Indie Books & Authors

Showcasing indie talent.

Are Amazon’s “Also-Boughts” Going the Way of the Dodo?

Becca Indie Books & Authors, News & Opinion, Posts , , , , , , , , ,

Y’all know what I mean by “also-boughts,” right? They’re the line of products Amazon lists on every product’s sales page under the banner “Customers who bought this item also bought,” or if the product hasn’t sold quite enough, “Customers who viewed this item also viewed.” As an Amazon shopper, I love the also-boughts. They’re one of the central ways I find products: either they guide me to additional products people like me tend to want, or they guide me to products similar to but better than the one I’m considering. I also love also-boughts as an Amazon author.

Image shows the first set of 6 also-bought products on the Nolander book page, preceded by the headline "Customers who bought this item also abought"; the first also-bought product is Solatium; beneath the also-boughts, 3 more books appear under the headline "Sponsored products related to this item."

Nolander’s also-boughts (above) helpfully indicate that readers of my first book are likely to buy my second. They also show 16 pp. of books by other authors whose readership overlaps with mine. This function makes also-boughts a great way for readers to find new authors and for authors to find new readers. Win-win.

Worryingly, there’s a thread on KBoards reporting that some people aren’t seeing also-boughts on book pages right now. Others are reporting them moved to the bottom or side of the page and/or reduced in number.

I’m still seeing also-boughts in the usual number and location, on both my laptop and my phone, and others are too, so the differences some are reporting could be a glitch. But we have in the past noticed Amazon conducting A/B testing, wherein some users are shown one version of a page and others are shown another, with the behavior of the two groups of shoppers presumably being tracked and compared. If A/B testing is happening happening right now with also-boughts, it means Amazon may be considering doing away with them or making them less prominent.

If also-boughts disappear, what would replace them? Another line of sponsored products, perhaps? You can see these products in the image above: they appear under Nolander’s also-boughts. As you can see, there are only a few books. That’s because I’m a very small seller, so other authors are not targeting their book ads at my readership. Authors who move a lot of books have their readership targeted far more heavily. Here’s an example from another author’s book page:

image shows the text "Sponsored products related to this item," with book covers underneath, cropped for anonymity; to the right, smaller text reads "page 1 of 82," indicated we are seeing the first of 82 pages of sponsored products

This author’s also-boughts are heavily weighted toward their own books because readers like their books and tend to purchase them en masse. Their also-boughts thus function as a substantial advertisement for their own backlist. A free advertisement. close-up of the previous image, with the number of pages of also-boughts (82) circled in red for noticeabilityWhat’s not so free? The 82 pp. of “sponsored” books this page is hosting. You get one of these sponsored book slots by purchasing advertising through Amazon Marketing Services (AMS). So, each one of those advertised books represents a revenue source for Amazon. I don’t know about you, but I can imagine there might be some temptation to replace all those non-revenue-generating also-boughts with another line of sponsored books. Instead of 82 pp., 164! Surely any company would consider it.

But. BUT. Are also-boughts really non-revenue-generating? As a shopper — and I am a major Amazon shopper — I click on also-boughts all the time. They’re an amazing repository of crowd-sourced consumer wisdom. I click on also-boughts far more often than I click on sponsored products. Sponsored products represent what their sellers hope people like me want; also-boughts represent what people like me actually buy. They’re visual evidence of how tons of other shoppers have voted with their wallets, and that’s just about the best endorsement you can get.

If also-boughts make me buy stuff — and they do — then they’re revenue-generating, eh? Perhaps more reliably so than sponsored products, which are “cost-per-click” — Amazon only gets paid for the ad if someone clicks on it. And clicking on the ad does not necessarily lead to buying the product. An advertised product could, theoretically, earn Amazon $0, but no product makes it into the also-bought system unless it’s been, well, bought. Products appearing in the also-boughts are proven earners.

Personally, I think also-boughts are one of online shopping’s two great advantages over brick-and-mortar retail (the other being the availability of customer reviews). Also-boughts are me happening to run into an acquaintance in the grocery store and having her say, “Hey, I know you care about getting antibiotics out of the food supply, and I know one of your kids is a super-finicky eater. Did you know Foster Farms just came out with antibiotic-free chicken breast nuggets? My finicky eater loves them. They’re sort of hard to find, but if you go to Aisle 12 and look at the very bottom shelf, about five feet down from the corndogs, you’ll see them. The package is yellow. Oh, and you might want to buy some ketchup to go with them. Gross, I know, but finicky eaters … whatcha gonna do?” Except all that happens behind the scenes, via algorithms analyzing the purchasing patterns of millions of shoppers, and it happens every single time. You don’t have to hope to run into someone. You don’t have to ask around. It’s just there, making the stuff you really need findable in an environment that truly does have everything from A to Z.

It’s worth mentioning that, from an author’s perspective, also-boughts are one of the only ways to gain quality visibility on the Amazon site if you don’t publish frequently, aren’t in Kindle Unlimited, and/or don’t have a lot of money to spend on ads. But hey … I’m trying to come at this from Amazon’s perspective. It’s a corporation; it’s going to act in its own self-interest. My own experience as a shopper suggests that maintaining clearly visible also-boughts is very much in Amazon’s self-interest.

So, you know. Hopefully what some folks are seeing is just a glitch. Big old fingers-crossed on that one. But if it’s not a glitch … Amazon, please don’t get rid of also-boughts. Add more lines of sponsored products, if you really must, but don’t take away the way I shop.

