KDP Crackdown 2025: 3 Weirdest AI Flags + 5 Reasons Authors Get Banned

Foreign. Hello and welcome to our livestream today. And guess what? This is an extra special live because it is our 1000th video. Yep, this is number 1000. So it is an extra special celebration. So, so glad that you are here to join us for it. Timothy and Gary, it's wonderful. And. And Angela's hiding behind the scenes. And Alyssa is here so you can see her. And Alyssa runs our books hub, so she is the one that oversees all the fun that all of our authors have as they journey from writing to editing to book design and then distribution. So as today's subject is all about the fun things that happen when you upload your book to KDP and that KDP can do to you. And actually some of these things happen after your book has already been out. Oh, the joys that can happen with kdp. So Elissa's here because as I was talking to her about this, you know, the fact is I don't experience these things firsthand. She does, but I don't. I hear them from her, I hear them from other authors. You know, I have secondhand and sometimes thirdhand experience. So I. I thought I would bring the person on who has all the experience. So. All right, we've got lots of people here saying hello. So awesome. Laura's here, Ellen's here, Renee, Kevin, Jordan, Jason. So glad to have you all here. And yes, a thousand videos. So here's the extra special thing. And sorry, Tim, I know being in Australia. Timothy, we won't be sending you this, but we are going to give away, I think. Did you confirm you have one, Angela, before I say it. Oh, she doesn't know for sure. Okay, I can't say it then there is some extra special swag something that we think she has in her closet. It is either our yeti mug and if she has. Because she thinks she has one in her closet somewhere, but if she does not have that, it will be our seventh year anniversary mug, which was this beauty right here. So we are going to give away an extra special prize for or somebody in the U.S. i'm sorry, when we ship these things overseas, it costs more than the thing itself, both for us and the duty that you get to pay when it arrives. So. So celebrating our thousandth, that will be somebody. So everybody who said hello, you're already entered. If you haven't said hello, make sure you do because we'll draw for that. Okay, awesome. And Joe's here too, so welcome. And Laura, welcome. Thank you, everybody. All right, so kick the kicking this thing off. Just checking My notes. So there's some weird issues that have come up with kdp not necessarily related to uploading and flagging. The one is an older one that came up and we talked about it already. So I'm not, you know, it's in an older live stream somewhere but it was imposter books under real authors names and this was really made public by Jane Friedman who has the bottom bottom line. I think she, she changed the name of her. Her. I think it used to be the hot sheet anyways her paid newsletter but she is one of my go to sources for or publishing news and she had a bunch of fake books under her name before Amazon removed the fakes. And this is also there's a video that I did a while ago on Scout I think is what it was called. It's a product that Dave Chessen had created for you to monitor changes in your account. And I think it's really important if you're not using the Scout tool and he might have changed the name on it too but it's an extension that you can put on Chrome and it will flag when things are changing with your book. So if you start getting some bad reviews or if you start getting reviews that can be an indicator that it's not something weird is going on. If there's other sudden price changes or another format comes out, you want to be monitoring that. And this is also one of the reasons why I've talked about having all the formats covered for your book. Because as soon as you leave a format open there is the possibility it's not a guaranteed. But if you have a really good selling book and it doesn't have a hardcover or it doesn't have an audiobook or it doesn't have an E book that opens the door for some of these scammers to kind of walk in and create a product and make money off of your hard work. And it's not always your book as was the case with Jane. Somebody used her name and produced fake books. So some weirdness. So basically the lesson in that is just to monitor your Amazon page, your KDP account with regular, you know, with regular and search your name, search your book title and just keep an eye on it. The next thing was a kind of a weird thing that. But it makes sense. And on the other hand it's kind of bonkers to me. But they KDP had to cap the number of new titles that somebody can publish in a single day to three. I mean, I mean three. I can barely publish a book every two, two and a half years. But there was people exceeding this 3, 3 book per day limit. And a lot of this is AI driven. And I have. Did the video come out last week? I think it did. I can't remember what video I put out, but I, I had a video where I showed pictures. My mom had been buying books on essential oils and, and things in that subject matter. And they were all looking just terrible. They were AI generated books. And you could tell as soon as you looked at them that it was AI generated content. And no human had actually been involved in the layout of these particular books. And even the AM sales page looked like an AI generated sales page. Both Alyssa and I were pretty surprised to see it because it had emojis out the yin yang in the description, which shouldn't on the Amazon page, which is supposedly not allowed, but they had to cap it at three per day to try to improve quality on this. And, and they, they just, they just said this is because of the AI generated book flood that has come on. Finally. The last thing is, and this is something Alyssa pointed out to me is a weird, kind of a weird thing that's happened lately is that readers who perceive your book to be written by AI, even if it wasn't, they're reviewing the book poorly. And so readers reacting strongly means that you really want to be careful that you have produced a human feeling book. Because there's some people who have very strong feelings to AI being the source of the content that you have created. And if they think, even if it's not true, if they think that you generated your book with AI, they can give you a one star or two star review. And they may not say it's because they think you generated it with AI, or they might, hard to say. Either way, it can be quite a negative thing. So anything you want to add to those three flags, Alyssa?

