims.
This was the response:
Hello,
As we previously stated, we still detect purchases or borrows of your book(s) are originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. You are responsible for ensuring the strategies used to promote your books comply with our Terms and Conditions.
We cannot offer advice on marketing services or details of our investigations.
Please be aware we will not be providing additional details.
Best regards,
[Name Withheld]
After a few weeks of “investigating,” Amazon returned the rank to Kristi’s book. She did not receive an apology from KDP, or any kind of compensation for this visibility-killing sanction. In fact, Amazon threatened to take similar action in the future.
And Amazon made good on that threat.
In early December, Kristi made another book free – Gia in the City of Dead – as part of a KDP Select promotion from December 1 to December 5. When she woke on December 1, she saw that her book had been stripped of its rank – before any promotion had even kicked in. She immediately emailed Amazon to ask them why this had happened. This was the nonsensical reply she received the following day:
Hello,
In the Kindle Store, the Bestsellers Rank is divided into Free and Paid lists. During the period when your book is being offered for free, it will have a ranking in the Free list. Once the free promotion is over, your title will show up again in the Paid list.
The Bestsellers Rank calculation is based on Amazon sales and is updated hourly to reflect newer and historical sales of every item sold on our website, with recent sales being weighted more heavily. With this in mind, titles that are part of a free promotion may see a drop in the sales rank under the Paid list after the promotion is over. However, since your sales rank takes into account recent and historical sales data, your previous Paid rank will influence your new Paid rank.
Category rankings will appear in the Product Details section of a book’s detail page to display the appropriate rank information.
While monitoring your book’s Amazon sales rank may be helpful in gaining general insight into the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and other initiatives to drive book sales, it is not an accurate way to track your book’s sales or compare your sales in relation to books in other categories, since a particular item’s sales rank does not absolutely reflect its sales.
While monitoring your book’s Amazon sales rank may be helpful in gaining general insight into the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and other initiatives to drive book sales, it is not an accurate way to track your book’s sales or pages read. Neither is it an accurate way to compare your sales in relation to books in other categories, since a particular item’s sales rank does not absolutely reflect its sales or Kindle Unlimited (KU) / Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) activity.
Your paperback which is linked to your eBook shows the following:
Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars 26 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #409,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#1296 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers & Suspense > Crime > Organized CrimeThanks for using Amazon KDP.
[Name Withheld]
It appears that a customer service rep has rushed a reply after misreading Kristi’s query and pasted in a bunch of irrelevant canned responses. I merely copy it here to show that this kind of botched reply is becoming typical with KDP customer service – a situation which is frustrating normally, but critically so when you have a major issue like Kristi did at the time.
Two of the four guiding principles of Amazon are “customer obsession” and “commitment to operational excellence” – I’d love to know if KDP thinks it is meeting those benchmarks with this type of response.
Anyway, Kristi persisted until she got someone to actually read her email. This is where things got really weird. On December 4, she received this unsigned email from KDP’s Compliance team:
Hello,
We detected that purchases or borrows of your book(s) are originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. We take activities that could jeopardize the experience of our readers and other authors seriously and may temporarily remove sales rank while we investigate. The sales rank(s) of your book(s) is now available.
If you have any questions, please email us at [redacted].
Thanks for publishing with Amazon KDP.
Note that while the email stated that “The sales rank(s) of your book(s) is now available” – this was not the case. The rank had not been returned to Gia in the City of Dead, as I can vouch for myself. Kristi was in contact with me throughout this episode and I was able to watch events unfolding and verify her claims.
Kristi’s rank didn’t return the following day either, but when her free promotion ended on midnight of December 5, as scheduled, her rank returned. On December 6, Kristi received this email:
Hello Kristi,
I understand your frustration and I really appreciate your patience while we investigated this further. There was a technical issue that prevented your sales rank from displaying while our system was updating the rank. Our Technical Team has corrected the issue and your sales rank is now displaying accurately. Again, I’m very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. You can confirm the sales rank is now appearing by accessing the link below.
Regards,
[Name Withheld]
Executive Customer Relations
Kindle Direct Publishing
Bizarrely, KDP was now claiming that a “technical issue” prevented her sales rank from displaying. This was obviously stretching credulity given the rank manipulation form letter that Kristi had again received from Amazon’s Compliance team, and she said that in response to this message. Then she received this message:
Hello Kristi,
I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. The email you received from crm-sra-compliance@amazon.com on December 4 was sent in error and the sales rank did not disappear due to free promotions or manipulation. Our Content Review team confirmed there was no manipulation and our Technical Team discovered that the disappearance of your sales rank was due to a internal issue.
Best regards,
[Name Withheld]
So, an “internal issue” caused the rank disappearance, and the rank manipulation email was sent in error. Hmmmmm. Quite the coincidence, don’t you think?
Nevertheless, at this point Kristi was relieved that her rank had been restored, even if Amazon had – once again – completely ruined a promotion which she had spent money on, killing her visibility and crippling her downloads.
Kristi was worried about this happening again in January, when she had a BookBub promotion scheduled. This time she decided to get ahead of the problem and emailed the same person she had been dealing with throughout at KDP Executive Customer Relations, explaining when her book would be free and detailing the (legit) promo sites she would be using. She expressed hope that there would be no “internal issue” like in early December.
I should note that Kristi has been remarkably restrained throughout this entire episode, showing much more composure than I would. For example, this is the email she sent in advance of her January promotion:
Dear [Name Withheld],
I’m hoping you can help prevent the rank stripping from happening to me a third time.
I’m going to have a Bookbub ad run Jan. 4 and I expect the ranking for my book, Gia in the City of the Dead, to change dramatically and I’m hoping this won’t trigger another bot to flag me for doing something wrong or trigger the internal issue situation like last time.
I’m writing to you in the hopes that you can alert someone that this is happening so I don’t get hurt by losing rank again in January.
Thank you for your time and help. It is greatly appreciated.
Best,
Kristi Belcamino
PS The book is this one: https://www.amazon.com/City-Dead-Santella-Crime-Thriller-ebook/dp/B0751LCQLQ
You might think that Kristi’s case would merit some careful attention from KDP at this point, given how they had mistreated her previously, but this is all she received in response. Note that this reply came from the Compliance team – the person at Executive Customer Relations didn’t even bother replying to her exceedingly polite email:
Hello,
We do not sponsor or endorse any 3rd party marketing services. You’re welcome to promote your book through third-party websites and other services, but we encourage you to monitor the tactics they use to promote your books. You are responsible for ensuring that no tactics used to promote your book manipulate the Kindle publishing service and/or Kindle programs.
