Another day, another Kindle Unlimited scam.
This time, it’s prawns!
Well, shrimps for US readers.
Okay, you can now place your table of contents at the end of your ebook, but it wasn’t the case a couple of months ago.
The catch
Many innocent self-published authors were caught up in attempts by Amazon to rid Kindle Unlimited of scammers.
It mainly affected authors who were publishing non-fiction.
The scammers used a weakness in the way Amazon pays for an ebook read in Kindle Unlimited.
As it transpired, Amazon had to admit that it could not tell if a reader had read a whole ebook on Kindle Unlimited.
The scam was that these scammers included a link at the beginning of an ebook.
It is a jump-link to view the table of contents, or other forms of inducement, to get a reader to go to the last few pages of an ebook.
By doing so, it was enough to earn a full payment for a completely read ebook.
It proved that Amazon is sometimes not as clever as one thinks.
However, the problem seems to be resolved.
But now Amazon has a new scam on its hands. Prawns!
What are prawns?
They are innocent published authors (yet again) who are being used by click farms.
Basically, these farms earn money by being paid to click on, well, anything.
Often it’s Adsense ads, but they are now big business as far as Kindle ebooks are concerned.
Click farms are collectives of people with multiple Amazon accounts.
They have been used for some time to click and download free ebooks to increase sales rank.
However, they are now being used more and more to read.
Well, only the first and last pages of Kindle Unlimited ebooks, and thus earning a full payment from Amazon for a fully read ebook.
There’s little you can do
Even though you may be playing by all the rules, if your ebook is selected (targeted) as a prawn by one of these click farms, expect Amazon to take action.
These click farms try to make their work look a little less innocent by adding a few hundred or thousands of clicks to ebooks that they are not paid to promote.
Perhaps thinking it is harder to track them.
Summary
Unfortunately, Amazon does and can track them.
The end result is that the innocent get tarred with the same brush as the guilty.
Yes, yet another swindle to add to the Kindle Unlimited scam list. Prawns.
Related reading: Kindle Unlimited Has A Problem – It Can’t Count Words
