All My Amazon eBooks Have Been Taken Off the Shelf!

[brobdingnagian]

Just a heads-up to anyone who is using PLR to publish ebooks on Amazon: KDP is cracking down hard on anyone with duplicate content. You'll get the following email:

Hello,

We’re contacting you regarding books you recently submitted via Kindle Direct Publishing.

Certain of these books are either undifferentiated or barely differentiated from an existing title in the Kindle store. We remove such duplicate (or near duplicate) versions of the same book because they diminish the experience for customers. We notify you each time a book is removed, along with the specific book(s) and reason for removal.

In addition to removing duplicate books from the Kindle store, please note that if you attempt to sell multiple copies or undifferentiated versions of the same book from your account, we may terminate your account.

If you have any questions regarding the review process, you can write to kdp-quality@amazon.com.

Best regards,

Kindle Direct Publishing
http://kdp.amazon.com

Lessons learned:

1. Don't believe every crap WSO that comes out about Amazon publishing! I had 22 books up, which only took a long weekend to "write" (more like format) and publish. I wasn't making a ton of money on them, maybe $60 over 2.5 months. Still, it was one of my first tastes of online success--albeit small--and to have it yanked away is a kick in the pants.

2. Of course anyone with more than half a brain (I stand disqualified, for obvious reasons) knows that you can't just take raw PLR and slap it into an ebook template and publish it.

3. Amazon is tightening up BIG TIME. This is Amazon Panda!

The takeaway? I'm going to continue to use PLR as an idea base for my ebooks. There's a lot of great PLR material out there, but you have to be a good enough writer to be able to put it all into your own words. Amazon craves unique content for its customers, not a bunch of recycled crap!

Anyway, I'm sure a bunch of us got those emails this week! Just wanted to gnash my teeth for a bit. Thanks!

[Andyhenry]

Yep - This was bound to happen.

I couldn't believe there were people running wso's telling others to grab PLR content and throw it together and call it a book and build an "Amazon book empire".

All the "create a book on Amazon in less than 10 minutes" crap was like lighting the touch-paper on an Amazon clamp-down.

It's only been good for me since I always create new content for my books and don't even use PLR as a starting place, but I do feel sorry for the suckers who got told to do this by people they were regarding as experts helping them make money.

There's certainly still scope for creating useful books and using existing material as the basis for content elements, but reprinting PLR has always been a spammy way to try and bring value to people without a lot of changes to make it unique and valuable in its own right.

How would YOU feel if you bought 5 books on your favourite subject and found out they were all the same with different titles? Pissed off I would imagine.

I think it's a good thing and once again should only be a concern for people who were trying to game the system rather than offer new value to people.

Andy

[Nathy Curiel]

I bought a WSO about and in the beginning it worked. But offcourse is was bound to happen some day

[brobdingnagian]

Hi Andy.

Thanks for weighing in. Yep--I learned that lesson the hard way!

Ah well, at least I'm a decent writer and, as the US Marine Force Recon is fond of saying, "Adapt! Improvise! Overcome!"

And I digress...

Have a nice day.

[cpaman]

I got nailed too. I even hire a full time person for this project. Silly me! I've moved them over to writing articles for our sites.

[brobdingnagian]

I got nailed too. I even hire a full time person for this project. Silly me! I've moved them over to writing articles for our sites.

I was less than a month from hiring a VA and scaling this up. I guess I dodged that bullet! Phew!

[wealthydon]

What else do you expect? Online business has become a
breeding ground for mediocrity (NOT YOU IN PARTICULAR!)
and people are becoming lazy by the day.

NO creativity any more. Just REGURGITATION of all the old
stuff.

[brobdingnagian]

+1 wealthydon.

The whole time I was formatting those books and slapping em up on Amazon, a nagging little voice in the back of my mind kept saying, "boooooolllshiiiiiiiiiiittt. boooooolllshiiiiitt."

Shoulda listened.

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by Danielle Clarke

Considering that you've just been slapped down by Amazon, I think you've got a really good and admirable attitude.