We advise against using any sites that “guarantee” a return on your investment. We support our authors’ efforts to promote their books worldwide, but at the same time, we work to prevent any manipulation of the Kindle publishing service.
If you have any questions, please email us at [redacted].
Thanks for publishing with Amazon KDP.
Best regards,
[Name Withheld]
Despite Kristi flagging her promotion in advance to Amazon, her book was rank-stripped yesterday. And it was rank-stripped as soon as it went free – before any promotion kicked in.
There’s something else bizarre going on here. I generally use affiliate links on this blog – when I remember to put them in, that is. I often forget. I can’t remember if I used affiliate links to point to rank-stripped books before, but I noticed something very strange when attempting to link to Kristi’s currently rank-stripped book Gia and the City of Dead.
In case you can’t read the above text, it says:
This product is one of the Amazon Associates Program Excluded Products. We do not support direct linking to this product. Please direct customers to another product or the category for this product instead.
In other words, Amazon is currently not supporting affiliate links to this book; it appears that rank-stripping sanctions have yet another dimension.
Kristi is due to have her BookBub promotion on January 4, something she would have spent a considerable amount on, and her book will be denied crucial visibility if this sanction isn’t lifted.
When a book is rank-stripped, it disappears from the charts completely, and is largely invisible to Amazon’s recommendation engine. In short, it kills downloads for a title while the rank is removed. It’s very damaging.
And to be absolutely clear: Kristi has done nothing wrong.
Authors are rightly angry about this, but I want to make an important distinction: this isn’t a BookBub problem. Most of the authors rank-stripped never used BookBub. It’s also not some kind of move by Amazon to squash third-party sites and force everyone to use AMS – that’s equally nonsensical, and demonstrably false: some of those rank-stripped didn’t use any third-party sites.
And as Kristi’s experience should prove: the rank-stripping is kicking in now before promotions even begin. In other words, this isn’t a BookBub problem; it’s an Amazon problem.
KDP is applying serious sanctions to authors who are completely innocent of any wrongdoing, refusing to show any evidence for its determinations or give authors any chance to appeal its decisions. And it’s doing all this while ignoring widespread scamming and cheating in the Kindle Store.
We must demand change.
Update:
Some have asked in the comments here and on Facebook, how we can demand change and what form that should take.
First, I think we need to make as much noise as possible. Share your feelings on this with Amazon. Spread the word as much as possible. If you are a member of a writers’ org, then see if they will take an interest in this (RWA already has). If you have a press connection, see if they wish to write about it.
As for what Amazon should do, I don’t think KDP cares what I have to say, but here’s my suggested template for handling cases of suspected rank manipulation.
1. Investigations can and should happen quickly – there is no possible need for it to take weeks and weeks.
2. No sanction should be applied until guilt has been determined.
3. If guilt is determined, Amazon should furnish the purported evidence, and authors should have a right of appeal.
4. If innocence is established, Amazon should apologize to the author, and compensate them for any losses suffered under applied sanctions, if applicable.
Aside from how KDP handles such cases, I strongly suggest that it looks at its fraud detection systems which appear to be throwing up a large amount of false positives. If that’s NOT the case, and some third-party is targeting innocent authors to kick up dust or test the thresholds of the system, thus manipulating rank unbeknownst to the author, then Amazon needs to sanction that third-party, as clearly something malicious is in play.
Update 2:
Kristi’s rank is back, in time for her BookBub promotion, which is great news. Amazon called to apologize and say that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but haven’t given any explanation beyond a “technical issue.”
Unfortunately, Kristi is not out of the woods yet. There is still something strange going on with this book. First, it’s invisible in the API – just gone. I’ve never seen that before. Second, when I tried to build an affiliate link to this book, I was informed that it is an “Excluded Product” as per the above screenshot.
Questions and issues remain, and obviously Kristi needs a full explanation, all issues resolved, and an assurance this won’t happen again. In the meantime, if you feel like helping Kristi recover some of her lost visibility, Gia and the City of Dead is free for the next couple of days.
Something else came up yesterday, which was quite timely. One of my main bugbears with Amazon right now is that they are being extremely heavy-handed when dealing with innocent authors, and are letting extreme gaming of the Kindle Unlimited system go unpunished – even rewarding those authors with All-Star bonuses every month.
It’s extremely difficult to get traction on the issue as it is quite technical. Author Heather C. Leigh has put together a helpful video explainer. As you watch this, and your blood boils, remember that Amazon is aware of ALL of this, and refuses to do anything – while cracking down on authors like Kristi who have done nothing wrong.
If someone hits you and continues to hit you then lies about it to other people it’s considered abuse. Amazon is abusing writers and doesn’t deserve to have us. My blog is for promoting other writers books and blogs, just ask and I’ll post a link to your book (your website or blog, not Amazon link.) send me an email or contact me here on WordPress. Enough is enough, forget Amazon they are corrupt, we don’t need them we have each other!
Thanks for your kind words. I am very excited to take my series wide this week. The author support in this industry is amazing. Best, Kristi
If you’d like I can link to your blog in mine? (I don’t know how to re-blog a posting from another blog.)
Anyone following the rank stripping/book stuffing/scammer issues will be very interested in a court case Amazon just filed: https://twitter.com/DavidGaughran/status/981893826288803840
I had an issue with the ‘technical issue’ when I tried to add a book to KDP. I spent 5 weeks trying to figure out why my book hit the last hurdle and stayed there. Numerous calls to KDP., Always told it was a temporary technical issue. Finally gave up and loaded ebook to IngramSpark. Upload cost is $25, plus royalties are less, but, hey, at least my book is on Amazon.
Reblogged this on Christy Jackson Nicholas, Author and Artist.
Reblogged this on How To Ebook.
Personally, I don’t make much money on Amazon or anywhere else as an indie author. Can’t seem to crack the nut of visibility, even with a hybrid publisher who has control of the majority of my novels. However, to answer Christopher’s question, YES, I do know authors who say they make more money on iTunes or via Smashwords with wide distribution than they do with Amazon. They are out there, on Facebook’s Club Indie, for example.
Good luck to you!
