You may have heard that numerous authors are having their accounts shut down, or their books pulled, or their royalties stripped, based on suspicious “gaming the system” activity on their Amazon account.

Now don’t get me wrong. Some of these authors did game the system and Amazon is trying to crack down on this misbehavior.

But the crack down is producing a lot of false positives, which I would argue is a bigger problem.

All the Proof I Personally Need

I’ve had multiple friends get the wrist slap from Amazon and have to pull their books from KU, and I’ve seen several legit author acquaintances (legit meaning actual people that come to conferences, write real books, and do a lot of business-y author stuff in the community) get their accounts completely shut down.

Many of those authors receive no or little warning and have no way to appeal or even get a straight answer on why they were booted.

Again, there are plenty of people who are actually scum-sucking scammers and deserve to get weeded out.

There are also a lot of legit authors who went a little too black hat with their marketing who maybe need a wrist slap or suspension.

But I know with fair certainty that there are several of these authors who did absolutely nothing wrong. Like, nothing. My knowledge is based on:

  • I know these authors and their character personally and have had ample chance to observe their behavior
  • I’ve known them for years and years and have built trust over a long period of time (i.e. they are not internet friends)
  • I know a lot about their business and marketing efforts because we’ve talked about it regularly
  • I had a conversation with them about what happened and believe what they are telling me

While I can understand if that’s not very convincing to you, it’s more than enough for me to say that whatever Amazon’s new policy is… there’s something bogus happening in their system.

What This Means for the Books

I’m confident Amazon will come up with a better way to deal with scammers… someday.

In the meantime, all the Growth Hacking For Storytellers series (and all my other books) have been pulled from Kindle Unlimited. I didn’t want to risk an issue and I’m also a big believer in boycotting things that don’t sit right with me.

I’m still seeing pagereads in my dashboard, so I’m guessing that if you already got the book through Kindle Unlimited, you are still able to enjoy it until you return it, at which point you wouldn’t be able to get it back.

I’m (slowly) taking the all my books wide and will keep the respective platforms updated as I receive those new links.

I’m Sorry. This Sucks.

I’m sorry if this affects you personally or you had planned to read the series using Kindle Unlimited and hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

I had put my books in Kindle Unlimited originally because I knew there were lots of authors on a budget who didn’t have much to spend on education. It was a way to give back to the community.

It feels really shitty to take away something that I know a lot of people used, just because of my own personal beliefs about it.

But then I realized… no the books aren’t in KU anymore, but I also don’t need Amazon to give back to a community.

I have plenty of ways to keep sharing what I know with other authors, including my website, freebies, podcast interviews, and IgnitersTV, my free Youtube show.

You can also email team@theworldneedsyourbook.com at any time and ask for review copies. We are happy to give them to you.

I’ll keep you updated on the situation over at Amazon and let you know if the books become available through Kindle Unlimited again.

Press on, Igniter!

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Monica Leonelle is a USA Today bestseller and the founder of The World Needs Your Book.