
Kindle Unlimited scammers on Amazon - monkeyprojects
http://www.annchristy.com/ku-scammers-on-amazon-what-you-need-to-know/
======
cstross
This scam isn't victimless.

First, it depletes the pot awaiting actual no-shit _real_ hard-working authors
who supply a product people want.

Secondly, Amazon react by trying to engineer algorithmic anti-scam measures,
which end up catching the aforementioned hard-working authors instead of the
scammers. For example:

[http://www.walterjonwilliams.net/2016/03/amazon-may-they-
cho...](http://www.walterjonwilliams.net/2016/03/amazon-may-they-choke-on-my-
vomit/)

(TLDR: Walter Jon Williams is a respected author, who has been bringing out
his backlist of out-of-print novels as ebooks. Amazon's anti-scam measure
yanked all his books off sale -- right after he'd released them and run a
marketing campaign -- for the crime of having a table of contents at the end
of the books. Because that was easier to automate than, say, collecting actual
pages-viewed metrics as a basis for payment instead of just checking the last-
page-bookmarked.)

~~~
spullara
Based on that article having your table of contents at the end of the book is
probably trying to scam more pages. Obviously Amazon needs to fix their page
accounting system but taking advantage of it in this way is pretty awful and
his books should be removed until they are fixed.

~~~
eloff
I really don't think he was trying to scam 1 more page read in books that
probably number at least 300 pages...

~~~
0942v8653
It's not about the number of pages—if the ToC was moved to the beginning, the
total count would be the same—it's about having people skip to the last page
to look at the ToC even if they don't plan to finish the book.

~~~
meric
Why would people skip to the last page to look at ToC of a novel? He put it
there so people don't have to look at it.

------
kcorbitt
I don't think the right solution is to track pages read better. That would
make the scam a bit harder (because scammers would have to either manually
turn pages or fake the client software), but is still pretty easily
defeatable.

A couple of things that Amazon _could_ do to fix this behavior:

1\. Instead of putting all KU subscriptions in a big pot and then dividing the
pot among all authors by page read, divide the income from each individual
subscriber among the pages he/she reads (so a read from a user who reads less
would effectively be worth more). That way spammers who join collectives to
read each others' giant books are just taking money from each other instead of
stealing from the larger pot.

2\. Don't pay out revenue for pages read until 2-3 months after the fact, and
if a book is determined to be spam during that time withhold all revenues.
This admittedly affects legitimate authors as well, but maybe Amazon could
soften the blow by contributing the spam-attributed portion of the KU revenue
back to the author pot so all the legitimate authors get a nice little bonus
for their patience.

Note that either/both options might require renegotiating contracts with KU
program authors, but if the spam problem is as bad as it sounds I can't
imagine most legitimate authors objecting.

~~~
kbenson
> Instead of putting all KU subscriptions in a big pot and then dividing the
> pot among all authors by page read, divide the income from each individual
> subscriber among the pages he/she reads (so a read from a user who reads
> less would effectively be worth more).

There's a few side-effects to this, some may be beneficial depending on your
point of view, others not.

\- People who read more are paying less to each author than those who read
less. I might find an author I like, and voraciously consume thousands of
pages of her works in a month. My total payout to her would be the same
monthly fee. Popular and/or good authors shouldn't be penalized.

\- What happens to the monthly fees for people that don't read anything that
month? Does Amazon get to keep it?

\- It runs the risk of incentivizing click-bait titles and synopsis, which may
cause readers to think most the content on the platform sucks, and leave.
Everybody is worse off if the platform fails entirely.

In the end, Amazon wants a market where good authors can get paid, so they'll
come, and they want good authors because that will attract subscribers, which
is how Amazon gets paid. Pairing subscribers with authors they like, and
allowing an exchange of money for services as frictionless as possible is in
the best interest for all the legitimate actors here, so hopefully Amazon will
find a better solution soon.

~~~
meric
Maybe it's not so good to have people who read more to vote with other
people's money in a capitalistic market.

