This is extremely long and probably only of interest to indie authors, but it does impact readers who shop Amazon, so I’m putting it here for anyone. Not many readers (who aren’t also authors) know any details about this, though readers sure are noticing the impacts of the scams. I see threads or posts all over the place about the difficulty readers are having with simply browsing on Amazon to find their next good read. Discoverability is an author’s word when it comes to books… ’s the holy grail of the indie. If you say it in the tones of a voice-over in a serious movie, you can almost hear the slight echo: What is the secret of the grail (discoverability)? Now, it is also a reader problem. The scammers have made finding books too difficult. Readers are going back to older methods for finding books or even worse, simply writing off any new author out of hand unless the recommendation comes from an actual person on Goodreads or forum or the like.
For those who don’t know, to be in KU, a book can’t be available at any other vendor. Amazon exclusive. The bonus is that it gets slightly better visibility simply because it can be a "recommendation" to KU browsers. Books not in KU are often not shown to them unless they are bigger names. On to the issue of the scammers and what’s really going on… KU pays authors based on a communal pot. It is not based on the price of the book. The amount KU subscribers pay is then divided between all authors based on how many of their pages were read by users. So, it’s a pie. Some get a bigger slice, some a smaller, but the pie is finite and must be shared. So, if scammers take out of that pie, it comes directly out of the pockets of the others. KU 2.0 (which is what we’re in now) pays by the page. Article was g enerated with GSA Content Generator DE MO.
Not pages in books, but pages reader reads. So, let’s say a reader checks out a book from KU, reads to page 100, KDP decides they don’t like the book and returns it. The author gets paid for the 100 pages read. If it’s a page turner that the reader reads through to the end, the authors get paid for all 500 pages of wonderful and quality prose. 00.0045 per page. That equates to about $1.575 for a 350 page book. One thing we were all assured by Amazon… …in writing…was that Amazon knew how much a reader was reading in each book and they would pay us for those pages. Scammers being scammers, they realized Amazon was lying very early on. Amazon couldn’t tell what pages were read. They only knew the last place you were at in the book. And that’s what they were paying authors, the last place that the reader synced in the book. So, a KU borrow on a device that didn’t sync until after the book was read and the reader flipped back to the front to check out what else you’d written?
Yeah, no pages read. But likewise, a reader who clicked a link on Page 1 offering them the opportunity to win a Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and a $100 Amazon Gift Card… 3000 page book? Yep, you guessed it. They got paid for 3000 unread pages. DOWN to 3000. There were 10,000 page books in KU doing this before that change. 00.0041 per page (which is our lowest payout yet), that’s a big payout. One of the scammers has YouTube tutorials on how to pull the scam. He showed a screen shot of a 15 year old kid’s KDP Dashboard who made over $70,000 in one month pulling this scam. And there are HUNDREDS of them. Enough so that they can get past a quick look at the first few pages. 2) Scammer then puts 3000 pages of synonmizer garbage after that first portion. 3) Scammer creates 25 versions of that book with different nonsense after the first few pages to get past the automated checks.
4) Scammer creates a new KDP Account using a fresh EIN. 5) Scammer uploads each of the 25 versions under 25 author names, enters them into KDP Select and as soon as the books go live, they immediately use their 5 Days "free promo" allowed by being in select. This puts the book into KU and also makes it free to buy. 6) Scammer then either lets the KU Click-Farm or their Click Cooperative know that they’re books are live and gives the links. Rinse and repeat for every KU account the farmer has. If Click Cooperative, then the Scammer loads all his day’s book links into the cooperative’s page, and each person in the cooperative does what the Farmer did, but usually only with 2 or 3 KU accounts. 8) Scammer has now made several thousand dollars. Note: If Scammer is smart… …they will parse out those clicks over a three day period so that there is no possibility of an alert.