Is Playster Rejecting LGBT+ Books? (Update: Situation Now Remedied)

Becca Indie Books & Authors, Posts , , ,

PlaysterValuesLike many indie authors, I distribute my books to some retail platforms through Draft2Digital, a company I’ve always found to be competent, responsive, and trustworthy. At some point in the fairly recent past, D2D added Playster to its roster of retail platforms. Playster is a digital entertainment subscription service that includes ebooks, similar to Scribd, Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program, and the now-defunct Oyster: for $9.95 a month, you can access what Playster advertises as a library of more than 250,000 “premium titles” — “the world’s only truly unlimited ebook service” (source).

Playster’s site is full of the rhetoric of freedom and limitlessness — attempts, I assume, to play off the name of Amazon’s program while distinguishing itself from Scribd, which restricts borrowing within certain genres. Just a sampling: “Entertainment Unlimited is about freedom of choice, and that’s what we’re giving you with Playster” (source); “The best thing about what we’re doing is its limitless potential. … we’re always looking at ways to give you more choice and bring you closer to the things you love” (source); “No Restrictions. … Spend as long as you like enjoying your favorite titles and discovering new things” (source); “World’s Most Diverse Digital Catalogue … Find everything you’re looking for” (source); “Anytime, Anywhere, Anyone … Playster is essential for families needing different things for different people” (source).

Sounds pretty good, right?

Unfortunately, at least four KBoards authors who attempted to distribute LGBT+ themed books to Playster are reporting that those books were rejected, even as their non-LGBT+ books were accepted. According to an email shared by one of these authors, Playster claims “erotic content” as the reason for her books’ rejection. The platform’s Terms of Service do reject content that’s “obscene, vulgar, pornographic, offensive, profane, contains or depicts nudity, contains or depicts sexual activity, or is otherwise inappropriate as determined by [Playster] in [its] sole discretion” (Source). But that prohibition doesn’t seem to offer a convincing rationale for the rejections. This author said her rejected books do have “steamy” scenes, but those scenes are no steamier than what appears in her straight romances that Playster accepted. Furthermore, Playster previously accepted the LGBT+ books of hers that it is now rejecting. Another author said none of her rejected books “has more sexual content than a kiss.” One isn’t even a romance.

Um.

So the catalog is “the world’s most diverse” … so long as we’re talking about straight folks? You can read books that “bring you closer to the things you love” … unless you’d love to read books about gay characters? It’s great for “families needing different things for different people” … but if they have a daughter who likes to read f/f romance, she’s sh*t out of luck? Using Playster “means no restrictions” … except, you know, that one? Seriously, I had to tie my hands behind my back to make myself end the second paragraph of this post. There’s so much “freedom” and “choice” rhetoric in Playster’s verbiage that I got a little irony-drunk.

In 2017, it should go without saying that a book is not “erotic” just because it focuses on gay, lesbian, bi, or transgender characters. Books about LGBT+ people can be erotic or not erotic, just like books about straight, cis-gender people.

I am really hoping this is some kind of mistake.

Playster

Hopefully D2D can liaise with Playster to shed some light on this situation and, if there really is a no-LGBT-books policy at Playster, help us get it changed. I mean, sure, Playster can sell and not sell whatever it chooses. But a policy to exclude LGBT+ books from its catalog would be unacceptable to many readers, as well as to authors on both the indie and traditional sides of publishing.

I encourage authors and readers to contact D2D and/or Playster* and express their concerns. I’ve written to D2D myself. I hadn’t yet distributed my books to Playster, but if I had, I would have pulled them, pending clarification. I’ll certainly update this post as new information comes in. Again, very much hoping these book rejections can be explained in some other way.

*Looks like you might need to use Playster’s live chat feature to contact them. I couldn’t get the “email us” link on the above-linked page to work. The person I chatted with said I would need to send my question here: publishing@playster.com. I’ve done that and will update this post when I get a response.

Update, 9/2/17: Dan Wood, director of author relations at D2D, has chimed in on the KBoards thread to say they’re “working on” the problem. He said he thinks it may be “just a misunderstanding over what is meant by some of the BISAC categories [D2D] sent Playster.”

Update, 9/5/17: Playster has posted in the KBoards thread, saying that it is in “absolutely no way discriminating against LGBTQ+ content.” Their explanation for the rejections is that they have “been receiving books with underage characters, and therefore put a temporary ban on all books labelled ‘erotica’ that are delivered from self-publishing platforms.” They say they are “investigating the possibility that some books have been mislabeled.” I’m glad to see this message and to know Playster rejects discrimination and is trying to fix this problem. The difficulty for me comes in figuring out where and how the “mislabel[ing]” could have happened. An author submits Book MM and Book MF to D2D and chooses to distribute both books to Playster. These books have similar content, and the author does not give either book an “erotica” label or category. Book MM ends up banned by Playster as erotica and Book MF doesn’t. So … when and how was the “erotica” label placed on Book MM, and why wasn’t that label placed on the Book MF?

Update, 9/6/17: Playster posted further on KBoards that they are “investigating the labeling thoroughly, using some of the examples in [the KBoards] thread, to establish exactly what’s happening,” and asking for “patience.” Very glad to know they’re working on the problem.

Update, 9/7/17: Playster has updated the KBoards thread with the following:

After careful investigation of each step of our content ingestion process for self-publishing platforms, we discovered that our restriction on the ‘erotica’ category had unintentionally affected other tags and genres, including LGBTQ+ fiction. We are extremely sorry for our mistake and any hurt it may have caused – it was never our intention to block these titles.

What happens now? The books that were wrongfully declined are currently being added to the Playster catalog where they will join our existing collection of LGBTQ+ titles previously delivered by our other major publishing partners.

