KDP Amazon Account Termination Resolution for Authors

Are you an author that has suffered an Amazon account suspension or termination? If you are, well, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, a professional self publishing services firm. One of the topics that almost never came up in the first five years of Book Launchers, but has come up half a dozen times in the last few months, is Amazon account termination. Now, thankfully, this has not happened to any of our Book Launchers authors. Wait, is there some wood I can knock on? Like right now? Like knock, knock knock. Okay, knock on wood. It's not something I've had to deal with personally or even secondhand through a client, but it is something that comes up a lot more lately in the comments here and in emails we get. Maybe it's because there have been a ton of Amazon glitches in the last year, or possibly it's to do with the Amazon scams that have been becoming rampant. I'm not sure what the reason is, but it's become a hot topic, and some so hot that 20 books to 50k in Las Vegas in November 2022. It was an entire presentation. Well, not the entire presentation, but it was a subset of a presentation. And I had a conversation with Dave Chessen after, and he said that I really needed to do a video because it's something that a lot of authors are needing help with right now. So with Dave's permission to share some of his advice from his talk, here's what you need to do if you find yourself facing an Amazon account suspension or termination. First, if it's a suspension, just know that they've put a hold on your account while they review something that they think could be in violation of the Terms and Services. It's essentially a slap on the wrist, and most authors will receive a notification from them as to why they did this. What your actions are Usually, you're going to have to confirm you've read their Terms and Conditions and Content Guidelines, and that you've now removed anything that was in violation to those guidelines. Essentially, you're going to get a form email that will likely look a lot like this. Before we can reinstate your account, we need you to do the 1. Reply to this message with the following declaration I confirm that my catalog meets the Content guidelines and that I have obtained the necessary rights to all titles currently published by me for sale on Amazon. I also affirm that I will not submit any new titles for which I do not have all the necessary rights and 2 review your catalog, including cover images and metadata, to ensure that it meets the Content Guidelines, including for trademark and copyright issues and 3 remove any titles from your catalog that do not comply with the Content Guidelines or for which you haven't obtained the necessary rights. Until we receive a response from you regarding this issue, your account will remain blocked. As a reminder, violations of our Content Guidelines may negatively impact your account status, and you may also lose access to optional KDP services. If you have questions or believe you've received this email in error, reply to this message. Regards, Amazon KDP so pretty simple. Do what they say and once you confirm you've done the above, your account is likely to be reinstated. If this happens again, though, it could be terminated and termination is much, much more serious. At this point, termination means your account is dissolved. It's usually because of repeated violations or egregious errors. It is also in most cases unrecoverable. So take their terms and conditions and Content guidelines seriously. And if you get a suspension, make sure you are extra careful suspect so why does this happen? Well, there's a lot of reasons that it can happen, but it's most likely to happen if you try to open more than one KDP account. Because, as per KDP's terms and conditions, you can only have one account at a time. And if your account is terminated, you cannot open a second account with the same information. That information is your name, email address, address, and banking information. Your book cover resembles another book too closely is another potential reason right from their tnc. But the title, subtitle, author name, and series information on your cover should match the corresponding metadata fields. Covers that may be misleading because they closely resemble another book's layout. Color scheme, fonts and or images aren't allowed. So the other thing is, Amazon could think you're publishing duplicate content. While this isn't something that typically happens to nonfiction authors, it's more common in the low content no content space. It is something that can arise on occasion. Usually, unpublishing and republishing your book is the trigger. Well, there's legitimate reasons to do this. Amazon's algorithm is smart, and it identifies authors that they think might be trying to game the system and rank their books as best sellers. Research has shown that Amazon does give preference to books that are new, so there's a reason authors could do this to try to reignite a book's sales that aren't selling. But this could be bad news if you're caught doing this. So anything that's in violation of the terms you've agreed to, which includes copyright violations content that is against their content guidelines, which is essentially anything they determine as hate speech, promotes the abuse of children, other nasty things, advocating terrorism, or other materials that they deem inappropriate or offensive. So preventing termination should be your number one goal. This means you should be acting the minute you get any sort of email from Amazon saying your account has been suspended or that there's an issue with your account, letting that lapse for very long will result in termination. And termination is trouble territory. If you do get terminated or your suspension isn't being lifted after you've taken the actions Amazon has asked you to. Well, here's the full approach. Number one, the minute you get an email from Amazon about a violation or suspension, get on it immediately. This means if you're taking a vacation, make sure your email is monitored. Number two, Contact an Amazon human. Keep trying until you get a human, and sometimes maybe try again to get a different human if the first human wasn't that helpful. When you get a human, be polite and admit your mistake. I know emotions are high, so it might be hard to just hold back, but you need to admit that you made a mistake that caused the situation and explain what you're doing to fix it. If that doesn't work, Number three, talk to the alliance of Independent Authors and see if there's some sort of support they can offer you. Number four, if you aren't getting a resolution, you may need to get a lawyer. 5. If all else fails, well, now you know why I'm always saying it's best to go wide, and it's really important to build your own audience. It's really tough to be dependent on one entity and have them hold everything in their hands. I mean, just ask me how rough it's been waiting for U.S. citizen Immigration Services to give us a decision on our work authorization in the U.S. let alone our overall status. As someone who wants to live in the US I don't have a choice. But as an author, you do have a choice, and lots of them. So you really don't need to put all your books in an Amazon basket. So many books all in one basket. All that said, if you are terminated off of Amazon, you do have a few options. You can create a new business, sell your rights to a publishing company, or go wide for the win. It's not the end of the line, and sometimes hitting an obstacle just means you have to find a new way. And have you ever had your account suspended? Or do you have other tips for authors on this subject? Please share in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some fabulous noboringbookswag. Now, after watching this, you might be thinking that you want to make sure you're selling your ebooks on more than just Kindle. If you think that Draft two digital or Publish drive might be your solution, then this video is exactly what you should watch next. If not, this is the video YouTube highly recommends you watch right now. Both are guaranteed good viewing, so click on over and I'll see you there.