I don’t follow the K-boards. I was never quite comfortable in the medium of a bulletin board, but a good friend and fellow author does. This morning she sent me the most incredible email describing for me all the ways authors try to game the system on Amazon.

With the odd way that Amazon pays authors in their Kindle Unlimited program, it’s almost as if they’re asking for people to try to test the limits of what they can get away with.

She told me of people who, when authors were paid by the book, they would serialize their novel so that they would get paid for selling more books–even going so far as to have ten page books.

As a side-note, I was nearly fooled into a trick like this by an author who serialized a book but didn’t say so in the book’s description. I thought I was buying a complete book… until it ended at a cliff-hanger in the middle of a scene. I bought the second book, but when that one was even shorter than the first and also ended at a cliff-hanger, I caught on and stopped buying books by that author–forever. It was a shame because she was a good writer and I enjoyed the first two parts of her book. But I hate being taken for a sucker.

Now that has Amazon started paying authors by the number of pages people read of their books, they have figured out a way to game that too. Apparently, they’re putting links in the back of their book for something the reader might want–another free book or a gift card or some such thing–so that the reader will skip to the back of the book to click the link. It then appears as if the reader has read the whole book and the author gets paid. They are apparently even writing or somehow putting together tomes of 3000 pages or more to get paid even more.

Because of this, my friend wrote to me in a panic because I also format all of her books for her–were the Table of Contents in the back of her books? Amazon is now, apparently, cracking down on this. They think that by putting the TOC in the back, my honest friend (and me and just about every author I’ve formatted for because I always put the TOC in the back unless asked not to) is trying to scam them into paying her for pages that haven’t been read.

I’ve always put the TOC in the back in order to give the reader more book to read when they click on the “Look Inside” feature. For the same reason, I also encourage authors to put their dedication and acknowledgements in the back, along with anything else that might normally be in the front of a book (other books by the author, a note to readers, whatever).

I’m trying to give readers more, but Amazon’s computers might see this as trying to game the system. So, what’s an honest author to do?

It really saddens me that there are authors who try to get money they’re not owed. It makes things difficult for those of us who are just trying to earn a little money while making people happy with our writing. Those of us who are writers first, business owners second are having to pay and up-end our lives and our work because of these dishonest people.

There was recently the dust-up over Brent Underwood and his book which was nothing more than a picture of his foot. With getting friends and relatives to rate and buy the book, he managed to become a “best selling author” on Amazon — if you didn’t hear about it, there’s a blog post about it here.

Yes, he could do this. Was this right? Obviously not. Is it going to mess things up for those of us who work hard and actually deserve all those wonderful reviews that are left for our books and the terrific sales that result from them? You know it’s going to be true.

Amazon has for a while been pulling reviews that they think come from associates (friends, family or co-authors) of an author. They remove reviews that they think were paid for. They seem, at times, to remove reviews just because they can.

There is nothing we can do about this, but to continue writing the best books we can. Maybe I’ll get a flurry of work from clients who want their TOC placed in the front of their books, rather than the back. I don’t know–but I certainly won’t charge my clients for this because a) it’s a minute’s work and b) it’s not their fault other authors are being so horrid.

What do you think about all this? Do you put your TOC in the front or the back? Have you heard about these games people are playing?

In my little effort, not to game the system, but simply give readers a fun book to read, my new book, Falling, is now available for pre-order. Want to know more? Read the first chapter? Click here. Want to buy your copy from Amazon? Click the cover. If you want to get it from Kobo or iBooks, it’s available there too. Thanks!!