eReaderIQ no longer Amazon.com affiliate eligible

[sufue]

Well, since eReaderIQ is providing a service by identifying books (that have dropped in price) that are already listed in Amazon/Kindle US, then if there is a problem with "scamlets" it would seem to be Kindle's problem that Kindle has the scamlets listed in the first place. It seems a bit odd to me to say that eReaderIQ is responsible for policing Kindle's titles for them.

In the two genres I watch on eReaderIQ, there are a lot of legit books identified as being on sale and I would never have the time to check all those authors and titles all the time for myself. So I plan to subscribe if eReaderIQ offers subscriptions at anything approaching a reasonable price.

I totally agree about BookBub and other sites/email lists that I've tried, but that feel like they are not really providing info on titles or authors I want but instead on the titles/authors they want to provide me info on. eReaderIQ is by far the best I have seen at letting me tailor to just get info about books and authors that I want to follow.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by sufue

Well, since eReaderIQ is providing a service by identifying books that are listed in Amazon/Kindle US that have dropped in price, then if there is a problem with "scamlets" it would seem to be Kindle's problem that they have them listed in the first place. In the two genres I watch, there are a lot of legit books identified as being on sale and I would never have the time to check all those authors and titles all the time for myself. So I plan to subscribe if eReaderIQ offers subscriptions at anything approaching a reasonable price.

How is what someone publishes Amazon's problem?

Anyone should be able to publish what they want.
I have no complaints with them being published.
I have a problem with whoever is promoting them not actually looking at it.

Ereaderiq was trying to make money by using Amazon to provide a service.
Amazon was and is not advertising these books.
Sorry but it is up to the person providing the service to vet what he is promoting.

Now Amazon will pull very bad books if they get enough complaints. (Formatting, grammar)
They also pull any "familial relationships for pleasure" and "non-consensual for pleasure" books.
They have also been known to put an adult tag on some books if they determine they were mis-categorized.

They will also pull very fast any copyright or trademark violations.
The trademarks get pulled immediately.

[Atunah]

I am still confused. How is it promoting if they list books that happen to drop in price. That is just a listing what is in the kindle store, sorted by the parameter one gets to set. How are they promoting scamlets that way. I don't get it.

You sort by price, by length, by genre. You get the results of what has its price lowered. That is it. Then you can sign up for emails of price reductions, kindleized items and authors. I guess they have a paid ad based email also like bookbub and the others, but I don't use that.

With my parameters I get to set, I don't see many scam books. And if they are there, it just means they had a price reduction that also fits the parameters I set.

I don't want a curated list of price reductions based on what authors paid to get on. That is what bookbub and all those are. I am not interested in that. I need what ereaderiq offers. A service to specifically target what I want to see. Not what someone pays for me to see. That is what sets them apart from all the others. The others just have a email, EQ has a chrome plugin and watch lists. Nobody else does that. So I hope they can stick around.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Atunah

I am still confused. How is it promoting if they list books that happen to drop in price. That is just a listing what is in the kindle store, sorted by the parameter one gets to set. How are they promoting scamlets that way. I don't get it.

You sort by price, by length, by genre. You get the results of what has its price lowered. That is it. Then you can sign up for emails of price reductions, kindleized items and authors. I guess they have a paid ad based email also like bookbub and the others, but I don't use that.

With my parameters I get to set, I don't see many scam books. And if they are there, it just means they had a price reduction that also fits the parameters I set.

I don't want a curated list of price reductions based on what authors paid to get on. That is what bookbub and all those are. I am not interested in that. I need what ereaderiq offers. A service to specifically target what I want to see. Not what someone pays for me to see. That is what sets them apart from all the others. The others just have a email, EQ has a chrome plugin and watch lists. Nobody else does that. So I hope they can stick around.

We are talking about 2 different things that ereaderiq does.
One side is fantastic. That is the side you use.
You use the specific search.
It is the other side that I am talking about.
If you don't set parameters, you can see all the books that fit the first two of his algorithms.
I think that is the side that got him in trouble with Amazon.
This is also visiting his website.

I do hope he survives because that price lowering side is wonderful.

You and sufue used it one way and I was using it another way.

And no, he wasn't getting paid by the authors.