Playster takes an extra cautious approach when it comes to self-published fiction because we do not have a large in-house team that is able to thoroughly read and review all titles that are submitted. However, we accept that, in this case, our efforts to solve one problem inadvertently caused another.

We strongly encourage authors to contact us if they have any further problems submitting books to Playster or notice that any titles that should be present are missing. They can do so by emailing us directly at support@playster.com.

So, good news! And, I might add, quite a prompt response, given that the problem came to light over the U.S. Labor Day weekend.

I’ll admit to some lingering curiosity about exactly how Playster’s ban on erotica came to affect other tags and genres in ways not intended. I speculated on one possibility toward the end of this KBoards post, but I have no idea whether that’s actually what happened.

All in all, this seems like a positive resolution. Thanks to D2D and Playster for the quick and productive attention.

Update, 9/8/17: A number of authors are now reporting their LGBT+ books have successfully published to Playster.

Authors Report Amazon Is Aware of KU Reporting Problem

Becca Indie Books & Authors, News & Opinion, Posts , , , ,

Several authors are reporting having called Amazon and been told the company knows Kindle Unlimited pages-read are not reporting properly. One heard about “an ongoing problem on the pages appearing in the reports,” and another was told that

Amazon is aware of the problem and has received a lot of Emails and calls this week about it. He actually said it has been “elevated far above my position, to our highest team.” …  He assured me my complaint would be escalated to that team and I should be called or Emailed by them without a form response.

Still another reports having been assured via email that Amazon’s “technical team is looking into it.”

This information may not to have trickled down to the frontline KDP reps, who seem still to be sending out “everything’s fine” form letters in response to email queries. If you’re concerned about your pages-read figures, you may have to press for your query to be elevated or just call Amazon directly (866-216-1072) and ask to speak to KDP technical support.

I’m glad to hear Amazon is working on this problem. Kudos to those authors who noticed it and were insistent enough to get KDP’s attention.

KU Page-Reads May Be Reporting Inaccurately

Becca Indie Books & Authors, News & Opinion, Posts , , , ,

Here’s the thing about electrons: no one can see them. That means those of us who produce digital wares are wholly dependent on retailers to report our sales, borrows, or page-reads accurately.

There are some worrisome indications that this may not be happening at Amazon.

Specifically, romance author Becca Fanning says in a Kboards thread that a number of writers have noticed weird changes in their Kindle Unlimited page-read* rates:

For the past few weeks dozens of authors have been reporting that their page read counts on new releases have been … off. Not off by ten percent, but by 50-95%. These are for consistent releases with expected patterns of performance (as expected as you can be in this industry). I don’t want this discussion to get bogged down in conjecture about bad books, bad promos, etc. Sales numbers and sales ranks are as expected, but page reads are drastically lower.

The problem seems to be affecting new releases, and perhaps also books whose metadata has recently been updated, as reported in the same thread by nonfiction author Kara King.

Now, before you roll your eyes and dismiss this claim as yet another case of authors unfairly blaming poor sales on a retail platform, these are books that are “selling well, ranking well,” but not accumulating page-reads at the rate expected, given their sales numbers and/or ranking. Fanning uses the example of promoting a book, selling 80 copies, and only getting 100 page-reads, whereas similar promotions in the recent past would generate 80 sales and 2,000 page-reads. It’s the ratio of sales to page-reads that’s off.

And here’s the kicker:

Emails began to fly, initially meeting with a stalwart wall of “We looked into your pages read and can confirm that they are accurate.” Most of us took that and gave up. But one didn’t. They insisted on getting someone on the phone and elevating their issue up the chain.

After thirty minutes on the phone, insisting something wasn’t right, something kind of miraculous happened: On Friday Sept 30, Amazon admitted that there’s a problem on their end and that they have to get their legal team involved.

That really pricked my ears. Amazon? Admitting a problem? Involving its legal department? Hello, Nearly Unprecedented, it’s nice to meet you!

So far, according to Fanning, only a few authors have received adjusted page-read figures, and the adjustments have been small. But quite a few people are reporting significant disruptions in their expected page-reads/sales ratios. Fanning says that “the pool of authors who have noticed things aren’t right includes those with fewer than five books under their belt and NYT bestselling authors with over 100 books who regularly break into the top 100 or top 50,” so if there’s a problem with page-read reporting, it could well involve big numbers.

At this point, most of our info is secondhand and anonymous. So far as I know, Fanning and some other authors participating in the Kboards thread are the only ones who’ve made their concerns public. Nevertheless, it seems worthwhile to bring this possible problem to people’s attention.

If you have a book that’s selling/ranking well AND has been accumulating significantly fewer than the expected number of page-reads given its sales/rank, you may want to email KDP at kdp-support@amazon.com. It’s also worth reporting discrepancies between book rank and reported sales.

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*For those unfamiliar with Kindle Unlimited, it’s Amazon’s subscription book-borrowing program, populated mostly (but not entirely) but independently published books. For $9.99/month, readers can have up to 10 borrowed books at a time. Authors are paid not when someone borrows their book but page by page, as each book is read. In order to join KU, self-published authors must agree to sell their ebooks only through Amazon.

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Edit: Hidden Gems has blogged about this issue here (near the end of the post).

DMCA Problem Resolved — for Me. Not So Sure About Everyone Else.