Sydney
Dave, I want to thank you first of all for keeping the rest of us informed about all of this. I don’t really know anyone who has the same overview as you do. I published on Amazon years ago, and had big dreams about digging into the indie pub ‘gold rush’ but I gave up on it all, because … well, life. And I simply did not have the discipline, it turned out to write as much fiction as I felt was necessary to hone my skill and have something out there in a large enough quantity to get discovered. I have thought about trying again, though, but your coverage of Amazon problems really have made me think twice about it. I am still thinking…
As regards the issue at hand – Amazon’s robotic rank-stripping punishment of authors (and everything else you have blogged about related to that), here are my two and a half cents:
First and most importantly: I’m afraid that if we want Amazon to change its actions on this issue we have to have real leverage – real power to affect their bottom line. Reality appears to have proven for some time now that nothing else is going to work, and that has been thoroughly documented here by Dave. Right now it honestly feels a bit too much like deja vu to the bad old days with a pre-Amazon-ecosystem (and other indie pub systems) when it was authors getting screwed by legacy publishers. Back then there was no really good alternative to legacy publishing, hence: bow down and take it …
I foresee, though, that for some time things will go on as they are – maybe even get worse 🙁 The majority of authors, indie or otherwise, (probably) don’t suffer from these problems. Many do, yes, but the number is likely small compared to the number of people who actually benefit, without too much hassle, from Kindle Publishing. Some who suffer from Amazon’s braindead algorithms once in a while may hope the problem will not return and don’t really have time or energy for collective action anyway. And do the rest of us have time and energy?
I was thinking … most authors probably put up with Amazon, despite the problems, because that’s where THE majority of their income comes from. Does anyone know of any authors who make a significant amount of income (not necessarily a full livelihood, whatever that is in your region), from self-publishing fiction independently of Amazon? Or at least with the majority of their income coming from other sources than Amazon? That may also include derivatives such as t-shirts, courses, ads, etc. I mean I know a lot of non-fiction authors with huge blogs and communities who are able to make nice money by selling directly to their list and the random million visitors to their sites.
Is this possible for fiction authors as well, I wonder … and if so, how? And would it be worth it?
Thanks for blogging, Dave – still saying it like it is, after all these years. I will keep reading and getting smarter, even if I end up going another route with my fiction that into the Amazon den …
Great info. Bought Kindle book from Kristi for $4.99. Money well spent.
This is VERY worrying! I published my first novel in August 2016 and it got an extended free promo period simply because we couldn’t figure out the system. I’ve got my second book finished and in the final pre-publication stages but if this is going on I may have to find another platform to publish to…
I am no expert, but I compared all three books of Kristi Belcamino’s GIA series that have Look Inside.
1. She has advertising at the beginning of each book in the series for a “free” book.
2. In Book 1, the ad is for obtaining BOOK 2 in the series for free.
3. The link provided sends the customer to the authors’ website for the free book.
4. The link for the free book is visible via Look Inside.
4. Book 2 is in Amazon’s KU program.
If an ebook is in KU, it needs to be EXCLUSIVE, meaning it cannot be sold (or given away) anywhere else — not even your own website. Therefore, isn’t she violating the terms and conditions under KU by offering the book for free from her site?
The ads in front of Book 2 and Book 3 are for books not in the GIA series. The ads do not include a TEXT link like in Book 1, however the author does send the reader to the end of the book for the offer (which I assume is a link to her site). I did not check whether these books are in Amazon KU as well.
Another issue may be that the link is visible from the LOOK INSIDE, which mean anyone, without purchasing BOOK 1 can click the link and obtain Book 2 free, bypassing Amazon altogether. Not every customer has KU, so would ordinarily pay for the book. Sending the customer to her website it taking money away from Amazon, but more importantly, in violation of the KU terms.
This may be the red flag that she is getting. As for the disappearing ranking, I have not idea, but it may be stemming from that FREE link in the beginning of the book. But as I said, I am no expert.
Hey,
It’s not Book 2. That’s a prequel novella which is not in KU – no rules being breached whatsoever.
You can verify that by clicking on Look Inside. This is the page it resolves to. http://kristibelcamino.us14.list-manage2.com/subscribe?u=9000fe01fef4c09b4e31e8cec&id=9d0560855b
I appreciate your intentions might have been good but, honestly, you could have checked that yourself in less time than it took you to write this comment.
I appreciate you pointing that out and you are correct. Thank you for the courteous and kind response to human error.
Aha, should have seen the first draft!
It’s all good. Stuff happens.
David,
Thanks for your article was wondering why I couldn’t find some of my favourite authors without doing a search on their full name every now and then. Just for your info Kristi ranking is not visible on the Australia amazon website for any of her books not just gia in the city of the dead. They maybe selectively fixing may want to watch this
Can you link to what you are talking about? I checked a couple and they seemed fine. Perhaps it was just the brief disappearance of rank that accompanies a transition from free to paid (she just went back to paid after a free run).
David,
Looks like they have return but at the time of posting my note before none of her books had a sales ranking when you looked in the features and details section, so may be an artifact as you said
Another thing I have noticed is the HUGE number of reviews some books get, ON THE DAY OF RELEASE. Uh huh. Some of these have to be bot-reviews, and allowed because AMAZON is publishing/promoting them under Thomas & Mercer. I am wondering if these “page stuffed” books also fall under the same category — Amazon putting money back into their own pockets. Hmm.
I actually didn’t even know until I started following this particular thread that Amazon has its own publishing imprint that isn’t, well, called Amazon. I guess there is no legal reason to expect them not to do this, but one wonders if this doesn’t indeed cause them to hedge the game in favor of their own imprint’s titles. I anticipate that in the future, Amazon will make a move to buy Bookbub. Just watch.
This happens a lot in my non-fiction health and fitness categories. Most of these are from the superfans, not bots.
There are big preorder bonuses (videos, downloads, coupons, etc) that often go with big publishing’s books (although small presses are even better at this).
The author’s superfans are also told how important it is to get reviews in quickly. Most haven’t read the book, but have ordered it and are familiar enough with the work to feel like it’s okay to review it without having read it. Some have read free chapters ahead of time, but still not cool, IMO.
Behind the scenes, they often make it us vs them. Paleo vs the vegan book that’s out that same week. Or a legit fitness book vs Tracy Anderson’s latest garbage. If you don’t review, the other guy wins, or so it’s portrayed.
New link for the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7xronSRNEU
I don’t suppose there’s any way to find out when an author is rank-stripped unless the reach out and tell you? There may be a lot of authors suffering, including traditionally published authors, but we may never hear about them.
