Amazon Tries To Snuff Out a Bunch of Kindle Publishing Scams (cnet.com)

Amazon has been working for years to clean its sites of fake reviews and fake products. It's still got work to do. From a report: The online retailer on Wednesday filed five separate legal actions through the American Arbitration Association to cut down on a variety of alleged scams used to make money on Amazon's Kindle self-publishing service, according to documents obtained by CNET. "Today's news reflects yet another step in our ongoing efforts to protect readers and authors from individuals who violate our terms of service and manipulate programs readers and authors rely on," an Amazon spokesman said in a statement. He added that only a "small minority" of those using Kindle Direct Publishing engage in such scams. Amazon since 2015 has been using these kinds of legal actions to fight against scams and already sued over 1,000 entities involved in allegedly creating fake product reviews on its sites. The company last year also sued alleged counterfeiters. As part of Wednesday's filings, one alleged scammer used a novel approach to try making money through Amazon. The man named in the filing, Nilmer Rubio, of Olongapo City in the Philippines, allegedly reached out to authors who used the Kindle self-publishing platform and told them he could artificially inflate the number of pages customers read of their books in two Kindle programs. He apparently did this with the use of hundreds of Amazon accounts he created.

Comments

fake youtube views paying organized crime

[Anonymous Coward]

a man called caue moura in brazil is linked to organized crime, using youtube videos and fake views made by bots created by a marketing office, to sustain organized crime. is is obviosu that is what is happening because the content is completely useless, and they get too many views in a shot period of time.

Re:fake youtube views paying organized crime

[cunina]

Why would you have to sustain organized crime with a fundraising effort? Shouldn't moneymaking be the point of organized crime in the first place?

Read it as: Amazon To Snuff Out a Bunch of Kiddies

[sinij]

Overly harsh.

What's wrong with that?

[Daetrin]

"one alleged scammer used a novel approach to try making money through Amazon."

Novels seem like a pretty standard and accepted approach to making money through a book publisher, it's either that or non-fiction. (I don't think short stories really get that much traction, but i could be mistaken.)

Re:What's wrong with that?

[Quirkz]

Heh. I've tried three times and haven't had success with novels. Now I'm trying humorous nonfiction handbooks. If that doesn't work, I might try selling my precious bodily fluids - likely more profitable, and less of a time commitment.

I suppose I ought to be a little put out other people are gaming the system and soaking up funds (some of the Kindle money is distributed in shares from a pool), and I suppose I am, but even without the cheaters I don't think it'd be making much of a difference.

Re:What's wrong with that?

[Jason Levine]

I published my first novel almost a year ago and sales have been extremely low. Then again, when I should have been focusing on promoting the book, I was focused on writing the sequel. I can't help it, I love writing and hate trying to promote myself.

Re:What's wrong with that?

[Quirkz]

I'm with you there. The skills sets for sitting quietly, imagining things, and crafting slowly don't really line up well with pushy sales, witty public banter, or a lot of the other major marketing techniques. Some people can do both, but it's unnatural to me.

Re:What's wrong with that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it may be good idea to concentrate on the sequel at this point. I've seen two successful self-published authors mention that their sales didn't start to go up until they'd published two books. My guess is that readers, myself included, don't want to risk reading the first part of a series that a new author might not finish. A second book gives some indication that the author is serious enough to continue, and actually has enough ideas to do so.

I'm personally in the process of doing final edits to my first book, and for exactly the above reason, I'll probably start on the sequel before self-publishing the first. I'd like to be able to publish the sequel not too long after the first book, so that if a reader tries the first book, they won't have forgotten it exists by the time the second book comes out.

Re:What's wrong with that?

[rtb61]

The reality is, it is more of an interactive world now and passive content, all though reading is less passive than most, as readers are creating those worlds in their on minds based upon the guidance of the writer, still, writer of books are competing with writers of games. There is a good reason why open world games are so popular, people basically writing their own story through the game add in playing with others online and they are doing it together. On top of that, you are competing with all the new writers with access to self publishing. When it comes to junk reviews, yeah, what was old (junk reviews paid for by advertising dollars in main stream media) is new again (junk reviews paid for by advertising dollars on the internet, which according to the USPTO you should be allowed to patent because internet in the description).

Rather than writing old world novels, you might try writing short stories suitable for incorporating as events in open world games. Keep in mind you are also competing with all the books ever written https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki..., whether in or out of copyright and that will only become much worse, much faster.

Re:What's wrong with that?

[Rande]

Put the first one on Kindle Unlimited? Then there's a very low barrier to entry so that people can try a new author without worrying about spending money on a book that sucks or only the first 10% has been edited with trying a sample.
Once you've established trust with the first book, the later books can be $3-5 depending on page count.
Find a few readers/reviewers of the genre and ask them to read and review. Usually just being asked personally will do the trick. Doesn't take much time and as soon as you have ~5 reviews of even 3-4 stars, you'll get more readers, especially on KU.
And finally, focus on the readers and writing what you enjoy. There's an almost 0% chance that you'll ever be able to give up your day job, so don't worry too much about making money as that's just the cherry on the top of a self-pub author.

Re:What's wrong with that?

[Quirkz]

All true.

I actually ran a web-based computer game for five years, and it was far more profitable than writing books has been. It was still probably only a minimum-wage hobby (if that - I overpaid for servers for too long and wasted a fair bit of income). I also liked that I was doing writing, programming, database, and art work, in addition to game design. Sometimes it was tough keeping tabs on all the components, but it almost always meant there was something I was in the mood to do. Problem was, it was pretty demanding in terms of total time and also the need for frequent updates, and after my first kid was born I couldn't keep up.

Writing, in comparison, is a much more forgiving pursuit. It's solitary, easy to pick up or put down as life demands fluctuate, and my eventual book doesn't care if the kids are resisting bedtime this week. So it's a much more suitable project for me, it's just probably a smaller and more crowded market. It doesn't help that two of the novels are literary fiction, which is a depressed niche as it is, while the fantasy novel, which could potentially appeal to mainstream fantasy readers, is heavy enough on retro RPG references that it's marketed specifically to that niche. But there's plenty of people out there writing stuff the public loves, and what I want to write is the stuff that *I* love, so for now I just keep doing it. I still think, even being niche, there's enough people who would enjoy it if I could get the word out, but that comes back to the marketing difficulties.

If I was just in it for the money, I'd go back to copy editing. I used to average $800 for proofing, and for heavier editing a long book can make a few thousand. There's always demand for that, and as work goes it's relatively pleasant getting paid just to read, but it's not the same thing as crafting my own stuff.

Re:What's wrong with that?

[Jason Levine]

Honestly, I'm not looking to make a ton of money off my books. If I make back what I paid in the publishing process (around $300 - mostly for a bunch of copies to give away), then I'll consider the book successful. Anything more than that is just icing on the cake.

Let's talk about how Amazon cheats on shipping

[Anonymous Coward]

If you order books via Amazon, they will just multiply the single shipping cost by the number of books, even if you order them all from the same reseller.

Amazon will happily over-charge you, forward the order to the seller, who then puts all your books in a single order at much lower shipping cost, bills Amazon for that actual shipping amount, and Amazon then happily keeps the difference.

Re:Let's talk about how Amazon cheats on shipping

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds more like an issue with the reseller to me.