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Amazon is intermittently admitting to errors in it's KU page reporting.

401K views 3K replies 323 participants last post by  Jan Hurst-Nicholson 
#1 ·
TL;DR - If you have books enrolled in KDP Select and you think your reported page reads have been unusually low recently, you should send an email to ecr-support@amazon.com, kdp-support@amazon.com, and jeff@amazon.com. Provide them with data and if your numbers don't look right, be firm. You might get results that are worth your time. Others have.

For the past few weeks dozens of authors have been reporting that their page read counts on new releases have been...off. Not off by ten percent, but by 50-95%. These are for consistent releases with expected patterns of performance (as expected as you can be in this industry). I don't want this discussion to get bogged down in conjecture about bad books, bad promos, etc. Sales numbers and sales ranks are as expected, but page reads are drastically lower.

As authors have started to come together in their genre-focused forums and support groups, they started to compare their data and take action. Emails began to fly, initially meeting with a stalwart wall of "We looked into your pages read and can confirm that they are accurate." Most of us took that and gave up. But one didn't. They insisted on getting someone on the phone and elevating their issue up the chain.

After thirty minutes on the phone, insisting something wasn't right, something kind of miraculous happened: On Friday Sept 30, Amazon admitted that there's a problem on their end and that they have to get their legal team involved. Since then, a handful of authors have gotten emails stating that a "small number of pages" were erroneously left out of their reports and were now being credited. One author saw their September page total go up by a little over 1,000 KENP and another saw it go up by over 30,000 KENP.

But so far, those small handful of responses are the only thing we've gotten. Interestingly enough, the author who first broke through the Amazon shieldwall and got the admission that there was something wrong hasn't received an email about additional page credit yet. In fact, concurrent with these developments this weekend, Amazon was still emailing authors with massively suppressed page reads that everything was fine.

Just to make a few points clear: the pool of authors who have noticed things aren't right includes those with fewer than five books under their belt and NYT bestselling authors with over 100 books who regularly break into the top 100 or top 50. This issue does not seem to be system-wide: it's only affecting new releases (perhaps since July, but mostly those published in September). These are books which are selling well, ranking well, but the reported pages are vastly lower.

I had a promo push on September 23. The book sold 80 copies and had 100 pages read. The prior books in the series had about the same sales but 20 times the page reads on their promo day.
I had a promo push on September 30. The book sold 118 copies and had 300 pages read. This should have been 10-15 times higher based on prior series releases.

If you recently published and your page reads look off, you should reach out to Amazon and let them know. The worst case scenario (unless you're me) is that they tell you that everything is fine and you're right back where you started. We're in a weekend, and it's not clear what will happen next week. But Amazon reaching out to individual authors seems to indicate that only the squeaky wheels are getting grease.
 
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#77 ·
I do a lot of promos, so it's hard to say definitively. Overall, my pages look about 10-20% lower than what they should be given the rank and sales. That's not enough to tell me there is a reporting issue. On the book I updated in September specifically, the pages look about 20-30% too lower for the ranking/sales (compared to previous months). That's within the margin of error to where it could be me/something other than a page reporting issue, but it's more of a clear difference than the overall pages.
 
#78 ·
I have more reads reported on the month to date sales report than I do on the graph today, which is confusing, but at least the numbers are going up! Like some others in this thread, I just came off a cross-promo and was waiting to see what would happen.
 
#79 ·
I write Urban Fantasy (for those who were looking at genre).

My pages read went from a steady 1500 - 2500 a day, to 20 on September 12th. I ran a promo on September 16th and got 45 sales then, 12 sales day 2. There was a total of 150 pages read over that weekend, and they went back down to 0 for the following week. They started to rise up to 100 ish a day on September 26th, and are beginning to return to above 1000 a day now. I emailed them about the problem August 18th and received no reply, but now I'm concerned about their reporting and potential income lost over those missing days.
 
