[My Dog's Servant]

Oh! Okay. So we're calling people who are writing books but are doing sketchy things with their titles scammers. They're otherwise still writing books that are being read, regardless of how choked their titles are with keywords, scammers.

scammers. Got it.

It's clear that I'm not seeing this distinction between titles that y'all are nitpicking over.

Yes, they're scammers. They're NOT writing books. Go look at some of them. Seriously. They're not an honest book written by an honest writer who is desperate to get attention. It's someone who wants to grab money and offer nothing legitimate in return. Don't mock us. Go look for yourself. Use the search I did, "Western historical romance," and tell me that all those books are legit. Some are. I'm not saying they're not. But a LOT are not. Even if you've never touched a romance in your life, you can tell they're not legit.

 

[Shelley K]

"ROMANCE: [TITLE] (Victorian Futuristic Police Procedural Regency Western Post-Apocalyptic)(Knocked up by the Bad Boy's Ghost at the Motorcycle Club) (Episode 1 of 600)"

Oh, those are annoying, the ones that state the genre in front. ROMANCE: would be a lot easier to crack down on than the keywords that come after the title, so I suspect that'll be their first crackdown, if they care at all.

Still, scammer's a strong word I wouldn't use for them, unless the book's stolen, they have a link in the front to click to the back, etc. They're just using the tools at their disposal, whether I agree with their use or not. If they're actual scammers, the book's still not going to sell no matter how much it comes up in a search.

 

[My Dog's Servant]

I do have to ask, though, would be titling a book Hill To Die On: A Bad Boy SciFi Military Romance be a bad thing, right? Because it's 'gaming' the system by putting bad boy, scifi, military, romance keywords in the title? Is that what has everyone so up in arms?

It's not a great title, but that's not what we're talking about. And if you have a real BOOK behind that title--you know, a story with characters and a plot and writing and all that fancy stuff, even if it could stand improvement--then we're not talking about that, either. Like I said, go check it out, then come back and tell us if you'd like to have that sort of stuff wind up on the first twenty pages of a search in the category you DO write in. Especially if you're actually selling and they're not.

The sad thing is, I'm not writing in that particular category. I just wanted to find some new authors who were writing in it because I felt like reading a book of that type. But I was so overwhelmed by the garbage that I gave up. This harmed me as a reader, it harmed the writers who wrote books in that category, and it harmed Amazon because I didn't spend money that I'd fully intended to spend on new authors.

 

[Atunah]

Sorry, but scammer is exactly what those are. I will call them what they are. I have had it up to here with those scammers. Lets call stuff what it is.

 

[new_writer]

People do this all the time. I think Nick Stephenson or someone made it fashionable for non-romance writers to do it too. Now everyone's book titles has "A Investigator Series of Police Procedure Action Adventure Killer Book Bestseller Blah Blah Blah" in their title. Even though I write in the genre, I don't mind at all, mostly because I outsell all of them by a HUGE margin and I don't use this tactic. Never had to, never will even when I stop selling. It smells too much like desperation to me and given how poorly the books are doing, I don't know why they keep doing it because it really doesn't seem to work.

 

[Shelley K]

It's not a great title, but that's not what we're talking about. And if you have a real BOOK behind that title--you know, a story with characters and a plot and writing and all that fancy stuff, even if it could stand improvement--then we're not talking about that, either. Like I said, go check it out, then come back and tell us if you'd like to have that sort of stuff wind up on the first twenty pages of a search in the category you DO write in.

There are a lot of titles like that in the categories I write in.

Especially if you're actually selling and they're not.

That's the situation. I'm selling, they're mostly not. So I don't much worry about it. Why would that make me worry more? My time is much better spent focused on my business than theirs.

 

[sela]

Oh! Okay. So we're calling people who are writing books but are doing sketchy things with their titles scammers. They're otherwise still writing books that are being read, regardless of how choked their titles are with keywords, scammers.

scammers. Got it.

It's clear that I'm not seeing this distinction between titles that y'all are nitpicking over.

I don't usually care about these scams. Frankly, I understand there will always be sociopaths who scam every system they find to make money illegally or unethically.

That's the human species for you. Always a few who F it up for the rest of us.