Yeah, I mean, the readers reviewing it, perceiving it to be AI is an especially interesting one because it seems to stem from the fact that AI is trained on the way that we write, the way that people write. And so it'll have things that if you're a writer, you understand why it's written that way. But even things like EM dashes have come under fire when EM dashes are well established, perfectly professional type of punctuation to use. And even things like following standard, like copywriting procedure can. People can sometimes flag. So it's something to be aware of. It's not something you can for sure avoid because it does seem like there's a bit of a sort of a witch hunt happening where people are so worried they're going to get the kind of book that Julie's mom got, that they're going to get something mass produced, that they put that AI label on it in a super negative way. Whereas, you know, we know AI used responsibly can be a very powerful tool. But right now there seems to be some. Some negative views on it. So it's just a good thing to be aware of for sure.

Yeah. Thank you. All right, so that was kind of the weird things that we wanted to touch on, but now I want to talk about the things that can trigger an issue with kdp. And I mean, really, I could just turn this over to Alyssa and she can vent for days about the fun that she has with weird issues. I mean, actually, I'm going to. You didn't know I was going to ask you this, but what's kind of the weirdest. I won't say most frustrating because they all have been frustrating, but what's the weirdest one that you've dealt with with KDP that. That you couldn't believe you were dealing with?

I think the one was when a book got blocked because it used the same word, one same word in the main title and the subtitle, even though they meant different things, they were technically the same word. And they blocked it. And I had to fight for a couple of weeks to get it reinstated. There was nothing wrong. It was perfectly clear it was used intentionally. But because they were cracking down on duplicated words, we got hit.

Was that the journal and journaling?

Was that art? It was. It was art and art journaling. Yeah, I think.

Right? Yeah, yeah.

It was double art that got. It was a journal. That was a problem. It was two uses of the word art in that case.

Yeah. And so what it took, if I remember, it took you working with the bots and escalating it to a human. To a human. To a human. And even once you got to a human, you had to explain what had happened and why this was important. And then they had to escalate it internally to then allow it to exist.

To convince them that in one case it was general arts, and the other one, it was a specific term of like art therapy or something like that. Two separate things, same word, used differently, and then they let it through. But, yes, I had to get to a human, and then I had to get to a human that could understand what I was trying to say.

And I know we've had it happen, too, where the ebook or the print book has been accepted, but then the other version gets rejected for the title, which was accepted in the other version.

That is what happened in that case, too. The ebook review teams and the print review teams are two separate teams that do not talk to one another. So the ebook had gone through just fine, but the paperback, they blocked until they got it unblocked. But it was like, we had no idea it was going to be a problem because the ebook had been fine.

Fun. So, yeah, so you guys can see the kind of fun that you can have with kdp, which is also why we would never advocate for somebody or even advocate even suggest that you plan your launch date or think that you're going to load to launch and celebrate and plan for this launch on a certain day. We would always recommend you have weeks and weeks in advance where you're going to be uploading your manuscript well before. So that some of these. And some of these issues you still might not find out immediately. But yes, because time is your friend when it comes to handling some of these fun little issues.

Absolutely.

All right, so one of the issues that does come up, and this is a newer one, is a failure to verify your identity when prompted, basically, if you want to explain this a little bit more, but I know it's come up for us, and when people miss the email, their accounts can get terminated. And it's extra fun.

