Amazon is Still Banning Authors for No Reason
Remember how I’ve been telling you for years and years that Amazon’s bots have been banning authors for inexplicable reasons and giving them no recourse to reverse the malicious actions?
Much to no one’s surprise, it’s still going on.
Yahoo Finance has found more examples of Amazon’s automated algorithms punishing the innocent.
In recent weeks, Amazon (AMZN) has taken down e-books written by at least six self-published novelists who say they did nothing wrong and depend on the platform to make their living, those six novelists told Yahoo Finance.
The six authors published many of their books through Amazon’s online self-publishing platform Kindle Direct Publishing Select, and they expressed shock and frustration over losing their livelihoods without understanding why.
Amazon, for its part, has been cracking down on KDP Select authors who supposedly game the system in order to get paid more. But the authors Yahoo Finance spoke to insist they haven’t engaged in this kind of fraud, and that Amazon banned them without sufficient explanation of wrongdoing.
Jason Cipriano, a self-published author in Bakersfield, California, known to his readers as J.A. Cipriano, says he has sold 143,000 copies of his novels through KDP — enough for him to leave his job as an electrical controls engineer in 2016 to write full-time.
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Cipriano says he has yet to receive a clear, detailed explanation from Amazon beyond the assertion that he manipulated KDP services — services that include Amazon’s all-you-can-read $9.99 Kindle Unlimited — despite reaching out to customer support to explain the situation. Feedback from Amazon largely came in the form of a generic form letter via email.
I’ve written about this several times since 2016. In almost all cases, the authors don’t know why they were banned, can’t get an explanation from Amazon, and are unable to break past Amazon’s automation and make contact with an actual human.
That is because Amazon doesn’t have any humans running the Kindle Store any more It’s all run by bots, and the only way to reach a human being is to go around Amazon’s system and come in through the side – either by getting the attention of Amazon PR, or Jeff Bezos.
This may sound like histrionics but let’s not forget that the only reason book stuffers were kicked out of KU, and the only reason Amazon changed the rules to ban the practice, was because of all the bad publicity.
Conversely, Amazon’s bots are running amok in the Kindle Store because there hasn’t been enough negative coverage yet. But with Yahoo Finance raising the story’s profile, that could soon change.
Amazon was queried before this post was published, and did not respond.
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