So, usually, I would just shrug and walk on by. However, the keyword stuffing alone means that the stuffed book goes to the front of the search list but clearly, people are not buying the book, if you consider the rank. Meanwhile, books that are actually bestsellers are not showing up at the top of the list -- books with legitimate titles.

Second, this keyword stuffing is often coupled with things like stuffing extra books in with the book in question, which in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, I mean it's free right? But they are books by other authors /pen names and are not actually requested by the reader nor does the reader KNOW they are getting all these dozens and dozens of books -- one scammer included 71 extra books in with the titled book.

On top of that, there are in a few of the scammer books I've seen Spanish and Norwegian / Icelandic translations of the unexpected stuffed books -- clearly padding the page count.

Plus, there are links at the front that ask the reader to click them to get to some kind of special bonus, which takes the reader to the back of the book, thus triggering a massive page read in KU -- pages that are being paid for out of the KU pool, which were not and likely won't be read.

That may not seem like a scam to some, but it takes payout money from authors who actually have books with real titles and real content.

Amazon has created a system that is intended to sell products to customers -- products that customers are most likely going to want to buy. It has designed a system of algorithms and a search engine that -- usually -- does this very well and is responsible for many an indie author earning a living off their book sales.

KU has built in incentives for scammers and they have found all the cracks, as they always do. It has to be cleaned up. It's not fair or good business when scammers profit at the expense of authors.

 

[stoney]

It's not a great title, but that's not what we're talking about. And if you have a real BOOK behind that title--you know, a story with characters and a plot and writing and all that fancy stuff, even if it could stand improvement--then we're not talking about that, either. Like I said, go check it out, then come back and tell us if you'd like to have that sort of stuff wind up on the first twenty pages of a search in the category you DO write in. Especially if you're actually selling and they're not.

Thank you for that. Because, see, I guess I'm not seeing them because I don't search. Search has been broken long before this issue ever came up which is why I'm so flummoxed by the aggressively hostile reactions.

Instead I go to the 'top' lists and skim.

I gave up on trying to search but not because of this issue but because of how using keywords sometimes ends up with books in inappropriate categories which I'm not convinced is solely a writer trying to scam the readers (which has also been used on this forum and is the reason behind my looking askance at the shouts of scammer in this case).

The sad thing is, I'm not writing in that particular category. I just wanted to find some new authors who were writing in it because I felt like reading a book of that type. But I was so overwhelmed by the garbage that I gave up. This harmed me as a reader, it harmed the writers who wrote books in that category, and it harmed Amazon because I didn't spend money that I'd fully intended to spend on new authors.

I get that, I really do.

It's just that the broken Amazon system is nothing new so why people are acting like it is, and that this is the thing that is breaking Amazon's search, has me somewhat taken aback.

 

[lilywhite]

Still, scammer's a strong word I wouldn't use for them,

Yeah, I just call those ones "keyword stuffers." But when I open up the book and it's got the link to go straight to the back.... well. I start name-calling. It's true.

 

[Shelley K]

Yeah, I just call those ones "keyword stuffers." But when I open up the book and it's got the link to go straight to the back.... well. I start name-calling. It's true.

Agreed.

 

[stoney]

Yeah, I just call those ones "keyword stuffers." But when I open up the book and it's got the link to go straight to the back.... well. I start name-calling. It's true.

See, and now I'm starting to see a conflation of several issues here. It's not JUST the title keyword stuffers, it's the keyword stuffers WHO ALSO pack a boatload of books into one file, WHO ALSO put links that send you to the back first to get the page count, WHO ALSO....

But that's not how this whole conversation started and there were howls for blood long before the conversation devolved into this mixture of issues.

 

[sela]

Yeah, I just call those ones "keyword stuffers." But when I open up the book and it's got the link to go straight to the back.... well. I start name-calling. It's true.

Keyword stuffers may be completely innocent -- they may have read advice that suggested they keyword stuff to get added visibility. They may not know it's against the TOS to stuff keywords in their titles. I understand the desire to find a way to get visible. However, if their book is not good, the stuffing won't do much. Readers will take a look at the content and then pass on by. So, really, while keywords are important, content and storytelling chops are the real key.

Those who can't, cheat.

 

[Maggie Dana]

Yeah, I just call those ones "keyword stuffers." But when I open up the book and it's got the link to go straight to the back.... well. I start name-calling. It's true.