If a person is willing to sign up to unlimited just to read one authors books
once a month, that means those books are that much more valuable.

For the person who reads a lot - if he wouldn't have gotten unlimited unless
he got that much volume in reading material that means each of his views are
worth less than the other guys.

Utility of page views are not equal.

~~~
kbenson
Maybe it's not, but maybe it _is_. It's not a foregone conclusion. We've had
the subscription model (albeit with many middlemen) in television for a while.
It allows for more niche content to survive, which is a benefit, but it can
mean that people end up paying for things they don't like.

There are lots of incentives and motives at play in a system like this. For
just about every downside there's probably an upside, the question is which
outweighs the other (and that may be relative to the person). For example, the
person who reads a lot isn't _just_ extracting content for a reduced cost,
they are also (possibly) rating a lot of books providing more accurate market
info. Their reading, if more eclectic due to volume, may provide more support
for more independent authors, allowing for more variety to exist (and be
rated). Now, that is a lot of maybes, but marketplaces live off information,
so increasing market information is an important task, and this structure
_may_ be one way to help with that.

~~~
meric
>> end up paying for things they don't like.

That's what's happening now - you've got low quality viewing clubs scamming
from everyone else. And that's a certainty. Remember in information one false
bit can introduce a lot of havoc.

You've got a lot of maybes - and I'm unconvinced. But I don't work in Amazon.

I do know if I got an unlimited membership I will not be happy my dollars are
worth less because I take my time to enjoy my material - pausing and
contemplating about it deeply. ( think poems ).

~~~
kbenson
> That's what's happening now - you've got low quality viewing clubs scamming
> from everyone else.

I'm not referring to that. That's _fraud_ , and it's entirely negative. I'm
referring to subsidizing niche content. For example, niche channels[1] and the
leeway for more esoteric work to attempt to define a new market. If you
believe people always know exactly what they want, then this isn't needed. If
you believe people sometimes don't know they like something until they've been
exposed to it (and it may not exist without the ability for niche markets to
form), then this subsidization of niche content may been a good thing.

Like most things, it's probably somewhere in the middle. Allowing for niche
content is how we experiment, but subsidizing too much means that we have a
very inefficient market. Put another way, sometimes it may worth it to
decrease market efficiency for current options slightly to incentivize the
creation of new options in the market.

1:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/03/23/471633490/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/03/23/471633490/episode-691-the-
great-unbundling)

------
nateberkopec
Ouch. I wrote a travelogue as a side project/on a bit of a lark, and I
enrolled it in "KDP Select" (Kindle Unlimited). I make far more money, it
seems, from full-price purchases than my per-page royalties from Kindle
Unlimited. It really seems that it doesn't make sense for most authors, since
the revenue-per-page is diluted by these scammers.

EDIT: To put some numbers on it, here's my KDP dashboard:
[http://imgur.com/lDWoQQ6](http://imgur.com/lDWoQQ6) The book is $4.99, of
which I receive 70% ($3.50). I sell about 3 copies per day (making about $10),
and generally get ~350 pages read per day (making $1.50). So I make 10x on
regular sales what I do on Kindle Unlimited. If it matters, it's a short book
of ~300 Kindle-normalized pages.

While writing this up, I realized Amazon charges authors $0.15 per megabyte of
book file size per download. My book was 10 MB thanks to a bunch of photos.
After extreme JPEG compression I was able to get it down to ~2MB or so. I
wonder how many authors, like me, are losing 20% of their royalty without
realizing it.

On AWS, you're charged ~$0.09/GB of bandwidth out. How Amazon thinks 1000x
pricing is fair here is beyond me.

~~~
robhu
I would guess the high megabyte charge is there to encourage authors to keep
their file sizes down, and the reason for this is presumably because Amazon
have to pay for book downloads run through their 'Whispernet' (3G) Kindle
service.

~~~
derefr
In other words, the charge is to incentivize people like nateberkopec to do
exactly what they did: compress their JPEGs better.

