KDP which means Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon’s e-book self-publishing platform which was launched in November 2007. KDP is like the digital version of a publishing house. Its a platform where writers publish and sell ebooks, paperbacks and hardcover books for free without stress. The books include comics, textbooks, novels, journals etc.
It was brought to the notice of Amazon’s kindle that some greedy Nigerians who have exploited this platform over the previous months solely for monetary gains, not minding the low-quality end-value of the books that they are publishing, hence, Amazon has started banning Nigerian publishers on Kindle platform.
Many publishers no longer want to pay the price of hardwork to produce quality content books.
Here is a fault on the side of Amazon
Amazon pays an author a royalty (a certain percentage) when a book ships in response to a paid customer order. However, If the customer subsequently returns the book to Amazon, no amount is deducted from the publisher’s KDP account. Amazon either disposes of the book or puts it on a warehouse shelf to fill the next customer order.
Why is Amazon banning alot of Nigerian accounts on their KDP platform
1. Plagiarized covers
Some writers copy the cover of best selling books or images on it, this is against the Amazon KDP metadata guidelines.
On the Metadata Guideline page, toward the end of the page, there is a section on guidelines for cover images, which clearly states that you are not allowed to create similar-looking covers.
2. Creating multiple KDP accounts
One of the rules as seen in the terms and conditions of Amazon KDP is that you can’t have more than one KDP accounts but today, you see users open more than one account. Another thing is that you can’t register a second account with the same information after your first account has been banned, if you do, they will surely catch you based on your I.P address and the new account will get banned too.
3. Copyright infringement
Some publishers don’t know what it takes to publish a book, hence we have low value and low content books. There are also some self-acclaimed coaches on social media claiming that it’s possible to publish a book per day on Amazon. It is not possible to publish a book per day on Amazon except you have already been engaging in copyright infringement.
4. Thin content
Its surprising to find out that there are some books on KDP with no more than three pages, what the authors do is to design an attractive cover, write a deceptive description and add a price.
5. Unpublishing and republishing
Amazon gives a little boost to newly published books by ranking them on the first page to test how they perform during the first month. But greedy publishers unpublish their already written books then republish the same books to trick the Amazon KDP algorithm. Unknowing to them, Amazon employees are extremely smart and will definitely clamp down on these deceptive techniques which are aimed at increasing sales.
Some online coaches coach these people on these illegal strategies that ultimately portray a bad image for Nigerians, which has led to Amazon banning alot of Nigerian accounts on their KDP for their deceptive advertising and recruitment methods.
Here is how these “online coaches” contribute to this problem
*They deceive people by telling them that publishing books on Amazon “do not require you to be a writer.”
* They will show you how to use Google to find information from other people’s books, then you tweak it a little, and boom! It gets published on Amazon.
*As a way of escaping plagiarism checks, what they do is download books from hot niches in different languages then translate those books to English using software like Google Translate, put their name on them and re-publish them on Amazon.
*The majority of them acquire unsuspecting buyers by posting fake Amazon KDP royalty reports.
*They technically teach people how to steal other people’s content and publish them on Amazon KDP in order to get paid. The original authors of those books aren’t given credit for their works.
*They teach their students how to get around other plagiarism detection measures without actually focusing on providing unique content.
*The few books that are original content are not edited and do not have good cover designs, they are not properly formatted either. They simply upload them on Amazon without understanding how to publish books on Amazon.
All these are done because they are looking for shortcuts to make quick money.
Most of these online coach and their disciples disobey the terms and conditions to publish books on other platforms on Amazon Kindle limited. They also publish these courses on other popular platforms where they run ads and convince people to buy them in order to earn money in dollars.
They are helping more people to learn the wrong thing while earning quick money by trying to beat the system. This has become a vicious cycle, where some coaches taught the present coaches and now they are teaching new people, some of them don’t know that what they are doing is wrong and this is leading many young people astray. They are being taught how to make money from other people’s sweat without giving credit to the original author.
Some publishers have published over 100 books which is not their original content. This has given Nigeria a bad name as Amazon now bans alot of Nigerian accounts.
This is a note of warning to coaches out there to stop teaching people the wrong thing as it causes more havoc to the Nigerian name. If at all you write someone’s content, ensure to give credit to the original author on the reference page. Only your original content should be published on Amazon KDP. You can be sued to court for plagiarism, write and publish your own content while following the right instructions given.
Read the KDP guidelines before going ahead
Original Post by Stanley Umezulike on Facebook: Why Amazon is banning lots of Nigerian accounts on their platform