Yeah, this is something that they've really just started doing in the last year, so. So it hasn't been around long enough that it's become common knowledge, even in self publishing. And so basically, KDP is now requiring all new accounts to verify their identity. You have to actually go in and upload a photo of your legal id. And what's happening, though, is that they'll send out an email prompting you to.

Sorry, I clicked the button. Where did I go?

They'll send you an email prompting you to click a link and upload your id, essentially. And it's triggered a lot of concerns from people that it's spam. They'll see it and be like, well, I know I'm not supposed to put this kind of sensitive information in, but the problem is that it's a real thing. And so what I tell people is that if you ever get an email about verifying your identity or logging into your KDP account to do something like this that requires sensitive information, it's okay to be cautious. Don't click any links, but go to your browser and go directly to kdp.Amazon.com yourself and log in because if it's a real alert, you will immediately be told to verify. Like, it'll only take you to the verification page when it's pending for you and then it'll walk you through the steps that you need to complete. But this is a big deal. Like, it is an automatic termination of your account if you don't verify in time. Now, we have had a few cases where this has happened and they're pretty consistent about if you respond and say, hey, you know, I was on vacation, or I missed the email, I missed my deadline, please let me verify that. They'll usually give you that opportunity. They'll give you grace to do that. However, I've also walked a client through that process and then her account had problems for months afterwards getting flagged for all kinds of random things because they were hypersensitive to something being wrong with her account. So it's good to just know that it's coming and take care of it immediately. If you have an older KDP account, you may also get an email to do this. I know that Julie and I both did. They were staggered, though we didn't get them at the same time. They were weeks apart. So they're slowly catching up old accounts. But all new accounts will need to verify pretty quickly after creation. So just keep an eye out for that and know that it's real. No, that's real.

I think that's great advice is, you know, and I think for. This is the case for everything. Your bank writes you and says there's something you need to do. Don't click on anything. Go to your bank and see if there's a notification. But the same with kdp. I think that's great advice is don't click on anything in the. In the email book. Go to your account. And that was the case when, when I did get the email that I needed to verify my identity, I went over to Amazon, our kdp, and that was the only thing I could do. So they made it very obvious. So keep. That's, you know, kind of going back to the. Just keep an eye on your KDP account. That will help you with these things even if you miss the email. But they didn't give a big long time window for it. I don't think. Was it seven days? I think you had to be on top of it.

It's pretty quick. It's pretty short. Yeah, it's just. And it's so it's easy to miss, especially if it's an email that you don't monitor. Really Closely like if it's one you only use for your author things. I see that question from Laura in the chat. I would just recommend forwarding that email address to an email that you do use a lot so that you're for sure to see it.

Yeah, yeah, just put her a question on there. So what if it's an email that you don't really use anymore? And that is very, very important, and it's something that we are always telling our clients is that your email needs to be something you're checking and you keep an eye on on a regular basis. Because again, if you're away on holidays and you get some sort of a flag or a notification and you don't take action on it immediately, that is when your account can get suspended. And then if you don't resolve it before their suspension is up, then they terminate it. And getting an account that's been terminated, reinstated, it's not very fun.

It's not. And it's a. It's a good habit to be in, no matter what. We're talking primarily about KDP here, but any publishing account notifications are almost always going to be very time sensitive. So if you have an author email that you're not monitoring closely, definitely set it up to forward to something you do monitor closely.

Yeah. Fantastic. All right, so the next thing is the Duplicated content Fund. So they will terminate your content that misleads or defrauds customers or is substantially similar to existing work. Now, on the one hand, like, this is a great practice, right? This will help prevent people from plagiarizing your book and selling, you know, selling something that's almost the same as work that you've already created. However, some of the fun that Alyssa has run into with this duplicate content thing is that it's content the author has created elsewhere, like a blog. So, yeah, I'll turn it over to you to kind of explain some of the situations and how you've navigated it.