No, and, exactly.
I wonder if someone like Data Guy could use his site crawler to ferret some of them out.
But then he’d be on their ‘list.’
The video is gone, btw. No longer available.
I look forward to reading her book too. I think despite the competition out there between various forums, all of them — including Amazon — should support indie authors to grow their brand and become a big success out of principle, as long as they do so legitimately. Writing is hard work, and it requires a huge expenditure of time, mental labor, and monetary investment in creating a quality product like a book. All the more so for indie authors, because we do not have the backing of a big company. Maybe you have to actually be a writer (or a creative in general) to completely grasp this fact? Or at least to empathize with authors properly?
This sounds incredibly annoying that Amazon would punish independent authors for trying to grow their audience. I have downloaded her book, and look forward to adding it to my list to read. Hope her writing year gets better.
UPDATE 2 (Jan 4):
Kristi’s rank is back, in time for her BookBub promotion, which is great news. Amazon called to apologize and say that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but haven’t given any explanation beyond a “technical issue.”
Unfortunately, Kristi is not out of the woods yet. There is still something strange going on with this book. First, it’s invisible in the API – just gone. I’ve never seen that before. Second, when I tried to build an affiliate link to this book, I was informed that it is an “Excluded Product” as per the above screenshot.
Questions and issues remain, and obviously Kristi needs a full explanation, all issues resolved, and an assurance this won’t happen again. In the meantime, if you feel like helping Kristi recover some of her lost visibility, Gia and the City of Dead is free for the next couple of days: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0751LCQLQ/
***
Something else came up yesterday, which was quite timely. One of my main bugbears with Amazon right now is that they are being extremely heavy-handed when dealing with innocent authors, and are letting extreme gaming of the Kindle Unlimited system go unpunished – even rewarding those authors with All-Star bonuses every month.
It’s extremely difficult to get traction on the issue as it is quite technical. Author Heather C. Leigh has put together a helpful video explainer. As you watch this, and your blood boils, remember that Amazon is aware of ALL of this, and refuses to do anything – while cracking down on authors like Kristi who have done nothing wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7xronSRNEU
I did my best to help with the promotion of Kristi’s book by spotlighting it on my blog here: http://godofthunder85.com/2018/01/04/spotlight-on-gia-in-the-city-of-the-dead-by-kristi-belcamino
Grabbed Kristis’ book, hope it helps, and about to enjoy some blood boiling by watching the video.
Just grabbed Kristi’s book. Her rank right now is at 50 free. Hope your post helped. Also I watched Heather Leigh’s video and it literally gave me chills. If Amazon is this lax about keeping their house in order, then they need a better system. I’m wondering seriously what the hell I’m doing in KU. Maybe I need to stop playing by the rules and start stuffing my books.
I grabbed her book this morning!
1. Union? Better chance with a class-action suit IF a group of authors could pinpoint $ losses due to Amazon.
2. It’s not just authors: I’m a KDP Select author AND a Prime customer from Prime’s inception. Amazon’s interest in Prime customer satisfaction has gone from admirable to just awful. The whole outfit is run by bots and minimum-wage teenagers in Asia. It will take a big hammer to get Amazon to pay any attention to the complaints of a customer or author. Good luck to us all.
As Mark Coker of Smashwords puts it, “Authors could kill KDP Select tomorrow, along with its KU spawn, by simply refusing to participate. KU would collapse overnight (or within three months) if all the books disappeared.” At least, it would give Amazon a smack upside the corporate head that we, the creators of the content, should not be treated in such poor fashion.
Mark Coker is a nice guy, but he’s delusional. I had to leave Smashwords and go over to Draft2Digital for my wide books. No meat grinder, no hassles.They have an amazingly simple user friendly system. And thinking authors would leave the biggest cash cow in the world (Amazon) for something untested is also delusional on Coker’s part. Right now I’m really pissed off at Amazon, but as long as they’re the bulk of my income, I’m not going anywhere else.
Reblogged this on Jane Blogs A Novel.
There are several comments – here and elsewhere, both under this post and the last rank-stripping post – speculating that rank-stripping is some kind of evidence that Amazon is trying to squash BookBub, or some variation thereof. I’d like to address that, as I don’t think it holds any water.
1. Most of the rank-stripped books didn’t use BookBub promo.
2. Many of the rank-stripped books didn’t use any promo site at all.
3. Kristi’s book was stripped the last two times before any promo kicked in.
4. The overwhelming majority of all BookBub deals pass without any rank-stripping.
5. If Amazon did want to reduce the influence that BookBub has over its Bestseller list it has far more subtle tools at its disposal than crudely rank-stripping a book. For example, weighting sales on its Popularity list – and there has long been speculation that it is in fact doing this already with regard to BookBub sales/downloads.
6. Amazon’s own imprints use BookBub regularly.
oh yes, and NEVER put all your eggs in one basket.
Sell your books at all online retailers, have paper and hard copies, audio books, foreign rights etc. and sell from YOUR OWN WEBSITE to maximize your revenue. Explained in detail here:
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/why-sell-your-books-from-your-own-website/
…needs to sanction that third-party, as clearly something malicious is in play.
What if this “third-party” is AMAZON itself? Maybe wants to get BookBub out of the way?
Clearly better not using these outrageous expensive “book promotions” until the culprit is found.
Reblogged this on Ice Cream Castles in the Air and commented:
While I’m not likely to have this problem, it’s something for authors to be aware of.
Meh… Something stinks. Amazon is playing chess not checkers. In the end, an author who is fed up will perhaps throw in the towel and advertise through Amazon directly to avoid accusations of rank manipulation (which is what they want you to do anyway) and walk away from third-party advertisers.
And I agree David, if a third-party advertiser uses shady methods to drive traffic to books, then Amazon should sanction them. How? I don’t know, but at the very least, they could provide a list of banned advertisers so that indies no longer spend their money with them.
Forcing authors to advertise through them only may be their goal but it seems so shortsighted. Amazon is getting a cut of every sale, so it’s in their interests to help their authors promote anywhere and everywhere they can. It reminds me a lot of what’s going on with YouTube creators. In an attempt to crack down on extreme content, YouTube has driven down revenue for all creators, including the noncontroversial ones. By going too far, they’re hurting themselves and the creators who bring in revenue.
