Forced from Kindle Unlimited -- Open Letter to Jeff Bezos

Yes, I know, I said I'd never again be a part of Kindle Unlimited. So, sue me. Or better, just call me an idiot. I did it for a pen name. I made a few dollars; now I might have to pay for it.

Open letter to Jeff Bezos

Mr Bezos:

I opened my email program and found I’d received a message from your company.

The mail came from ‘content review’, asking for my attention, and I got the immediate feeling that this would be bad. I didn’t know why I’d receive that message now; I’d done nothing with my account in almost six months, haven’t changed a bit of content at all. Thus, it was with no little consternation I opened the message and found that my account is in violation, and if it continues to be so, I’ll be faced with penalties up to and including the termination of that account.

What did I do wrong? Actually, nothing. Not a thing. Amazon claims that accounts suspected of ‘manipulation’ have borrowed my book and I therefore accrued ‘illegal page reads’. I’m told that Amazon doesn’t offer advice on marketing, but I’d better be careful because if this happens again, well, see the termination threat above. There’s only one problem with that: I don’t do marketing. I’ve never hired any marketer, and for the past year or more I’ve not even advertised any of my books. The only advertising I get is by word of mouth. Yes, I sometimes – but not always – put a notice in one of the infrequent entries in my blog, and I sometimes, but not always, make a mention of a new book in the two writers’ forums of which I’m a member. Other than that, nothing. I’m lazy, know nothing about marketing, and don’t want to spend the energy finding out about it when I could be writing.

So, because Amazon alleges that suspect accounts have borrowed my book through Kindle Unlimited, I’m in danger of losing my account with Amazon. I use the word alleges, because Amazon up front refuses to give any details on their ‘investigation’. At first I found myself just sitting there, stunned. Then I looked up my stats. I’d sold three books so far in April, and had 3000 page reads in nine days. What kind of manipulation was that? Like a fool, I asked.

Why do I use the words ‘like a fool’? Because we can rarely get any sort of a straight answer when dealing with Amazon KDP. I asked, “What sort of manipulation?” I got the reply that they rechecked my account and stand by their determination; I will not be paid for illegal page reads.

See what I mean? I didn’t ask them to assess the status of my account or to reinstate my page reads. For the leader of a multi-billion dollar industry, you can’t seem to hire anyone for KDP who can read and understand a simple sentence in plain English.

I keep daily records of my sales and pages read through Amazon-provided KDP reports. After receiving this letter, and conferring with other authors with whom I share certain authors’ forums, I discovered that the letter would refer to my March totals, not my April month-to-date. I checked my March figures. Of the 24,829 Kindle Pages read (from the daily reports), I find that Amazon has now removed 15,924 or 65%.

As the book which constituted over 80% of my previously counted page-reads contains upwards of 750 Kindle Pages, I have to suspect that your company believes that I contracted marketers to “read” a grand total of 21 copies during a 31 day span, grossing me some $72 (approx). You must think I engage the bottom of the barrel marketers.

Amazon has a great reputation with respect to customer service. In fact, I’ve enjoyed just such great service. Last year, a CD I ordered from one of your 3^rd party suppliers in Germany failed to show up in the stated time – in fact, I didn’t complain until some weeks after that time had passed, wanting to give the CD every opportunity to show up. Within hours of my finally making a complaint, I received a choice of them sending a second CD or giving me my money back. I chose to receive the second CD. It took 8 weeks to arrive – but I don’t blame Amazon or the 3^rd party retailer, because the postmark on it showed that the German Post Office had received it only 3 days after my complaint (and one of those days was a Sunday and Monday was New Years Day, as well). It was marked Luftpost (airmail). So, I blame the Post Office – either the German PO, the Canadian PO, or both. (The first CD never did arrive.)

Yes, you are rightly proud of your company’s customer service. However, the concern that you and your company show to your customers falters somewhat when dealing with your content providers – those of us who write books and place them in the Kindle Store and especially in Kindle Unlimited.