Well, you're actually the best example here, Julie. So when we were loading Self Promote and Succeeded, the follow up to Self Publish and Succeed, they blocked me from uploading it because the titles were too similar. And I had to fight my way to a person to be able to say, I'm doing it on purpose. It's all ours. Like, it's all Julie's. She wants them to be similar on purpose, part of a series, and they eventually were completely fine with it, but it was initially blocked for exactly this. So it can be something you're doing intentionally, that is Actually, okay. But the problem is that these initial checks are extremely automated. So you need to be prepared to face this even if you aren't technically breaking any rules or doing anything wrong. But you can also see it if, like, there's duplicated content in your book description. You can see it if there are exact keyword phrases or exact category names in your book description. If you've taken that and you've put it directly in there, you can run into issues there. But also, they kind of seem to use the misleading or negative customer experience label to cover a lot of potential things. And they won't necessarily tell you specifically what it is until you've gone through multiple layers of pushback to get to a person who can say, oh, okay, you were actually flagged for this. For this reason. They'll just say, this book was. This book was blocked for, you know, an umbrella term. And then you have to try to figure out what it was. So my advice is always to be aware of what you're doing. Make sure it's all really intentional. Don't duplicate your categories or your keywords. You don't need to. You actually want as much of a variety there as you can possibly get. So it can be tempting to think, I want this really good phrase for my book in every place I can possibly put it. Don't do that. Just put it in one place. They don't want you to duplicate that content. So just being aware and then know that you can do everything right, and you may still have to face a flag and then be prepared to, you know, to push till you get to a person so that you can get it resolved.

Yeah. And Laura was asking, is it bots doing the checking? And. Yes. I mean, it's. It's an automated process. And even when you start, when you submit a. A ticket or whatever you want to call it an issue, you're trying to get support. That initial response is also an automated bot response.

It is. And so one of the reasons why we mentioned these AI things at the beginning of this live is that anytime there are new trends happening, they update their bots. So we know to prepare ourselves for new flags, for new issues, for new things being a problem that weren't a problem two weeks ago. And we'll always see an uptick whenever there's any kind of shift in the way things are handled. But, yes, it's extremely. It's extremely automated. And even, like Julie said, sometimes three, four layers can be automated until you can actually get to a person. That's the trickiest. Thing, they're hoping you're going to give up, and I don't. So I argue with bots till I get to a person.

Now speaking, this is a little bit of a tangent, but there's two things going on in my head right now that I want to share. Number one is I want to ask everybody a little favor. Today is Dale L. Roberts birthday. And so I want you to pop over to his channel today and just say Happy Birthday. So whatever video he's released today, just on his channel, Angela can probably put his channel in the comments. But I thought of him not just because it's his birthday, but he thinking of trends and things that can wreak havoc. And I just, it made me think of him letting everybody know last week that KDP Unlimited, you can now post your book to libraries. Right? You can now distribute it to libraries. And that is okay because previously you had to be exclusive with KDP with your ebook and you could not have that book available for distribution anywhere else. And so he, he was the one that everybody kind of referred to as him saying, hey, now you can publish your KDP Unlimited book to libraries. And so he was the one that kind of brought that forward. And so when she was talking about that, it made me think, oh goodness, I wonder what kind of joy this change is going to bring as people accidentally upload their book to Draft two Digital and think they've only checked libraries, but they've actually checked one extra thing that is not a library, and that is a violation. Right. So you can upload your book to Draft two Digital, which is one of the aggregators, and they have the library distribution channels, but if you check anything else, you are violating their terms. So with any change comes some extra joy with the bots as they start to navigate that. So. So yes. So please wish Dale a happy birthday. He's a dear, dear friend. Okay, so going back to this, we'll save some of the questions. I saw the questions. We'll. We'll tackle them at the end. The next thing is another thing that we ran into with, I think it was self promote and succeed. But you have to be prepared to prove that you have the rights to publish. And this can be triggered again as everything seems to happen by a lot of different things in the listing. And it can require that you answer a series of questions about the project and how it came from. But ultimately, proof of copyright is the absolute best defense for, for this issue. But Alyssa, I know you've got context.

