Amazon on the Warpath or a Different Type of Conflict Diamond

While I was recovering from surgery over the past six weeks, Amazon cracked down on a few people scamming their Kindle Unlimited (KU) service.

(For those new to the world of indie publishing, a publisher can place their books in the Kindle Select program. While this gives the publisher access to special promotions, the books must be exclusive to Amazon and are automatically enrolled in KU. Readers pay $9.99 a month for KU, and they can read as many books as they wish within the program.)

From the advent of indie publishing, people have tried to con Amazon and/or readers. Private label rights was a big issue right from the beginning. Amazon yanked that crap pretty damn quick.

Since the start of KU, folks have been gaming the system to make the most bucks possible. Now, I don't have a problem with people making a buck or two. But I prefer doing it by writing an entertaining story that people want to read. Not by cheating readers, or retailers, out of their hard-earned money.

During the first iteration of KU (referred to as KU 1.0 by most indie writers), Amazon paid the publisher the full retail price once the customer read 10% of the book. Indie writers quickly figured out shorter works hit the threshold faster, triggering the payout sooner. Which meant a lot of short scenes that didn't even qualify as flash fiction were published on KU and irritated the hell out of readers.

Within a year, Amazon ditched the first version of KU for KU 2.0, a system that allegedly counted the number of pages read. Oh, the howls of outrage from the short story writers.

Until they figured out that Amazon COULDN'T actually count the number of pages the customer read. The number of cons to get the maximum amount of money by getting the readers to click to the end of the books exploded. Hell, I'm not even going to try to list them all here.

But Amazon couldn't ignore one major scam any longer. To do so would make them internationally liable.

It has to do with sweepstakes-style contests. Many countries have very strict laws governing these type of contests. In many more, these contests are very illegal. And since entrance was through Amazon's online store, they could/would be held equally guilty as the indie publisher.

A few indie writers went too far. It's one thing to offer a free e-book when a customer signs up for your newsletter. It's another when a indie writer offers to give away diamonds.

*facepalm*

Yeah, the diamond trade is pretty heavily regulated on an international level. I don't know what this author was thinking.

Or he wasn't thinking. He just wanted his readers to make money for him by clicking to the end of his books.

Amazon pulled everything he had down: e-books, print books, and audio books. All that potential income--gone. Just because someone got greedy.

So when someone offers you a sure-fire way of making thousands of dollars through e-book publishing, think twice, do your research, and read the terms of service on the retailer's webpage.

Because screwing people over may not bite you in the ass today or tomorrow, but one day, Karma will and she'll take a bigger chunk than a megalodon.