Amazon is getting a cut of every sale, as you say. Which means it’s also in their best interests to keep the prices up. The higher the price, the higher their cut to an extent. This happening mostly at the free and $0.99 price points, right? I know those are prices that drive the sales up and cause number spikes in rankings, but that may not be the only factor.
I’ve been quietly and politely railing against Ammy for years. Haven’t yet convinced anyone not to buy books from them. If anyone does put together an alternative sales channel of the authors, by the authors, and for the authors, count me in!
If ever there was a reason to go wide, this is it.
I’ve been considering giving KDP Select a try in February, but these horror stories leave me hesitant to push the magic button…especially since I wouldn’t be cool and collected and I don’t think it would be fair to subject my husband to the amount of ranting/cursing that would occur if this happened to me.
Reblogged this on Anna Dobritt — Author.
Reblogged this on 38 Caliber Reviews.
We are extremely lucky to have David Gaughran here fighting for the little guys. Thank you so very much, David, for shedding light on this.
Reblogged this on The Active Voice and commented:
An important read …
Well, I wrote a long post about my own experience with the KDP machine and wordpress gobbled it up. So, this one is considerably shorter: THANK YOU, David, for keeping up with the nonsensical ridiculousness that Amazon continues to do while scammers take over the KU program and steal from hardworking authors. I send all my author friends to your blog for the latest info on what’s going on… TY!!!!!
Maybe we’ve got this wrong. Maybe the algorithms have gone rogue and the people in charge don’t want to admit they’ve been locked out of the system.
I wonder how long it would take for an SF story about Amazon’s algorithms taking over the company to be delisted? Would it be delisted by people or by algorithms?
Thank you so much for tracking this issue and explaining it in a method that is easily understood by those new to the process. Amazon should be ashamed of themselves, though I know they really don’t care who this affects.
I recently got a warning letter from KDP, saying that (apparently) someone I (was supposed to) know had attempted to upload a review for one of my novels, and that it had been removed (which, by the way, they have done numerous times – very frustrating!!). I was completely baffled by the curt warning, with no further details forthcoming when I wrote politely to ask for clarity. When I got nothing but a botched generic “response” (which made it clear no one human had actually read my email), I wrote KDP customer “service” (I use that term extremely loosely) again, informing them that I know thousands of people all over the world – and I do not now, nor ever intend to, babysit them. What they read and what they review is their prerogative as Amazon customers, whoever they may be. I also pointed out the fact that I’ve seen brand new books released that have, overnight, 50 or more reviews – I dared them to tell me those reviews were legitimate, and not purchased online. Of course, I received NO response… Being an Indie publisher of English novels in a foreign-language country, I’m hard-pressed to find online avenues besides Amazon that are worth the effort. If I could find substitutes for KDP, I would, especially if they pull tricks like this on innocent authors.
Reblogged this on The World of The Teigr Princess and commented:
Please read this one – no matter if you’re a reader or an author, having this happen to an author can ruin their career – especially if it happens often enough.
I am seriously considering pulling my books out of Amazon completely. It’s going to need a lot of thought on the matter and investigation into other publishing venues… oh and when I say pull my books out completely, I mean it – I won’t be using Smashwords to have files that a Kindle can use either.
I didn’t read the rest of the comments, but it would be worth consulting attorneys over this for a potential claim: false advertising (by Amazon), deceptive trade practices (by Amazon), breach of contract (if they are in breach of their own Terms of Service) may be available claims, depending on facts, applicable state laws, etc. The litigation is expensive, and may need to turn into a class action to be financially viable for a law firm (the firm bears the costs up front and gets nothing if they don’t win), but the only way to “persuade” a business of the size of Amazon to behave less capriciously is through litigation. It all starts with calling a lawyer who has sued Amazon successfully in the past. You should be able to find that with a little google searching.
David,
I’ll briefly outline my tales of woe in a somewhat similar fashion. I’m one of “those people” who write erotica and the problem I have with Amazon is that they have consistently marked my last several books as “Adult” and not “Safe.” This ranking means that my stories disappear from the Amazon search engines and cannot be found except when you know the exact title or AISN number. In many cases I can get the ranking changed to “Safe” but it typically takes several weeks to do so and I lose the initial exposure of a new publication. While I write porn, I’m careful to avoid any trigger topics that Amazon reacts to. My latest story “Cheating Glory Hole Wives” went immediately to Adult within a day or so of publication even though Amazon lists over 500 similar stories that are ranked “Safe.” WTF? I’m still trying to get this one out of Amazon’s adult dungeon.
Larry Archer (LarryArcher.com)
Reblogged this on Yvonne Hertzberger.
Reblogged this on Kanundra's Blog and commented:
This is so sad. But more and more people are getting scared of trying BookBub because of it, or other really legitimate promotion sites. 🙁
I’ve been following David’s posts concerning this matter for a while now, and I must confess that I too saw what I believed to be a pattern connecting the use of Bookbub for free promotions and strip-ranking by Amazon that sabotages the promotion. I know that Bookbub is a legit site for that purpose, but the thing I couldn’t help asking myself is this: Does Amazon nevertheless not like authors using Bookbub for such promotions? Do they perceive the use of Bookbub as problematic for their own business model for some reason? The legitimacy of Bookbub wouldn’t necessarily translate into the bigwigs at Amazon being happy with authors who sell off their platform using it. So, could Amazon’s algorithm system be designed to “flag” and penalize indie authors who are using Bookbub for free promotions, even though technically Amazon shouldn’t be doing this? Whenever we say that authors using Bookbub for free promotions were doing nothing wrong, I have to ask myself if Amazon agrees with us on that. But since Bookbub is a legit site, they cannot come right out and tell authors their dislike of its use for free promotions.
However, I do have to note that in today’s blog, David addressed this and made it clear that the evidence suggests it’s not just about Bookbub, because many unfairly penalized and rank-stripped authors never used Bookbub at all. Hence, it’s clear that use of Bookbub is not the only thing that can get you strip-ranked, and likely not even the main thing. But I did get the impression that it may be one of the things that can. Is there some conceivable reason why Amazon would have a problem with its book sellers using Bookbub for free promotions? I’ve seen use of Bookbub connected to this unfortunate phenomenon often enough at this point to wonder about that.
Amazon’s own imprints use BookBub regularly.
Then it would seem the problem is mainly what you surmised: a very faulty algorithm system. And unfortunately, one of the ways an author can get unjustly targeted is via the legitimate use of Bookbub. Even more unfortunately, it seems as if this faulty system is something Amazon is willing to live with.