You're one step ahead of most in that you already know how to format for Kindle. PLUS you've figured out the correct way to use good PLR: someone else has done the research for you, but it still has to be entirely rewritten.

In the big picture, cleaning up Amazon can only be a good thing. Good luck, brobdingnagian, in getting back up and running again with unique and valuable content.

Amen to that.

It's all to common to see people come here and just bitch and moan about how unfair something like this is when deep down they knew they were creating crap.

It's refreshing to see someone who's open enough to take it on the chin and learn from it without the victim mentality.

[ureshii]

There's a template for that? Where can i get it? =P

[SUPER Louie]

Lol if it didn't work on Amazon. Try Barnes and Noble, as well as iBooks, maybe they don't have much content police in their management

[LegitIncomes]

Originally Posted by siocowiz

Lol if it didn't work on Amazon. Try Barnes and Noble, as well as iBooks, maybe they don't have much content police in their management

I hope you are joking.

[sbucciarel]

You won't get a lot of sympathy from a lot of people for putting garbage on Amazon and expecting them to keep it there.

Great News from Amazon Kindle!!!

Selling Garbage as a Business Model

[Contentpimps]

Hi Suzanne,

I asked this in another thread, but could your "mobile site" app also be used on a laptop, desktop, etc? Also asked about .mobi, can you use this for both "formats"? Thanks, newbie questions I know...

[PPC-Coach]

Another magic pill and shortcut to success dies.

What a shocker.

Put up unique quality content that may involve...*gasp*...WORK and you'll be fine.

[sbucciarel]

Originally Posted by Contentpimps

Hi Suzanne,

I asked this in another thread, but could your "mobile site" app also be used on a laptop, desktop, etc? Also asked about .mobi, can you use this for both "formats"? Thanks, newbie questions I know...

I'll pm you with my email so we don't hijack this thread with an irrelevant topic.

[nnsjw702]

There are many more options available other than amazon. My advice, just don't stick to what everyone do, try each and everything.

[Christophe Young]

I just got that email yesterday. Funny, I noticed that the other listing for one of my ebooks was taken down off of Kindle. That's good because it was someone else's listing for my ebook. Now, only my listing is up there which is the official copy of my book.

I applaud what they are doing over there on Amazon!

[David Chung]

What's to stop someone from swiping your (non-Amazon-listed) ebook and listing it on Amazon as their own ebook though? If they do that before you do, does theirs become the 'official' listing? How does Amazon tell who's the real author?

[Christophe Young]

Originally Posted by David Chung

What's to stop someone from swiping your (non-Amazon-listed) ebook and listing it on Amazon as their own ebook though? If they do that before you do, does theirs become the 'official' listing? How does Amazon tell who's the real author?

That's a good question. I actually contacted them a while back telling them that the other listing was not mine and they have to remove it. Amazon only recently removed it so I'm glad they zapped the right listing.

Also, I have the words "Official Copy" in my description. I don't know if that helped or not.

My author name matches my Amazon username which is on the ebook cover, so I'm assuming they put two and two together.

[Heidi White]

Is it possible to have your eBook on Amazon published under your name (first)- and then sell it as PLR as well.

Can you have your cake and eat it too?

[M Thompson]

Congratulations on getting on the front page of arstechnica now if only you could have had a link in there!

Amazon cracking down on spammy "private label" e-books

[brobdingnagian]

Congratulations on getting on the front page of arstechnica now if only you could have had a link in there

Wonderful, now my idiocy is truly on parade. LOL. Oh well.

I have since added a link to my sig.

[M Thompson]

Originally Posted by brobdingnagian

Wonderful, now my idiocy is truly on parade. LOL. Oh well.

I have since added a link to my sig.

I was too polite to say that ... but it did cross my mind!

hmmm is a PLR product quite the right sig link in the circumstances

[kindsvater]

I have never understood the desire to publicly post: I spammed [pick your service] and was banned.

But since you're apparently just going to rewrite the PLR, the lessons about quality and unique content (not just quickly rewritten content) has apparently not been learned.

It is truly amazing how much time people spend on something that (1) does not have a high profit opportunity to begin with, and (2) carries a high risk of having all that time simply being deleted.

