Free books and Amazon heavy handed actions
Oct 30, 2017 4:03:47 GMT -8
chelsfield, Julie Harris, and 2 more like this
Post by jaydax on Oct 30, 2017 4:03:47 GMT -8
If you don't know what clickfarming is, read on. Basically it's a method of getting a book a high ranking at Amazon and then stealing money from that dreadful Kindle Unlimited.
Kindle Unlimited has been a target for quite a while.
And that is the situation as it stands. If you offer a free ebook at Amazon you may be at risk of being clickfarmed. Not being in Kindle Select is no guarantee that you are not at risk.
You can get further details at David Gaughran's blog at davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/amazons-hall-of-spinning-knives/
Kindle Unlimited has been a target for quite a while.
- Initially KU favored very short books. If you wrote a 12 page book you would get a full payment as soon as the reader read the first page. Amazon spotted that and changed to 'page reads'.
- Scammers produced large books of rubbish. Content didn't matter and was often stolen from others. The books featured a 'special offer' on the first page - a link which took the reader to the last page. Amazon counted that as a whole book read and paid out for a large number of page reads.
- Amazon forbade linking to the back of a book. They took action against those who did and in many cases wiped out the account. Many genuine authors lost their entire income because their contents page or an index was at the back of a book.
- Clickfarms arose. People in Asia were paid to sit in front of blocks of smartphones, each with a fake Amazon account. Their job - to page through books. Amazon's software was altered to try and solve this, introducing 'page flip' butall that happened is readers often read a whole book in this mode this being counted as a single page read and greatly annoying authors.
- The clickfarmers realized that they could offer their services to unprincipled authors to increase their Amazon page ranking. These authors paid to have their free or very cheap book downloaded multiple times by the clickfarmers on fake Amazon accounts thereby increasing it's ranking. These books would then be paged through in the normal clickfarm way.
- Genuine authors spotted that some books appeared out of nowhere, usually on a Friday night and rocketed up the rankings over a weekend. Many were complete rubbish or even written in Greek, Russian or Indian scripts. Kindle Unlimited subscribers downloaded them because Amazon's page ranking software favored them. Inevitably they got poor reviews and Amazon realized they had been clickfarmed the following Monday when real people returned to work.
- Amazon started removing accounts used by clickfarmers who promptly replaced them with new fake accounts. To make things difficult for Amazon the clickfarmers started adding some genuine books to the fake ones they are paid for. Inevitably these were added while the book was free. Some were books in Kindle Select others are books which have been made free using distributors such as Smashwords or D2D
- Some genuine authors suddenly saw their book rankings soar and sales spike. This was then followed by a warning letter from Amazon:
We are reaching out to you because we detected purchases or borrows of your book(s) originating from accounts attempting to manipulate sales rank. As a result, the sales rank on the following book(s) will not be visible until we determine this activity has ceased. ... Please be aware that you are responsible for ensuring the strategies used to promote your book(s) comply with our Terms and Conditions. We encourage you to thoroughly review any marketing services employed for promotional purposes.
Please be aware, any additional activity attempting to manipulate the Kindle services may result in account level action.
Removing a book's sales ranking effectively made the book invisible at Amazon! Naturally worried authors threatened with 'Account level action' protested, asking 'what activity?', and invariably got this response:
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.
And that is the situation as it stands. If you offer a free ebook at Amazon you may be at risk of being clickfarmed. Not being in Kindle Select is no guarantee that you are not at risk.
You can get further details at David Gaughran's blog at davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/amazons-hall-of-spinning-knives/