When I began providing content to Amazon in 2010, things were simple. If someone liked the presentation of an author’s book, they bought it outright or read the sample and then bought it. The author then collected the royalty. If the customers didn’t like our presentation or the sample, they didn’t buy it, and we received nothing. And, finally, if the book did not live up to their expectations, they returned it for a full refund and again we received nothing.

There existed no way to scam the system to get more royalties than we deserved. Customers either bought our books or they didn’t. They bought short books, long books, epics. They either paid the price we set – or they didn’t buy. No one had a valid complaint over length or price; if they didn’t feel they got value for money, they didn’t buy the book or they returned it. The only scamming that occurred came from a very tiny minority of readers who bought books and then returned them on a regular basis. Some authors noted that book after book of theirs got purchased and then returned, in order. This suggested a multiple returner. We lived with it.

Then came Kindle Unlimited. KU started out and remains an irredeemably and irretrievably broken system. Its terms and make-up were almost created with the interests of scammers in mind, and it continues to provide them with the means and opportunity to – let us not mince words – steal money from legitimate authors. That went for the original iteration of KU and every iteration since then.

We legitimate authors don’t know what to do. We can only complain, but that rarely gets us anywhere. We hate scammers even more than Amazon does. They steal our money, not Amazon’s. We hate the manipulation of rank that goes on. We believe in value rising to the top. We work very, very hard to provide the best reading entertainment we can. So, yes, we hate scammers. And, at times, we try to do something about it.

Example: One scam entailed putting up books full of repeated sentences, paragraphs, or short chapters – thousands of pages worth of repeated verbiage. A poorly-made cover and an enticing, though totally inaccurate description, accompanied the publication of these books. The authors in one of my groups spotted them, and we counted something like 40 obvious scam books in Amazon’s top 100. Eight “authors” with five books each. If a scammer had someone “read” one of these books (with 10,000 pages or more by my estimate), he’d make $50 for that one read.

I took it upon myself to report this to Amazon. All I wanted was an e-mail address to send the details to. Unable to find such on the Amazon site, I went the route of “Chat”. Upon discovering that I was not a customer who had been cheated out of money, nobody really wanted to hear from me. Over the next 45 minutes (I still have the transcript), I got passed through 6 different representatives, the last of which agreed with me and gave me an e-mail address. Those books quickly got taken down. I thought I had done my part. It took time, caused frustration, but a blow had been struck for justice.

You’d think that your company would be happy. I thought so, too. On my own time, I had investigated and presented the evidence. Amazon had struck quickly to maintain its honour. All was well with the world!

Then it occurred again just days later – the exact same sort of scam. Another 20-40 books. Annoyed with the scammers, I sent a second e-mail, only to get told that I should use “Chat” – they wanted to subject me to another 45 minutes of pass-along only to get told in the end to use the email address I’d just used? Not a chance; I then gave up.

So, if I’m a customer, I get treated royally. If I try to help Amazon prevent fraud in KU, I’m a nuisance. I’m a nuisance, because this fraud didn’t really hurt Amazon financially – they had already set aside the pool of money – it only hurt legitimate authors who would receive less for their page-reads.

We legitimate authors hate scammers with a passion. But then, Kindle Unlimited – as well as being a haven for scammers – is something of a scam in itself.

The contract we sign with KU gives Amazon exclusive right to sell and lend out our books; we can place them on no other platform. For this, Amazon undertakes that they will pay us per kindle-page read (present edition of KU). However, it turns out that Amazon does not have the ability to accurately determine how many pages get read. Scammers depend upon this weakness for their scams to bring in the money they steal from legitimate authors.

Authors have imaginations. You might consider possession of such as a prerequisite for the trade. We’re curious, inquisitive. Thus, when things seem just a little off, we investigate and talk among ourselves. At first we accepted Amazon’s word that they would pay us for pages read at face value. Then we noted strange things, and began experimenting. The result: we have determined that if someone borrows a book, downloads it to their Kindle reader and then turns off the wireless, bad things can happen. If that person then reads the book through – every page – but then returns to page one before again turning on the wireless and syncing with Amazon, the author gets credited with only one page read. This, in effect, is Amazon stealing from us. Amazon uses our content to entice readers to KU, promising to pay us for each page read, then paying us less than ½ cent for an entire book read – no matter how many pages.