It was his algorithms that were finding the books. Yes I have talked to him.

[Blossom]

I can't donate at the moment but I removed all the books I had on watch it was 1000 or more so that should help lighten some of their cost. It's the best I can do. I don't buy books at the moment so it was just wasted use. I was a heavy user of their FreeReadFeed for years. It's well worth to donate too.

[disconnected]

I'll miss ereaderiq if it disappears but I'll be a lot more disappointed if turns out that the same thing has happened to autheralerts. It stopped working a couple of weeks ago I think. I'm hoping it's just a coincidence and that Amazon isn't responsible for it. Authoralerts doesn't send discount notices, just notifications of new releases by the authors you're following.

[chrhup]

Hi...

This is Christian, the creator of eReaderIQ. To answer the primary question in this thread, Amazon shut down my affiliate accounts because I had affiliated links in the Alert emails and in the Chrome Extension. They also did not like that I retained historical price information for Kindle books.

The donations have been great, and will keep the site going for the summer. It will be my mission over the next three months to find a reliable way to monetize eReaderIQ so I can keep it open for the long term. That may mean a few extra ads or sponsored listings, but it will not change the tracking services.

If I fail to monetize the site, then I will be forced to charge a moderate monthly fee to utilize our tracking services. I really hope it does not come to that.

Thank you to all who have used, talked about, donated to and helped my site thrive for the past few years. Hopefully there are a few years left.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Atunah

I am still confused. How is it promoting if they list books that happen to drop in price. That is just a listing what is in the kindle store, sorted by the parameter one gets to set. How are they promoting scamlets that way. I don't get it.

You sort by price, by length, by genre. You get the results of what has its price lowered. That is it. Then you can sign up for emails of price reductions, kindleized items and authors. I guess they have a paid ad based email also like bookbub and the others, but I don't use that.

With my parameters I get to set, I don't see many scam books. And if they are there, it just means they had a price reduction that also fits the parameters I set.

I don't want a curated list of price reductions based on what authors paid to get on. That is what bookbub and all those are. I am not interested in that. I need what ereaderiq offers. A service to specifically target what I want to see. Not what someone pays for me to see. That is what sets them apart from all the others. The others just have a email, EQ has a chrome plugin and watch lists. Nobody else does that. So I hope they can stick around.

I think the point that you are missing is that for some people, Amazon can do no wrong, so when they play hardball with other people, it's obviously because the other people must have done something wrong. I think that the straight forward explanation is that Amazon isn't nearly as interested in referrals as they use to be and would rather you go directly to Amazon so they can keep the referral fee. Plus if you go through Amazon, they have more opportunities to try to up sale you, or push you towards items that they are currently pushing.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that both authoralerts and this site, both which provide similar services, got dropped in roughly the same time frame.

[Atunah]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I think the point that you are missing is that for some people, Amazon can do no wrong, so when they play hardball with other people, it's obviously because the other people must have done something wrong. I think that the straight forward explanation is that Amazon isn't nearly as interested in referrals as they use to be and would rather you go directly to Amazon so they can keep the referral fee. Plus if you go through Amazon, they have more opportunities to try to up sale you, or push you towards items that they are currently pushing.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that both authoralerts and this site, both which provide similar services, got dropped in roughly the same time frame.

This really has nothing to do with my post at all though. Did you quote me by accident?

Glad to hear from the owners of ereaderiq and I hope you guys find a way to stick around.

[fjtorres]

It turns out the ebook click farming scam is getting more common and the farmers are disguising their practices by roping in legitimate books from innocent midlisters along with the ones they're paid to boost.

https://the-active-voice.com/2016/06...t-think-again/

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2016/...rawny-authors/

As I pointed out above, the practice hurts everyone; readers, authors, and yes, Amazon.
Since it is relatively new in the ebook space Amazon seems to be fumbling around for a handle on the problem.

Probably going to get uglier before it gets better.

[sufue]

Thanks @fjtorres for the articles - call me naive again, but I didn't know that sort of stuff was going on. I totally agree that that sort of scam is bad for everyone who gets roped in by it, especially when it pulls in innocent authors used as camouflage.