#80 ·
I just published a new novella Friday night. It got up to the 13,000 rank and has had 27 sales, but only 170 pages read in total! The book is 135 KENCP, and my sister checked out the book and read it on day one (and synced her device) so that accounts for 135 pages read right there.

In the meantime, I have SHORT STORIES published over a year ago with 0 sales with a rank in the 100,000s that are getting 160 pages and 35 page reads. Short stories selling 0 to 1 copies published over a year ago, are beating my new release in page reads for the day.

I know I'm small time, but sheesh.
 
#81 ·
I thought I wasn't affected, because my figures are normal overall, but I've just looked at my pen name and seen that pages read on one book (released in June) dropped from a steadyish 500-1500 per day to nearly zero for about a week around 5 September. They seem to be back to normal now, though.
 
#84 ·
Rinelle Grey said:
It occurs to me that perhaps Amazon is trying to change something to deal with the the 'skip to the end counts as a full read' issue that the spammers have been playing on, but is messing up and missing genuine reads?
This is my guess, too. There was a lot of talk at one time about how easy it would be to bury markers in the book and use those as a guide to exact amounts read, rather than the last page read number. But if the placement of markers or the reading of them is out of kilter, you could see these effects.
 
#85 ·
Even if they're just trying to set a time started/time finished, it could easily be too slow for a prolific reader.

I still can't tell if my pages are down or not. I'm inclined to say they are, since I'm seeing no page reads bump for my new release, but it's so hard to say for sure!
 
#86 ·
Rinelle Grey said:
Even if they're just trying to set a time started/time finished, it could easily be too slow for a prolific reader.
Good point. I hadn't thought of that. There was some talk that a lot of romance writers are affected, and they do tend to be very prolific and fast readers.

I still can't tell if my pages are down or not. I'm inclined to say they are, since I'm seeing no page reads bump for my new release, but it's so hard to say for sure!
I'm in the same postion. The pages read for the new fantasy are nowhere near what I'd expect, compared with the last 3 releases, but this could just be a duff book, who know?
 
#87 ·
A friend had a heavy promo push this last week and gave me these numbers. This book of hers is approximately a year old so whatever is going on it's definitely hitting older books as well as those released recently.

Her book has 460 KENPC. Promo results:

54 sales and 1,834 pages read
840 sales and 6,421 pages read (book reached rank of 88 paid at .com store)
124 sales and 9,035 pages read (reached ranks between 150 and 250)

She said in August this same book was averaging 5,000 to 6,000 page reads per day on an average of only 7 sales per day.

Page reads are clearly broken. I'm not sure how authors remain in KU if this isn't fixed immediately.
 
#89 ·
Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.
 
#90 ·
Yup, 'Zon is kinda FUBAR'd right now. Noticed it in early September & wasn't sure at the time, but then ran a FFP Promo & knew for sure (Thanks to Phoenix!). Been watching and things are still wonky.  I might be an outlier thought, since I just pulled four books from wide & put them in KU, and I also have several pre-orders & a new release in KU.
The past three days have looked suddenly better, but I'm holding my breath right now and hoping I did not make a mistake putting 4 of my breadwinner books in KU.

Of course, falling smack on my face is usually how I learn my lessons, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is some major change going on with KU calculations for page reads.  :-[ :'(
 
#91 ·
It's very important that if you notice a problem with your page reads that you reach out to Amazon to let them know. Please don't wait for others. It's possible that each situation needs it's own investigation and that there will be no blanket solution.

Not every author who has emailed in has gotten satisfaction, but no author who has remained silent has gotten satisfaction.

-Bec
 
#92 ·
My biggest problem is how do I know for sure that I'm having an issue? I'm still seeing some page reads. Not as much as my last release, but it was the last in a serial, this is the first in a related one. And it's been 6 months since then. I just really can't tell for sure. It's very frustrating!
 
