# "SCAMAZON"



## Aquilo (Mar 15, 2016)

This article is a little... worrying. The Amazon loophole:



> ...Amazon changed that payment method  from “per borrow” to “pages read.” Not pages written, mind you – but how  many pages a reader actually reads.
> 
> Except, the problem with this method  that’s recently come, shockingly, to light, is that there’s a loophole  in the system. Apparently, if you put a link at the beginning of your  book to the very back and a reader clicks it – the author is paid for _*all those pages*_. A full read. Even though a reader _just skipped over them._



Full Article: "SCAMAZON – Amazon “Kindle Unlimited” Scammers Netting Millions"

Hmmm, if true, and in reality they can't track how many pages a reader has read, how can they legally use that in a contract?


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## LeeC (Mar 15, 2016)

Whew, the author went on and on till I quit reading, talk about rambling verbosity. Anyway the fact is that many people will take advantage of most any opportunity in our materialistic economy that thrives on parasitism. No doubt many even feel joyful in scamming Amazon, without giving a thought to how others are affected. 

I kinda like the idea of Amazon's corporate "trickle down" approach getting its knickers in a bind, and you have to admit there're many "authors" that aren't even decent writers. Be that as it may, this whole transition to self-publishing is still in its wild west days. Of course it's fueled by a traditional system that's mostly interested their immediate bottom line (out of necessity in our economic system). 

So, one learns all they can and takes their best shot, as with anything in life. Glad I'm not in this for material gain 

Thanks for sharing.


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## Aquilo (Mar 16, 2016)

I'd hate to be on this KDP program they run, Lee. Sounds horrendous. Barely worth the effort behind writing.


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## Schrody (Mar 16, 2016)

That's why I won't enroll in KDP... also, I hate DRM.


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## TKent (Mar 16, 2016)

But on the flip side, for those whose books really are read, a reader can make more off a book through Kindle Unlimited than they do selling it outright. So I think you need to put things in perspective. For many self-publishers, if Amazon wasn't around, they might not be making money off their books at all.


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## Terry D (Mar 16, 2016)

TKent is right. I have all my books on KDP and have reached a far larger audience than I would have without it. The money comes trickling in (a weak trickle, but money none-the-less). I don't give a damn if someone has learned how to game the system. Trust me, Amazon will close the loop-hole.


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## InstituteMan (Mar 16, 2016)

There's a lot of things to dislike about Amazon, but I don't think this is one of them. That people are working to game the Kindle Unlimited system is really just a sign that Kindle Unlimited is a success. The only way to avoid having your business be the basis of scammy activities is to not succeed. If there is money to be made, there will be dishonest people trying to make it.


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## MzSnowleopard (Mar 16, 2016)

What happened to pay per publication / download? It seems to me that it's better to pay when a copy has been purchased.


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## Terry D (Mar 16, 2016)

MzSnowleopard said:


> What happened to pay per publication / download? It seems to me that it's better to pay when a copy has been purchased.



That's still in place. I still get royalties for each e-book purchased, or each hard copy sold. The KDP Select program allows me to get paid when an Amazon Prime member down loads my book for free and starts reading it.


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## MzSnowleopard (Mar 16, 2016)

Then maybe I don't understand how that works, how can Amazon pay you when the book is free? You can't make something from nothing, unless you're God. 
Is it connected to the $99 annual fee Amazon charges for Prime?


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## Aquilo (Mar 16, 2016)

MzSnowleopard said:


> Then maybe I don't understand how that works, how can Amazon pay you when the book is free? You can't make something from nothing, unless you're God.
> Is it connected to the $99 annual fee Amazon charges for Prime?



Readers pay a subscription price and authors are paid from the KDP Select Global Fund. It's why I'm not keen on advertising that says it's 'Free under KDP'. Readers still have to pay a monthly subscription fee, so if you're picking up royalties, then it's not free to readers.


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## TKent (Mar 16, 2016)

Kindle Unlimited is a subscription model for readers. I pay $9.99 a month to have unlimited access to anything in the program. Authors get paid based on pages read when someone downloads their book. For low-priced self-published work, I made more on the kindle unlimited reads than I did on purchases  



MzSnowleopard said:


> Then maybe I don't understand how that works, how can Amazon pay you when the book is free? You can't make something from nothing, unless you're God.
> Is it connected to the $99 annual fee Amazon charges for Prime?


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## Terry D (Mar 16, 2016)

MzSnowleopard said:


> Then maybe I don't understand how that works, how can Amazon pay you when the book is free? You can't make something from nothing, unless you're God.
> Is it connected to the $99 annual fee Amazon charges for Prime?



Yes. I guess I should have said, "as part of their Prime membership."


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## TKent (Mar 16, 2016)

I think with the PRIME membership, you get one free borrow a month. With the Kindle Unlimited, you get unlimited downloads of any book in the Kindle Select Program.



Terry D said:


> Yes. I guess I should have said, "as part of their Prime membership."


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## Terry D (Mar 16, 2016)

TKent said:


> I think with the PRIME membership, you get one free borrow a month. With the Kindle Unlimited, you get unlimited downloads of any book in the Kindle Select Program.



Oops! You are right, T. My mistake.


