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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Sept 14, 2020 17:11:52 GMT
I was reading an old Kboards thread that was talking about the Mastermind group that started in 2017. This was back at the height of the bookstuffing days before all of the crackdowns and the bans. It was an exciting time to be on Kboards. Nowadays it's pretty boring on there. The only excitement we get is when Shane pops up to start a thread. So I don't know if there just aren't any controversies happening anymore. Maybe was right that all of the scamming stuff has stopped. Perhaps all of the marketers have moved on to other things.
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Post by writeway on Sept 15, 2020 17:19:26 GMT
The Mastermind Group (the original at least) has been gone for a few years. Many of those authors have been banned from Amazon after repeatedly coming back under other aliases. Chance Carter was the leader who wrote under many pen names, all eventually banned and the last thing I heard he was going wide but not sure if it was under Chance or someone else. That was probably two years ago and I haven't heard anything about him since so I am guessing he moved on from books. But you never know. Could be out here writing under another name but it would have to be wide because Amazon blocked it to where his IP address can't even get through, I hear. He might be employing ghostwriters and stuff but supposedly he can't publish to Amazon himself anymore. And last year he sold Bookclicker but authors still wouldn't work with it because of its reputation so not sure it's still around. He also did other things to suggest he has moved on from the book world altogether. I mean, what choice did he have? Scammers main goal is scamming KU so once they can't do that, why stick around?
Everything exploded with The Mastermind Group because of moles and spies who screenshot stuff and sent it to people like David Gaughran and others fighting scammers. Also, these spies sent stuff to Amazon and this is how the Mastermind group imploded and people got caught. Spies also doxxed the scammers, exposing their pennames, etc. This is how this stuff became public. If not for the spies, we might still not know.
Be warned though, there are still plenty of scammers in KU and Amazon is still page-stripping folks because of it. Been doing it heavily the last few months. So scammers are still around and always will be. As long as the world exists there will be scammers, new or otherwise. The big scam now is publishing fake content over and over and mostly in nonfiction because it's so much easier to sell.
It seems like it's over but it's just doesn't make the news much these days because authors got tired of fighting to clean up Amazon when they didn't put in much effort themselves. The last big scandals I've heard about were the Alexa Riley scam (they now publish on Eden Books) and the Copyright Chris scandal about the woman who plagiarized all those novelists, including Nora Roberts, and blamed it on some made-up Fiverr ghostwriter.
Since then I haven't heard of any big scandals and I'm in circles where I would. As I said, I don't think it makes the news anymore because people no longer care since Amazon does nothing. The people fighting this stuff no longer do it. David doesn't even do it anymore and Phoenix seems to have disappeared from the activist life as well. I can't blame them. Wasn't worth it.
On another note, anyone heard anything about Dirty Discourse? A few people said they tried to join but can't. I hear they are still around but definitely not as vital as they used to be. Folks can find all the info they need in FB groups now for free.