I have often seen my page reads tick up by one page. [Let’s face it; I’m not a heavy hitter. I don’t sell a lot of books, and I don’t get hundreds of thousands of pages read per month – or per day – like some do. So, I can note this sort of thing better than more popular authors might.] And seeing my stats tick up by one page, I wonder if someone read one page of my book before putting it down, or if someone read through my whole book and then returned to the beginning before syncing with Amazon. Did I get my half-cent for one page, or did I get paid a half-cent for seven hundred and fifty pages? Did Amazon pay me justly according to contract, or did Amazon scam me out of three dollars? I don’t know, and Amazon relies on non-transparency to ensure that we don’t have more than the minimum amount of information useful to finding out.

KU’s lack of transparency doesn’t stop there.

When it became obvious that scammers were getting the monthly “All-Star” awards, and authors made this clear in blogs, in posts on forums, etc., Amazon’s solution to the problem seemed to be to make it more difficult … no, not more difficult to scam an “all-star” status, but more difficult to see the results of the scamming. Amazon stopped publishing the names of the winners, making it even less transparent.

When Amazon reacts to problems, it often uses a shotgun, where a rifle should be used – in other words, the solution often hurts the innocent as well as the guilty – often more than the guilty, because the guilty, if caught, simply abandon that account and start another. We legitimate authors cannot do that – or, if we do, we lose all books previously published.

Take this present situation. I, who have absolutely no control over who reads my books, find myself in danger of losing my account. Why? Because someone Amazon considers a scammer has borrowed them. I didn’t ask anyone to; I didn’t pay anyone to; I didn’t do anything. And my sales figures should show this to be the case. I had an average of 800 pages read per day in March (initial figures) of which you claim an average of 513 per day were scammed. No scammer worth his salt would try for a $2.50 per day payout.

I put in a lot of work to write a novel. It takes me a minimum of about 400 hours work to get one ready for publishing – I’m not fast. Sometimes it works out; other times I get a flop. One of mine (which I still believe is a fine novel) has sold 103 copies in almost 4 years. That’s $200 for 400 hrs work, or $0.50/hr. Not near minimum wage. A scammer puts in a couple hours work and nets thousands. We legitimate authors don’t think this is fair. But that’s what KU invites, what by its very composition it has always invited.

As I said, I don’t advertise – not any more. I did try AMS, but it gave me a very poor return on investment. And AMS has authors bid against each other to get what the Amazon algorithms once gave for free. The last time I tried for an ad, the bid went up over $1 per click. I think I got about 1 impression and no clicks before I gave up. At $1 per click, I would need a 50% success rate to barely break even. In fact, more likely I’d be paying Amazon more than my book is worth for the privilege of finding a reader. And Amazon knows that and still operates AMS like this. If I were to pay those readers a dollar each from my own pocket to read my books in KU, I’d make money – but that would be scamming, and I’d lose my account. So, doesn’t that make Amazon Marketing Services somewhat of a scam in itself as well?

To finish, I’m threatened with termination of my account for no valid reason; AMS doesn’t work for the author; KU is filled with scammers, and the innocent are tarred with the same brush by what? association? by the fact that alleged scammers may actually have read our books?; Amazon doesn’t seem to care who they damage with their shotgun attacks; Amazon actually scams us by not paying us for pages read – because they don’t know how many pages are read, and they knew they didn’t know this from the introduction of Kindle Unlimited. Yet they said that they did, and made a contract with us on that basis.

To protect my account, you have forced me to withdraw all my books from Kindle Unlimited when their present terms finish (one’s turn was up today – my best earner – and it’s out, the others should be gone by the end of the month). I can’t stop anyone from borrowing my books if I leave them in – I have no control over that aspect – and if the wrong people continue to borrow them, I may lose my account. I understand: your game; your rules (even though they are generally undefined publicly, and the internal definitions change at a seeming whim and without notice).

There is much more I could say, but this letter is long enough as it is.