~~~
dbcurtis
well, except it makes books with screenshots worthless. I bought an e-book on
Mac Server. The print book is great because it is full of usefull screenshots
showing exactly what you need to do. The Kindle book is a useless collection
of smudges. Amazon has taught me to avoid an entire class of technical books
on Kindle.

~~~
sebular
I feel like I've heard a lot of general hate toward the Kindle when it comes
to anything with visuals. For starters, it's in black and white, but that's
obvious, and nobody's going to try to sell or buy a coffee table photo book on
the Kindle.

But the bigger issue with the Kindle platform is the inability to mimic the
usefulness of a large, graphics-heavy reference book. It has a tiny screen
that isn't good for viewing larger diagrams, and its tools for quickly
flipping through pages or jumping back and forth between specific parts of the
book are pathetic when compared with using a real book.

In terms of popular digital devices, the Kindle is the most puzzling to me. It
was an innovative and groundbreaking technology when it was introduced 8 years
ago, and all we've seen since then are the most boring and incremental
improvements. Some have even been major missteps, as evidenced by the removal
of physical page-turning buttons, only to have them return in the latest
model.

Imagine if smartphones, tablets, wearables, or laptops had undergone such a
severe lack of innovation in the past 8 years. How the product leadership of
the Kindle team isn't fired and replaced with people who have real vision is a
complete mystery to me.

I thought Bezos was supposed to be a hard-ass, but from an outsider's
perspective it seems like he's totally fine with them barely lifting a finger
to collect their paychecks.

~~~
djrogers
You d realize that you can read a kindle ebook on a tablet, phone, laptop, or
retina iMac?

You're clearly conflating Kindle (the device) with Kindle (the ebook store).

------
Gratsby
This is very interesting. My son like most kids in his age range is a
minecraft junkie. He blew through a series of Minecraft diaries - very short
pages, very simple reading, but it entertained him. He read more than 20 of
them in a week before I went and got Kindle Unlimited, and blew threw another
20 of them once I did.

It was obvious to me that the books were spam of sorts - but I figured it was
to make money on $2-$4 purchases. It wasn't just one author, there was a
series of similar book series.

Now I have an understanding of what's taking place. They are targeting kids
like my son who can churn through pages like it's his job because it basically
is. I'd rather him be reading ANYTHING than nothing. Once you develop a love
for it, it turns into a lifelong joy instead of a punishment that you have to
suffer through during school.

I really don't like how kids are targeted as revenue streams these days. I
feel like there needs to be an awareness campaign targeting soccer moms so
they are made aware of all the channels that are aggressively focused on
making money off of elementary-school aged children. (endless youtube
channels, video games, addictive mobile games, web games, etc.)

There is a giant hole in the marketplace for engaging and fun educational
experiences that can be had for an annual subscription that doesn't try to
monetize kids throughout the day. There are a lot of "free" educational
options that don't have the quality or engagement that kids want. There are a
handful of quality ones, but there really needs to be a market-leading
presence that small/startup businesses can emulate and aspire to. The money is
there in the market but nobody is attacking it properly.

~~~
jandrese
Is that really any worse than the dime store pulp novels of old?

------
ilamont
Self-published authors who went “all in” with KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited are
furious about this. You can see the discussion on Kboards:

[http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,234330.0.html](http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,234330.0.html)

A few days ago someone shared a link that showed the free KU books in one of
the categories filled with scam books, but it looks like a lot of them have
been removed:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_pg_97?rh=n:283155,n:!...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_pg_97?rh=n:283155,n:!1000,n:25,n:16190,p_n_feature_browse-
bin:618073011,p_n_publication_date:1250226011,p_n_feature_twenty_browse-
bin:13054657011&page=57&bbn=16190&sort=date-desc-
rank&unfiltered=1&ie=UTF8&qid=1460832033&tag=viglink20273-20)

The other issue this brings up is how Amazon has been pushing authors to join
KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited and the Spotify-style payout structure. It’s a raw
deal for most authors, the exception being prolific/well-known authors (and
the scammers). Anyone joining the program gets some nice marketing tools, but
they have to remove their books from other marketplaces (Google Play, iBooks,
etc.) and end up cannibalizing the sale of digital downloads which pay more
(typically 70% of list for titles priced $2.99 and above).

Like Spotify, Kindle Unlimited is great for audiences and the platform owner.
The publishers/creators who can scale do OK. Everyone else gets the scraps.

