Book Scammers. Amazon. The thruth. #authormustread

My thanks to Daryl Devoré for allowing me valuable space to share my insight. My blog post is written to educate and enlighten on the dirty little secret that's not so little or secret anymore.



Did anyone read the Amazon Scammers post by David Gaughran? He makes great points and backs them up with proof of how the scammers are ruining things for legitimate authors.


The few FB Scam groups I covertly belong to are going wild about it. It’s like a mob mentality! Here’s a few comments: 


"Lol I stopped reading at the point where he started whining about not being able to market his books during free promo well enough and he was being pushed down by the competition. Regardless of the quality of the competing books (scam or no scam, pretty much irrelevant), its still supply and demand. They are outranking because they can market better.” 


“in whole article he is whining because someone is doing better job then he do ...
it is something like.. ho my.. i lose ranking because someone is doing same stuff as i do ... and doing it better” 


This is another reason why the promotion of Free days isn’t working like it used to. There are groups dedicated to Click each other’s free download, then turn around and give 5-Star fake reviews. They’re very organized and share book titles via email with HUNDREDS of other scammers. According to them, if their titles are reported to Amazon for being a scam, the response time is so slow that they don’t care because they’ve already made thousands of dollars.

Scammers have also used Click-Bait in the past to get the unknowing reader to skip directly to the end in order to receive a “free book”. This provides the ebook publishers with instant payment if they’re enrolled in KU/KENP. “Don't assume that you still cant make money with ku. You dont have to be messing with hyperlink bs to make bank. Keep your books 3000+ pages (take out your unnecessary hyperlinks) and from people simply using the scroll bar to the end or skimming through the content, you will make a bunch of money.
Also you could put a riddle, puzzle, etc at the beginning and tell the reader to go to the last page of the book to find out the answer.”

While Amazon caught on to this tactic, Scammers are now toying with placing the Click-bait within the TOC where it’s more hidden from Amazon’s virtual eye.


Additionally, Scammers talk of stuffing Title Descriptions when uploading to Amazon, using all 400 allotted characters (See KBoards). They even share articles like thisand this.


These are not lazy people. They’re enterprising, smart, and constantly educate themselves on how the nitty-gritty aspects of Amazon works.  


Many use ghostwriters from Fiverr to create content, and then sell the content when they’re tired of their fake book à “I will be selling around 25 books since Amazon and I are parting ways. These books are all non-fiction. I will piece them out but really just looking for someone to buy them all at once. PM if interested.”


More here as this guy sells not only his fake books, but the How-To as well:  “The four products that I now have available for sale are


1. Dave's Non-Fiction Book Collection
2. Dave's Romance Fiction Book Collection
3. Dave's Publishing Webinars
4. Dave's Publishing Coaching Training Videos


My Non-Fiction Book and Romance Fiction Book Collections are literally all of my books that I no longer have published on Amazon. I am selling them and giving you the rights to do whatever it is you choose to do with them.


https://gumroad.com/l/davesnonfiction


https://gumroad.com/l/davesfiction


You can use them to see what niches I was in, to build your e-mail lists as free give aways, you can study them, model them, copy them or do whatever you want with them. There are a lot of different things you can do with the content.”


The last guy I mentioned is particularly smart. He brags of the thousands of dollars a year he’s scammed off Amazon, and thusly our readers. All in all, the plight of our books seem to have slipped to Amazon’s backburners – and this has me worried. I understand Amazon probay makes a lot more money selling other types of products than they do with ebooks, and their security/fraud department maintain the most vigilance where the most money is spent.


I get it. Doesn’t make me feel better. 


Consumers who purchase these scam books are slowly rising up and complaining to Amazon. They’re going elsewhere to find books. And on the heel of their abandonment comes a new wave of scamming in the form of publishers.
“I am really glad how things worked out. Most of you have known that I have parted ways with Amazon KDP. It has really opened up my eyes on what I should have been doing instead of just publishing books on the platform.
My wife and I are going to be launching a Publishing services business centered around using our experience to help new or seasoned Publishers be successful in their business. Some of the services we will be offering are Ghost writing full books, writing optimized discriptions, profitable niche and keyword selection and much more!
I am also working on a publishing format where you can publish books on your own for free downloads and still generate a profit!
This is a sample of what I am working on: http://bestdamndirtyjokesever.blogspot.com/…/best-damn-dirt…
I Think this Idea is going to be revolutionary In both list building as well as getting away from the Kindle platform.
give it a check out and if you are feeling froggy, fill out the survey and get me some love!”
It’s a different publishing world from where we were ten or fifteen years ago. One can only wonder…
What will tomorrow bring?