But even after reading the articles, I still don't really get why folks are condemning eReaderIQ for this, unless folks are arguing that the site was one of the entities doing the fake clicking on the fake titles, versus just seeing price drops on some of these titles, along with many others, and therefore listing them as price drops. And if eRiq wanted to be in the fake-click business, why set up such an elaborate site, complete with the very real price drop monitoring algorithms and stuff?

(And no, @Cinisajoy, I really don't expect eRiq to monitor the quality of every book its algorithms identify as having dropped in price. I will agree that eRiq might WANT to try to do this, to provide better service to its users, but I don't EXPECT them to do it. I also wonder, even if eRiq did try to do it, where and how they might draw the line, beyond some of the examples you already mentioned as sufficient to get a title kicked off Kindle itself - e.g. "familial relationships for pleasure", "non-consensual for pleasure" - in which case the title won't show up in eRiq's lists anyway.)

Unless eRiq is a click farmer itself, is it really credible that eRiq was producing enough clicks for any given title to even be noticed when compared to the 25,000 page clicks produced by a scammer as described in one of the articles, especially when the point of eRiq seems to me to be to identify price drops on books so we can BUY them rather than KU them?

Anyway, until I might learn that eRiq is a fake-click generator itself, I continue to really value the price drop monitoring and price history services, and would be willing to pay a reasonable subscription fee for these...

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It turns out the ebook click farming scam is getting more common and the farmers are disguising their practices by roping in legitimate books from innocent midlisters along with the ones they're paid to boost.

https://the-active-voice.com/2016/06...t-think-again/

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2016/...rawny-authors/

As I pointed out above, the practice hurts everyone; readers, authors, and yes, Amazon.
Since it is relatively new in the ebook space Amazon seems to be fumbling around for a handle on the problem.

Probably going to get uglier before it gets better.

[Cinisajoy]

I wasn't talking fake click books.
I was talking about a certain group of authors that always use simple American names that put together 30 to 40 page books that have literally been copied and pasted from websites. Then they get the others in their group to go give 5 star reviews on Amazon. Then they go to sites like Ereaderiq and request price drops on these books.
I NEVER blamed Christian.
I said that he got caught in their game.
He was an unwilling particpant.

The scammers figured out his algorithms.

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It turns out the ebook click farming scam is getting more common and the farmers are disguising their practices by roping in legitimate books from innocent midlisters along with the ones they're paid to boost.

https://the-active-voice.com/2016/06...t-think-again/

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2016/...rawny-authors/

As I pointed out above, the practice hurts everyone; readers, authors, and yes, Amazon.
Since it is relatively new in the ebook space Amazon seems to be fumbling around for a handle on the problem.

Probably going to get uglier before it gets better.

That poor author mentioned in the first article not only got one of Amazon's apparently typical form letters cutting her off with no chance for investigation or explanation but the form letter started off with the offensive and revoltingly touchy-feely "We are reaching out to you".

I'm sure the author was more upset about the content than the form but you'd think Amazon could have at least have found someone to draft a letter that was uniformly businesslike and not treacly in the beginning and a slap in the face at the end.

The "We will issue a negative adjustment to any outstanding royalty payments." doesn't even sound legal although no doubt it's stated in some TOS somewhere.

[DuckieTigger]

The solution could be simpler than it appears. To effectively shut down click farms might only require a delay of payment on ALL KU borrows during the first free month. Make the delay so long that the author doesn't get paid until the KU account at least paid for a month. Should be fairly easy to split up the pages read into 2 columns - those for paying subscribers read pages and trial subscribers read pages pending payment.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

The solution could be simpler than it appears. To effectively shut down click farms might only require a delay of payment on ALL KU borrows during the first free month. Make the delay so long that the author doesn't get paid until the KU account at least paid for a month. Should be fairly easy to split up the pages read into 2 columns - those for paying subscribers read pages and trial subscribers read pages pending payment.

People have been gaming Amazon for years and still are. It's a natural outgrowth of how Amazon's business model (i.e. pushing as much work on to someone else as possible) works. For that matter, many indie authors game the system by breaking their books up into chapter books, thus charging a lot more and are much praised here for it. There will always be someone willing to grab a buck if it's out there. The only real difference this time is that Amazon decided that it was their ox that was getting gored.