There has been a lot of panic recently with horror stories about Amazon banning indie authors en masse for promoting their books. Here’s why that’s fake news.
1. Amazon is a business that wants to make money.
There are millions of books on Kindle, something like 7 million. Around 10% of Amazon’s total book stock. There’s no way Amazon wants to ban indie authors from Amazon, who must account for at least a quarter of those books, just by pure common sense.
2. Getting reviews and promotion for your book is not going to get you banned.
If you do it right. Stick to the rules.
- Don’t have multiple KDP accounts. This looks fishy. Delete old accounts with the same email or credit card attached.
- Don’t buy review writing services; buy promotions that get you reviews. Our service promotes to readers that like to review via a mailer. This is a promotion, not a review-writing service, and is completely fine to use. Another service that is fine to use is BookBub.
- If Amazon writes to you, reply. Any issue with your account must be dealt with immediately. If you don’t reply, Amazon will take action on anything their bots sees as strange, and it could be a very simple fix.
- Aim for Verified Reviews only. Verified Reviews are easier for Amazon to view as legitimate, as they will prove a sale from a real customer.
- Link or delete all editions of your books. That way Amazon knows you are a legitimate author not trying to game the system.
- Don’t ask other authors or family/friends to write you a review for a free copy of the book. Anything Amazon can see as an “incentivized” review will get you banned.
3. Buying Editorial Reviews is encouraged by Amazon and will not get you banned.
An Editorial Review, which is what we provide here, is a professional review that you can quote on your Editorial Review section on your Amazon Book Page, NOT to be confused with Customer Reviews, that readers write in the Customer Reviews section. As well as our service, you can buy a respected Editorial Review from BlueInk, Kirkus, Clarion, and IndieReader. You can find the section to place your review provided by Amazon at Author Central.
I read a really dumb comment on KBoards where someone said, “Editorial Reviews don’t exist.” Well, there’s nothing further from the truth. Editorial Reviews are very important to book promotion for kudos, and all authors need at least one on their Amazon Book Page as good practice, to ensure they have filled out all sections possible and get seen as a well-constructed page for Amazon’s search algorithm. See my article on editorial reviews with resources here.
4. Most authors who are banned often did not take heed, repeatedly.
Authors who constantly ignore Amazon warnings, buy review-writing services from Fiverr, for example, in bulk, and have done this for multiple books with many “fake reviews” are the authors getting permanently banned. These people tend to be selling ghost-written books, claim more than a normal amount of titles (as many as 150!) with high sales and Unverified Reviews. This is not you. Amazon is a very forgiving service. If they write to you telling you they have deleted your account, it’s because you didn’t answer them the first, or maybe even second, time. Be a responsible seller and ensure you do everything in your power to follow the guidelines given.
If you do get banned, it’s not irreversible. Simply contact Amazon to discuss what happened. They are interested in keeping sellers, so they will help. Here’s a list of all of the rules and contacts.
5. Most “fake” reviews will be removed from your book page automatically.
Amazon usually knows when customer accounts are faked. To leave a review these days, you need to have spent a minimum amount of money and have a history of purchases. Fake reviews are usually poorly written and generic, cut and pasted many times for various similar products by the same user. “Wow, what a great book, five stars…” or “I liked it, it was good” are examples of fake reviews. These reviews will be Unverified, i.e. no purchase of the book was made. To avoid these sorts of review:
- Don’t buy reviews, buy promotion services that offer purchases and reviews as a result of the promotion.
- Avoid services that seem too good to be true, i.e. $30 for 30 reviews in three days.
- Avoid anywhere where have to provide a copy of your book to get the reviews (if you want an Editorial Review, however, you will need to provide an ARC or free book).
- If you see a weird review, ask Amazon to remove it. Better the review gets removed than your account.
- Only use reliable promotion services with testimonials and a reputation. You can see ours here. We’ve been running this service for four years to hundreds of happy clients.
6. The few authors (and it really is a few) who have been banned mostly got reinstated.
It seems that for a while now, KENPs being checked over by bots come up with false positives for heavy-hitters. We’re talking those who earn six figures on their books. This is because of the 2016 book-stuffing scams (getting bots to read books for heightened page read counts and therefore getting large payouts) that resulted in a lot of fake authors getting thrown out. Amazon is now picking up flags based on:
- Copyright infringement – If your book is called something similar to another product or brand, or looks like it, it may be flagged for deletion if you have high KENPs.
- Unusual behavior – If your book goes from zero to loads of reads in a few hours, this flags you as a potential ‘book-stuffer.’ Amazon is tetchy about this, because that’s a shared fund for all authors getting page reads, so anyone getting more than they should is a really big flag. Avoid being flagged by running your (genuine) promotions over a few days to avoid spikes.
- Having ridiculously high numbers of fiction books – Everyone knows that realistically, it takes at least a year to write a fiction book. Therefore, authors who are in their thirties with forty fiction titles? While it’s not illegal to use ghost writers, it’s not ethical, and Amazon sees it as a manipulation to make money.
- Lots of Unverified Reviews. Unfortunately, high-read-volume authors probably get a lot of these from their off-Amazon giveaways. This looks suspicious to Amazon.
- Kindle Unlimited terms say that you cannot sell your book anywhere else. If you are, you need to stop while you are in KU. Not even on your author site. You must re-direct readers to Amazon only.
Case Studies
Authors like JA Cipriano who say they don’t know why they are banned have many of these factors in their books. His book “The Hammer” looks like a copyright infringement on the Games Workshop brand, and he currently has thirty books for sale, despite being a young man, which Amazon has probably frowned on as an impossibility. Still, would have been big of them to let him know in detail why, instead of me having to investigate. He won’t be allowed back on Amazon.
Indie Author Derek Murphy, who has an impressive nine YA titles, was banned a while back, for having a duplicate Amazon account and not replying to Amazon’s emails about it, two cardinal Amazon sins I mention above. He talks about how he got reinstated by speaking with Amazon, as he hadn’t seen the emails, and hadn’t realized you can’t have two accounts. He’s back on Amazon now.
As always, avoid gossip and panic.
Amazon is not “lying” or “ripping you off.” You’re getting a free and easy-to-use platform to sell your books, and Amazon, as a private company not a charity, didn’t ever have to do that. Out of the millions upon millions of titles on their site, they have messed up a few times, and have already reinstated those affected. There’s a lot of it going around what with Brexit, Kavanaugh, Weinstein… It’s not something you need in indie publishing as well.
Always seek professional advice, and never trust an indie author forum (the chalices of poison as we book marketers like to call them), because they’re just all kicking around in the dark like you. Lately, I’ve seen such lies and ignorance being churned around and repeated so often it’s entered the realm of hysteria. As Red Adair, the great American firefighter once said, “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, just wait until you hire an amateur.”
If in doubt, break out an email to us, or any other true industry professional and get some answers. Other trusted names include Penny C. Sansevieri, Joel Friedlander, and Dave Chesson.
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