.

[sadiecopywriter]

As a ghostwriter for years (and a newbie to Internet marketing) I must say I'm little stunned. I was under the impression you're always supposed to rewrite PLR. In fact, unless I'm doing a specific paragraph by paragraph rewrite for a client, I just treat it like research and ideas and rewrite from the ground up.

Some PLR articles are very good. They're a great starting point. But you have to assume everybody's already using these exact same articles. It's better to combine them from multiple sources to create one good piece of work.

In fact, one of my biggest writing jobs right now is rewriting PLR for my clients so it's not even identifiable as the article it started with. People choose me because they know I can produce a brand-new interesting article from a pretty common PLR.

Mercedes
writetherightstuff.com online writing services

[K Smith]

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

Amen to that.

It's all to common to see people come here and just bitch and moan about how unfair something like this is when deep down they knew they were creating crap.

It's refreshing to see someone who's open enough to take it on the chin and learn from it without the victim mentality.

He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day. Good luck with your 'new and improved' kindle publishing experience!

[Doot]

The main thing is to keep your head up and keep trying Your attitude after you got slapped is very good, don't let this get you down just keep pushing

[JohnMcCabe]

Here's another thing about using PLR for the 'research'...

You may want to do some fact-checking of your own. More than a few PLR providers consider reading and rewriting a few articles from directories as "research".

I have more than a few PLR products on my hard drive which sound perfectly reasonable if you're totally ignorant of a subject. To anyone with even half a clue about the subject, the factual errors are glaring.

Ignorance of a subject is to expected from the buyer of a basic text on a subject. It's unforgivable from the so-called expert author peddling the "booollshiiittt".

With a few notable exceptions, my only use for PLR is to suggest a basic structure for a book and to point to possible areas of interest for further research. I don't rely on PLR authors to provide accurate information.

[sifiauthor]

I've had people using this program STEAL from me by taking sections of my books and posting them as their own. Why not do something unique-- write your own damn book? Amazon may just kick you off, but I've retained a lawyer. If someone copies any of my books beyond fair use, you'll be paying in court. Already got one down. Going after the rest.

[Rus Sells]

Next time listen and obay!

You got outed and drew attention to this forum in a negative fashion.

Amazon Dumping Copycat "Private-Label" Ebooks - The Consumerist

Your forum user name is named in the post and a link to this thread is included.

Originally Posted by brobdingnagian

+1 wealthydon.

The whole time I was formatting those books and slapping em up on Amazon, a nagging little voice in the back of my mind kept saying, "boooooolllshiiiiiiiiiiittt. boooooolllshiiiiitt."

Shoulda listened.

[eddale]

I'm glad it happened, (not personally to you of course) but it frees the market up for good quality original work.

Ed

[foreignnative]

It's been said numerous times by so many people. In order to BIG, successful, and most importantly sustainable you must produce quality content. If you always have to change you strategies and tactics you're not moving away from trading hours for dollars and moving towards passive income. My favorite new term that I heard on the foolish adventure podcast is that nowadays you have to become an "entreuprdoucer." Best of luck in you endevours to create awesome ebooks that help people and sell.

[Link]

I agree that producing your own high quality content is the way to go. I also agree that using PLR material for ideas, concepts, and even good phrases and titles can work great.

These products take longer to create, but hopefully that will make you think more about the niche you're in, the customers you're targeting, and the product you're delivering before you put it up. Getting all these things right, plus high quality content, will translate to much better results anyway.

[Christian Chan]

Originally Posted by brobdingnagian

Just a heads-up to anyone who is using PLR to publish ebooks on Amazon: KDP is cracking down hard on anyone with duplicate content. You'll get the following email:



Lessons learned:

1. Don't believe every crap WSO that comes out about Amazon publishing! I had 22 books up, which only took a long weekend to "write" (more like format) and publish. I wasn't making a ton of money on them, maybe $60 over 2.5 months. Still, it was one of my first tastes of online success--albeit small--and to have it yanked away is a kick in the pants.

