15 years old scam Amazon's KU for $60,000+ paycheck

[Xianxia]

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

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.

Sela wrote a good post about this:


http://www.kboards.com/index.php/top...tml#msg3237850

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.

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

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.

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).

[booklover6]

I've been following that thread. It's disgusting what some people will do. As for the Washington Post reporting on it, I wouldn't hold my breath. Bezos owns it! He's not going to want to advertise his own broken system.

[Cinisajoy]

Well now that does explain why Amazon is now telling KU authors to move their TOC to the front of the book.
What is so different about this or the ones that put 10 page books up to get paid under the old system? Or even 30 page books?
PS: I am not going to go read that thread.
I know that bunch.

Yes, it is bad what the kid did or is it since he just exposed a flaw.
Oh and to the OP, that 60,000 may or may not be accurate.

[Catlady]

Am I understanding correctly that Amazon pays the KU authors by the page count rather than the proportion of the book supposedly read? So that the payment is the same for a 200-page book read completely, and a 400-page book read to page 200? That's just dumb, even before these scamming schemes enter into it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Am I understanding correctly that Amazon pays the KU authors by the page count rather than the proportion of the book supposedly read? So that the payment is the same for a 200-page book read completely, and a 400-page book read to page 200? That's just dumb, even before these scamming schemes enter into it.

It's not dumb at all. Prior to the introduction of this, authors were releasing serial novels to game the system, because the author got paid the same amount for a 30 page book as for a 300 page book, so splitting a 300 page book into 10 sections resulted in potentially 10x the income.

[booklover6]

Yes, I think that is correct.

Originally Posted by Catlady

Am I understanding correctly that Amazon pays the KU authors by the page count rather than the proportion of the book supposedly read? So that the payment is the same for a 200-page book read completely, and a 400-page book read to page 200? That's just dumb, even before these scamming schemes enter into it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Xianxia

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).

You still have to write your 1000-page novel before this will work, and that's not a trivial task. I don't agree with you that this is a "scam". People still have to write books to get paid.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's not dumb at all. Prior to the introduction of this, authors were releasing serial novels to game the system, because the author got paid the same amount for a 30 page book as for a 300 page book, so splitting a 300 page book into 10 sections resulted in potentially 10x the income.

Thirty pages is not a book, it's a short story. What would make more sense to me is some sort of sliding scale that takes into account both total number of pages and the percentage of pages apparently read. It seems that rewarding authors for longer books would just encourage a lot of padding and extraneous material--liking adding a lengthy author bio, acknowledgments, reviews, etc. up front, knowing full well that a reader is likely to just skip ahead to the actual beginning of the story.

[mitford13]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Am I understanding correctly that Amazon pays the KU authors by the page count rather than the proportion of the book supposedly read? So that the payment is the same for a 200-page book read completely, and a 400-page book read to page 200? That's just dumb, even before these scamming schemes enter into it.

No, that was the old system. KU 2 pays per actual number of pages read.
Supposedly.
But now the scammers have figured out multiple ways of getting readers to skip to the end of the book directly, "Click HERE to win FREE Kindle Fire", thereby immediately crediting the 'author' with a full read, even if the rest of the book is junk. And since they're scammers, there's good reason to believe the 'readers' clicking are not like you or me, but hired click farms or reading circles.
With the new maximun of 3,000 KENPC pages allowed per book x an average of .0045 cents per page, that's $13+ payout per book, and well worth the thieves' while. And the 3,000 max just started, up til now the sky's been the limit.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Thirty pages is not a book, it's a short story. What would make more sense to me is some sort of sliding scale that takes into account both total number of pages and the percentage of pages apparently read. It seems that rewarding authors for longer books would just encourage a lot of padding and extraneous material--liking adding a lengthy author bio, acknowledgments, reviews, etc. up front, knowing full well that a reader is likely to just skip ahead to the actual beginning of the story.

yes 200 pages read in either 1 book or 20 books is a little less than $1.
The old system if a book had 200 pages, 20 pages or 10% had to be read to get roughly $1.34
If the book had 10 pages, 1 page read was $1.34
30 pages was 3 pages read to get the $1.34.
I know many previously full length writers that started doing short stories just for KU and that $1.34 per borrow.

I think Amazon changed to pages read to get longer and better works in KU because the subscribers were tired of finding 90% short stuff (not the word I was actually thinking).

Now the new payout did hurt two groups. Children and the erotica writers.

[HarryT]

In what way did it hurt children? I'm pretty sure Amszon don't allow children to sign up as authors.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

In what way did it hurt children? I'm pretty sure Amszon don't allow children to sign up as authors.

It hurt children because the authors started pulling their books out of KU so the children have less to read.
And idiot me dropped the word author after children in the previous post.

Oh HarryT,
Here you go.
http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Writ...ce+was+a+panda

The child wrote it because he wanted the latest "Plants and Zombies. "

[mitford13]

KDP speaks:

Announcement: Update on Table of Contents (TOC) and KDP Select
"...Relatedly, some in the community have contacted us about the activities of a small minority of publishers who may attempt to inflate sales or pages read through the use of various techniques, such as adding unnecessary or confusing hyperlinks, misplacing the TOC or adding distracting content. We both actively police for this type of activity on our own as well as investigate when the community points out such abuse (thank you to those of you who have helped us in this regard). Any abuse we find results in the immediate suspension of a title. Some circumstances, including repeat offenses, will result in KDP account suspension. In any abuse cases, we will also remove related pages read from the allocation of the monthly KDP Select Global Fund."

https://kdp.amazon.com/community/ann.jspa?annID=991

[DiapDealer]

That sounds all well and good. And while "policing" books for "TOC-at-end" syndrome can foil some looking to scam the pay-out algorithm, it misses the point that there's also valid reasons for putting the TOC at the back of the book. Namely that the Look Inside/Sample can be rendered nearly useless by ebooks that have huge TOCs (that have to be placed at the front to avoid being "dinged" by over-zealous algos and customers).

Never mind the fact that there's a double-standard about who can place a small TOC in the front of the book that leads to a few key places--including the full TOC in the back--(so the free sample can have as much reading content as possible).

They need a better plan that allows authors and ebook creators to place the TOC wherever-the-heck they want without fear of getting a "badly formatted" notice/report.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

That sounds all well and good. And while "policing" books for "TOC-at-end" syndrome can foil some looking to scam the pay-out algorithm, it misses the point that there's also valid reasons for putting the TOC at the back of the book. Namely that the Look Inside/Sample can be rendered nearly useless by ebooks that have huge TOCs (that have to be placed at the front to avoid being "dinged" by over-zealous algos and customers).

Never mind the fact that there's a double-standard about who can place a small TOC in the front of the book that leads to a few key places--including the full TOC in the back--(so the free sample can have as much reading content as possible).

They need a better plan that allows authors and ebook creators to place the TOC wherever-the-heck they want without fear of getting a "badly formatted" notice/report.

I think it is only "Select" authors that are getting the TOC notices. Or at least that is what I read on David Gaughan's facebook page.

I also think the "badly formatted/error notices refer to something else.

Maybe Amazon should just get rid of Kindle Unlimited. Then where the TOC is wouldn't matter.