- In the last year,
scammers have been working really hard to take authors money
in rather creative ways using the Amazon platform.
If you want to know what to watch out for
and get a little tool to help monitor your books,
then this video is for you.
(upbeat music)
Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad of Book Launchers,
a professional, full-service self-publishing team.
At Book Launchers,
we set our authors up so they are fully independent of us
when the process is over.
We don't keep any royalties, nor do we have any control,
but we do provide support
for some of the crazy things that happen
when you publish books on Amazon.
In the last year or so, scams have gotten really big
and I didn't even realize the extent
until Dave Chesson gave a presentation at 20Booksto50k
here in Las Vegas in November, 2022.
He gave me his permission to share what he shared
because in his words,
"We need to get the word out so authors know what to do."
While we haven't had to deal with everything
I'm about to reveal,
we have seen some really weird things happen,
and as frustrating as it can be,
Amazon is rarely quick to resolve the issues.
So you need to be on top of your issues and your books
and know the way to resolve things,
not just going to Amazon saying,
"Hey, there's a problem, fix it"
because sometimes, they won't.
(playful music)
So, scam number one.
Scammers identify a book is selling well.
More than likely, it's an independent author,
not one with a major publisher behind them
and the scammer buys the book
and runs it through OCR scanning technology.
Oh, hang on.
Let's have a quick definition
in case you're not familiar.
Optical character recognition, OCR
is the process that converts an image of text
into machine-readable text format.
It's kinda like photocopying the book,
but it converts it into an editable text
that can be read on Word or other software like that.
We've used it to get a digital version of a book
that was handwritten.
What we did was we sent that handwritten book
to an OCR scanner
and they sent back a Word document of text.
Anyway, the scammers use OCR to copy the book
and then they run it back through a printing press
and make the cheapest copy of your book possible.
Then, they open an Amazon FBA account
to sell cheap replicas.
Oh, another definition for you.
FBA is fulfilled by Amazon,
which is the kind of account you need
if you offset print thousands of your books
that you then want to sell direct on Amazon,
not through Ingram or KDP print.
Then they sell it a little cheaper than yours
so they get the Buy Box
and it's their book being sold, not yours.
Now, at first, you might think the big issue with this
is that you're not getting paid royalties
when your book sells.
And yeah, that absolutely sucks.
But the bigger issue is that these crappy copies
now get into the hands of a reader
who doesn't know that they bought a knock-off
and now they're angry that your book is so badly made.
They start posting reviews about the terrible quality.
So suddenly, your five-star reviews
are dropping to a four-star average
or even a three stars on average.
That sucks.
(chuckles)
So, how do you know this is even happening
and what can you do?
Well, first, this is really only going to be an issue
if you have steady print sales every month.
If you're selling 100 print books every month,
then it's possible you could be a target
for something like this.
More likely though, they're gonna go after the books
that are selling even more than that.
Now, there are a few flags
that this could be happening to you, your ABSR.
Okay, one more definition,
Amazon bestseller rank.
You know that sales rank
that's relative to other books selling on Amazon?
If that's high or steady, yet you're not getting royalties,
that could be a sign.
Bad reviews flagging print book quality issues
is a huge sign.
If you see either of these things,
immediately buy your book and make sure it's okay.
Acting swiftly is important because get this,
Amazon won't stop the scammers
because their view is that anyone can resell books
on their platform.
Of course, these aren't being sold as used,
they're being sold as new, but Amazon doesn't seem to care
or at least to date, people who've had this issue
have run into Amazon's, "Eh, we're not gonna do anything."
Okay, even worse
is that they won't remove the negative reviews that occur,
even when it's obvious the review
is solely because of this crappy knock-off.
So what is the solution?
Well, first, notify Amazon as soon as you identify the issue
and immediately make a copyright infringement claim
against the seller.
In Dave Chesson's talk at 20Booksto50k,
he said this has repeatedly happened to the author
of this book.
Now you can see why Ryan Cleckner is a target.
His book is from seven years ago
and he's still got a great bestseller rank.
It sells really, really well
and he's clearly getting a ton of great reviews,
but if you look at his reviews,
you still see evidence of the scammer's work
like on this one.
That sucks.
All right, scam number two.
When your book is in pre-sale
and a version is for sale, used.
Huh?
(chuckles)
And this is the case of a scammer testing your book out
to see what the sales volume will be.
I assume if they get a lot of volume,
they will quickly copy your book and sell it.
Now, if you see this happening,
a book for sale in prelaunch, used,
immediately flag it to Amazon.
And if you're loving learning about this,
I do hope you've subscribed to the channel
and turned those notifications on
so I can make sure you're always on top of your book issues.
Now, it's also worth commenting,
not only because I always comment back,
but also because we have a lot of no boring books swag
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So thank you to all of you for your comments,
likes, and shares.
Now, the one scam that I had no clue was happening
until Dave's presentation is this one.
Scam number three.
The book gap replacement.
Essentially, if you don't have a soft cover,
a hard cover or Kindle, and an audiobook,
you could be a target for this.
Scammers look for books that don't have all the formats.
In particular, if you don't have an ebook,
this is an easy gap for a scammer to fill.
Somehow, the scammer is able to tie the fake book
to your account.
It has the same title,
but the author name will have a slight misspelling,
like an extra R or an initial.
The cover is likely to be the same,
but the contents are not.
It won't be on your author page.
So you will only spot this
if you're clicking around the formats on your Amazon page.
I don't actually understand how the scammer
gets it connected to your book in the first place,
but somehow they're able to do that
and fill this missing gap.
In my view, this can be prevented
by publishing all the formats.
But, if you don't do that for some reason,
you have to be vigilant about monitoring your book
and clicking around to all the formats
to see if anything looks weird.
Look for a format coming up that you don't have
or any other oddities with your author name.
So regularly search your title in Amazon and on Google
to see if anything strange is coming up.
And to help you monitor your Amazon account,
all authors should download ReaderScout.
This is a Google Chrome extension
that Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneur,
Publisher Rocket, and Atticus created
to help authors monitor their accounts.
So here's a quick overview of what ReaderScout is
and how you can download it.
So when you follow the instructions
over at readerscout.com,
you see that you just need to download the extension,
pin it, and head over to Amazon to find your books.
When you find your book,
you'll see the extension turns orange in your toolbar,
which means you can now click on it and add to watch list.
Wait for it.
Wait for it, okay.
Wait a couple more seconds.
Voila.
Okay.
Now, when I added Self-Publish and Succeed,
I started with the Kindle version
and nothing seemed to happen.
There was a lotta waiting and not much else.
So I clicked to the print version,
waited, waited, waited,
and voila again.
Now, when there is a price change
or some other change with my book,
this is going to notify me,
which means I don't have to obsessively check every day.
Cool beans, right?
I hope after the video,
you're heading over to get your ReaderScout extension.
Now, let's chat
about what scams you've seen in the comments below.
And after you comment,
well you just might want to watch
the latest and greatest video from the channel,
which is right here.
Or, may I suggest this beauty
on how to sell more books on Amazon
because maybe you're not selling hundreds of books on Amazon
and you wanna be?
Both are pretty fabulous
and watching them means we get to spend more time together.
So click on over and I'll see you there.