Where Next For Review Scams. KU, Maybe?

Here’s a neat little variation of the age-old buy-a-review scam.

This enterprising Brit will, if you hand over a fiver (£5 GBP) buy your ebook from Kindle UK, up to a value of £1.99, and then leave you a VERIFIED positive review. (LINK)

For a £1.99 title you’ll get 70% back anyway from Amazon, so £1.40 coming back to you from the buy itself. Therefore a five-star verified purchase review for just £3.60.

Anyone with more money than scruples racing off to take advantage should bear in mind Amazon can, if so inclined, pretty easily find out what this person’s Amazon account is, ban her and remove any reviews she has placed.

This from the Amazon review guidelines: (LINK)

“We do not permit reviews or votes on the helpfulness of reviews that are posted in exchange for compensation of any kind, including payment (whether in the form of money or gift certificates), bonus content, entry to a contest or sweepstakes, discounts on future purchases, extra product, or other gifts.”

Meantime we await with interest the first entrepreneur to offer their services to download, say, five of your KU titles and skim through 10%, netting you a pot payout for each one. A KU subscriber need only get two paying clients to cover the subscription.

For the author it would be a no-brainer (no ethics, either, but that’s another story). With the pot at around $1.30 per borrow, five titles downloaded and skimmed through (by 10% read, Amazon just count how many pages were turned) would net the author $6.50.

The scam artist charging $5 could easily carry ten clients a month, netting them $50 income. Twenty clients and a $100 a month, etc. Pay out the KU subscription and they are up $40/$90 on the deal. As KU is unlimited they can download and skim through ten books in as many minutes, never reading a word of any, and making themselves a nice little income and the author a nice little income.

Maybe it’s already happening. If not, rest assured it soon will be.

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