~~~
wmeredith
>Like Spotify, Kindle Unlimited is great for audiences and the platform owner.
The publishers/creators who can scale do OK. Everyone else gets the scraps.

Meet the new boss... same as the old boss.

------
mfoy_
Isn't this payment scheme similar to Spotify's model? I thought that was
broken too, considering some artists have 10min "silent" songs that they
encourage their fans to play over and over during the night so they can get
some more revenue.

Why are services like this using such a fundamentally flawed model to pay
their content creators? Why not just allocate funds based on users usage? Is
it that much harder to implement?

\---

For those who aren't familiar with spotify, they also have a "pot" they pay
out of, and they pay out based on your content's consumption (measured in
minutes) as a percentage of all content consumed that payout period. So you
could have one single Spotify subscriber who listens to your music 24/7
causing you to be paid more than than subscriber pays Spotify. Alternatively
you could have a couple subscribers who listen exclusively to a single artist
a few times a week and the artist will receive substantially less than those
subscribers share of money, since other artists may have a more voracious fan-
base.

~~~
nathancahill
By "some artists" you mean Vulfpeck's Sleepify album? A stun/statement about
the flawed music royalties model, used to fund a free tour?

~~~
mfoy_
I don't particularly remember, or particularly care, I just remembered the
"hack" such as it is, and how it highlights the inherent flaw I'm talking
about in these proxy metrics.

The issue is that the platform uses "minutes listened" or "pages read" as a
proxy for "interest" or "value brought to the platform". Because these proxies
are measured poorly, lazily, or have exploitable loopholes some content
creators suffer for it.

In you specific example, Vulfpeck literally is taking money out of the pockets
of their fellow content creators. There's a set amount of money in each payout
pot. If they have their fans game the system to take a larger share than their
"genuine" content would merit them then isn't that almost theft? Of course I
don't really take issue with that. I take issue with the spotty (ha, get it)
system that enables such behaviour.

------
feintruled
In summary - Amazon pays all Kindle Unlimited authors out of a shared pot, the
size of your share determined by the metric of "pages read" (and you thought
your Kindle just reported that back for syncing purposes!). Enter the scammers
- who make 3000 page fake books, page one containing an enticing link to the
final page. This counts as having read the whole book!

~~~
enraged_camel
Wow! That's some incredible gross incompetence on part of the people at Amazon
who designed this system, and those who QA'd it.

~~~
morley
How would you have fixed it?

Assuming you implement the obvious thing -- tracking each page of a book the
user has opened --

(a) How could you reliably track this if the user always keeps their Kindle on
airplane mode?

(b) How could you track this accurately if the user reads a few hundred pages
in the subway, where there's no Internet service?

(c) How could you distinguish that between someone who hopped around a book in
that same time period?

(d) If Kindles don't already track page views this way, how do you update the
software on all Kindles to start tracking this way? When do you switch your
billing script to track purchases like that?

(e) If you're QAing a Kindle and you spot this loophole, how do you do all
these fixes? How long are you willing to keep the software from shipping? How
certain are you that your theoretical solution is better than what's already
shipped?

Product development is hard, and it makes me angry when people handwave it as
"gross incompetence" from a position of ignorance.

~~~
phonon
Uh, store a log file of every user action in that book, and send those log
files to the mothership periodically, as internet is available? It does not
have to be same day, just eventually.

Analyzing log files for duration/pages visited is probably easier than the
equivalent for web server logs, and there are very many services that will
analyze those for you.