So, if you can, sir, please tell me one good reason that I or any other legitimate author should endanger our accounts by maintaining any books in KU? (I already know why scammers should: they get our money – and in large amounts.)

D. A. Boulter.

PS: As I’m not sure you’ll ever get to see this, I’ll be posting it to my blog as well, as an open letter to you. But don’t worry, I only have about 20 or so followers. Hopefully someone else will pick it up – word of mouth.

[Re-blogging or posting of this letter permitted with a link to the original.]

Kindle Unlimited -- A Disaster.

I've written previously about Kindle Unlimited in a post called Damned if you do; Damned if you don't. It's actually worse than that. Kindle Unlimited has a history of being a great place for scammers to make money ... to the detriment of all legitimate authors.

Some of the scams:
1. in KU 1, where they paid for any book that a borrower read 10% of. Make the book so short that simply opening the book would trigger the payment.

Amazon countered with KU 2 where we get paid per page read.

2. publish a book that has 6000 or more [amazon ku] pages. Hire a 'click farm' to borrow your book and skip to the back, triggering full payment. A 'click farmer' might have many identities, all of which have a Kindle Unlimited account at Amazon. That 'farmer' will borrow the book on each account. If the payment per page is 1/2 a cent, each 'read through' will get the author $30. If the 'farmer' has 10 identities, he'll make the author $300 (less his commission). If the farm has 10 'farmers', the author gets $3000 (less commission). The 'book' will often have several novel-length books in it. The first is on the cover, the others are bonuses or just word salad.

3. (Relates to 2 above). Put several novels in one book, and then rotate them. In other words, Book one is called ABC and the novel ABC starts it, followed by the novel DEF, then GHI, etc. Then change the order and publish a second book with the novel DEF as the cover novel, followed by GHI etc, ending with ABC. Publish a third book with GHI as the cover and beginning novel. Now you have 10-6000 page books out there, and each 'farmer' will borrow all 10. The books themselves can be mostly garbage, unedited, uninteresting. The point is not to get sales, but borrows from the farmers.

Amazon countered by limiting the page count to 3000. Great. So now they limit the amount for a single borrow to $15.

4. Put up 3000 page books which have the same 4 or 5 paragraphs endlessly repeated. Hire the farmers again. I once found 40 of those books up -- and all in the top 100 'Movers and Shakers' list because of the borrows. I reported them to Amazon -- and a more frustrating 'chat' exchange, I've never had. I was shifted through 5 or 6 different persons. The books were taken down -- 'Good job, Doug,' you might think. Others promptly took their place, and I reported those, too -- by email this time, only to get the admonition that I should have gone through 'chat'.

There are more scams, but I'm tired of writing about them. There's a blog by David Gaughran. I recommend you go to it and read it.

These are some of the reasons many writers are disappointed and discouraged. Not only does Amazon allow KU to be scammed, reducing the amount legitimate authors get, but they're teaching their customers that books are worth essentially nothing ($10 per month for an unlimited supply). I find it very discouraging.

David Gaughran's blog:

On Friday, a book jumped to the #1 spot on Amazon, out of nowhere; it quickly became obvious that the author had used a clickfarm to gatecrash the charts.

The Kindle Store is officially broken.

This is not the first time this has happened and Amazon’s continued inaction is increasingly baffling. Last Sunday, a clickfarmed title also hit #1 in the Kindle Store. And Amazon took no action.

Over the last six weeks, one particularly brazen author has put four separate titles in the Top 10, and Amazon did nothing whatsoever. There are many such examples.

I wrote at the start of June about how scammers were taking over Amazon’s free charts. That post led to a phone conversation with KDP’s Executive Customer Relations.

Repeated assurances were given that the entire leadership team at Amazon was taking the scammer problem very seriously indeed. But it was also stressed that the problem wasn’t quite as bad as I was making out, and that this stuff never hits the charts and remains largely invisible to customers.

I explained in detail how none of those contentions were true, that readers are leaving angry reviews under these books, which regularly hit the charts, and further that KDP has singularly failed to act on 18 months-worth of complaints.