Becca Indie Books & Authors, News & Opinion , , , , , ,

I’m delighted to say that Nolander is back on sale — or on giveaway, anyway — on Amazon. Even as the lower levels of KDP were churning out the form letter I quoted in my last post, the upper levels must have been giving the problem more individualized consideration. So, thank you to Amazon and KDP for taking care of this problem. And a huge thank you to the folks on Kboards who orchestrated an attention-getting email campaign on my behalf. You guys are the best. :)

Hopefully this situation is all wrapped up. I’ve been in touch with other retail platforms, asking them to be alert for fraudulent attacks on my books. Fingers-crossed, I won’t have to deal with this sort of thing again. But of course, other people might. In fact, I might be safer than others, now, since there’s a paper trail (“electron trail”?) at all the retailers documenting my having been targeted.

For the time being, I had better go grade some student papers.

But I want to think about this DMCA-scam issue some more. My scammer clearly made some mistakes, and those allowed me to build a convincing case. But what if there are no mistakes, next time? The person I spoke to at Amazon said the company doesn’t want to inadvertently aid spurious uses of the DMCA and that it would be taking a fresh look at its current policy. I trust they will do that. Nevertheless, it seems like a tough problem to solve. The DMCA may have been written for the digital age, but it wasn’t really designed for a truly global environment — nothing that leans so heavily on the U.S. legal system for both its teeth and its safeguards is going to work properly when information flows unimpeded across borders. And it doesn’t seem to have been designed with today’s massive digital sales environment in mind, since retailers apparently see themselves as exempt from the counter-noticing process.

I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but it seems like a problem we need to solve. Anyone have any ideas?

March 7 update: Aftermath for Nolander, and thoughts on how retailers could react to fraudulent DMCA notices more effectively.

Independent Publishing and DMCA Abuse, or “How a Scammer Got My Book Blocked with Very Little Effort”

Becca Indie Books & Authors , , , , , , , ,

Okay, I’ve got a story. It’s a sort of scary one. I think independent/self-publishing authors need to know about it, and telling it carefully and correctly is also important for my own situation, so I’m going to take my time and lay it all out in order.

Pressed for time? You can skip to the bottom for the TL;DR summation.

Becca Mills - Nolander - 333x500On Friday, February 27, 2015, I noticed that my bookmarked Amazon.com link to my first novel, Nolander, was yielding, “We’re sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site.” I went to my Amazon dashboard and discovered the book had been blocked.

In my spam folder, I discovered an email from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Amazon’s self-publishing arm, informing me that someone had sent in a DMCA notice. In response, Amazon had summarily blocked Nolander from sale.

“DMCA” stands for “Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” It’s a Clinton-era U.S. law that lays forth a process for dealing with copyright infringement online. If you find material online that infringes a copyright you hold, you can send the hosting website a DMCA notice; in order to be in compliance with U.S. law, the hosting website has to remove the material and notify the person who posted it.

When I heard a DMCA notice had been filed against Nolander — which is a completely original work — I assumed a reader had reacted badly after reading the book in a boxed set and then finding it available as a standalone. It could be confusing to find the same material in different places, after all. A vigilant reader might think something fishy was going on. So I wrote back to KDP, sending them my U.S. copyright registration info and assuring them that Nolander was my work.

Soon after, I found an email notification from Smashwords as well. That one was a little more informative:

Hi [my real name redacted],

I have just unpublished your book Nolander, formerly found here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/272292

As we received a DMCA Notice and I was able to verify that the text in your book, published on Jan. 07, 2013, matched the text of a book made public on August 2nd, 2011.

If you have any questions or can give me critical information about the book, please do.  Per our policy, the book needs to remain unpublished until Smashwords is given consent by both parties to republish it.

Thank you for your understanding.

Cheers,

*[name redacted] – Smashwords Support Team*

This was mystifying. I could imagine a vigilant, informed reader emailing Amazon about copyright concerns, but hunting around on other retailers for the book and contacting them? That seemed strange. I started to get a little worried.

I poked around on my hard drive and found a finished draft of Nolander dating from March 29, 2012. It’s the one I sent my husband so he could help proof the manuscript. I have it in mind that the book took about three months to write and a month to edit, so I probably began writing it in November or December 2011. August 2011 was situated conveniently before my writing would’ve begun.

Still, I figured Ockham’s Razor dictated this was an instance of boxed-set-related confusion. I’d seen such confusion arise for another author, though that confusion didn’t progress to a DMCA, so far as I know. Perhaps, I told myself, the Smashwords rep had been using a form letter and had neglected to replace “August 2nd, 2011” with the correct publication date for the boxed set.

I wrote back to Smashwords with the same info I’d sent Amazon. Then I proactively contacted the other platforms where Nolander is available, hoping to head off any further take-downs.

Also in my email was a notification for a pending comment on my website (I have to personally approve comments from first-time commenters):

Kelvin

February 28, 2015 at 3:21 AM

I can’t find Nolander on Amazon. The link is returning “Page Not Found”. I only found a Print Edition on Amazon which cots $15 ! But I find Nolander on other stores like B&N.

Have you removed your book from Amazon? Sorry but I only download or buy books from Amazon. Please consider your decision again.

You can see the comment toward the bottom of my books page on this site. I approved the comment and responded:

Becca

February 28, 2015 at 7:31 AM

Hi, Kelvin. Yeah, someone apparently sent Amazon (and Smashwords also) a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice. That means they think the book infringes on a copyright. But I am the copyright-holder for the book, so I assume this is some kind of mix-up. The book will be unavailable until Amazon figures out what’s going on. Very annoying!

You can email me at bccamills@gmail.com, and I’ll send you a PDF. Kindles can display those.

Folks who know my email address might notice I typed it wrong, but Kelvin tracked me down anyway. I got this email on Saturday:

Regarding Your DMCA Problem

Kushal Das <kushaldas.usa@gmail.com>

Sat 2/28/2015 12:10 PM

Hello Becca,

I am Kushal, who posted on your blog with the screen name Kelvin. I have experience with various aspects of online business including DMCA process, hence I thought about contacting you.