Amazon’s imprints might use Bookbub, but only because they haven’t yet built their own in-system version of it. If Amazon can make an Amazon version of something, it will. If people are spending $600 on a bookbub, they’re not spending that $600 on AMS ads, are they?
I am in several author groups and the reference the Bookbub promotion and rank-stripping happens too much to be a coincidence. I would be careful.
It does seem that BookBub has become the new gatekeeper. I’ve done many promos with Bookbub and have done very well with them. All other sites pale in comparison when you consider ROI. I am exclusive to Amazon simply because I make as much money on page reads as I do with sales. I’ve gone wide several times and all the other sites don’t make up for what I lose in page reads. This is sad for several reasons. One: those exclusive to Amazon have no chance of landing on New York Time’s or USA Today bestseller lists, and two: in recent months it’s getting tougher to land a BookBub featured deal unless you’re wide. BookBub’s TOS even states that you have a better chance if you’re wide. If you look at BookBub’s daily list of featured deals there’s usually just one Amazon exclusive among the mix. I think we do have to consider the possibility that Amazon doesn’t like that BookBub is now determining bestseller lists, and that they are pretty much excluding those who choose to go exclusive with Amazon.
David, do you think Amazon has algorithm’d almost everything, including customer service responses? Is Siri sending replies to emails instead of a real person?
I used to do this kind of job. They probably have 100s of canned responses they can input very quickly with short codes. They are probably incentivized to hit certain targets (or penalized if they miss them) – encouraging them to go too fast and scan the emails for the first applicable canned response.
Ah, ok. I used to be a claims adjuster for a health insurance company. Definitely a numbers thing and you had to be able to quickly identify the appropriate code and send it on or reject it out. Seems over at Amazon there is no mechanism whereby someone can run one of these cases up the chain, save by chance someone sees what is happening. Maybe a person with a conscience caught this and actually went the extra step and told someone who could actually do something about it. This is just an absolute mess.
Not Siri, it’s that Windows 10 bot called Cortana!
There has been some very strange stuff going on at Amazon. MY own titles lost a few reviews a few months back which were reinstated soon after. I don’t use KDP select except for one title, so I haven’t seen many ranking changes. Earlier this year, I logged into my Vines Voice Review page to find I was no longer a Vines Voice Reviewer! No warning. I’d been invited to write reviews for Amazon for more than five years and had over 1100 “helpful” votes, yet they cancelled my Vines review account. I tried to get some reason from them, but the gobbeldy-gook responses were curt and nonsensical or in the nature of “we’re making some changes right now, blah, blah, blah.” I didn’t like being treated like a no-name commodity so I contacted Jeff Bezos directly, but no explanation was forthcoming. Not even a thank you for the years of reviews I wrote. Several months later, when submitting a review of a book I’d recently read, I needed to edit the review to find I was still being listed as a Vines Voice Reviewer. To me it shows that there is some kind of shakeup in Algorithm land with no one at the wheel in process. Since they are crucial to new authors getting their work out and to all readers, I sure hope things find a balance soon.
Amazon is too big and too powerful. Indie authors (any authors) can’t afford not to be there but we need to have other distributors too, if only to keep them alive and stop the Amazonian monopoly drive. Draft2Digital now distributes to Amazon so you can publish through them and appear there but also have the books scattered elsewhere. You can’t do KDP though.
You say, “Two of the four guiding principles of Amazon are “customer obsession” and “commitment to operational excellence” – I’d love to know if KDP thinks it is meeting those benchmarks with this type of response.”
I don’t think Amazon considers us customers at all. They consider readers/buyers customers, but not us. Am I wrong?
Amazon has stated that it considers authors as customers of KDP.
Okay, I call bullshit. Seriously, I had assumed we were getting screwed over because all they care about is the reader/customer. I didn’t realize they claim we’re some of those customers, as well!
However Amazon sees us, either as customers or producers of content, it’s important for them to realize that they need us and our content. Currently, they seem to believe that we need them, but they do not need us, because they’re really the only game in town, and there would be literally a few thousand writers replacing everyone of us who left. And if we left, where else would we go? Smashwords was a great idea that ultimately came to naught. I do think that we authors need to band together en masse and start our own alternative to Amazon, break up the near-monopoly they currently have, and let them know that they have to deal with us as valued producers of content, not peons they can push around or dismiss with near-impunity. As long as they see us as being essentially at their mercy, I believe we can expect no better from them.
I suspect they consider us “customers” of the AMS ads program more than anything. I have one suggestion and one question. Clearly, the algo-bots favor slow builds and anything that would indicate a sharp rise for any reason is assumed guilty until proven innocent or enough stink is raised for a human to look at it. Knowing that, plan accordingly if you have upcoming bookbubs.
My question, though, is one for Amazon. If they don’t give us ANY customer information AT ALL, how are we supposed to know which of Amazon’s customers is a legit customer and which is not? And following on that one, why is it an author’s responsibility to police Amazon’s customer base, and why is AMAZON allowing fake customers to shop its stores? Isn’t that just like blaming stockboys in the Martha Stewart Home Goods warehouse for Kmart shoppers who return Kathie Lee Gifford tracksuits?
I just wrote a long note on Amazon’s facebook page making my concerns about this known. I was considering of using their publishing program but of course now I am very worried. Can’t afford to waste hard earned money on something they will just take away. Amazon has a few other bad practices now too. Such as charging prime membership to someone who does’t want it. They just take the money from their account card without telling them.. So I guess be wary of Amazon for that as well. This is all very bad news but thank you for making it known to us.
It seems to me the issue is largely a KDP select one, and the solution is simple, if incredibly difficult to organize; authors should boycott KDP select. Aside from the model for it being heavily skewed in Amazon’s favor, its biggest weakness is Amazon’s reliance on abundant books from authors willing to make their works available for something as poorly compensated as page reads. The model is broken and only works for two of the three parties involved: the retailer and the consumer. The author/suppliers allow themselves to be screwed by this set up. The solution is glaring obvious: drop out of KDP select. If enough of Amazon’s suppliers abandon the program, they will certainly begin to take notice.
The key is what you said here: Amazon is trying to come up with an automated ‘solution’ to the problem that is scalable. Like all technophobes, they believe computers are superior to people at everything, even when it comes to large scale customer service. A faulty solution that is automated is vastly preferred to a manual solution that works. Any problems are chalked up to ‘bugs’ and the humans that suffer never come close to entering the picture. It will get 99% straightened out eventually, but only after lots of personal collateral damage.