I seem to remember reading a while back when KU 2 first came out that Amazon had some way of knowing if a reader skipped from the front of a book to the back without actually reading (i.e., staying on a page long enough to have read it). If they do have this capability, the scammers who put links to the end of a book at the start are wasting their time.

 

[sela]

I seem to remember reading a while back when KU 2 first came out that Amazon had some way of knowing if a reader skipped from the front of a book to the back without actually reading (i.e., staying on a page long enough to have read it). If they do have this capability, the scammers who put links to the end of a book at the start are wasting their time.

I believe that several authors have experimented with this on their books in KU that are not selling. Apparently, it does trigger a full read. Sadly.

 

[Shelley K]

I believe that several authors have experimented with this on their books in KU that are not selling. Apparently, it does trigger a full read. Sadly.

You know, an awful lot of people also claim it doesn't. I've come to believe that this is as consistent as KENPC--sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

[lilywhite]

But that's not how this whole conversation started and there were howls for blood long before the conversation devolved into this mixture of issues.

That's probably true -- aren't there always? -- but I can only speak for myself. My definition of scammer doesn't extend to the keyword-stuffers, even though I think what they do is detrimental. But other people's MMV.

 

[lilywhite]

You know, an awful lot of people also claim it doesn't. I've come to believe that this is as consistent as KENPC--sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Good point. I have absolutely seen ti work, consistently, on more than one book from more than one author, when my FB group tested this. But there's no reason at all to think that it's surefire. Why would it be? LOL

 

[sela]

See, and now I'm starting to see a conflation of several issues here. It's not JUST the title keyword stuffers, it's the keyword stuffers WHO ALSO pack a boatload of books into one file, WHO ALSO put links that send you to the back first to get the page count, WHO ALSO....

But that's not how this whole conversation started and there were howls for blood long before the conversation devolved into this mixture of issues.

No one called for blood. There were no howls. Seems like you're more concerned with the tone than the actual issue. There's a word for that, but I'm not allowed to write it.

 

[stoney]

No one called for blood. There were no howls. Seems like you're more concerned with the tone than the actual issue. There's a word for that, but I'm not allowed to write it.

No, no outright calls. I did see subtle calls for reporting and for overtly hostile disdain for something that seemed quite innocent to me on the surface, before the shift of the conversation. So, yeah, you're right. I guess I came across as a [deleted] when I worry that people who may be doing misguided things getting swept up in the witch hunt to scream scammers at anyone who does something someone else doesn't like. I mean, it's not like this was the first time it's happened here.

I have no idea why I had hoped this community wouldn't devolve into that sort of name calling and this aggressive venting of their venom. I should have known better by now.

I wish you and the others luck.

 

[My Dog's Servant]

I gave up on trying to search but not because of this issue but because of how using keywords sometimes ends up with books in inappropriate categories which I'm not convinced is solely a writer trying to scam the readers (which has also been used on this forum and is the reason behind my looking askance at the shouts of scammer in this case).

I understand. I've run into a lot of books that are mis-categorized or use inappropriate keywords. Some categories are more prone to abuse than others. But I could still find something, and what I didn't want were at least real books even if the authors botched (deliberately or otherwise) the categories. Regardless, there were still a lot of properly categorized books that came up on every single page. So...the search results were annoying, but not impossible. This latest assault on some of the romance categories is blatant, unrepentant scamming, and this garbage has almost totally consumed most of any search. I went something like 12 pages deep in that first innocent search and found almost no honest books among them all.

Out of curiosity, last night I ran some quick searches on a random list of "categories" (big categories like "science fiction" and narrow categories like "historical horror"). Some I read in, some I don't. It was enlightening to see the differences among them--in a couple of the obvious categories, authors had actually titled their books with the category name!--and there were quite a number of legitimate books (whether they were well written or not didn't concern me) with blatantly stuffed titles. Some categories were more prone than others to be hit by books that didn't really fit. But whatever the category, I could still find a preponderance of real books with normal titles in their proper categories.....except for the romance ones I tried. OMG! What an impossible mess!

It is at this point that Amazon's search system has gone from creakily misused to totally unusable, which hurts us all. (Honest writers and readers, that is.)