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Amazon Changes KDP Rules on Bonus Content

Amazon has not yet responded to yesterday’s story about a book-stuffing scammer, but they have quietly changed the rules to make it more clear that book stuffing is not allowed.

According to the new rules bonus content can make up no more than 10% of an ebook:

If you choose to include bonus content (e.g., other stories, or previews of other books that are not part of your book’s title), it should be relevant to the customer and should not disrupt the reading experience. To meet these guidelines, we require placing additional content at the end of the book, and listing the bonus content in your book’s table of contents.

To provide an optimal customer experience, bonus content should make up no more than around 10% of your book. If you would like to include multiple stories within your book, consider creating a collection of works. When selecting your book’s title, always make sure to follow the Metadata Guidelines.

Primary and bonus content must meet all program guidelines (e.g., bonus content in KDP Select titles must be exclusive). Translated content must be high quality and not machine generated. Disruptive links and promises of gifts or rewards are never allowed.

For more information, see our content guidelines and Terms and Conditions.

You can find a previous version of this page in the Wayback Machine.

The rules change was inspired by yesterday’s story about a scammer who is cheating Kindle Unlimited via the book-stuffing con. They were stuffing whole novels in the back of each book, effectively making the book an anthology mis-labeled as a single book, and then collected the maximum payout in Kindle Unlimited by tricking readers into visiting the past page of the ebook.

Amazon has not yet commented on yesterday’s story, nor have they banned the scammer. It’s not clear why; the scammer is clearly violating both the spirit and the letter of several existing rules.

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Comments


Allen F June 3, 2018 um 1:09 pm

Possibly because this scammer isn’t the only one doing it and Amazon is trying to set the bot to get just the ones they’re after.

(Every time their bots have gotten aggressive a few writers whine that they were caught too and claim 'they' really weren’t doing anything wrong.)

There used to be an old saying about better a hundred bad men go free rather than one innocent be hung, though most people only remember it when they are the one with the rope around their necks.


Hannah Steenbock June 4, 2018 um 3:51 am

I find it rather shocking that Amazon still has no way of accurately counting page reads, after running KU for several years. Since that "jump to the end of the book" trick is still working to get a huge page count, this is at the root of the problem and the weakness book stuffers employ.

Unless Amazon fixes this root problem, scammers will have an open field on KU.


The Career Author Podcast: Episode 23 – Mailing Lists for Authors – August 14, 2019 um 1:48 pm

[…] https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/06/02/amazon-changes-kdp-rules-on-bonus-content/ […]


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