Timothy's forum was the place to be for this but you don't hear much of anything about scammers there these days. There used to be FB groups dedicated to outing these people but I'm not sure they are still around. Supposedly, they are secret groups and I was never involved in any.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Sept 16, 2020 0:57:16 GMT
Thanks writeway! I hadn't heard anything about publishing fake nonfiction content. It's sad that all the scammer-watch warriors have given up, but I suppose it's too much work for too little reward. And also maybe, fear of lawsuits. I'd forgotten about Bookclicker. The Bookclicker website still exists, I just went and checked. But that doesn't mean it's still active. I think you're right about Dirty Discourse not being active, as well. I still technically have an account there. All I can see are my old pms, but the last time I tried to login, I got an error message. I did hear something about Alexa Riley, and Copy/Paste Chris (that was a looooong time ago). I hadn't heard of Eden books, I'll have to check them out. I think the last scandal I heard about was Mark Whats-his-name, the FB ads guy that ordered thousands of his own book to make a list. You can still hear about some things on Kboards. The indie world seems really quiet, right now. Maybe that's good. I don't know. I don't think I hang out in the right places. |
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Post by writeway on Sept 16, 2020 2:40:06 GMT
Thanks writeway ! I hadn't heard anything about publishing fake nonfiction content. It's sad that all the scammer-watch warriors have given up, but I suppose it's too much work for too little reward. And also maybe, fear of lawsuits. I'd forgotten about Bookclicker. The Bookclicker website still exists, I just went and checked. But that doesn't mean it's still active. I think you're right about Dirty Discourse not being active, as well. I still technically have an account there. All I can see are my old pms, but the last time I tried to login, I got an error message. I did hear something about Alexa Riley, and Copy/Paste Chris (that was a looooong time ago). I hadn't heard of Eden books, I'll have to check them out. I think the last scandal I heard about was Mark Whats-his-name, the FB ads guy that ordered thousands of his own book to make a list. You can still hear about some things on Kboards. The indie world seems really quiet, right now. Maybe that's good. I don't know. I don't think I hang out in the right places. Oh, yeah, Mark Dawson. I forgot about that one. LOL! As for the nonfiction thing, yep that's been going on a long time and getting worse. Go to Youtube and type in Kindle Publishing and you will see videos full of people talking about buying pre-written content and republishing with different covers, etc. They also have these books that are not copyrighted that folks buy by the dozens and republish them. They make a lot of money doing it but it's just a racket. It's much easier scamming in nonfiction because nonfiction and self-help books sell easily because people are always looking for a certain topic. People just buy books with the same content and republishing them over and over, different people. And these books are cheap so they can buy all this content and keep recycling it. This is the number one tactic from these so-called Kindle gurus. Pitiful. |
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Sept 16, 2020 3:02:27 GMT
Ohhh, are you talking about PLR? I thought amazon stopped that a long time ago. That was popular back when amazon was new and they didn't have a rule against it. I haven't seen anyone promoting PLR for kindle for a long time. Right now low content publishing is all I see. Journals and notebooks and puzzle books. You can generate one of those in 20-30 minutes, and flood amazon with thousands a month. I also see a lot of marketers pimping children's picture books. They do sell a lot of PLR notebook interiors and things like that. For nonfiction books all I've seen suggested is write a really short book about something you know how to do, or pay a ghostwriter in India to rewrite someone else's book. I've also seen, go on reddit, ask how to do something, and then copy/paste everyone's answers into your book. I've also seen scrape the internet for recipes to make your own cookbooks. Oh, and interview books where you interview someone, have it transcribed and boom a book! And then there are summary books, that allow you to piggyback off popular authors SEO. Nonfiction is very easy for marketers to get into. I'll have a looksy at amazon and see if any nw trends have popped up that have somehow escaped my notice.  Thanks writeway ! I hadn't heard anything about publishing fake nonfiction content. It's sad that all the scammer-watch warriors have given up, but I suppose it's too much work for too little reward. And also maybe, fear of lawsuits. I'd forgotten about Bookclicker. The Bookclicker website still exists, I just went and checked. But that doesn't mean it's still active. I think you're right about Dirty Discourse not being active, as well. I still technically have an account there. All I can see are my old pms, but the last time I tried to login, I got an error message. I did hear something about Alexa Riley, and Copy/Paste Chris (that was a looooong time ago). I hadn't heard of Eden books, I'll have to check them out. I think the last scandal I heard about was Mark Whats-his-name, the FB ads guy that ordered thousands of his own book to make a list. You can still hear about some things on Kboards. The indie world seems really quiet, right now. Maybe that's good. I don't know. I don't think I hang out in the right places. Oh, yeah, Mark Dawson. I forgot about that one. LOL! As for the nonfiction thing, yep that's been going on a long time and getting worse. Go to Youtube and type in Kindle Publishing and you will see videos full of people talking about buying pre-written content and republishing with different covers, etc. They also have these books that are not copyrighted that folks buy by the dozens and republish them. They make a lot of money doing it but it's just a racket. It's much easier scamming in nonfiction because nonfiction and self-help books sell easily because people are always looking for a certain topic. People just buy books with the same content and republishing them over and over, different people. And these books are cheap so they can buy all this content and keep recycling it. This is the number one tactic from these so-called Kindle gurus. Pitiful. |
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