#93 ·
Rinelle Grey said:
It occurs to me that perhaps Amazon is trying to change something to deal with the the 'skip to the end counts as a full read' issue that the spammers have been playing on, but is messing up and missing genuine reads?
This affects me as a reader. Sometimes I get ansty when reading a mystery and I skip to the end. I usually read the last two chapters. If it's interesting, I'll go back and read the chapters I skipped over. Sometimes, and this holds for any genre, I'll get bored with the book but still want to know the ending so I'll skip and read the last two chapters. I'm definitely not doing this to create artificial page reads. Just my reading habit.
 
#94 ·
Rinelle Grey said:
My biggest problem is how do I know for sure that I'm having an issue? I'm still seeing some page reads. Not as much as my last release, but it was the last in a serial, this is the first in a related one. And it's been 6 months since then. I just really can't tell for sure. It's very frustrating!
None of us know for sure. We don't have borrow information, and that's on purpose. All we can do is look at patterns and be confident in our books and concerned about our future as KDP Select Authors.

I just got the "everything is fine with your reports" response, ten days after sending my email. I immediately replied, thanking the person for their hard work but insisting that this be elevated to a higher tier of support. I explained that I had borrowed my own book and flipped through it, but those pages never appeared in my report. I made mention that hundreds of authors are now comparing data and we're all seeing the same thing, and that we are aware that there is something wrong enough with their reporting that their legal department has to get involved.

I ended it by providing more data and making it clear that I've built my writing business around KDP Select, I'm a KDP All Star and I require the same diligence as any other author.
 
#95 ·
ebbrown said:
Yup, 'Zon is kinda FUBAR'd right now. Noticed it in early September & wasn't sure at the time, but then ran a FFP Promo & knew for sure (Thanks to Phoenix!). Been watching and things are still wonky. I might be an outlier thought, since I just pulled four books from wide & put them in KU, and I also have several pre-orders & a new release in KU.
The past three days have looked suddenly better, but I'm holding my breath right now and hoping I did not make a mistake putting 4 of my breadwinner books in KU.

Of course, falling smack on my face is usually how I learn my lessons, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is some major change going on with KU calculations for page reads. :-[ :'(
This is me. Naturally, I recently put my 2 romance series into KU (that pen name has always been wide) and have been shocked by the lack of page reads, even after promo. My income in Sept is...scary. Keep an eye on BB ads everyone--now that I have access to them, the whole system is sure to fall apart!
 
#96 ·
My rankings on both my kindle titles have plummeted to levels I haven't seen in years. Still no response from Kdp and my book is still in the review process! It's like it's stuck in review mode. Something is going on over there.

Am I the only one whose rankings have fallen way down? From the 800's to 3800 today!!! I was 2800 yesterday. When will it stop?  ???

It seems those being affected are either  new releases or have made changes to their titles recently. Anyone not in these two categories having issues?
 
#97 ·
Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.
 
#98 ·
KaraKing said:
It seems those being affected are either new releases or have made changes to their titles recently. Anyone not in these two categories having issues?
If you mean that the author as a whole is tanking after a new release and/or making changes, then that's me, too. But if you mean just the new release titles or updated titles are crashing, then no. Every title I have is nosediving, new or old, untouched or updated. Nosediving HARD. I've gone from a very solid $20k a month income for over a year to $5k in the throwing of an Amazon switch. I'm now at a very steady average that is exactly 1/4 of my normal.
 
#99 ·
I mean ... is there any legal action that can be taken?

I'm a very small fish in this pond, but dropping from an average of 1k pagereads per day for 6 weeks with NO PROMOS down to zero, is strange to say the least.

Everyone who was reading the book finished it on the same day? And nobody else has picked it up despite sales?

Seems bigger authors here have much more legit statistics to show them. I don't like the fact that we have no way of knowing how accurate (nor not) Amazon's reporting is.
 
#100 ·
Amazon has been having alot of problems lately, from also boughts and also views being interswitched, to series pages being messed up, and now to pages read, I just released a new book and I've never been sticky before but i've gotten an average of 500 pages read a day since tuesday, but it's a new release so i'm not sure if that's bad or good yet.
 
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