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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Jun 26, 2020 4:44:06 GMT
Because of the sensitive nature of some of the stuff we discuss on here some of our boards are private. As a guest you are only seeing two of the boards we have, The Safe Zone and the Services Area. If you sign up you will see the Bad, bad authors - name and shame forum, the off topic zone, and the erotica authors board. To be fair, none of these boards are very active and the few threads in them are quite old. So if you don't feel like creating an account I understand. I just wanted everyone to be aware that we do have hidden boards. In the public areas you can post as a guest though without needing to sign up, which I think is neat!  |
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Post by writeway on Jun 27, 2020 4:30:28 GMT
I'm taking the fact that the Bad Bad Authors thread being so old is a good sign that we don't have as many scammers in the industry as we used to. Might be naivete on my part but I've noticed lately I haven't heard about some huge scammer scandal. Maybe Amazon finally cracked down on it for good. Or maybe the scammers got tired of reinventing themselves and getting caught over and over. All that cheating and scamming has to be exhausting. |
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Jun 27, 2020 4:39:46 GMT
I'm taking the fact that the Bad Bad Authors thread being so old is a good sign that we don't have as many scammers in the industry as we used to. Might be naivete on my part but I've noticed lately I haven't heard about some huge scammer scandal. Maybe Amazon finally cracked down on it for good. Or maybe the scammers got tired of reinventing themselves and getting caught over and over. All that cheating and scamming has to be exhausting. I think a lot of it is that the old people who used to keep track of everything got exhausted and aren't doing it anymore. I doubt the scamming has stopped, although a lot of the loopholes have been closed. But I'm sure new ones are always emerging. It's possible that a lot of the black hat discussion has gone underground. But you could also be right and maybe they have all stopped.  |
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Post by writeway on Jun 29, 2020 2:13:53 GMT
I'm taking the fact that the Bad Bad Authors thread being so old is a good sign that we don't have as many scammers in the industry as we used to. Might be naivete on my part but I've noticed lately I haven't heard about some huge scammer scandal. Maybe Amazon finally cracked down on it for good. Or maybe the scammers got tired of reinventing themselves and getting caught over and over. All that cheating and scamming has to be exhausting. I think a lot of it is that the old people who used to keep track of everything got exhausted and aren't doing it anymore. I doubt the scamming has stopped, although a lot of the loopholes have been closed. But I'm sure new ones are always emerging. It's possible that a lot of the black hat discussion has gone underground. But you could also be right and maybe they have all stopped. K, I might be naive with this (normally I am not) but I do think most of the scamming is gone. Even in the FB groups, you don't see them talking about it anymore. I am sure there are still scammers because you will always have them but I don't think that Mastermind group is still around. I know that they kept changing their names, Chance Carter included and they kept getting caught. Maybe Amazon finally blocked them for good. That or they just got tired. I doubt the money was still worth it to be doing all that scamming. KU isn't as profitable as it once was. Page reads are down across the board and it's not as easy to zoom up the charts these days. Again, maybe I am being naive but I think that at least those old group of scammers are gone. Also, Amazon brought a new lady on to be in charge of KDP and I'm watching to see if she makes any significant changes to anything. I do agree maybe people also got tired of reporting and talking about it. But, yeah I've noticed for some months that I haven't heard much about any scammers. The last one I heard of was a "woman" who writes historical romance in KU. She was outed in a FB group and then kicked off Amazon. That was probably January or Feb. Haven't heard of any sense or at least if some are around they are not selling well enough to notice. |
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Post by writeway on Jun 29, 2020 2:17:18 GMT
I don't keep up with David Gaughran but it appears he has stopped tracking scammers. No one is linking to his blog about them anymore so I figure maybe he gave up. I haven't heard anything about Phoenix Sullivan since everyone ran from Kboards. I don't know if she is still tracking scams or not.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Jun 29, 2020 4:14:45 GMT
I had heard that David G quit, and Phoenix doesn't post anywhere I have access to. So I don't know if she's still watching or not. I had not heard that someone new was in charge of KDP. That's interesting! I am soooo out of the loop with the publishing world. I don't really have a lot of writer FB friends. I'm in a couple groups, but I rarely remember to visit.
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Post by writeway on Jun 29, 2020 20:47:58 GMT
I had heard that David G quit, and Phoenix doesn't post anywhere I have access to. So I don't know if she's still watching or not. I had not heard that someone new was in charge of KDP. That's interesting! I am soooo out of the loop with the publishing world. I don't really have a lot of writer FB friends. I'm in a couple groups, but I rarely remember to visit. Yeah, KDP hired a new lady to take over about two months ago. I heard about it in the FB groups. I figured David stopped following the scammers. I knew he was getting hell and maybe it wasn't worth it. interesting about Phoenix. I don't blame either of them if they've moved on though. |
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Jun 30, 2020 3:56:46 GMT
[Yeah, KDP hired a new lady to take over about two months ago. I heard about it in the FB groups. I figured David stopped following the scammers. I knew he was getting hell and maybe it wasn't worth it. interesting about Phoenix. I don't blame either of them if they've moved on though. [/quote]
I'm sure keeping up with all of those scammers must have been exhausting. Which FB groups are you in? Private ones? There so many groups anymore it's hard to keep track of them all.
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