I do. So actually, you're exactly Right. We did have to do this for Self Promote and Succeed. I do think it was because we had already had to argue about the title. So then they're like, oh, we're going to do an extra layer of checks and make sure she actually has, you know, the right to publish something so similar to something else, even just in title, because the content's very, very different between those two books. But yeah, copyright is incredibly important. It is. Being able to show that letter, to give them actually a picture of your letter from the copyright office is a very powerful tool. When they are questioning your publishing rights specifically, it's very difficult to prove to them otherwise that it's yours. I have seen people succeed, but it can take a lot longer and it, there's just no guarantee. But having your filed copyright, it's a very powerful tool. So we really encourage people, as soon as they're past the proofread step, they go ahead and file for that so that by the time you're uploading, you should have that letter in the mail. Yeah, it's. I can't overstate this one. I do expect that at some point it will become standard, that you need to have it to self publish or at least that you need to be able to present it at some point in a check process. That would not surprise me, especially as people are trying to crack down on, you know, things that are duplicating or copying or pretending to be by an author. I think I expect this to play a bigger role as time goes by, not a smaller one.

Yeah. The only thing I think that will stop it from becoming a requirement is that it's not different in every country. So, and I, maybe they would require that they, you know, that you file in, you know, for protection in the US But I can't see that. However, every author watching the anthropic settlement right now is, you know, international. They're probably wishing they had taken a minute to file for copyright protection in the US So. And just a quick note on. Yeah, go ahead. You look like you're going to add something to that.

I was just. That's a good point. I'm thinking predominantly about the North American market. But you're, you're exactly right. It does differ from country to country. However, I could see distributors, retailers refusing to allow your book in certain markets if you can't prove copyright, at least like in the U.S. yeah.

And that might be how they do it, and that's a good point, is that your distribution options will be limited. Platform. Yeah, will be limited. If you can't prove your copyright because. Yeah, the filing process is different in every single country. And the United States is one of the few countries that actually requires you to have filed it in order to get the protections that copyright is supposed to give you. Yeah. In court. Exactly. So, so yes, it's, it's a whole. It's a whole fun little ball game, but that letter was the easiest way to solve it. And I just want to, for those that lots of people have just joined in. So one of the things that I think is important to understand that Alyssa brought up really early on is once your account is flagged for something, you can expect the checks to be more rigorous throughout. And we see this all the time, especially as a company, a service provider company that's supporting authors through this journey. It's especially frustrating because the authors, once something has been flagged, we deal with multiple flags throughout the publishing journey and it can feel like we're messing up at every turn. But just know this happened to my book as well. You know, it started with the title being question, and then it went on to do you actually have the rights to publish this book? And so forth. So one flag means you can expect or not expect, but there's a high likelihood that you will see another flag in your journey.

And to tangent off your tangent, when they do make changes to their terms of service or to their guidelines, like this library change. But if they, for instance, change their policy to no longer allowing something, say like review content in your book description, that's something that's no longer allowed according to their guidelines, but it used to not specifically be listed. You will still see books out there that have reviews in their book descriptions. But the problem is that if you go to change your file, if you go to make any kind of update at all, you're likely going to get blocked or stuck because now your project doesn't meet the current requirements. And you're then going to have to scramble with it potentially being taken down to get it updated to the current thing. So it's, it's good to be aware of these changes for that reason too, and check what's already up for yourself to make sure that you're as up to date as possible as you go. It's impossible to be perfect, but it's a good thing to keep an eye on.

Yeah, for sure. Thank you. And I think kind of leading into that or kind of tagging into, you know what, we've already covered one of the other weird things, and I think it's a Little weird and yet also some of these weird things. I think there's a good purpose behind it. It can just be frustrating. But as somebody's releasing. How am I going to put this? I'll explain what it is and then I'll give you a couple examples and turn it over to Alyssa. But plagiarism, or they'll flag things as freely available on the Web. And so where this can come up is say you own. You published your book and now you want to republish it under another name, but you don't take the original book down. And some authors have tried this. They have a hybrid deal and their book is tied up with the hybrid. They own the rights to the book, so they're within their rights to publish it in another. Most of the time depending on their contract to publish it themselves. But now they're going to run into this plagiarism or, you know, free already freely available on the web. And so this can be a challenge. And it's one of the reasons why I would never recommend just putting a new title and cover on your book. Release a second edition, unpublish the previous edition, like, go through its work. And it's a pain, but you know, going through those steps is going to be so much better for you and your book in the long run. But yeah, walk us through, you know, if you've seen this or if you've heard of this happening and how to avoid it.

