This would make for a good news article if any reporters want to investigate.
Washington Post?
New York Times?
Publishers Weekly?
TechCrunch?
Engadget?
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/top...tml#msg3237264
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Further proof of this scam:
https://imgur.com/a/YwBA0
Not only are these people bragging about it and selling it as genius hard work that eventually paid of, the owner of that screenshotted account is only 15 years old. Yes, it's that easy! A deluded kid can do it and rob honest people of money they deserve because of a blatant Amazon glitch.
Also pay attention to the dates. The scam even passed Amazon's 60-days-payout-window. Most likely more than once. The money's long gone.
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Sela wrote a good post about this:
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/top...tml#msg3237850
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And here I thought that Amazon was all knowing and all seeing, what with their ability to tell you how many pages you read and pay authors for how many pages were read in a month. I thought they had the whole big data thing figured out. How else could they pay an author for the number of pages read, right? They had to have a way to calculate how many actual pages were read by actual people.
Right???
I mean, they set up this brand new system of payment for KU. A reader reads your whole book? You get paid for the whole book. A reader reads only half? You get paid for those pages only. This would reward good books, right? Books that pleased readers? Those authors whose books pleased the most readers would be All Stars!
Except, no.
Turns out Amazon DOESN'T know how many actual pages actual readers actually read. It only knows the last page you were on before you stopped. It ASS-U-MEs that the reader actually read those pages in between the start and place where you "stopped reading" and I say that loosely. It doesn't know how you got to that place where you "stopped reading" just that you got there.
What a great system!
To scam...
As soon as the scammers figured it out, they unleashed the scambooks.
Got 30 erotica works that no longer earn much in KU 2.0? Simple: bundle them up, throw in a few novels, a few translations, and put the TOC at the back and a link so that the reader HAS to click to the back of the volume to read the advertised story. BAM. Full read in KU. Full payout. Some of those books were tens of thousands of pages long and netted their scammers $50+ per scam-read. Put a link to the back of the eBook and a contest, and readers would click to the back and BAM. Full KU payout. Put a riddle with the answer at the back, or an urgent message, or a chance to win a Kindle, or some other trick, and BAM. Full KU payout. Become an All Star. Scam Amazon.
Scamazon.
I WAS going to write a series for KU but until they figure this out, I'll stick with writing novels for all platforms and stick with getting paid for my books. Sure, I might not be able to make it into the top 100 ranks because of all the KU books, or top the search engines because of the scambooks with keyword stuffed titles, but at least I will get paid real money and will know what that money is at the time the book sells rather than finding out after the fact and from a ever-shifting pot, a lot of which goes to line the pockets of scammers.
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http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2016/...-hits-authors/
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The latest wheeze from this shady crew was to place a message at the start of their KU titles encouraging readers to click through to the end – because this fools Amazon’s system into thinking the entire book has been read, the author of that title then receives an inflated payout from the KU pot, and then honest, hard-working writers who aren’t pulling these cheap tricks on readers have less money to share. It’s a mess. These guys are peeing in the KU pool and Amazon is paying them by the gallon.
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Amazon messed up big times when KU page read isn't paid by PAGE READ.
It is paid by where a reader stopped furthest in the book.
For example, Read page 2, click on bait link, jump to page 1000 = full payment of 1000 pages.
It's easy to see how scammers take advantage of it. Some are making life changing money from the scam ($50,000+ a month).