There may be a certain amount of misplaced faith in the tech here, but I think it ultimately comes down to money.
Hi David,
I just hijacked your comment thread by linking to my own blog. I was actually only meant to email you directly, but it seemed to go to your comments instead. Just so you know I’m not a dick.
Goddamn it! Did it again. Lol.
Haha yes, this is a new WordPress “feature” – if you hit reply to a blog post which is emailed to you, it now goes straight onto the comments.
And hilarity ensued…
Hi David
I touched upon this problem briefly in my own blog post today. I can’t see Amazon not addressing it this year (if they are sane).
https://azofselfpublishing.com/self-publishing-new-years-resolution-2018/
Best
Iain Rob Wright
Reblogged this on .
Bottom line: Amazon just does not care about authors—especially indie authors. They care more about buyers. I have 2 novels on Amazon and someone used the reviews to take a personal jab at me. They weren’t legitimate reviews but a character assassination. I know who it was and I even told Amazon this. Would they do anything? Nooooo! They. Just. Don’t. Care!
Wow. And that “reviewer” was just attacking you over a personal slight, and it had nothing to do with the content of your book?
I hadn’t noticed the affiliate link wording for rank-stripped books (thank you for pointing that out), but I have noticed that *some* books that have been rank-stripped for a prolonged period continue to come up with an API message on KND’s eBook Tracker months after rank has been restored. Where the notices appear (the wording changes, but basically refers to metadata being unavailable even though rank is being tracked) is inconsistent, however. Some of the books that deserved the stripping due to actual rank manipulation don’t carry the notice, while others — such as one book briefly removed from sale due to a handful of what Amazon cited as formatting errors — continue to carry the notice at least 6-8 months later. I haven’t been able to figure out a pattern there.
Some of the books that carry the notice also only get rank updates once a day, rather than hourly updates.
Of particular concern, *some* of those books with the API notices do not turn up in search results unless searched on exclusively by ASIN.
So the consequences of rank-stripping (or being removed from sale) can linger for months beyond when rank has been restored.
That is worrying. I’ve seen books which look “broken” in the API and never knew the cause. Always seemed to be books that were either yanked from sale or rank-stripped.
Reblogged this on Ruth Nestvold – Indie Adventures and commented:
Another important post for indie authors. *Sigh.*
I don’t think Amazon cares what I have to say, but here’s my suggested template for handling cases of suspected rank manipulation.
1. Investigations can and should happen quickly – there is no possible need for it to take weeks and weeks.
2. No sanction should be applied until guilt has been determined.
3. If guilt is determined, Amazon should furnish the purported evidence, and authors should have a right of appeal.
4. If innocenece is establish, Amazon should apologize to the author, and compensate them if they have suffered any losses from any applied sanctions.
Aside from how KDP handles such cases, I strongly suggest that it looks at its fraud detection systems which appear to be throwing up a large amount of false positives. If that’s NOT the case, and some third-party is targeting innocent authors to kick up dust or test the thresholds of the system, thus manipulating rank unbeknownst to the author, then Amazon needs to sanction that third-party, as clearly something malicious is in play.
Agree 110%! Maybe if there was an alternative sales entity for authors to be presented. Competition does wonders for humility.
Maybe, similar to my union suggestion, we authors need to get together and create our own alternative to Amazon. If millions, or even thousands, of us are using it to successfully sell our books in both digital and POD, then Amazon would be forced to take heed and cease its lack of concern for our concerns. Of course, that would open up the possibility of the same eventual bureaucratic degeneration of the authors who run it as occurred with the top executives of Amazon, so I think we would need to make it a collective effort run and maintained by all the authors who utilize it, rather than leave it under the control of just a few high-ranking executives, whether they are authors or not.
I’m game. Sign me up coz this crap can’t continue. We work hard to turn our gifts into works that others can enjoy. We deserve better than what we get from these pigs.
Had a similar nonsensical and unhelpful response from Amazon a few weeks ago. I was part of a boxset aiming for USAToday bestseller list. We sold a ton of books, made the WSJ list at #6, but no USAToday because Amazon had failed that week to send the data. “Sorry for the inconvenience.” Six months of work down the drain…
Reblogged this on Indie Lifer.
As always, when we think we’ve seen the worst, Big A pulls out something even more shockingly stupid and bad. Like you, I was tracking this for a long while, but recently, I simply gave up. It’s becoming remarkably common and there seems little that anyone can do.
While being in Select definitely increases risk, it also happens to books not in Select now…though admittedly not as often and for very short periods of time. (Second level checking, so a few hours at most, seems to be the limit for paid wide books). Even a paid, $0.99 wide book having a BookBub can get rank stripped for that second level check depending on prior sales levels. Sales velocity triggers it, not venue. I know, it happened to me with a paid wide book and a BookBub, but again, only for a few hours for that second level check.
The crucial difference here that is most alarming to me is that it is handled entirely differently for indies versus tradpub. Tradpub is resolved very quickly…very. Indies can have repeated problems and weeks of missing sales. This approach makes the dividing line clear: If you’re indie, Amazon feels free to treat you like a thief and criminal, while Tradpub are the special kittens in a box to be petted.
But what can we do? Their efforts to stop scammers are completely ridiculous and ineffectual. The scammers run roughshod over the charts, while anyone doing a promo in Select is at very high risk. How do we demand change? How do we make them listen? How to we get them to understand we are not widget makers they can slap around with impunity?
Yeah my first thought was that this was just the initial fraud check on going free. We waited over 24 hours before going public to be sure.
I don’t know how we can make Amazon listen, but perhaps we should try making enough noise to ensure we are heard.
Indeed. I think we need to remind Amazon that it’s huge book empire would be nothing without us frequently producing new content for them. David, maybe a large-scale union of authors who dabble in digital is in order? I think a few million of us united for mutual benefit would be far more effective in getting Amazon to listen than just a few dozen of us.
This always comes up when there are issues with Amazon or scammers etc.
While I agree that Amazon is more likely to listen to a large org rather than a handful of indies, the simple truth is that building such an organization would take an incredible amount of work, and it could be a case of reinventing the wheel anyway. There already is an established indie org (ALLi), and several genre-focused ones for writers of all stripes (RWA, SFWA, HWA, TWA, MWA etc.).