Yeah, So I have seen authors, not ours, but I have seen other authors who've run into this trying to do exactly what you're talking about, where they're wanting to change a title of a book they've already published and they've updated other content, but it's still essentially the same book that they published before and they don't know to do it as a second edition, then it can, it can be a very difficult one to get corrected because it is essentially the same book. And there's not as easy a path in the KDP support pushback for this particular issue. The other thing you can run into is if it's something you've published before, like on your blog, and you're repurposing some or all of it into a book, that one's tricky. You are almost certainly going to get hit with this even if you have repurposed it correctly, even if you're citing your own work correctly, and obviously you wrote it, so it's yours. But you're very likely to get hit with this because again, we're Talking about an automated bot based review initially. So all they're looking for is, is this on the Internet? If yes, blocked versus, you know, actually saying, well, this is the blog with the same author's name. It's clearly the same person. They don't, they don't do that. And you're going to have a time getting to a person who can understand that, you're saying, yes, I know it's online, it's mine, and I've cited it correctly, it belongs to me. So it's just something to be aware of. It's not as easy as saying, hey, I wrote all these blog posts and I can publish them as a book.

Yeah, you'll eventually get it resolved, but it takes a lot of extra steps. That again, if people are not giving themselves extra time for the space to handle these things, that's when these things get really, really stressful. If you have time and space and you're not really sold on a specific launch date or you've already started promoting your launch date, booking out a big event, you know, those kind of things. You know, I say this because this is, this is what Alyssa deals with.

Right. And again, you kind of already said it earlier, but just because say for instance, you successfully put your ebook up for pre order and there were no issues, does not mean it'll get through on print. In my experience, the print checks are more rigorous than the ebook checks.

Yeah. Which is always fun because we typically are loading the ebook well in advance and then we're usually loading the print book on launch day because we've been pre selling print through Ingram, so. So the good news is the books are still selling through Ingram, but it, it creates problems with the Amazon side of things. So. Cool. So we do have lots of questions. We'll cover the last one and then I'm going to do prizes and start wrangling some of these questions here. Metadata, which is fun. We touched on this already as far as the title, an issue with the duplicate words in the title. What other metadata issues can come up that might flag a book for kdp?

This is one where you want to make sure you're operating in good faith, but also that you're doing your research. So another thing that you can get flagged for, although clearly it didn't protect Jane Friedman, is if your cover is too much exactly like someone else's. This is something that we come across sometimes in our cover design process with our clients that they'll really love a cover by a different author and say, I want a cover like this one. And we have to say, well, we can work on a cover design that has some elements like this that will have the similar feeling, but we can't just, like, change the colors and the title and use essentially the same design and put a book out there. Because cover design is something that Amazon will flag as being too similar. If it looks like you're trying to copy someone else. The same thing goes for a title that's too close to. Obviously, Julie ran into this with her own books, too close to another book's title. But also, if you're stuffing your book description or your keywords with mentions of someone else's book with, you know, another author's names, if you're really leaning heavily on that, that's a problem. But then there's also that good faith piece of making sure that the keywords you're using and the categories you're putting your book in and the description that you're using to help sell your book is actually very, very accurate to the book that you're publishing. It can be tempting to say, you know, oh, this person's really successful and they're, you know, not exactly like me, but I could still sort of make it sound like it's like them. But it's not.

Don't do that.