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## TKent (Mar 16, 2016)

And personally, although it sucks that people are 'scamming' the system, I actually think the method of paying based on how much a reader has actually READ of the book vs. just clicking download, is a good method and is fair to the authors. Part of why I pay my $9.99 month is because I get access to lots of books and it doesn't cost me a thing to click download. If I bought the book outright and I'm 3 pages in and the book is not what I wanted, I can return it within 7 days and the author gets zero and once I learned that, I'm very disciplined about returning books that I get a little ways in and for whatever reason, it is not what it claimed to be, or there are lots of SPaG issues distracting me from the actual content, etc. At one point, I didn't know to check how many pages were in a book and downloaded a bunch of self-published books that were SO SHORT and were priced like books 5 x their size. 

 This is no different for Kindle Unlimited/Prime downloads. If I'm 3 pages in and it isn't a book I want to read for whatever reason, then would it really be fair for the author to get the same payout for MY download as someone else whose book I read all the way through?  

Anyway, you know what they say about opinions . . . that just happens to be mine


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## Flint (Mar 16, 2016)

LeeC said:


> Whew, the author went on and on till I quit reading, talk about rambling verbosity.



Yeah, that article didn't really work for me. I found it a bit sensational.

Also, her paragraph here doesn't really seem to square with the about me page:



> Apparently a 15-year-old mentee of Dave Koziel made $64,000 in a month. That’s not a typo.Do I think this kid wrote all those words? Not if he’s following Dave’s advice, he’s not.I’m posting the screen shots here, just in case the link gets removed. (You never know…)Quoted on those images, Dave Koziel says: “A screen shot I got earlier from my mentee and coaching student @justin8600 For those of you who don’t know what this is it’s a report from Amazon that shows you your actual royalty payments from the Kindle store. Take a close look at these numbers and you’ll see how much money he is actually getting paid this month from Amazon. Did I mention he’s only 15? A lot of you may look at this and think it’s fake. How can a 15 year old possibly make $70,000+ in a month online from selling ebooks on Amazon? The world is changing and fast. Opportunities are out there to make money and a lot of it! It doesn’t matter how old you are, where you came from, what your circumstances are etc.”



About me page:

http://www.davekoziel.com/about-me/

----

If this scam is so lucrative, why is DK:

1. Telling everyone about it instead of keeping it to himself (and all the money)
2. Wasting his time teaching other people instead of making money from the scam
3. Alerting Amazon about possible loopholes, who may close them

?


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## TKent (Mar 16, 2016)

Here is what I'm interested in...the cover designer for this kid who makes so much. In order to scam Amazon, it means A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE DOWNLOADING THAT BOOK!!!  I would be thrilled if that many people even downloaded my book and read one page. I have TOCs at the front of 4 amazon books, and two are in the Kindle Select program. I guess not enough people are reading them to notice. COL (that's like LOL except I'm crying rivers here...)


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## Aquilo (Mar 16, 2016)

But I think that's what bothers me, TK.  Readers can download just because it's "free" and never read it, therefore it's not reaching any new readers and gaining reviews. If you already have an established readership, it can potentially upset them if you give sole distribution to Amazon for a while, especially those who rely on distribution besides Amazon (I have Smashwords readers, ARE, B&N etc). And it's just become so saturated, with everyone vying for the space and promo, that even a new author could find it difficult to make money and get noticed.

I'd be interested to know how many authors have seen sales increase by going this way. Or if their readership on other works increased because of their time in this.


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## TKent (Mar 16, 2016)

The thing is, Kindle Select is 100% optional. It is a choice an author makes. So if you put it there for three months and no one downloads it and actually reads it, then take it out of the program. You can still sell it on Amazon and then put it other places as well. There are some authors who have both and aren't sellling so they take down the ebook and do Kindle Select to try to get their sales going by using Amazon's Kindle Countdown and/or Free promo options. 

If I choose to put my book in Kindle Select, and someone downloads my book but doesn't read it, why would I care that I don't get paid?  I'm not losing anything, they didn't read the book. It is no different than me going to the library and borrowing a book and not reading it, except actually it is better for the author. The library only buys my print book one time and an infinite number of people can borrow it and I get nothing for those reads. Every single time someone borrows my book on Kindle and actually reads it, I will get paid. 

So anyway, I totally understand being upset with the authors who are scamming. Nobody likes a cheat. I am sure that at some point, Amazon will get wise to the scam, if it is in fact happening, and they will figure out a way to stop it. No technology is fail safe, ask the big corporations who have had their data encrypted with the Locky ransomware and had to pay hackers to get their data back. There are always risks that folks will figure out ways to circumvent the system. But someone will come along and figure out a way to stop that particular scam. Then another one will come along. That's life.

Selena writes as if Amazon is cheating the authors in some way because they have a system that is open to a scam. I find it hard to believe that Amazon sat down at the planning table and said, let's screw these authors and purposely design a system that is going to allow authors to trick it and get paid even though their book isn't being read. Well if it is true and they don't fix it, she can take her book out of the program! 

The fact of the matter is, I feel sure that Amazon implemented the 'pages read' payout system because authors whose big books that were actually getting read were fed up that they were getting paid the same thing that lower quality books were getting, even if they weren't read. 

There are always multiple sides, and *no one is being forced to put their book on Kindle Unlimited!*




> But I think that's what bothers me, TK. Readers can download just because it's "free" and never read it, therefore it's not reaching any new readers and gaining reviews. If you already have an established readership, it can potentially upset them if you give sole distribution to Amazon for a while, especially those who rely on distribution besides Amazon (I have Smashwords readers, ARE, B&N etc). And it's just become so saturated, with everyone vying for the space and promo, that even a new author could find it difficult to make money and get noticed.
> 
> I'd be interested to know how many authors have seen sales increase by going this way. Or if their readership on other works increased because of their time in this.


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