If People Read Your Book, Your KDP Account Will Be Terminated
Source: https://the-active-voice.com/2016/06/...
Okay, so maybe my title is a bit shocking. Lemme explain…
As an author, you’ve decided to leverage sales from all other book publishing platforms and go all in with Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program. Maybe one person is reading your book (80 pages a day) and then, all of a sudden, your page reads skyrocket to the equivalent of $125 earned on one day (25,000 pages).
Did you forget about a scheduled promotion? Did someone post a great review on a blog and all of their followers started downloading and reading immediately? You have no idea, but you’re elated that your book is finally getting some traction.
The next day, you eagerly open you KDP dashboard for more results. At the same time, you check your email and see this from Amazon:
We are reaching out to you because we have detected that borrows for your books are originating from systematically generated accounts. While we support the legitimate efforts of our publishers to promote their books, attempting to manipulate the Kindle platform and/or Kindle programs is not permitted. As a result of the irregular borrow activity, we have removed your books from the KDP store and are terminating your KDP account and your KDP Agreement effective immediately.
As part of the termination process, we will close your KDP account(s) and remove the books you have uploaded through KDP from the Kindle Store. We will issue a negative adjustment to any outstanding royalty payments. Additionally, as per our Terms and Conditions, you are not permitted to open new KDP accounts and will not receive future royalty payments from additional accounts created.
Yeah, that happened to the author in the above article–probably not all the details of the story I laid out, but you get the gist.
Amazon’s customer service extends to customers of the site, not to business partners. Instead of reaching out and speaking with the author, instead of destroying a relationship and terminating legitimate sales–maybe Amazon doesn’t need that money–Amazon just shuts down the account and ghosts the author. Really. The bots told her the problem is being investigated, but by a real person? It can find a lower price of your book and update your product page within hours, but it takes days–with no end in sight–to investigate this?
But wait, if all the downloads are from “systematically generated accounts,” doesn’t that mean Amazon received payment for all of those “scammy” KU subscriptions? Did it refund the money to whoever opened those accounts (LOL)? Did it close all of those KU subscription accounts?
Well, if you’re an author struggling to get page reads, and then your poor book is the target of a scammer, your recourse is to go wide and build such an extensive platform that sales from Amazon don’t move your bottom line. Indie authors have had success with this strategy, with a few reporting their income from Apple and Kobo is greater than what they earn with Amazon.
Most of my books are in KU at least until the end of the summer. I’ve earned more while in the program than out, but it’s such a small amount that I’ve got to believe I can do better. It’s depressing otherwise…
