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Hot New Scam

3K views 25 replies 16 participants last post by  C.F. 
#1 ·
It would appear that someone has discovered a bug in Amazon's release tracking algorithm. People are releasing a book, then unpublishing it, then releasing it again. It stays on the HNR list that way. I saw one book that was published in 2012 that is suddenly a HNR with a June 2018 pub date. Bonus points are the reviews are intact.

How much effort do people put into discovering and testing these things?  :-X :-X
 
#2 ·
It's true - some people just don't have a conscience. They don't get that they're not cheating Amazon, they're cheating all of us. I feel sorry for them. In the end, cheaters never win.
 
#5 ·
brkingsolver said:
It would appear that someone has discovered a bug in Amazon's release tracking algorithm. People are releasing a book, then unpublishing it, then releasing it again. It stays on the HNR list that way. I saw one book that was published in 2012 that is suddenly a HNR with a June 2018 pub date. Bonus points are the reviews are intact.

How much effort do people put into discovering and testing these things? :-X :-X
Unless it is something that customers are likely to complain about, it appears that beta testing is fairly minimal. But that isn't unusual in most companies since the back end code doesn't make them money and they don't want to waste time/money/developer resources on it.
 
#6 ·
Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing that -- I've recently been unpubbing my back catalogue and repubbing, usually with edits, and with a new title, new blurb and sometimes a new pen name. Publishers do that all the time. If a product is unsuccessful at first, you market it differently in hopes of a different result.
 
#7 ·
I don't think this is a scam?
What rule states that we have to let our books die?
If we can spruce them up and republish to give them new life, then we should! Why is that a scam?
I think amazon connects the new one to the old one because it's basically like a "new edition".
I don't think it's in any way consistent, but if their algorithm catches it, then good! Why shouldn't it?
 
#8 ·
RPatton said:
Who says they are intentionally scamming?

I have unpublished a book and then republished. Not because I wanted the HNR to hit, but because I was planning on actually unpublishing, but because of some readers' response, I put it back up.

Not everything has ulterior motives and claiming everyone who does X is scamming is just a bad business practice.
Shall we say when a book is repeatedly repubbed every 30 days, it looks a little suspicious. Draw your own conclusions.
 
#9 ·
sandysocks said:
I don't think this is a scam?
What rule states that we have to let our books die?
If we can spruce them up and republish to give them new life, then we should! Why is that a scam?
I think amazon connects the new one to the old one because it's basically like a "new edition".
I don't think it's in any way consistent, but if their algorithm catches it, then good! Why shouldn't it?
I guess because it's not really a new book, and it's taking eyeballs away from people who are actually releasing new books instead of rehashing old ones? I don't see a problem with it if you take an old book from three years ago, rewrite a few chapters, fix some edits and release it again *once*, but if someone is constantly just rereleasing the same book over and over to get it on the new release list multiple times, then yeah, that's a problem.
 
#11 ·
DebH said:
This isn't new. It's been going on for years. The publication date on KDP isn't locked.
The pub date used to be a metadata field that authors/publishers had control over on the dashboard. There was a rash of abuse, with authors resetting the pub date every 30 days with the intent to game the system by camping out on the new release list. Amazon kindly removed the option to make changes to the pub date for all KDP authors/publishers.

Pretty sure they wouldn't have bothered if they didn't like the practice.

Here's what they say about republishing an ebook:

eBook
You cannot change the Digital Rights Management (DRM) setting you chose when you set up your eBook. You also cannot change the publication date after you publish your eBook. The Kindle Store will automatically enter the date you first published your book through KDP. If you make significant changes to your book content and want the publication date to reflect the date of the new version, you can resubmit your revised content as a new book. Updates to both your book title and author name are also considered significant changes. If you would like to republish your book by changing both the author name and the title name, it will need to be submitted as a new book and go through our standard review process.
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200736410
Some authors have been able to have their reviews carried over to a new, revised version of the ebook (with the same title and author name), but some authors have also lost those reviews shortly afterward.

Repubbing often just to hit the new release list frequently? I know that authors who were adjusting the date when that was allowed were flagged by Amazon and told to cut it out or else. A single reboot that involves significant changes to content and/or title PLUS author name isn't an issue. Multiple reboots? Amazon has already said 'no' to that.
 
#12 ·
Content removed due to TOS Change of 2018. I do not agree to the terms.
 
#15 ·
PhoenixS said:
The pub date used to be a metadata field that authors/publishers had control over on the dashboard. There was a rash of abuse, with authors resetting the pub date every 30 days with the intent to game the system by camping out on the new release list. Amazon kindly removed the option to make changes to the pub date for all KDP authors/publishers.

Pretty sure they wouldn't have bothered if they didn't like the practice.
I didn't notice the change. That's good though.
 