Since you are saying that there has been problems both at Amazon and Smashwords, are you sure that it’s a mix-up? That would be quite unlikely. I don’t know about Indie Fiction Authors but in case of Webmasters, YouTubers and Indie Non-Fiction Authors, DMCA process is often abused. Are you sure someone is not deliberately doing this? Anyway, if the problem does not get resolved then you can let me know what Amazon is saying and I will see what can be done.

Paranormal authors with unique story telling angles are damn hard to find, so I don’t want you to go through this. A malicious DMCA attack can end a person’s career (happened with many YouTubers).

That’s why I am concerned. I hope you won’t find it creepy.

If possible, you can send me a pdf of Nolander.

P.S: I don’t live in USA. I live in India but I am currently going to take the GMAT and I use this email address to communicate with various American B-Schools.

Best Regards

Kushal Das

“How kind!” I thought. I set it aside to respond later. That’s the great thing about indie publishing: people come out of the woodwork to help you. It’s amazing.

At that point, KDP got back to me:

Hello,

As stated in our previous communication, we’ve received notice from a third party regarding copyright concerns over B007R6PPZA Nolander (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 1) by Becca Mills. We don’t involve ourselves in third party disputes and therefore have removed the availability of the book through our systems until this matter is resolved.

Here you will find information on the party that submitted the notice:

Rajesh Lahoti

theeroticaauthor@gmail.com

If a resolution is reached, before we may take any appropriate action regarding the book(s), all involved parties must contact us via title-submission@amazon.com.

Best Regards,

[name redacted]

Amazon.com

So, my proof of official, pre-publication U.S. copyright was not going to be enough. In order to get Nolander restored, both the DMCA complainant and I would need to write to Amazon giving permission. This was alarming. What if Rajesh Lahoti never responded? All they’d have to do was ignore my queries, and Nolander would never appear on the Amazon storefronts again.

A friend I spoke to about the situation pointed out how easy it would be to make my April 2012 book appear to rip off material from an August 2, 2011 book – all someone would have to do is take a book published August 2, 2011, stick a bit of Nolander into it somewhere, upload the new file, and then point Amazon/Smashwords at the new version. It doesn’t take much for a book to appear to be in copyright violation, right? Anything that’s not fair use is a violation. I bet a single paragraph would do it. Who knows? Maybe less.

This too was alarming.

I dashed a quick, neutral email off to Rajesh Lahoti saying I’d been informed of the DMCA notice by Amazon and asking for more info about their copyright concerns. I was still hoping this was an honest mix-up.

Then I turned back to Kushal Das’s generous email offering to help me with my “DMCA problem.”

Reading it again, I began to have some doubts. If Kushal was already a fan of my writing, why had they been trying to download the first of my series from Amazon? Hadn’t they already read it? And it sure was coincidental that they had emailed me about Nolander’s absence from Amazon the very day it happened.

So I wrote a careful response, trying not to give away anything new and yet not wanting to assume the worst of someone who was quite possibly a genuine good Samaritan:

Hi, Kushal. Thank you for the lovely compliments! I’m so glad you like my writing. :)

Here you go – attaching Nolander. This is actually the brand-new revised copy, which I’m just now having formatted. If you’d like a copy of the older edition, which is the one you would’ve read, just let me know. I have that too. I’m planning to make the new edition available on my website for existing readers to download, if they choose, rather than pushing an update through Amazon.

>> P.S. Hmm … I’m getting an error when I try to send this, so I’m going to try without the PDF attached. I can send the attachment later from home – have done it before, so I know it works. Maybe this café’s router balks at large attachments, or something.<<

If I get the book back up on Amazon, that is. Yeah, I didn’t want to sound alarmist in commenting on my website, but I am concerned about the situation. All I know is the name and email address of the complainant. I’ve written to that person asking for more information about their concerns. Hopefully it is just a misunderstanding.

I’ve never heard of malicious DMCAs being used against an author. If this is malicious, I guess I’ll have a real gem of an experience to share. :-/

At any rate, thank you so much for offering to help. It’s not creepy at all. Quite the opposite – it’s extremely kind and generous, and I’m grateful! I’d appreciate hearing any ideas or wisdom you have to share.

Good luck on your B-school apps! I’ve gone through the applying-to-grad-school thing. It’s tough and stressful, I know!

All the best,

Becca

The thing about not being able to attach the PDF was the only fib, here. I’ve been working on revising Nolander for the last few months. Bringing Solatium to completion was a tough but very good experience. It (I hope) made me a stronger writer, and I figured Nolander could benefit from my improved skills. Maybe I could do something about all those “it starts off slow” responses! But free book or not, the last thing I wanted to do was put the new version in the hands of someone I had doubts about.

Then I started poking around.

Since, based on the email address I was sent, the DMCA complainant appeared to be a writer, the first thing I did was check Amazon and Smashwords for books by Rajesh Lahoti. No one has published under that name. I Googled it and didn’t come up with anything notable.

Then I Googled Rajesh Lahoti’s email address, “theeroticaauthor@gmail.com.”

