When I signed up with Amazon KDP (Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing) five years ago and had my first book published, I was excited because now I was an author! I danced to KC and the Sunshine Band " Get Down Tonight, from 1975" (you all know the lyrics "Oh, do a little dance, Make a little love, Get down tonight, get down tonight'
Then the unthinkable happened - I, just like thousands got the dreaded AI Bot generated email, "we are terminating your account for manipulation of services" . I was annoyed, as one would be because as an author I didn't do whatever caused the manipulation of services to shut down my account.
"Scott" just posted he got a AI Bot generated email on trustpilot.com "for having a prior account" which was b.s.
Longtime author account deleted out of the blue : I have been an author with Amazon since the early 2000s. Yesterday, they terminated my account and deleted all of my books, saying that I had violated their TOS by having a "prior account that had been terminated". I have never had any other account than the one I have (I have not published any new books since 2014). If you try to get an explanation or proof, they just send a boilerplate template saying "we know you had a prior account". And that's it. Horrible, horrible customer service (well, basically non-existent, there is no way to actually contact an actual person). Stay away from Amazon if you don't want your books to disappear into thin air in minutes. I'd give 0 stars if it was an option. Date of experience: April 04, 2023
And when you get that awful email, you try to contact KDP , and you can't get ahold of a human , or if you do try to appeal, you might get this KDP Template email :
"Hello, Thanks for your email concerning the status of your account. Unfortunately, we need some more time to look into the matter. We apologize for the delay and for the inconvenience this may cause. We'll be in touch within 5 business days."
And never hear back from them. So my point is, thousands of KDP accounts are wrongfully terminated. That means all that hard work, goes poof! KDP doesn't care if you are famous, they don't care if you are like Walt Whitman. KDP Kindle Content Review gets a AI Bot red flag and instead of KDP doing their job and looking into it, they are termination account happy. Authors, such as this one, over the years, have said KDP is the worst company, and I can honestly agree. No human to talk to, to resolve the AI Bot mistake.
When your account gets terminated, you don't get paid royalties. Let's just say Amazon KDP is holding for 'ransom', $1200 in royalties all because of "Manipulation of services" Which, I figured out what that was, people were READING my books - oh goodness! my books on Kindle Select Unlimited- people were reading and KDP didn't bother to look up my name, to find out, there are people who know my books. I wish Jeff Bezos would get off of his Yacht or whatever rich people do now-a-days and get back to how bad the training is for KDP!
Okay back to my main point of this article. Your books have been removed but not off of books.google.com, you contact KDP to remove the print books and KDP states they don't have access to it- oh but they do, if KDP was trained right, they would know that their ISBN you get, comes from a third party called "bowker.com" Basically, us authors were thinking KDP was so special, that it was a privilege to be part of KDP because we are having our books published through them and don't you know, KDP is just like any other publishing company. You would think Amazon KDP would have bought ISBN numbers exclusively ! I mean they do, but it is through a 3rd party, not their own, which Amazon makes billions a month, practically, they should have that option!
So, with that said, KDP has hurt a lot of us authors, all because of lack of training. Thanks so much KDP for terminating accounts when 96% of the time, us authors did NOTHING. And my rant is, once your books are removed from Amazon, they should be removing the print version as well from Bowker. Also, Jeff Bezos, even other departments from Amazon knows that working with KDP is awful - as you can't get ahold of anyone at KDP. Wake up what your company is doing to us authors!
okay. I am done ranting about KDP, I am moving on. oh and ADVICE for authors out there, who use KDP, do NOT PUT YOUR BOOK ON Kindle Select Unlimited, that is why so many accounts are being targeted by KDP AI Bots. If you have people reading your book, KDP detects 'unusual reading, it has to be a hired bot from Author, Author must be punished, we will not look into the matter" - that is basically what it is in a nutshell.
Always save your manuscripts. Publish your books everywhere (including my eBook store) you can (as long as it isn't under Kindle Select Unlimited) , do your own PR (public relations) and you have to always make sure you hold copyright, which, real publishers will tell you that- If you want to have your book published on Salty Vixen's eBook store, you, as the author, keeps all copyright, we are just a host for your amazing books. We don't distribute to 3rd party only because we know you probably had your books with Draft2Digital and other places who do that for you. If you don't have that, we can distribute your books for you to third parties.
