UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion
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Current problems for authors with Kindle Unlimited
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Thanks for the head's up, Lydia.
The main thing seems to be that you should ensure your table of contents is at the front.
There was a legitimate reason for putting the TOC at the back, way before the days of KU etc. particularly for short books, or books with lots of short chapters: The TOC would take up a huge chunk of the Look Inside, along with other front matter, and that sometimes resulted in books with little or no actual story in the sample.
Something I read yesterday - I can't remember where - said that some scammers are putting links in the front of their dodgy ebooks that click through to a TOC at the end of the book. Apparently, this makes KU think the whole book has been read and thus they get paid for all the pages in that book.
If I find the link again, I'll post it here.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "I just found this.http://the-digital-reader.com/2016/03..."
That isn't the one I saw, but it says more or less the same thing.
But I wonder if it is not just a problem with deliberate scammers,
Presumably - and I could be wrong - but when a reader uses a TOC positioned at the back of a book won't it show that they have got to the end of the book to KU, even if they haven't read that far yet?
And - for that matter - what about footnotes? They are often put at the end of the file.
If you read the blogpost by David Gaughran, you'll get a much fuller picture. There are people uploading what are, in effect, non-books with lots of click-throughs. e.g. the same text in several languages with the English version at the end to get people to click to the end. The "writer" gets a full payment under KU rules.
I'm worried because two of my books - only one in KU, to be fair - use footnotes which take the reader to the very back of the book. That's something KDP's own formatting job did to my Word file, but I do worry it makes me look like a guilty party, though the first footnote in Casanova occurs about 15% through, and it was published some months before KU1 was even a twinkle in Mr Bezos's eye...
I can see Andrew's worry, proper books have footnotes, and a bibliography at the back and you refer to those long before the book is finished.What if you place the Maps at the back?
I've untucked the auto renewal on all mine. First book comes out at the end of this month. They'll all be out by the start of May.
Thanks for the heads up. I do not even have a table of contents so this should be interesting.
I've only just spotted this thread. I found out about the problem yesterday which, as Lydia points out, is detailed in full on David Gaughran's post. I originally put the TOCs at the back of my books after reading David Gaughran's 'Let's Get Visible' because it takes up some of the 'Look Inside' space. I'm not criticising David as he couldn't have foreseen this problem. He also offers a lot of useful advice in his book. However, I think it's shocking that Amazon have been pulling the books of genuine authors (not scammers) without any warning.
I spent yesterday afternoon shifting my TOCs to the back of my books and re-uploading them. It's just not worth the risk.
That's a worry. There used to be a problem with unscrupulous "authors" posting books that were very short - some less than 10 pages long. I guess that trick is not working so well any more as people are starting to take a look at the number of pages line in the Amazon description.So now it seems that the dishonest ones are bumping up their page count by including any old rubbish. I have heard of some which include "bonus" translations of their books into other language - all badly google translated of course - and the English version is right at the back of the book (to boost the KU pages read numbers).
We need to be reporting these sorts of tricks to Amazon.
I would seriously ask for a refund. Not as described.
Dave read and very much enjoyed a book a couple days ago that ended at 55% ish. The rest was 'back matter'. Appendix and what-not. He didn't feel cheated by it and wouldn't consider asking for a refund.If it had been superfluous crap, damn straight he'd have ask for a refund.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "Dave read and very much enjoyed a book a couple days ago that ended at 55% ish. The rest was 'back matter'. Appendix and what-not. He didn't feel cheated by it and wouldn't consider asking for a re..."Interesting, a properly laid out academic book will have endnotes at the back, perhaps a bibliography and appendices you're referred to in the text.
Done properly the reader will have read the end of the book long before the middle :-)
In brief, a number of authors who have committed no offence are having their books taken down. While a number of authors whose books are encouraging outright scamming, gaming the "pages read" system, are continuing to publish and profit.
There's a full account on the blog written by David Gaughran, himself self-published and a Goodreads author too, I believe, though I daren't leave this box to check for the link. The blog post can be found at:
http://ow.ly/ZlU1E