#16 ·
The thing is, just updating a few things doesn't require unpublishing and then republishing. And especially not doing it over and over again, conveniently in time to hit that new release list. This sort of thing is why Amazon keeps changing things that end up hurting honest authors, while the scammers and cheats get away with so much.
 
#17 ·
This has been going on for years. I know of at least one author whose books have been unpublished and republished with the same title and cover more than 30 times. It's not only the HNR list where they get a benefit, but they also re-enroll in Select and get their 5 free days all over again. If ever you want to check, Goodreads keeps every single version for ever.
 
G
#18 ·
sandysocks said:
I don't think this is a scam?
What rule states that we have to let our books die?
If we can spruce them up and republish to give them new life, then we should! Why is that a scam?
I think amazon connects the new one to the old one because it's basically like a "new edition".
I don't think it's in any way consistent, but if their algorithm catches it, then good! Why shouldn't it?
She isn't talking about publishing a NEW edition, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do if you have, in fact, made major changes. She is talking about unpublishing the same book and making the same book (with the same AISN) available again and again and again.

If you have a PRINT book and unpublish it, the PRINT page remains on Amazon forever because third-party sellers may still have copies of the book. So when you publish a NEW edition (with a new ISBN) Amazon will link them together eventually (though you may need to prod them).

With EBOOKS if you unpublish, the page vanishes. If you publish a NEW edition, with a new AISN) the new page doesn't "match up" with the old page because the old page no longer exists. If, however, you simply make the unpublished book available again, it gets turned into a "new" book again.
 
#19 ·
Shelley K said:
You know, back in the day every time you made a change to your book the system updated the pub date. That was a glitch Amazon corrected pretty quickly, though.

A book from 2012 showing up on the HNR now isn't necessarily sketchy. If you're actually seeing the same books show up every 30 days, repeatedly, certainly looks like the authors are taking advantage of a loophole.
When a book stays on an HNR list for months, it leads me to wonder. The book from 2012 was removed when the author's account was terminated, but is now back with a new publisher. I don't know if it has been playing that trick or not.
 
#21 ·
Bards and Sages (Julie) said:
She isn't talking about publishing a NEW edition, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do if you have, in fact, made major changes. She is talking about unpublishing the same book and making the same book (with the same AISN) available again and again and again.

If you have a PRINT book and unpublish it, the PRINT page remains on Amazon forever because third-party sellers may still have copies of the book. So when you publish a NEW edition (with a new ISBN) Amazon will link them together eventually (though you may need to prod them).

With EBOOKS if you unpublish, the page vanishes. If you publish a NEW edition, with a new AISN) the new page doesn't "match up" with the old page because the old page no longer exists. If, however, you simply make the unpublished book available again, it gets turned into a "new" book again.
That's a doubleplus ungood bug in KDP. I've unpubbed/repubbed a few times (usually erotica titles at the request of Zon the Great and Powerful) and never noticed it. I knew about people resetting the publishing date back before Amazon locked it to stop the abuse, but I've never heard of this one before. I had assumed the OP was talking about republishing under a new ASIN.
 
#22 ·
Stewart Matthews said:
Republishing the same book has, unfortunately, been happening for years on Amazon. And, like Pauline said above, if you look at the book's entry in Goodreads, you'll see exactly how many times a particular book has been republished.
Just be mindful when reading Goodreads. One of my book lists being published 7 times, but it's never actually been unpublished. It has the Kindle edition, Nook, Paperback, and Smashwords versions listed, as well as the times I've changed publishers. Yet looking at it without clicking into it one could get the impression it's been gamed.

Click through and take a deeper look at titles to be safe.
 
G
#23 ·
KelliWolfe said:
That's a doubleplus ungood bug in KDP. I've unpubbed/repubbed a few times (usually erotica titles at the request of Zon the Great and Powerful) and never noticed it. I knew about people resetting the publishing date back before Amazon locked it to stop the abuse, but I've never heard of this one before. I had assumed the OP was talking about republishing under a new ASIN.
When you publish under a new asin, the reviews do not carry over (unless there is a print book associated with it.).
 
#24 ·
In the front of my books I have a short section labeled, "Other Books By Joe Nobody," that lists all of my other titles.
We go through and update this list on all books as new titles are released, or at least did for a long time.
There have been times when I've released 8 books in a 12 month period, which would make it seem that I was scamming the system. We had no such intent, nor did I ever notice any "pop" in sales or appearance on the HNL list. Maybe other authors do the same?
 
#25 ·
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#26 ·
PhoenixS said:
Simply updating the manuscript or making metadata changes doesn't reset the pub date or give a book a bonus time on the HNR list.

Shelley, I believe that only happened over a period of about 3 months in late 2013/early 2014, coincidental to the time when they were removing the pub date as an editable field on the dashboard.
Yep, that happened to me. I updated something with my book and it reset the pub date and put it on the HNR list. I actually got a one-star review from someone saying they loved the book but wanted to warn people that it wasn't the next book in the series and I was trying to trick people.
 
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