Tags
Amazon, Chris McMullen, Dave Koziel, KENP, KENP payments, scam, scammers, Selena Kitt
The Internet has been buzzing lately with news relating to the placement of our Table of Contents. Specifically, Amazon is now requesting that we place it at the beginning, not the end of our ebooks.
Has the company lost its marbles, as some claim?
Sadly, no. Scammers have been making millions off Amazon – and off any author enrolled in Amazon’s KDP Select program.
The KENP Scam
Authors know that when Kindle Unlimited was first launched, we were paid “by the borrow.” It was similar to a sale (on sales, we were paid 70% of list cost on books priced between $2.99 and $9.99), except now we were paid out of a general fund instead of a set percentage.
But Amazon changed that payment method from “per borrow” to “pages read.” Not pages written, but how many pages a reader actually reads.
As reported by author Selena Kitt, The Fussy Librarian, David Gaughran and others, digital entrepreneurs (ie scammers) have found a loophole in this system.
You see, all you have to do it just upload “books” stuffed to the gills with anything, even unrelated material (romance books, cookbooks, South Beach diet books, foreign language texts, any and everything you’ve got at your disposal), then use a click-bait link at the front of the book (something like “Click here to win a Kindle Fire!”) to take the reader directly to the very back.
If a reader clicks it, the author is paid for all those pages. A full read. Even though a reader just skipped over your book.
The serious guys aren’t just using TOCs to inflate their page reads, but also links to the back of the book, footnotes, and all sorts of other tricks (like filling books with page breaks, filling books with the same text in 10 different languages – done by Google Translate – and then having a link go to the English version at the back, etc. etc.).
And these scammers are pretty successful. Many have been in receipt of All-Star Bonuses – taking that money from the authors who truly deserved it. Remember when Amazon capped the KENPC count at 3,000 pages per book per month? This is why. This also explains why KENP payments have seen a steady decline since the switch to payment per pages read.
Why Would you Put the ToC at the End?
There are a number of perfectly reasonable reasons why you might want to place the ToC at the end of your book. For example, author Ali Isaac places her TOC at the back because she writes short chapters and so it gets very long.
But the main reason is that the Look Inside feature only shows so many pages. With the ToC at the back, people looking inside your book can jump straight into your story, without going through copyright, acknowledgments, a 3-to-5-page-long (in the case of Pearseus) ToC etc. Hopefully, with them reading more of your story, the incentive to buy the book will be greater.
Besides, a ToC’s placement is irrelevant with ebooks. Although it makes perfect sense in print to have it at the front, with Kindle the ToC is always available, whether you’re in the middle of the book, at the start or at the end. You just click “Go To” and “ToC”.
The Crackdown
According to David Gaughran, some individual authors are receiving Quality Notices warning them that their title will be removed from sale unless the TOC is moved to the front. Normally these notices – which appear to be generated by bots – give us just five days to comply. Other writers are having their buy buttons removed without receiving these notices – a rather blunt-instrument approach.
Given the bad publicity generated by the story of author Walter Jon Williams – who had his Nebula-nominated SF novel Metropolitan removed from sale during a BookBub promotion – it looks like Amazon is no longer using a sledgehammer approach to the matter. The company’s statement reads as follows:
We have recently received a number of questions on topics such as TOC formatting and our policing of abuse and fraud among KDP publishers. In many cases, putting a book’s Table of Contents (TOC) at the end of a book can create a poor experience for readers, and in general we suggest authors locate TOCs to the beginning of a book. If the formatting of a book results in a poor experience or genuine reader confusion, or is designed to unnaturally inflate sales or pages read, we will take action to remove titles and protect readers. That said, absent any other issues of quality, locating the TOC at the end of a book is not in itself outside of our guidelines.
An Inelegant Solution. But it Works.
Amazon is aware of the problem:
Some in the community have contacted us about the activities of a small minority of publishers who may attempt to inflate sales or pages read through the use of various techniques, such as adding unnecessary or confusing hyperlinks, misplacing the TOC or adding distracting content. We both actively police for this type of activity on our own as well as investigate when the community points out such abuse (thank you to those of you who have helped us in this regard). Any abuse we find results in the immediate suspension of a title. Some circumstances, including repeat offenses, will result in KDP account suspension. In any abuse cases, we will also remove related pages read from the allocation of the monthly KDP Select Global Fund.
When I first read about Amazon asking authors to move their Table of Contents (ToC) to the beginning of the book, it raised an eyebrow. How would that help?
And yet, Chris McMullen informs us that this month’s KENP payments are already 17% up. So, kudos to Amazon. I just hope they find a more elegant long-term solution, as implied by the message above.
Until the scammers figure something different out, anyway…
stephrichmond said:
Reblogged this on S C Richmond.
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The Story Reading Ape said:
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog.