~~~
Spivak
And you don't think that those logs can be faked? It might stop the casual,
"hey fans, read this 'book' to support me" but it wont stop the real scammers
or people who would buy reads for revenue and ratings.

~~~
phonon
Kindles are pretty locked down...it's not that difficult to have the kindle
sign the data it sends (probably does that already). Being scammed by hacked
kindles is one thing, but they're not even trying here...

------
kbenson
This is a very old scam. Twenty years ago, my little brother did something
essentially the same with pay-per-click ads and an IRC chat room of people
that would all click on each others ads (or more likely there was a bot that
did it for them). My little brother was getting multiple checks each week for
$50-$150 until his account with most the ad networks was terminated five to
six weeks in.

He was 13 or 14 at the time.

------
domador
Reward systems of any kind need to be very, very carefully designed, otherwise
they are vulnerable to perverse incentives. Unfortunately, there can't be a
single chink in the armor.

~~~
Paul-ish
Companies that have complex ecosystems like this ought to start giving more
though to mechanism design[1]. I would bet there are academics out there who
would have a field day optimizing this sort of system.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design)

------
underwater
I dabbled in subscribing to Kindle Unlimited, but quickly realized that most
of the material there was just trash. It was like the literary equivalent of
tuning out to some cheap reality TV show. Hearing that authors are paid per
page explains a lot.

~~~
jff
It was full of trash back when it was paid per "borrow" too. People would
crank out dozens of 30-page erotica shorts per month, and each time one of
those was read they got paid as much as the author of a 300-page novel. More,
in fact, because IIRC the criteria for "user has read enough of the story,
time to pay the author" was set as a percentage of the length... so the guy
spamming shorts got paid after a page or two, but the novelist didn't get paid
until the reader stuck it out through a couple chapters.

------
nissehulth
I read the whole article and didn't find any explanation what "KU" was. Now I
find here that it means "Kindle Unlimited" but I still have no idea what it
is. Some kind of subscription service?

I buy a lot of Kindle books but never seen any "Unlimited" offer, perhaps
something that is US only?

~~~
nateberkopec
Kindle Unlimited is Amazon's "Spotify/Netflix for Books" product. $10/month to
read any book enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program.

~~~
nissehulth
Thank you. I just tried to read more about it but all I got from amazon.com
was "We're sorry. Kindle Unlimited is not available in your country. Please
stay tuned.".

~~~
coldtea
Not sure what you mean. It's not in my country either, but I can easily access
a page like:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1002872331](http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1002872331)

Besides, there's always:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle_Store#Kindle_Unlimited](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle_Store#Kindle_Unlimited)

[http://ebookfriendly.com/kindle-unlimited-ebook-
subscription...](http://ebookfriendly.com/kindle-unlimited-ebook-
subscription/)

------
klagermkii
I guess this is one version of what a micro-transaction powered Web could look
like. Potentially even worse forms of click-bait becoming dominant.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Wouldn't micropayments theoretically be done with 100% human interaction? (As
in, I click on an article, like it, and click on the tip button?) Wouldn't
that be relatively hard to actually game, short of actually stealing money
from me?

~~~
pjc50
Who would bother to click the tip button?

Why couldn't the site play games with the tip button by hiding it under other
links or routing repeated clicks to it?

If it requires human interaction, the simple fact that you've asked the user
imposes a nuisance cost. There's a reason that app store purchase bottom tier
of pricing floats around the $1 range and not the $0.01 range.

~~~
wlesieutre
> There's a reason that app store purchase bottom tier of pricing floats
> around the $1 range and not the $0.01 range.

I can't speak to Android, but on iOS the reason is that Apple has decided
$0.99 will be the lowest price tier [1].

If they wanted to let people have an even crazier race to the bottom, I'm sure
we'd see $0.49 apps and then $0.10 apps and $0.01 apps. With password entry
there was a nuisance cost, but "scan your fingerprint" is pretty close to
frictionless. Tapping the download button is the most difficult part of the
transaction.

