IMPORTANT INFO RE AMAZON SCAMS
For those of you who aren’t on Dave Chessom’s email list, I’m sharing the email I just received because I would hate for any of you to be scammed!
Hey Simona,
Book scams and pirating are happening at an alarming rate on Amazon - and it’s starting to become more public.
Scammers are doing things like:
Attaching ebooks to books that don’t have them in hopes of syphoning off sales
Printing copies of your book, and sending them in listed as Brand New, and pricing them cheaper so that when people purchase the book, Amazon fulfills with the scammer’s book, and the author doesn’t get paid.
Even David Goggins of the well-known book “Can’t Hurt Me” fell victim to this and is currently suing Amazon over it.
He found out that some printing press (located in another country) mass produced his book and had been selling it on HIS AMAZON PAGE.
~Amazon allows people to resell books, and if you mark it as brand new, it is sold when someone clicks the normal buy button and not the used section
Because of this, the scammer got all the sales, and David didn’t.
“Despite Amazon’s full knowledge of these bootleg book sales, Amazon continued to allow them on its websites and marketplaces,” the suit says. “Amazon did not care. It continued to make money from each bootleg item sold.”
Plus, the copies sold were poor quality, and customers were not happy.
What’s worse is that when they finally shut down the account (after a couple of payments to the scammers), Amazon still had money left over from previous sales and did NOT redirect it to David Goggins.
Instead, they just kept it - hence the lawsuit.
“But his is a famous book...that probably doesn’t happen to less known books, right?”
Wrong...
It happens more than you know, especially to books that either:
Have consistent sales over a period of time
Surge in sales and show popularity right out the gate
(My friend who published the Book of Enoch - something I talked about a couple of months ago - had this happen)
The famous books are usually left alone because they have too much visibility, which means a higher chance of getting caught and if it’s through a publisher, publishing companies are a lot more vigilant on things like this.
So, how do we defend against this?
Well, the first thing is to learn more about this type of operation so you can pick up on it faster, and know how to fight it sooner.
With this, I’ve updated my Amazon’s Scam article: https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-printing-scams/
But there is something even better...
As you’ll read, the most important thing you can do is to monitor all of your books’ prices, reviews and changes in Amazon BestSeller Rank (ABSR).
When the price changes and you didn’t do it...take caution
When reviews start dropping poorly with claims of quality issues....take caution
When your ABSR is great, but your sales/royalties are not....take caution
But who has time to check those things every day?
Well, because of this, I have created a free chrome plugin tool that will monitor your books for any signs that someone is scamming or pirating your work on Amazon.
You can download that here: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/writer-watch/ankgmhneialghlebgnocmjjemngllcgd/reviews?hl=en-US
WriterWatch (used to be called ReaderScout), has just been redesigned, and improved and again, is totally free.
Using it, it automatically does daily checks on the status of your books, and when something is up, it will notify you and assist you is checking the problem:
Just a quick something to help "watch" your book, and give backup.
So, why do this? Why make it free?
I've had 3 author friends get scammed this way (one of which has been hit over 4 times now on the same book).
It sucks. I personally hate it. And the worse part is, the scammers got away with months’ worth of their royalties.
If authors picked up on the scams faster, and thus took action sooner, it can make this whole endeavor of theirs not profitable.
Take away their profitability, and scammers will move on.
So, in a way, it's more of a mission and hopefully we can make Amazon a better place.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy and if you have been using WriterWatch - please leave a review.
Cheers,
Dave Chesson
Founder of Ebookpreneur LLC
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