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Jack Eason said:
Reblogged this on Have We Had Help? and commented:
More on Amazon from Nicholas 🙂
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Andrew Joyce said:
Thank you for a most informative article.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
A pleasure! Thanks for reading 🙂
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Deborah Drezon Carroll said:
Wow. Shady people will think of anything, won’t they? At least this makes more sense now. Thanks for this information.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
A pleasure! Thanks for the visit and comment 🙂
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Holly Jahangiri said:
Other than to scam Amazon, why would you ever put the TOC at the BACK of the book?
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
It’s simple: the Look Inside feature only shows so many pages. With the ToC at the back, people looking inside your book can jump straight into your story, without going through copyright, acknowledgments, a 3-to-5-page-long (in the case of Pearseus) ToC etc.
Hopefully, with them reading more of your story, the incentive to buy the book will be greater.
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Holly Jahangiri said:
But what kind of reader experience is that after they actually BUY the book? It makes sense, the way you explain it, but it still seems terribly contrived and not likely to be a good experience for buyers after the fact.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
It makes no difference, actually. The ToC is available from any page within the book – you just click “Go To” and “Table of Contents” 🙂
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Elizabeth J Walker said:
Could revive the old fashioned custom of adding a little precis under each chapter heading, as is done in the audio version of ‘Well at the World’s End’. I use this for the Resilience Handbook, though that is non fiction
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
An interesting take on it!
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michaeldouglasbosc said:
thank you for making me aware of this as always you are on the ball my friend
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Aw, you! Thanks 🙂
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Don Massenzio said:
Reblogged this on Don Massenzio's Blog and commented:
Here is an interesting post on a scam involving Kindle Unlimited publications
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C.M. Blackwood said:
Wow — thanks so much for that information, Nicholas. I had no idea that all this was going on; and though it makes me a little mad, I’m glad to know that Amazon is at least attempting to solve the problem. What a helpful post! 🙂
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Thank you 🙂
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Carl D'Agostino said:
I don’t do kindle because I’m not selling my books for $2.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Then you don’t have to worry about this 🙂
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Palessa said:
I’ve been reading about this subject for a week or more now. I won’t lie, I’m still a bit soured on Amazon’s KU because it creates an environment that makes THIS and other scams even more possible. Thanks for helping us to understand the story behind it all. Let’s see how this pans out
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lynhorner said:
Reblogged this on Lyn Horner's Corner.
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lynhorner said:
Thanks for this important article! I’ve always placed the ToC at the beginning of my books, not thinking about the “Look inside” feature, so I don’t expect any hand slaps from Amazon. However, I receive those Click Bait messages all the time. I never do what they want because I figured such messages are scams. Good to know I was right! I am spreading your valuable warning everywhere I can.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Thank you for spreading the word 🙂
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Phillip T Stephens said:
One easy solution, which I do, is to keep my TOC to a single page and the front matter to a single page too. Then readers don’t have to skip through pages and pages of contents to get to the first chapter. Authors may think they need complicated substructures, but they really don’t. Do you want readers to preview, or kill them with a TOC?
Besides, it’s an eBook. If you need subchapters, include a mini-nav menu at the beginning of each chapter with links.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
That’s a great idea, actually. Thank you for sharing 🙂
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adeleulnais said:
Reblogged this on firefly465.
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Esther Doucet said:
Thanks for this rundown, Nicholas. Am sharing to my FB and Twitter pages.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Thank you! Sharing is loving 🙂
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writerchristophfischer said:
Reblogged this on writerchristophfischer.
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Barb Caffrey said:
Excellent post,Nicholas. I’m glad you explained this, because I was wondering what in the world was going on with Amazon this time…and now, I know. 😉
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Yay! Thanks, Barb 🙂
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Barb Caffrey said:
You are most welcome. I always learn a lot at your blog. (I don’t always say that, because lately life has been interfering — but it’s the truth.)
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Thank you so much, Barb! It means a lot 🙂
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olganm said:
I’d read about this too. People complain about Amazon (and I’m not in KDP Select anyway), but these kind of things are unjustifiable.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
I assume you’re referring to the scam? Yes, it’s really obnoxious.
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wendyandcharles said:
Reblogged this on Siefken Publications.
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Opinionated Man said:
Great info! Sadly some have taken to stealing my blog posts and placing them into such books that you described. It is amazing what people will do for a buck when they could just be creative for themselves. Thanks for sharing this on!
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
You’re kidding! That’s terrible. Sad, indeed 😦
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vermontbookworks said:
Thanks for this information.
Vermont Book Works
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
A pleasure. Thanks and welcome 🙂
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Gina Scarlatti said:
Do they get paid from people clicking their books with free KU monthly trials?
How do they get all those EIN numbers?
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
When you read a book on your Kindle, it reports your progress to Amazon. That way, they know how much to pay each author.
Authors get paid at the end of the month an amount that is relative to the number of pages read by Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) users. You can find out more here: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201392160
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