[1] [https://www.macstories.net/stories/a-beginners-guide-to-
app-...](https://www.macstories.net/stories/a-beginners-guide-to-app-store-
pricing-tiers/)

------
AJ007
If this is correctly documented, there is no reason why Amazon would not have
to pay out all the truly owed royalties to authors.

Fraudulent methods of measurement are a real issue in online marketplaces and
you can't just say oops when you are sued.

------
djrogers
Wouldn't it make sense for Amazon to hold payouts for 30-60 days on new
accounts, and _require_ books to be available for 30-60 days before a payout?

It seems a huge part of this scam is pulling your book from the store before
you get caught - make that part impossible and he scammers will have to work a
lot harder.

There are ways around anything for a determined scammer, but those all have an
associated cost, and if you make the costs high enough many of the scammers
will go away.

------
sireat
What is ridiculous that while these kind of KU scams abound a legitimate
publisher is still unable to publish on KDP (where people pay real money for a
real e-book whole) unless your language is one of the chosen few:
[https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A9FDO0A3V0119](https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A9FDO0A3V0119)

It took forever to get Welsh added to the list and after that no change for
the past 4-5 years on Amazon KDP.

Finnish is fine, but Estonian is not. Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian are deemed
unreadable by Amazon KDP despite rendering just fine sideloaded on my Kindle.
It is beyond infuriating.

I have edited multiple books for a non-profit organisation to publish on
Amazon Createspace, that is the print-on-demand division.

No problem on Amazon print-on-demand you can publish in Klingon if you want,
but every time I choose to publish the same book on KDP(KDP is half-assedly
integrated into Createspace Dashboard) my books get thrown back
programmatically after a few days because too much of the text is in an
unsupported language.

The official Amazon reason for refusal to publish these same books on Kindle
is because they feel the user experience in unsupported languages would be
substandard.

In other words Amazon are either incompetent and understuffed or mostly just
do not care about publishing in niche languages. I suspect it is the latter
since I doubt the former.

This is despite the book rendering just fine on my Kindle privately I just
can't publish it on KDP.

I apologize for the rant, but it irks me that Amazon a company which is
supposed to care about book publishing is so blase about it.

------
AndrewUnmuted
I was a founding member of the ACX service, which is a partnership of sorts
between Amazon's Audible and KDP properties. It allows self-published authors
to have audiobooks made by voice actors of _highly_ varying degrees of talent
+ expertise, which then get sold on Amazon/Audible.

As the manager of the Audio QA team and its related internal technology
services, I saw this kind of scammery on a daily basis. Amazon has actually a
very weak policy against these kinds of scammers, because getting someone
kicked off of the service for this kind of thing requires a lot of expensive
and time-consuming legal work. Amazon likes avoiding this consequence whenver
possible.

And yes, audiobook voice actors would try to turn all kinds of scams on us -
from robo-voicing entire narrations, to resubmitting a prior-recorded
audiobook under a different title and author credit.

When you open your media library to the dastardly UGC (user-generated content)
world, these things will happen. The fact is that Amazon has become successful
in monopolizing both book and audiobook distribution because they have figured
out how to devalue the experience _just_ enough to extract as much scale as
possible to out-perform the competition.

------
kirykl
Paying per page and requiring exclusivity seem like a recipe for terrible
content.

------
Practicality
It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to add a time on page metric before
counting pages, especially when you own the hardware. I am honestly quite
surprised this was missed.

~~~
awqrre
Would that be user-generated data?

~~~
tamana
Sure but so far this scam is in fake books,not fake kindles. It's hard to move
the needle with fake Kindle client accounts paying $10/mo each.

------
gcb0
the retail side of Amazon is so sloppy. things like this. vendors much much
worse than eBay for small items or sometimes even $600 smart phones...

it's the main reason i have never even considered AWS. I'm too conscious to
depend on them.

~~~
duaneb
Amazon isn't the one perpetrating the scam here....

~~~
msandford
> Amazon isn't the one perpetrating the scam here....

Not directly perpetrating, but definitely enabling.