You should ask for refunds. These WSO sellers clearly have no interest in your success. They resort to outright lies.

[dbarnum]

Originally Posted by cpaman

I got nailed too. I even hire a full time person for this project. Silly me! I've moved them over to writing articles for our sites.

Have your worker write new ebooks now, not just articles. Do some research to come up with popular title topics and start cranking out your own series now.

[waken]

Congratulations for discovering it that early. Failure is roadblock that you have to pass before reaching success.

[brobdingnagian]

Congratulations for discovering it that early. Failure is roadblock that you have to pass before reaching success.

You said a mouthful there, bud. It was a harsh lesson, but I'm glad I learned it before I was too invested.

[Shane Bryan]

I'm fairly new to publishing to Kindle but have had some successes.

I do buy almost everything available about publishing to Kindle. While I have learned a lot, there is an awful lot of crap being peddled out there too. I knew from beginning that publishing a quality Kindle book "in 30 minutes" was total BS. I stayed far away from most of the questionable methods promoted.

I do however use quite a bit of PLR in my Kindle publishing and I thought I'd share my experiences with that.

I like PLR. I'm not much of a writer so I find this a great starting place. I look for quality PLR. I spend a lot of money on it and sort a few gems out of piles of crap. I have published a few pieces unaltered - I thought they were great as is. But I do tend to add to most of my PLR. I don't do a lot of rewriting but I do add more relevant content to improve the book. I also usually come up with my own titles and cover art.

I too have received a letter like that above on one of my projects. I put an unaltered PLR up that had been floating around for awhile. I didn't realize til after the fact. That letter kinda scared me.

Later I published a new PLR book I obtained off the WF. Turns out I wasn't the only one. But instead of blocking it, they wrote to me and asked for clarification or proof that I was either the real author or that I had publishing rights to the book. I wrote back and explained to them that it was PLR off the WF. I gave them the link, a copy of my receipt and a copy of PLR license. They published my book 2 days later. At the time there were only 2 other copies up and they both were too lazy to even change the cover art! I just checked again - now there are 5 different copies up! Mine is the only one with original artwork and a print edition available thru CreateSpace! They are letting some duplicate stuff thru. I'm guessing eventually they will evaluate for quality and knock several of these off.

After this experience I wrote back to them with some questions. And I even got a reply back! First I was worried about getting my account banned trying to publish duplicate content, ie PLR. They assured me that wouldn't happen. What they meant in this warning was something different. - "In addition to removing duplicate books from the Kindle store, please note that if you attempt to sell multiple copies or undifferentiated versions of the same book from your account, we may terminate your account." This was directed to the idiots who try to publish same book to different audiences - ie: Taxes for Doctors, Taxes for Handymen, Taxes for Taxidermists, etc. - where all same other than minor changes. Run into few WSOs advocating doing just this and knew were crap!

They wouldn't really say but I think the fact that I also publish some physical books with CreateSpace also makes a difference. They have never had a problem associating my Kindle edition with my print book; even when Kindle copies exist. This is just my thoughts based on my experience. I'm not sure is actually valid.

My adventures with PLR have educated me a lot on publishing. I'm likely to continue using some but do recognize the importance of branching out and creating my own material too.

I'm not just a publisher. I have always been an avid reader and buy a lot of books - both print and digital. I love my Kindle! I spend a lot of time carefully formatting my books; making them look good and making sure the content is good. Before publishing anything I ask myself if I would be a happy customer after buying this book? Or would I feel ripped off buying a load of crap? I won't publish anything I wouldn't be happy to buy and own. Quality comes first.

For those of you interested: I have only been publishing to Kindle for about 6 weeks. I have 16 titles up. 8 of those titles are also available as print editions thru CreateSpace as well. I haven't done any promotion. So far royalties from both sources add up to a little over $200. Its not a lot yet but I do see this as a success and will continue building my publishing empire.

Hope my experiences will help someone else out there.

Shane

[mounds]

*Not roasting you here; this is more of a general post*

Sadly, you see a lot of this kind of stuff on WarriorForum.