People may like those orgs, or may feel they don’t serve their needs. Either way, if change is going to happen in any kind of reasonable timeframe, I would suggest that it would have to go via an existing org.
I know that RWA has already made representations to Amazon on this issue on behalf of affected members. I know people have had issues with various orgs in the past, and felt they were too timid in terms of advocacy. With RWA at least, I get a sense that is changing. That will probably ripple out to the others too as there is a need there, as you identified.
Maybe then we should reach out to RWA, let them know that they need to step up to the plate, and also to engage in a widescale recruitment effort for new indie writers. It seems that if Amazon doesn’t fear their influence, they possibly are not doing enough. I have learned first hand what a large number of people can accomplish if they stand together in large numbers and refuse to be dismissed. Amazon may have the power in terms of money, but power in terms of numbers and loudness can at times effectively offset that advantage. Amazon owns the platform on which we sell, but we do the work, millions of us, and that is a potential advantage right there… as long as we do not give into hopelessness.
And, yes, you are 100% correct when you say that trad authors have similar issues resolved much more quickly. This isn’t an exactly similar case, but you can see the speed of Amazon in a case where a Big 5 author is involved: https://www.thebookseller.com/news/hill-and-dickinson-fall-foul-amazon-fake-e-book-scams-663041
What that tells me is that we either need to make a colossal uproar ourselves to get Amazon’s attention, get the media involved, and/or get the writing orgs to take this on.
The Amazon speak is bizarre to begin with and with KDP changing terms as often as they do, it’s hard to stay on top of what’s allowed and not allowed. Cases like this probably happen more often than we know. Some authors don’t have as many sales or check the ranking often enough to notice the difference. It’s very disturbing because so much of our strategy’s success depends on KDP’s algorithm and actions. Thank you David for documenting this problem.
I guess my major question is this, David: Why is Amazon persistently doing this? What benefit might it have for the Amazon corporatists at the top of the heap? There must be an unstated purpose to this seeming madness of theirs.
After the embarrassment of clickfarmers hitting #1 in the Paid store twice in the summer, Amazon needed a solution. But instead of cracking down on scammers and cheaters, and involving some humans in the problem, it went for a dumb, automated solution that misses the most egregious cheaters and sweeps up lots of innocent authors. I think Amazon doesn’t care because the solution is scaleable and that’s all that matters.
David, thanks for continuing to report on this issue. I’m guessing you’ve tried this but have you tried tracking down the director of customer experience/marketing or director of KDP author services on Linkedin? It might get a response that isn’t canned. I say this as someone who works in a similar area and gets tracked down from time to time. Something to consider if you haven’t tried that route already.
I spoke with a very senior KDP exec in person at a con a few months ago, and we spoke again on the phone subsequently, and have chatted by email too. He said he was taking personal leadership of this issue.
Not seeing much impact from that. I genuinely think Amazon doesn’t care. All it wants is an automated solution for the clickfarming problem – because that’s scaleable! – and it doesn’t care if innocent authors get caught up in it.
Yes. It’s apparent from their response letters that they are simply doing a keyword search on the emails they receive from authors, then sending out the “appropriate” automatic answer. They simply do not have enough tech savvy personnel on the front end of the business to even communicate with the geeks running the code on the flagging algorithms that there is a “minor” problem.
Like you said, their automatic response program is scaleable, and a few authors caught in the gap do not really matter in the long run to their business model. .
would you be able to supply the email address and name of this person, some more authors could contact him directly?
How do WE demand change?
Do we have to wait for a Big 5 book to get hit?
What if it happens to a Hugh Howey or another big name in the indiesphere?
It has already happened to huge authors (see that box set mentioned in October’s post). Some of them were APub authors too. And something somewhat similar-ish happened to a UK Big 5 author – although I’ll note their situation was resolved much, much quicker.
I’d say communicating your feelings to Amazon might not be a bad idea. Certainly better than doing nothing. Getting the word out helps too. I’m sure someone will be along in a moment to say complaining is pointless and so on, but I’d rather do that than nothing.
Reblogged this on adaratrosclair and commented:
REBLOGGED! Whoa, hold the phone! What’s going on with Amazon’s KDP program? This article is scary news for what the Big Business Behemoth, Amazon is becoming. Google has a motto “Don’t Be Evil”. (Read between the lines, people.) Well, well, well, what have we here? Something is indeed rotten in the state of you-know-where. 🙁
Reblogged this on C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m and commented:
It bothers me that some will say, “Well, you wanted scammers policed so innocent authors will get caught in the net!”
That’s like saying I want my neighborhood policed so I can’t complain when the cops shoot innocent people. C’mon, Amazon. You can do better.
David, thank you so much for writing about this and alerting fellow authors to this corporate injustice. I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with what’s going on in the United States of America and the “tax reform bill” that will supposedly help everyone (when it appears to be helping only Big Business”, but this is scary. What can we do about KDP? What can we do exactly to demand change? Again, thank you!
Agree. Change will require action. A literary militia, if you will. If several million of us authors banded together and formed an alternative outlet for our works you just might see some crocodile tears.
That would be nice. I had no intentions to bring politics as “Amber” falsely claimed. Unfortunately, politics and big business are becoming some Frankenstein nightmare in my country. There’s even a word for it: Corporatocracy.
You are seriously bringing Politics into this? It has nothing to do with politics. Your response to this blog is really quite mind boggling. Why not just ask your simple question? What can we do to demand change? That would have been a simple post and been right in line with the blog…not bring in the tax reform…which by the way you obviously have done zero personal study. By that I mean you have not read up on the actual tax law changes. Instead you have been listening to CNN and MSNBC. Try reading it for yourself.
I wasn’t bringing politics into this. I’m discussing how corporations are becoming more powerful. The lines between governments and businesses are becoming blurred. I didn’t attack you personally so I would hope that you would treat me with the same respect. What’s your problem? You’re reacting with emotion and that was unnecessary. You had no right to lash out at me and to make an ASS out of yourself for assuming that I haven’t personally looked at the tax reform bill. Take your own advice and try reading and researching these issues yourself. I don’t watch CNN or MSNBC. I don’t even have cable. Again, stop ASSuming and try to have an intellectual conversation. I supported neither Hillary or Donald, but it’s evident in your nasty response who you did.
Here’s a half-dollar (I’m being very generous) for your anxiety attack: Corporatocracy. Look it up and educate yourself. I don’t handhold.
Let’s cool it down, guys, and keep it to the topic at hand.