EDIT: Worse is that if you think about it, who is getting scammed? Is Amazon
paying out more money by people doing all this crazy stuff with books?
Probably not. So the scammers are scamming the real authors who aren't getting
paid as much as they otherwise would for the real people who actually read
their books.

Does Amazon have any obligation to ensure that pages read are real, or
verified or whatever? Probably not. But it's definitely bad business, similar
to how Google desperately needed to crack down on click bots for Google ads.

~~~
duaneb
I would say its relation to vendor management is shaky at best. I am also
curious what you think they should be doing better--I certainly do not waste
my time shopping elsewhere on the internet. There is no reason in most cases:
it is easier to wait for sales than it is to bargain hunt because everyone
else is just as bad as amazon.

------
obsurveyor
Who is writing these horrible systems for Amazon? From the article, the way
they detect page reads sounds like the simplest use case that a novice
developer would come up with. Kindles can definitely record information and
upload it later when there's a chance to sync; I use it all the time to submit
corrections for books. There's no reason that it should be this simple to
game.

Of course, the scammers would just move on to using actual device farms but at
least there would be some physical obstacles.

------
jcslzr
It should be divided by user. Let say the service costs 10 usd per month. So
lets say you are going to pay 5 usd to authors. You should divide each user 5
dollars between the percentage the user read of each autor, so if a user only
read one author, then the author gets 5 usd. And if he reads 80% of one and
20% of other authors, then the same percentage should be applied from the 5
usd. I do not know how hard would be this to implement.

------
Theo59
Stating the obvious here but the difference from monetising music streaming
services is that you don't consume the content over a live connection hence
the current Amazon model is just plain flawed.

I personally would adapt to something much much simpler than guessing
thousands of page views sharing thousandths of pennies.

KU subscribers pay £10 pm for up to 10 books at a time. After the commission
just share the remaining £7 amongst the other books held during the month.
None of this funky pageview stuff.

That way the scammers would only be taking from their own subscription fees.

------
nxzero
Sites down, Google Cache link:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.annchristy.com/ku-
scammers-on-amazon-what-you-need-to-know/)

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studentrob
This is another reason the court's decision to fine Apple over the iBookstore
and its publisher agreements was such a shame.

Amazon still has a stranglehold on the market and authors suffer for it.

------
xbmcuser
Amazon has been pulling books with the table of contents at the end for a few
weeks now and has also informed the authors. So this scam is no longer
workable.

~~~
natdempk
How does this ruin the scam? Couldn't the scammers just put other enticing
page links that link to the end of the book and have the same effect? Is there
something I'm missing here?

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JoeAltmaier
Scams like this are why we can't every have nice things. Not for very long
anyway.

Sigh. I guess I'll put that novel on the back burner, again.

~~~
tamana
The only thing stopping you from writing a novel was KU?!

~~~
JoeAltmaier
No, one of the motivations was thinking it could be easily marketed.

~~~
coolsunglasses
If the book isn't one of these guys
[http://cdn.movieweb.com/img.news.tops/NEdgXRU4ZlbPhg_2_b.jpg](http://cdn.movieweb.com/img.news.tops/NEdgXRU4ZlbPhg_2_b.jpg)
trying to climb out of you, then the book ain't gonna get done whatever
happens.

~~~
ansible
Yeah, I've got three stories banging around in the back of my mind. Sitting
down in front of a screen (with nothing else asking for my time) to get bits
into a file is hard for me.

------
teh_klev
> then he or she won’t get their money for this EIN

What's an EIN?

------
dandare
Wow, Amazon is this cheap?

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andrewfromx
this is like expert cheaters in a casino keep the casino security on it's
game. The people pushing the edges of what counts as a "real page read" are
forcing Amazon engineers to be more clever. But the article really assumes
Amazon isn't doing anything sneaky and clever to filter out cheaters. Maybe
the sales are low because they are low. And cheaters will always cheat and
Amazon is "on this." But what authors need to do is write better? I'm quoting
LCK, "be more funny" that's your only job as a comedy writer. Be more funny.