Amazon asked me to compile more information for them – and I did that with a report submitted on Wednesday.

Read the rest at:

https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/scammers-break-the-kindle-store/#more-4447 

Now, I'm going to try to break through my discouragement and get back to writing -- something I'm finding more and more difficult to do.

 Live the joy, my friends.

PS: Here's my 'chat' with Amazon:

Me: I have discovered a group of books in the Amazon KU catalog which are scam books. They have the same paragraph or group of paragraphs repeated endlessly. There are several 'authors' and all use a selection of the same images for the covers. All are in the 'movers and shakers' list. A few of them use the names of actual authors, but most don't. they seem to have 5 books per account.

You are now connected to Taylor from Amazon.com
9:26 PM Taylor: Hello, my name is Taylor. I'm here to help you today.

9:27 PM Me: Wonderful. I'd prefer to send the message by email but this program doesn't seem to allow it.
9:28 PM Taylor: Let me transfer you to our Kindle specialist. Just a moment. They will be able to assist you further.

9:28 PM Me: Thank you.

A Customer Service Associate will be with you in a moment.

You are now connected to Mohd from Amazon.com

9:32 PM Mohd: Hello, my name is Mohd. Please give me a moment to review the previous correspondence.
9:33 PM A member of our Retail team will be the perfect person to help you with this. Let me connect you to a member of our Retail team. It will only take a moment.

A Customer Service Associate will be with you in a moment.
You are now connected to Shandean from Amazon.com

9:35 PM Shandean: Hello, my name is Shandean. Please give me a moment to review the previous correspondence.
9:36 PM I'm seeing these are Kindle books. Please hold while I have you transferred to our Kindle team.

A Customer Service Associate will be with you in a moment.
You are now connected to ShanmugaDass from Amazon.com

9:36 PM ShanmugaDass: Hello, my name is ShanmugaDass. Please give me a moment to review the previous correspondence.

9:39 PM Thank you for waiting.
I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you had with Kindle content.
9:40 PM We appreciate your bringing that Kindle content issue to our attention.

9:40 PM Me: There are 8 different authors, each with what appear to be 5 scam books. All are in the 'movers and shakers list"

9:41 PM ShanmugaDass: So in this case we will need to file a ticket, so A Kindle Specialist is the best person to help you with this. Please wait while I transfer this chat.

A Customer Service Associate will be with you in a moment.
You are now connected to Kamal from Amazon.com

9:41 PM Kamal: Hello my name is Kamal. I am a part of Amazon Kindle Technical Specialist team. I'll certainly try to help regarding your concern.

9:42 PM Me: I'd just like an email address where I can send the list of what appear to be scam books.

9:43 PM Kamal: Please allow me a minute.
9:49 PM I'm sorry to keep you waiting. It'll just be a moment longer.
9:52 PM Douglas, May I know did you purchased or borrowed the book under your amazon account?

9:53 PM Me: No, I neither purchased nor borrowed any of these books. I came across them (about 40) in the 'movers and shakers' list, and opened a few of each using "Look Inside".
9:54 PM They looked designed to take advantage of the Kindle Unlimited system. 

9:55 PM Kamal: Thanks for your valuable concern Douglas,
In this case a member of our Concerned team will need to help you with this. Please hold while I transfer you. One of our Concerned Specialists will assist you shortly.

A Customer Service Associate will be with you in a moment.
You are now connected to Jesse from Amazon.com

9:56 PM Jesse: Hello, my name is Jesse and I'll be helping you today

9:56 PM Me: Wonderful

9:58 PM Jesse: I hope you are well. I'll do my best to help. So just to confirm, you'd like to report fraudulent Kindle books on our website?

9:58 PM Me: Books that I suspect are fraudulent, yes.

9:59 PM Jesse: I see. May I please have a few minutes to research this issue?

9:59 PM Me: Have at it.

10:04 PM Jesse: Thanks for waiting Douglas. I do appreciate your patience. So on the website, when you open the page of the book, if you scroll down further, you'll see a section "Feedback" , do you see that?