It's not worth it. You will get in trouble. You're very likely to get flagged, and it could even become a bigger issue than that. So that's, that's what I mean by good faith. Make sure that you know your title is uniquely yours and not trying to piggyback off of someone else. Make sure that your book description and your keywords and your categories are accurate to the book that you have actually written, that you are not misrepresenting your content at all. It can be difficult, especially if you aren't very experienced in writing marketing copy, to overstate or to make claims that aren't fair or loud or accurate because you really want people to read your book. But the problem is that that can get you hit with that negative customer experience block or misleading or. And those are pretty big issues to. To resolve. You can resolve them, but you just. You want to avoid it if at all possible. It also doesn't make you look very good to potential readers if they, you know, catch on to what you're doing, especially with the book description. So it's a good thing to be aware of.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right, so we have tons of questions coming in. I'm going to do prizes right now. So first we're going to do our thousandth video prize. So maybe. Let's see, let's see if I'm successful at sharing my screen. I tried to close some of my windows before we got on here so that this would be easier for me. Look at that. I got it on the first try. It's my day. Okay, so for those of you who are new, we need to see. Look at all these great lives we have coming up, you guys. We have how to optimize your author website, how to get paid to speak as an authority, how to find readers to buy your book, and of course, today's the KDP crackdown. Okay, let's see. We've got 26 people entered to win this first one. You have to be in the US but we're going to send you some special swag to celebrate our 1000 video. Angela will let you know whether it's going to be the Yeti mug or our seventh year anniversary mug, which she still has a couple hanging out in her closet. So this will be a thank you for being here for our 1000th video prize. Let's see. Stella. Yay, Stella, so glad that you were our thousandth video winner. So email Angela@Teambook launchers.com your mailing address and she will send you the prize for the day. And I'm going to do one more prize just for you guys who are here. This one can be self publish and succeed, self publishing, promote and succeed. Or a journal or a mug. But probably the books. If I don't know how many mugs Angela has hiding. Like the regular. I'm talking regular book launchers mug minus the stapler. This is where I store. Oh, congratulations, book launchers. You've won a book launcher. Smug. Let's draw that again. Love it when we win. Told you. It's our lucky day today. I hit this screen on the first try. It's amazing. It's a good day. Absolutely. Heading in Sweden. I think it's Sweden. Is that right? Stayed up late for us today. Heading. And I think you've got the books and the, the books already. We have other books so we can potentially hook you up with something else. But. But yeah, because if I'm right, let's see.

Henning, are you in Sweden?

Did I get it right? Not. Angela's nodding, so. All right. Love it. Okay, so let's start tackling some of these questions. And Angela is back. You guys didn't know this, but she left. Her power went out. She lost power, she disappeared, but she got back. So okay. Oh, yes, Health. Oh, yeah. That's the other thing we didn't talk about. I know Gary's sitting there waiting, but, Julie, you didn't talk about consciousness content restrictions. So this is a great segue into talking about other content restrictions that KDP has. So, Alyssa.

Sure. So I would say using the word heal is not necessarily bad in your title and subtitle. The context will matter. If it is making some kind of, like, intense claim, like, you know, heal your cancer, then, yes, you're. You're very possibly going to get stuck there. So it's not just the word itself. There is a little bit of context there that will be in play. Claims, however, seems to predominantly get flagged in book descriptions. Titles can get flagged. I've had it flagged for having the word free, as if it was promising some kind of free thing, but it wasn't. It was talking about something being free of something else. And it was completely legitimate. So heal could get flagged, but I think if you're using it in a proper context and not making a claim, you'll be able to combat it. We've used the word heal in titles and subtitles before without a significant issue. But book descriptions, you do have to be careful about what kind of health claims specifically you make. They're very sensitive about health claims. And even if it passes for. For publication, you may run into issues with Amazon ads if you make specific types of health claims in your book description.

Yeah, and that's like, you know, if you put a curse word in your title, it will. You can publish it, but you run into other challenges. First of all, it ends up looking really weird because people are like, it's okay, I'll just put a, you know, f asterisk symbol, you know, on the COVID It's like, yeah, but how does that look when you put it on Amazon title spot? Like it's a disaster.

And it is something where TradPub tends to get a break on it in a way that self publishing doesn't. And in that case specifically of language, you run into the risk of getting shadow banned where people can't find your book when they search for it even though it's technically published.

Yeah, it's a challenge. Now, specific to content restrictions. Now Gary's talking. He writes about guns in particular. But there's quite a few subjects that can be challenging to publish a book on. And I know we've done books on like, kind of active shooter type scenarios and school shootings and things like that. It's not Necessarily about guns. But yeah, I don't know if you have any experience or advice to offer.