Take a second and imagine YOU are the CEO of Amazon. You set up this great self-publishing platform that could potentially make people a lot of money. Then, some people looking for a cheap fix start uploading garbage, effectively ruining your marketplace. These people begin to threaten your company's income and reputation. You squash them like insects, and your company rolls on.

Now look at it from the other end. You've heard IM is a great way to make money. After spending some time in the WSO section, you deduce that by purchasing PLR and self-publishing it to Kindle, you can clean up. Lots of people are doing it, but hey, Amazon won't catch on... right?

Take the following two sentences and brand them into your mind: Amazon and Google are well-managed companies that are not going to allow a bunch of yahoos to ruin their business. If it doesn't look like a good business decision for them, don't expect it to work out for you.

I learned that lesson when I was 10 years old. I found a guy in Texas who bought and sold dead bugs. I sent him a box of about 500 specimens, most of them ruined. I didn't think he'd ever notice. He did. I got about 400 specimens back, along with a meagre check. Never heard from him again. That's cold, hard reality right there. When you're dealing with real business people, don't pedal BS.

-Tim

[ocean80]

Looks like it is indeed getting harder and harder to sell at KINDLE...

[Daniel Evans]

"Do your own sh*t" is the best and most simple advice I've ever heard and had the pleasure to pass to the next person.

There's so much more to gain.

[onegoodman]

This have been going for a while PLR or MRR, they both going down on kindle, they are not happy with duplicate ebooks over there

[luvtrees]

I can't believe they ever accepted all the duplicate and PLR books in the first place. Slapping a new title and cover image on content that has been floating around for ages was never going to last.

[salegurus]

Originally Posted by Louie Sioco

Lol if it didn't work on Amazon. Try Barnes and Noble, as well as iBooks, maybe they don't have much content police in their management

You obviously don't get it.

Originally Posted by luvtrees

Slapping a new title and cover image on content that has been floating around for ages was never going to last.

LOL, i thought you were going to add WSO section at the end of your sentence...

[becanada]

PLRs are great for bonuses, building opt in listing and of course passive selling with your links in the PLRs [you give away!]...

Perhaps use the PLRs as a starting point; update the info / add to it ; or even merge multiple PLRs together [and update content]... if you plan to sell / resell...

D

[YasirYar]

I noticed this as well. The only real solution is to take PLR books and rewrite them so that they really are your own unique creation. Not the easy money that it used to be, but I knew those so called courses were a waste of time and money.

[Robin3972]

I thought I'd give the Kindle PLR book business a try and upload some ebooks, too. I put three up there sometime in June. I have many plr books on my hard drive and thought this might be a good use for them and a way to make some easy money. It was worth a shot I thought. I was too busy with my other biz at that time to put up anymore though right then so I didn't get around to uploading anymore.

About a month after I put those three up I got a similar email from Amazon saying that they had taken down 2 of the books because they were the same as many others.

However, they still have the third one up there even though it is the same as others. Probably a matter of time before it gets taken down, too.

So, any more that I put up in the future will definitely be rewritten considerably.

It is too bad that I missed out on the easy money but this is a good thing for consumers that they are cleaning house and getting rid of a lot of the spam / duplicate stuff that is out there.

[georgebush]

i have 2 books on kindle - one has sold none, the other has sold 4 in 3 months, both took me about 3 months to write each! i can see why people opt for the easy route, however, having said that. john locke made £1 million with only 9 books!!!!! so i figure you do not need hundreds of books in the first place -- you just need a few really good ones that people will appreciate -- i think maybe the other problem is finding the right niche.

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by georgebush

i have 2 books on kindle - one has sold none, the other has sold 4 in 3 months, both took me about 3 months to write each! i can see why people opt for the easy route, however, having said that. john locke made £1 million with only 9 books!!!!! so i figure you do not need hundreds of books in the first place -- you just need a few really good ones that people will appreciate -- i think maybe the other problem is finding the right niche.

If you look into the story (which Locke sells on the Kindle platform), he sold a million books by doing the work to market them and build his audience. He didn't get there by slapping some PLR up and waiting for the checks to roll in...