10:05 PM Me: Yes, and I did that for two of the books, but there are 40 of them.
10: 06 PM 5 each from 8 different "authors"

10:07 PM Jesse: I see. I will submit the feedback on your behalf then. This will get sent to the appropriate people within the company and we will investigate this issue

10:08 PM Me: Can I email a list of the suspected books/authors to someone? Note that three of the author names are the same as legitimate authors whom I doubt know anything about this.

10:09 PM Jesse: You can. Send it to cs-reply@amazon.com

10:09 PM Me: Thank you. I'll do that. Appreciate the help. Doug.

10:09 PM Jesse: Is there anything else I may do to help?

10:09 PM Me: Nope. That should do it. Thanks again.

10:10 PM Jesse: Thank you for contacting the Amazon Customer Service Chat Team, enjoy the rest the week ahead! Please don't forget to click on " End Chat "
Jesse from Amazon.com has left the conversation.

Melting Snow ... and a new book

Not With A Whimper: Destroyers has now gone live on Amazon. It's the second of the NWAW series. Can I really call it a series when the books run concurrently? Can you have a concurrent series, or is that an oxymoron?

I had a very difficult time with this book, matching the dates and events to those already established in Not With A Whimper: Producers. I really don't look forward to repeating the process in the remaining book(s) of the series. After I'm finished, remind me to never do this again.

Tough jobs like the above seem to age me. I feel older, more tired than I did in my younger days. Perhaps that's why I have an old man in the book recalling his own younger days, though not with joy. Old Paulo says that in his time of military service he created enough regrets to last him a lifetime, his memory triggered by a conversation.

My own memory recently got triggered, but not by a conversation. I was walking in Central Park in New York (on vacation) and water tumbled over rocks in a stream making its very distinct sound. It took me back to where I grew up, when the winter's snow began melting, and the runoff in the streets, ditches, and alleyways tumbled over ridges of slushy snow and gravel. The sound transported me back to where, as a child I and my friends would make little dams of snow, trapping pools of water, then put our feet through the dams, allowing the built-up 'lakes' to flow once more.

The air felt fresh, clear, and crisp. We wore not the parkas of just a month previous, but sweaters and light jackets. The world seemed to be returning to life after the long winter's slumber. And the sound of the water running and tumbling symbolized that.

There I stood, lost in the memory of so many years ago. I now live on the West Coast, and we don't get that much snow. The seasons down here don't have the sharp delineation that they seemed to have up north, and I miss that.

I suppose that, sooner or later, in some book I shall write of a character listening to the music of the melting snow.

But, for now, I'll rejoice in another book published, and hope that those who pick it up will enjoy it. My period of rejoicing, alas, will be limited. With that book out of the way, the next in line begins to demand attention, and it will be back to the old grindstone.

Live well, my friends, and make memories you'll cherish.

Not With A Whimper: Destroyers

Duty.

One man's "duty" is another man's "mutiny". Major Karl Müller of the European Treaty Organization (ETO) walks a fine line as his squadron of shuttle-fighters prepares to meet any enemy in Earth's Last Battle. His orders are to commit what many would consider a war crime -- an attack on a helpless civilian space station. But if they have to face the powerful United States of North America, chances are most of the squadron will not survive long enough to launch from their Azores base -- in which case the question become moot. But Müller can't count on death giving him the easy way out.

On the other side of the Atlantic, USNA Sergeant Frank Jensen views the near future with equal desperation. He and 39 fellow "volunteers" have failed Colonel Westorn's brainwashing course, and if the Colonel cannot successfully finish their indoctrination, he intends to finish them in another way. Jensen believes his group's only chance is to escape to one of the colony worlds, where Westorn won't be able to find them. That spells desertion, but his duty to himself and his comrades drives him forward.  However, he sees no chance of them getting into space without help, and dying here on Earth appears the only alternative. He knows his people won't go down easily, but wonders what use Colonel Westorn has for soldier-fanatics.

Throw scientist Christine Burnett, aghast at what the perversion of her sleep-learning program has done, and the powerful Yrden Family into the mix, and you know that the world will end not with a whimper, but a bang.