Recently I received an email from KDP regarding some kind of
alert for content review. Naturally I was perplexed by this. Here is what it
said:
Hello,
We are reaching out to you because we detected accounts
attempting to manipulate Kindle services by simulating reading or borrowing
activity on your titles.
You do not need to take any action, however, we will block the
activities of these malicious accounts and their effects on payments. This
means that you will still receive royalties associated with legitimate reading
activities, but you will not receive royalties associated with activities
related to these accounts.
Please note that this notice does not represent a change to your
account status but is sent to make you aware of how our security countermeasures
will affect your previously reporting page count and your royalty
payments.
We understand you might have questions regarding the nature of
how we detect these activities; however, please be aware that we cannot provide
details that might compromise the integrity of our security
systems.
If you have any other questions, please reply to this
email.
No, I did not reply to it but went directly to KDP Community forum. I would rather not click on the link they provided because I did not want to click on something malicious. If this email is not directed to me personally, and it was sent out as a newsletter to all Indie authors then that's fine but recently I received several downloads of my books which surprised me but I am thrilled about it and I don't see a problem with it, people can download any of my books if they wish. I even got several global rates on all of them, thank you and I received an actual review on my book, In the Company of Elves, however, I was curious about the email I received from KDP so I went ahead and logged into the KDP community forum. I asked about the email and why I would be receiving it and this is what several users said:
“The notice has nothing to do with
reviews and all to do with vandals manipulating sales numbers. I had it happen
to my account several years back and it takes a while for them to find and
disable the culprits, but they will do so. They are trying to reassure you will
get paid for all legitimate sales but not for those fake sales being stuffed
into the system. Think of it as cyber graffiti. Nothing to do but stay
aware and wait it out.”
User 2:
"Amazon is looking out for itself, not
publishers. After all, you will not receive any royalties from page-reads they
deem questionable. Be glad you still have an account. Back in the heyday of
click-farms, hundreds of innocent titles were used to camouflage the real
beneficiaries of click-farming. A great many indie bystanders found themselves
jettisoned along with the offending parties, sometimes instead of.
Click-farming isn't what it used to be (too many checks, balances and limitations to bring in the
$500,000/month they used to get), but the practice has not gone away, no more
so than has review or ranking manipulation. Even leaving out those who might
get caught up with the actual scammers (like dolphins in a tuna net), KDP
deletes 300-500 publishing accounts annually for a variety of reasons. I am
sure a goodly percentage of those terminations are undeserved. It is always a
mistake to assume KDP is looking out for us, is our friend or
colleague/partner, or that they will listen to our protestations of innocence
once a determination has been made."
I don't know what he or she is talking about, I've never heard of click-farming before. As far as I'm concerned, any VERIFIED buyer, is a verified buyer. Verified reviews or global rating is genuine and I should receive royalties from those sales, period!
3 user:
"Well, the scammers aren't, AFAIK,
"targeting" you. They manipulate YOUR sales, which means YOU get the
money, not them. There's no realistic way for scammers to download KU, Kindle
Unlimited book and speed read through them and THEY get the money. You get hurt
by it, yes, because Amazon alerts to it and then starts to monitor your downloads
and all that. It's bizarre. Not as bizarre as the sideways-book pirates, which
is odd but odder."
This person is totally wrong, you can read through a book in two weeks or less if that book is under 100 pages. If it’s a novelette. Some of my books are novelettes. The only books that I have that are more than 100 pages are the Chandra’s Quest Trilogy set and In the Company of Elves.
So, I’m not sure where I stand with receiving royalties from KDP because ever since I had received the email, I haven’t heard anything else from them.
For those who want to know, my account on Amazon KDP is still up and running, it will not be deleted because I am not guilty of any kind of supposed scam. I’ll still have it next month, 6 months from now and for as long as I’m alive. Period!
Please do feel free to visit my author's page and download or
buy any one of my books. Read, rate and review. Thank you.
I will make a vlog video about this soon.
Please follow links below.