Nothing showed up … except for this, the hit at the top of the results:

Google_search_result_theeroticaauthoratgmaildotcom

Clicking on the link in the Google results led me here: http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu/?q=The+Ultimate+KINDLE+EROTICA+GHOST+WRITING+Service%3A+Best+Quality%2C+Best+Price

The link has functioned on and off this morning, so here’s a screenshot of where it led when I clicked on February 28:

goto_answer_screenshot

goto: answer is a search engine that indexes material posted on technical forums (according to its front page, http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu). Google seems to have indexed one of its search-result pages, creating a snippet based on what that search was returning at the time. All but one of those forum posts have since been deleted, so when I clicked on the link, I got the above: a mostly blank page, with just the one remaining post. But the author and location of that post caught my eye:

goto_answer_screenshot_closeup

The email address “theeroticaauthor@gmail.com” suggests that Rajesh Lahoti writes erotica, and I (and a bunch of other people) once had a run-in with some Warrior Forum members over on the Kboard Writers’ Cafe. So I followed that “… Ultimate KINDLE EROTICA …” link. It led to a Warrior Forum page on which a member going by “Ghost Author” had apparently posted a thread offering to ghostwrite erotica and had later deleted the posts: http://www.warriorforum.com/warriors-hire/1015285-offer-removed.html

Curious, I clicked through to Ghost Author’s profile: http://www.warriorforum.com/members/ghost-author.html

(I’ve saved and screen-shotted these pages, but to save space, I’ll hold off as long as the links still work.)

There I noticed the link in Ghost Author’s signature, which leads to an ad for his ghost writing services: http://www.warriorforum.com/warriors-hire/1016548-rave-reviews-best-kindle-erotica-ghost-writing-service-content.html

And what do you know? Ghost Author also goes by “Kushal”:

GhostAuthor_Kushal_ghostwriting_ad

I scrolled down to the thread of queries and responses from Warrior Forum members interested in Kushal’s services and found these comments:

Kushal_Das_WF_complaints

First name and last name: Kushal Das. So, the person who’d emailed me with the kind offer to help me with my “DMCA problem” apparently owns the email address from which the DMCA take-down notice was filed.

Honestly, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather. When I went looking for some possible connection between Kushal Das and Rajesh Lahoti, I wasn’t expecting to find they were the same person. Talk about hitting pay dirt.

So, this person files a dishonest DMCA, gets my book taken down from two sites, and then contacts me, offering to help me deal with it. But why? I’m not a big seller. There’s little monetary potential in stealing my books and none at all in stealing a free one.

A vendetta, maybe? As you might imagine, I looked around for any connections between Kushal Das and past run-ins I’ve had with people. I couldn’t find any. Couldn’t find any connection between his name and me or my books, any connection between Warrior Forum and me or my books, any connections at all.

I was mystified. Why was Kushal Das targeting me?

The evening of February 28, I sent Kushal Das a PDF of the current (not the revised) version of Nolander. Why not? It’s been available as a free PDF download from Smashwords for years.

Then I sat tight and waited for him to email me back. I figured I might never hear from him. Maybe he only contacted me because he wanted the satisfaction of hearing that I was worried. But there was the chance that he wanted something from me. Maybe this was some sort of scam. If so, finding out what he wanted would be good.

On the morning of March 1, Kushal Das emailed me.

Re: Regarding Your DMCA Problem

Kushal Das <kushaldas.usa@gmail.com>

Sun 3/1/2015 8:16 AM

Hi Becca,

Thank you for sending the pdf. I would just like to say one thing about your problem though – please don’t try to upload the new version of Nolander on Amazon without sorting this DMCA thing first. Otherwise, it will get ugly.

You said you have got the complainant’s details. Is the person providing a real looking US/Western Country address and contact details? Abusing DMCA is a serious offence which can result in prison time. So, 99% of the time DMCA abusers use fake name and addresses based in countries like India, China or Russia. It’s because they know you won’t dream of suing someone in those countries. To add to the problem, big sites like Amazon and YouTube don’t verify the complainant’s identity at all. Anyway, in the next couple of days, it be clear where this is heading.

Thanks again for sending the updated novel. Am looking forward to reading it.

Best Regards

Kushal Das

There wasn’t much here to work with. “[I]t will get ugly” sounded like a threat, just as “you can let me know what Amazon is saying and I will see what can be done” had sounded like some kind of solicitation. But it was all vague.

I responded:

RE: Regarding Your DMCA Problem

Becca Mills <bccamlls@gmail.com>

Sun 3/1/2015 9:51 AM

Hi, Kushal. Wow, I hadn’t really thought about potential problems with uploading a revised edition right now. How come that would be bad? Would it upset Amazon?

It’s distressing to hear that companies like Amazon don’t make any effort to verify the complainant’s identity. I hadn’t realized that. It seems like that would open the door for all kinds of abuse. Some angry person using a fake name to file spurious DMCA notices against their ex-spouse — that kind of thing. And you’re right – I can’t think of any way to confirm the info Amazon sent me about the complainant. It could be fake, for all I know.

Well, I’ve written to the complainant. I haven’t heard back yet, but I’m still hoping this is a real reader who’s misunderstood the situation.

All the best,

Becca

I got the word out on Fb and my blog that Nolander was down due to an errant DMCA notice. Since I wanted to keep the dialogue with Kushal Das open, I kept most of what I knew out of those posts.

On March 1, a friend suggested I send Amazon and Smashwords a DMCA counter-notice. A counter-notice is a way of saying to an internet service provider (ISP), “Hey, this material doesn’t infringe anyone’s copyright, and I take responsibility for it.” After receiving a DMCA counter-notice, an ISP is supposed to restore the content within ten days—the matter is no longer their problem.

Of course, Amazon and Smashwords are not ISPs. They’re retailers. It could be that they aren’t bound by the requirement to restore the content they’ve taken down. Retailers can decide what products they want to sell, right? If they want to make those decision capriciously, who’s to stop them?

At any rate, I began drafting the counter-notice, using models I found online.

