As of a couple of hours ago, Amazon took me out of the KU program. It's gonna suck, I suspect I'll lose about half my fans and readers, but I can't afford to be shut down because I got targeted.
Now I have to update my webpage and I guess I should open up accounts with other ebook sellers as well. Not that I expect to make much money there. But I guess we will see.
lots of your books are still in KU, just FYI
ReplyDeleteYeah, Kindle Unlimited is banning anybody who's manuscripts fall out of line.
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it they're banning
--Anybody who has links anywhere in their books because it screws with their algorithm.
--Anybody who's formatting makes the book go lower than 250 words per page (Or possibly a similar amount in characters per page.)
--Anybody with weird spacing in their book
--Anybody who is making a significant amount on Kindle Unlimited.
So basically, Amazon built an AI ban bot again and it's going through everybody. Anybody who's an outlier is getting cut. So you can probably stay in Kindle Unlimited. You're just going to have to remove anything that isn't plain text from your novel and format it *exactly* as Amazon's guidebook recommends, even it it hurts legibility.
It sucks, but we have to satisfy the Robot Overlords that Amazon has built for us.
I have to wonder if they want to also get rid of prolific readers? I read a LOT as I've gotten older, and generally it's series on KU, to save money. This is a real mess.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't want prolific authors or prolific readers on KU, then why would anyone want KU? Reading books that were popular five years ago is not my thing.
I heard about this in an e-mail blast from Michael-Scott Earle to his mailing list on 7/17/18. He asked his followers to complain to Jeff Bezos, which at least some did.
ReplyDeleteOther authors whose books were not available at that tome were J.A Cipriano, Terrance Thorndyke, Scarlett Dawn and J.J Hendricks, to name a few. I'm sure there were many more, but I just took a quick sample.
Cipriano, Dawn & Hendricks are back, including their KU books.
Earle is not been re-instated. He did say that officially told that he "violated terms of service", but had not been told the actual violation.
This Sucks!
ReplyDeleteWas pointed here for why some authors were disappearing.
If it does go on I'm going to have to leave KU as well.
JA Cipriano doesn't seem to be on Kindle at all (I'm in the UK) except for one book where he is a not the main author.
JAC and MSE were totally banned from Amazon because (supposedly, no one knows for sure) of 'irregularities' that Amazon claims to have seen. I don't know JAC, I know MSE in passing and have read a lot of his stuff (even before he got 'famous') and I have never seen MSE break any rules.
DeleteSo until I think it's safe to go back into KU, I'm going to stay away from it, as much as it pains me to do so.