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Cinisajoy. Thanks for posting this.
As those who have read my posts know, I am a huge fan of Amazon, and my posts are generally but not exclusively in their favour. I have been following this whole saga, in the expectation that Amazon would find a solution. In earlier days, since Amazon sets the pool for KU on some unknown basis, I was sceptical about claims of money being taken from Author's pockets by these scams. Unfortunately, it seems the scamming is now so blatant and widespread that there can be little doubt of it.
Hopefully someone from Amazon is reading this. In this hope I reluctantly have a message which I hope will be passed on to those in the company who can do something about it. This is a fundamental issue. Whilst there is probably no easy way of totally eliminating these scams, eliminating all but a very few is not rocket science. Failure to do so, even when concerned authors and readers spoon-feed you with the problem, shows that the issue is not being taken seriously. And it needs to be. The situation is a joke, pure and simple. Some basic electronic monitoring will sound the alarm bells on many of these scams, and reports from authors and readers will continue to flow in. The names of many of the serial offenders are known, and Amazon is certainly not shy about taking action against people for much lesser offences. In fact, this is one other aspect where I have been critical of Amazon in the past. You need to actually allocate some real live competent people to take the necessary action. Given the size of KU I suspect the additional wages and benefits would be a drop in the bucket. As the author of the article writes, significant goodwill is being lost by inaction and the perception of simply not caring. The alternative explanation, which I do not believe, is a staggering level of incompetence. Not good enough. You have a reputation and significant goodwill to protect.
And make no mistake, this will be an ongoing arms race. I love the system of paying by pages actually read. It is far superior to the previous system which encouraged not only scamming but shorter and poorer quality works. I must admit that when you first introduced the new system I did wonder just how detailed the information Amazon was able to collect from Kindle devices and applications was, since the obvious scam for those so inclined was to publish a very long work and use the click farms to borrow and simply go to the last page. This does appear to have happened, and I'm not sure to what extent it is possible even now. It seems to be quite apparent that the data collected on reading is simply not sufficient to detect these scams. And personally I would not be happy to see my reading habits subjected to the level of scrutiny required to rigorously police KU. However, scamming the system can never be entirely eliminated with the current level of detail.
Having said that, much can be done with what you have, and the level of scamming can be kept to a minimum. But it requires an ongoing commitment and resources. Effectively the situation is an arms race. One loophole will be closed and scammers will move on to the next. Smart scammers who are not too greedy will probably get away with it. But you can keep things within manageable levels.
I love KU. I think the system of payment by pages read is far superior to alternative methods, but as things stand is also far more open to scamming. Please keep the system, but devote the time and resources necessary to police it properly and keep the scamming within acceptable bounds.
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