In researching the issue, I found that Kushal Das (not surprisingly … he/she should know) had been quite right in saying that DMCA notices can be and are used as weapons. Here are some articles and resources on the phenomenon. As you can see, none of them are quite like what’s happening to me. These abuses of the DMCA were motivated by ideology, commercial interests, and so forth. But what could motivate Kushal Das to attack a free book?

This morning, I sat down to my computer to think some more about the problem.

It occurred to me that filing a DMCA counter-notice is risky because, as I understand it, my counter-notice will be forwarded to Rajesh Lahoti/Kushal Das. Do I really want a document containing my full name, mailing address, and account-associated email address in the hands of this person?

I decided I would have to send the notice as “Becca Mills,” with my rented private mailbox as my contact info. It’s not optimal, but I don’t see another path forward.

I very much resent the idea that I might be forced to give identifying information to someone who has behaved fraudulently. Needless to say, I’ve frozen my accounts at the credit bureaus. What a drag.

At first I intended to tell this story after it had all been resolved. That’d be so much more satisfying, wouldn’t it? I planned to keep stringing Rajesh Lahoti/Kushal Das along by email until I figured out what’s motivating all this. And it sure would be nice to be able to report that DMCA counter-notices do work on ebook retailers.

But then I thought better of waiting. Trying to engage with a scammer is asking for trouble, and every day that goes by is a day Nolander is not getting into readers’ hands. The book was getting about twenty downloads a day and generating decent sell-through to the next in the series. Now my business model is in serious jeopardy (Amazon accounted for 68% of my writing income last month, and Barnes & Noble, where Nolander is free through Smashwords, accounted for another 5%).

Last but not least, indie authors need to know about this. And here’s the TL;DR: wholly fraudulent DMCA notices can be used maliciously against independent authors, and registering for U.S. copyright and submitting proof of copyright is not going to suffice as a defense.

Depending on how Amazon and Smashwords react to my counter-notice, we’ll see how well equipped online book retailers are to handle this form of fraud. It seems obvious to me that “you two go sort it out among yourselves” is not an appropriate position when the DMCA complainant is acting in a fraudulent, malicious way. Hopefully Amazon and Smashwords will see it that way as well.

P.S. Just after posting this, I got another email from Kushal Das:

Hi Becca,

Sorry for the late reply, have been very busy today. To confirm, yes, if you upload the new version, it will seriously create problems. Amazon might block it outright. Or even if the new version goes live, if the person who filed the complaint points out the new uploaded version, Amazon will then block it. Amazon will also automatically assume that you are trying to game the system by uploading a slightly modified version of the “plagiarized book”. 3 copyright blocks result in automatic KDP account termination, without any hearing or recourse. So you don’t want to reach 2 blocks.

Very few people realize how shockingly easy it is to abuse DMCA. Since complainants’ identity is never verified (unless you are complaining against a huge best selling author like Dan Brown), anyone holding a grudge against an author can ruin his /her book. Indies are especially vulnerable. It either happens if someone holds a personal grudge, like you pointed out or someone online finds the author’s religious or political views offensive. At least in case of YouTube, most DMCA abuse is related to religious, political or human rights (like gay rights) views.

Please do keep me updated. If it doesn’t get resolved within next couple of days, I will see what options are available for you.

One thing, since I live in a complete opposite time zone, I might take 12 – 24 hours to reply. Hope you don’t mind.

I wish you the best.

Thanks

Kushal

The guy’s good, eh? (Or “the person,” I should say — I keep reminding myself I have no way of knowing who Kushal Das really is, including their gender.) The information about Amazon being provided above might well be true and genuinely helpful. And it’s all so personable. If I hadn’t found that connection between Rajesh Lahoti’s email address and Kushal Das’s Warrior Forum presence, I might’ve packed away my suspicions.

I wonder what “options” Kushal Das would’ve offered me in a few days? Maybe a Nigerian-prince-style suggestion to send along my account numbers? Or maybe nothing. Maybe the point is just to have an inside view of my reactions as I watch my nascent writing career wither way.

P.P.S. Nolander is back up at Smashwords! A big thank you to Smashwords for a quick, personal, and effective response.

Based on what a Smashwords rep said, I think I know how Rajesh Lahoti/Kushal Das showed evidence of prior publication of the material in my book. Apparently, they pointed Smashwords to a 2011 blog post that contained material from Nolander. Now, I don’t think blogs are a good form of evidence. Here on WordPress, when I revise one of my posts, the platform doesn’t add an “edited” line. The post just keeps the original date. If that’s the way most blogging software works, it’d be very easy to use a blog post to “prove” prior making-public of someone else’s writing: you’d just delete the contents of an old post and fill it up with someone else’s book text. Then it’d look like you’d written the book yourself, years earlier.

Ebook retailers need to be on the lookout for this sort of thing, IMO.

Editing to add: At this point (March 4, 2015), quite a few people have told me that the major blogging platforms allow you to set the publication date of a post to whatever you’d like, including in the past. This means ebook retailers and other carriers of digital content need to be awfully careful about using blog posts as evidence of prior publication. Blog posts should be examined by folks with expertise in dating them, not accepted as prima facie evidence.

March 5: A sad update — KDP refuses to unblock Nolander.

Somewhat later on March 5: Good news! Nolander is back up Amazon. Thanks so much to everyone who helped me deal with this. :)

March 7: Aftermath for Nolander, and thoughts on how retailers could react to fraudulent DMCA notices more effectively.

The Best Blog I’ve Ever Read

Becca Indie Books & Authors, Musings, Posts

Speculative fiction tends to ask impossible what-ifs? “What if zombies showed up?” “What if SETI got an answer?” “What if your neighborhood was plagued by the serial-killing ghost of a golden retriever?” Test cases for the extreme, right?

