Ever since the first time an author walked into a neighborhood bookstore and turned her own book face-out on the shelf, there have been ways to game a bookselling system. The digital era, however, creates far more potential for scams, as sleight of hand gives way to manipulation of algorithmic engines.
For some time, online chatter about Amazon among independent authors has been taking on more critical tones. Having created the most viable self-publishing option in history with the launch of the Kindle in 2007, this massive retail platform, with its moves and mysteries, now triggers what you might hear in a nine-year-old marriage: frequent complaints and bickering. In recent write-ups, you get a sense of the wariness and weariness among writers.
- “Amazon, You Hit Like a Bitch,” from book blogger Megan Cooke, has 159 comments on it as of this writing. Cooke says her book reviews have been banned by Amazon without what she considers adequate explanation: “Was I banned because your computer system deemed me to be paid or fake based on whatever wonky system you have?”
- Author Ann Christy offers an extensive explication of how the page-count system of measuring consumers’ KU reads can be manipulated, referencing David Gaughran’s post below.
- In “KU Scammers Attack Amazon’s Free Ebook Charts,” David Gaughran features the experience of author Phoenix Sullivan, who believes she saw Amazon sales rankings being manipulated. Gaughran believes Amazon is struggling to handle scammers’ distortions of rankings and writes that “customer service levels at KDP are still unacceptable” on issues of this kind.
Scammers, Gaughran says, are systematically “using a number of tricks to boost their sales rank, appearance in search, general visibility, and KU payouts.” To do this, he writes, they’re stuffing keywords into titles; “bloating” page counts by putting more than one book behind a single cover; and using other writers’ covers, titles, and names to create faux “study guides” and draw buyers.
We contacted Amazon to ask if they wished to respond to what we see as a mounting chorus of concern, and we presented the three posts mentioned here. Here is Amazon’s comment:
“It’s important to us to ensure that customers can trust our sales’ rankings and that those rankings accurately reflect legitimate customer activity. We don’t tolerate sales rank abuse and actively police our site to maintain the integrity of our rankings. So as not to reveal anything to potential abusers, we don’t discuss the specifics of the tools we use to check for abuse, and we are constantly working to improve them.”
Bottom line: In the digital arena, systems are safeguarded—frequently by silence. Nothing ventured, nothing deduced. That may be cold consolation to writers who feel something is amiss. On the one hand, we believe Amazon when they say that customer trust is critical to them. On the other, authors’ writings are the stuff of KDP’s success, and authors deserve all the candor that Amazon can responsibly offer. We remain optimistic that author-vendors and retailer-platforms will improve over time. As Gaughran mentions, Amazon did apologize in March for “incorrect enforcement” around table-of-contents regulations and quality-control notices. Both sides are learning, and in the first decade of this brave new relationship, all is not going to be smooth or correct.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
