From Geekwire
Amazon has filed arbitration demands against several book authors, publishers and marketers, alleging that they abused the Kindle Direct Publishing system to artificially inflate their profits and sales rankings.
The five arbitration demands, filed Wednesday with the American Arbitration Association, make a variety of allegations, including fraudulent customer reviews, the creation of fake user accounts and other schemes to increase rankings and royalties on the company’s self-publishing platform for e-books.
One of the demands, for example, alleges that a man from the Philippines offered a service to authors to boost the number of pages read in their books using hundreds of fake Amazon customer accounts, in exchange for a 40 percent cut of their profits. Amazon pays authors who participate in the Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library program using a formula based on pages read.
“While the vast majority of authors and publishers using Kindle Direct Publishing are genuinely working in good faith to publish and promote their books, a small minority engage in fraud to gain an unfair competitive advantage,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “Today’s news reflects yet another step in our ongoing efforts to protect readers and authors from individuals who violate our terms of service and manipulate programs readers and authors rely on.”
Link to the rest at Geekwire and thanks to Nate at The Digital Reader for the tip.
PG notes that most arbitration proceedings are not made public (it’s an advantage for some litigants). Amazon made a decision to publicize/leak these to send a message.
I am the owner and publisher of Hydra Publications and we want people to know one the companies listed, Hydra Enterprises, is not us. We are in no way affiliated with the company and their alleged conduct. We applaud Amazon’s aggressive pursuit of any person or company who is scamming the Kindle Direct program.
Thanks for the clarification, Tony.
Scammers can hurt legitimate authors and organizations in many ways.
After this arbitration, the next step is invoking the RICO statutes.
Shouldn’t Amazon be wary of releasing the names of these people? Just because someone files a lawsuit or a demand for arbitration doesn’t mean the defendant/respondent is guilty (innocent until proven guilty and all that). I would think the way Amazon is publicly naming these people when such matters are usually not made public, in order to incite the public against them and use them as a scare tactic for others who might try what they have allegedly done, before they’re even found guilty, might actually be grounds for a lawsuit against Amazon. But then I’m not a lawyer, and I still believe in hearing both sides of the story before condemning people. So far this is just Amazon making accusations, yet look at the vitriol that is being directed at these people, which is exactly what Amazon wanted.
‘Innocent until proven guilty’ pertains to criminal law. Civil suits, as I am sure PG can confirm, are supposed to be decided on the preponderance of the evidence. Amazon is not accusing anybody of crimes, or it would be taking these cases to the courts – where the names of the defendants would be made public in any case.
String them up! I’m so sick of so-called writers gaming the system. They have no honor, no soul and no talent. They should be selling vacuum cleaners or used cars.
Hallelujah! Finally! Only five, but this should give the scammers and gamers the heebie-jeebies.
I wonder how AMz can ever, will ever, deal with fake reviews. I bought a nebulizer and a toaster oven recently to replace old ones. The dreck one has to wade through to find the honest reviews, or what you hope are honest reviews, is huge on small appliances.
I look at the one and two stars, but sometimes even those seem odd as though placed by a competitor. I look at ‘valid purchase’ reviews, but the whole thing of reviews, made even more tangled by some of the ‘vine’ reviewers. Man.
Dont know what/if amz will do anything more about all that.
>made even more tangled by some of the ‘vine’ reviewers.
Oh god. I hate Vine reviews with a passion. As a group, they always seem to be inflated. “But…, 25 reviews said this was great, how could they be so off?”
I understand that taking someone to court is a big step and not to be taken lightly, but five? Really? I find it hard to believe that Amazon could only find evidence enough for five people/organisations. 🙁
Five today, five tomorrow, ten on Monday… They can get more fear and scrambling for the buck by rolling this out slowly.
PW- is there any legal website we can go to that we can track this case’s progress?
Since most arbitration proceedings are kept confidential, I’m not aware of any service that identifies and reports on those which are not confidential. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon keeps releasing information to publicize the dangers of trying to game the system.
This is the first step. I hope there’s more. Because unless the bad actors know what these people did, and that Amazon will get them, they can always try this again.
It’s only when they won’t get the money that they’ll quit.
So let’s hope that Amazon is releasing this to show the bad guys and not to fool the good guys.
Yes and no. Amazon doesn’t want to show all their cards, least they show those gaming the system how the others were caught – the better for the gamers to play around the barriers now in place.
And we’ve seen writers that claimed they were doing no wrong also caught when Amazon gets too heavy-handed on stepping on the gamers.
Amazon made arbitration public because: good P.R.
And to deter others from trying the same scams.
And thus David Gaughran is vindicated
Word.
I’m very glad they’ve taken this first step. I hope more arbitration demands are coming.
Only five names. I’d say they have a long way to go.
Slow and steady is better then us hearing from actual writers getting caught in false positives.
And if they hit these five hard enough it’ll help the other bad actors consider whether they should keep fishing – or cut bait and run.