But there are plenty of everyday what-ifs, too, because every person’s experience is different. You can always look with curious empathy toward another and ask, “What if I were more like you?” “What is your experience of being human?” Reading helps us ask these questions. These questions are the place where fiction and nonfiction come together into the seamless empathy-engine known as writing. In this sense, all writing is speculative.

There are a lot of blogs out there. The best one I’ve ever read makes me ask what-ifs like these: “What if I had an intellectually disabled adult child?” “What if that child were terminally ill?” “What is it like, as a parent, to accept that you will care for your child from birth to death?” “What is it like to do that as a single parent?”

Check out Catherine Lea’s Happiness: Optional to see how one person does these things. (With love. With exhaustion and perseverance. With humor. And with sharp-eye perception that goes right to the center of herself and others.) Start at the beginning and read to the present. You won’t be disappointed.

Then come back and tell me about the best blog you’ve ever read.

Guest Post by Vanna Smythe, Author of Protector

Becca Indie Books & Authors

Can Love Bring Back The Natural Balance of Things?

Anniversary of the Veil bannerProtector (Anniversary of the Veil, Book One) is based on twin souls and the energy of love released when they find each other. The belief in twin souls, that is, a soul mate in the form of your one true love, existing somewhere in the world and pulling you towards them relentlessly and ceaselessly, is the underlying theme of Protector and the entire Anniversary of the Veil series. Only, in this world that I created the energy released when two twin souls find each other is used for purposes that are not altogether enjoyable for the pair.

In the world of the Anniversary of the Veil series, Joinings of such strong love, and the energy they release, have been used to build bridges and tall buildings, stem the flow of rivers, even change the duration and force of seasons. One thousand years ago, energy from one such pair was used to separate the world in half by a barrier only a select few can cross. On one side of this barrier, or Veil as it is called, they have continued with the forced Joinings, while on the other side the practice was eradicated. This was achieved mainly through the means of keeping the people ignorant and under the complete control of the Priesthood. The priests rule the realm from the shadows. Among other things, they also decide who can marry whom, so as to prevent any natural Joinings of love from occurring.

Protector takes place at a time when the fate of this barrier must be judged. The decision of whether the Veil should continue to stand, or if it is time to let the world be whole again, must now be made.

Princess Issa is one of a pair, called to her other half, her twin soul. She is ignorant of her true purpose, steered to go along and find her love, not knowing that a Joining waits at the end of her journey. Unbeknown to her, she is loved from a distance by Protector Kae, a soldier assigned as her bodyguard and the one whose role, whose decision, could decide the fate of all.

How long can a world where something as natural as the energy of love is twisted and used for artificial purposes exist? Will love prevail and restore the natural balance of things? What price must be paid? Answers to all these questions and more wait in Decision Maker, Book Two of the Anniversary of the Veil Series, which is already out.

You can follow Vanna on Twitter or Facebook, and visit her website.

Guest Post: How to Crack the Market in Your Own Country, by Jen Minkman

Becca Indie Books & Authors

Shadow of Time book blog bannerI have been writing paranormal romance for almost three years now. When I first learned about the genre, it was through Stephenie Meyer’s books, which were a huge hit in Europe at the time, my own country, the Netherlands, included. Inspired by the storytelling and sheer scope of possibilities within the genre, I started writing my own book. The story was called Shadow of Time and it was a paranormal romance set in Navajo Nation, heavily influenced by Native American spirituality, mythology, and history. I wanted to do something that hadn’t been done yet, and in a sense, I was already doing that by writing in this genre — I was (to my knowledge) the first writer of the genre in the whole of Holland. So when I sent out the manuscript to several publishing houses, I more or less hoped they would jump at the chance to publish something in this bestselling genre which was written by one of their compatriots.

minkman_author-picI was wrong. Rejection after rejection found its way to my mailbox, and most of those rejection letters weren’t even saying I couldn’t write — they just said they couldn’t sufficiently market my book. Slowly, it started to dawn on me: why would publishers invest in a nobody like me when it was so much easier to acquire translation rights for a bestselling book from the U.S. or the UK? Goodbye, Jen Minkman, hello L. J. Smith.

Stubborn as I am, I just wouldn’t give up, though. I started sending my manuscript to publishers known for their publications of original Dutch and Belgian work. And the hard work paid off: in the summer of 2011, I found a small independent publisher who liked my manuscript enough to publish it. However, I had to take a detour. Since Ellessy Publications hadn’t published any paranormal romance books yet, they asked me to write a ‘normal’ romance first, in order to prepare their market segment for me and my work. I wrote a chicklit in one summer, and Back to School! (set in a Dutch high school in The Hague) saw the light of day in September 2012. My first book (which would be my second published book) is scheduled to follow later this year, in September 2013.

Shadow of Time coverIn the meantime, it had occurred to me that translating my own book into English might prove lucrative. At the very least, it would reach far more people than just the 23 million Dutch-speaking people in Holland and Belgium. So I took it upon me to re-write and translate my book into English (I come from a family of English teachers and am a teacher of the language myself) and asked a freelance editor from the U.S. to have a thorough look at it.

This is why the book is already available in English, but not yet in my native tongue. It turns out self-publication works a lot faster, despite all the hard work it took me to prepare the book for its international appearance.

The upside? I am already getting very good reviews for Shadow of Time, and this makes me more confident the book will sell well in my own country as well.

The downside? I feel like foreign readers will probably appreciate me and my books more than the people from my own country ever will, and that somehow saddens me. Who knows, though? They might learn about the title because of rave reviews abroad!