I do have some. I do have some advice. So the issue is that you're most likely running into is again, that this initial assessment is going to be very automated and inciting violence. And there are a few other language things that they could potentially point to. It does violate KDP's guidelines, however. Just because something is talking about violence, talking about guns, or even talking about gun violence doesn't mean that it's inciting people to it. But it might get flagged and blocked. Right, because they don't differentiate between. With context. So the things I would look at are to make sure your title isn't doing something too fun that might be trying to shock or, you know, get a reaction that is, you know, toeing the line a little bit too much there. I would also be careful about book cover. I do know that KDP can be pretty serious about featuring certain things on their covers, including like a guns that point toward the reader and things like that. I've heard of getting restricted. And then again in your book description, any kind of potential, you know, content like this. Again, it's how you say what you're saying that can make a big difference. But at the end of the day, with something that is so close to anything that's like one, violence, war, certain health things, even erotica, those types of topics, even if they're academic, educational, you know, completely not violating the terms at all, you may get flagged or blocked initially. And so you just need to be prepared for that fight. And I do think that, you know, books that should get through will get through, but you do have to push till you get to the person for those.

Great. Thank you. All right, so when you get the person, is the person interested to resolve the issue?

How do I answer this honestly? Once I get to a person, I am really, really nice to them because I know that by the time other people get to them, they're probably really fed up and frustrated. Once I get to a person, I generally have a really good experience being able to resolve something. Sometimes there can be a language barrier that contributes to, like, difficulty in getting them to understand the nuance of something. Like with the duplicate use of art in the title and subtitle. I don't know if I would say interested. They have really set things that they can and can't do at each level of escalation. So sometimes what you'll come up against is they'll say, I can't do anything but if you've been really nice, they'll escalate you to the next level, to someone who maybe can make the call that you're looking to have called. But I've never had anyone be rude. If anything, they're just polite and limited in what they can do sometimes.

Yeah. So Abby just said, when I search my book, there's an AI generated summary. It's somewhat right, but also concerning. Right now they're only showing on your Kindle. The Kindle version, I should say. And on your iPhone. I don't think they're showing. Are they showing on. We looked at this before. They were only showing on the app. They weren't showing on Amazon, like the desktop. But it's only on your Kindle version.

I'm not seeing it on the desktop. I do see it in the browser, like, not just like on my phone. I can see it through the browser even if I'm not in the app. Okay, yeah. No, this is something they've rolled out, unfortunately. There doesn't seem to be anything specific you can do. If it's very, very wrong, you can try reaching out to KDP support about it, but only if you're able to show that it's, like, factually incorrect. Otherwise it's meant to be kind of an objective summary. They're also, of course, offering that AI summary of the reviews now as well. And those, those are often amusing to look at because they'll pick out. You know, I saw one on a book the other day that was like, super, super positive. Super, super positive, positive. Some people are concerned about the language in this book. Oh, no. So it's interesting to see what it pulls out, but unfortunately it is a new feature and not one you directly control.

All I can offer for comfort is that Amazon will get rid of it if they think it's negatively impacting your conversions. Not just your specifically, but in general. So they will only keep something if it's helping a book or the general mass of books convert more on a regular basis. So that's the only sort of comfort I can offer to these sort of things. But the other side of this is expect a whole lot more. Right? And this is one thing we've been talking about a lot internally is keywords. It's not that they don't matter for KDP because you still have seven keyword boxes to put words into, but as far as writing your book descriptions, writing your bios, we used to put a lot of emphasis and focus on keywords. Keywords, context is matter. It's going to matter so much more than ever. And pretty soon we probably will not even submit book descriptions. Like, you know, I don't know what, what, what time frame we're in, but it will generate the book description from your book because it will ingest your book, spit out a description that their system has decided is going to be the best way to sell your book. That world is not that far away and there's good and bad to that. Right. You know, there's so many hours that we put into crafting a book description to help us sell a book. So on the one side it's like hooray. On the other side is when it isn't good or it's, it's not right then now you've got another thing you have to fight the bots for.

Just get your boxing gloves.

All right. What's the best way to get from a bot to a real person? I mean, Alyssa kind of answered this. You just keep, you know, talking to the bot and asking for the next level of assistance.

Yeah, and I'll usually ask really specific questions or I'll say that is not correct and then I'll ask a really specific question. And that will often trigger it. If you only sort of like you want to talk in short sentences that are very, very clear and easily parsed by AI or automated filtering. So I've gotten better at it over the last few years. But definitely like short direct sentences. State exactly what you mean. Ask clear, direct questions one at a time. And usually that'll that'll help.

Is there a checklist or website we can go to to check what might be triggers and items we can use to pre check our book before we upload?

Wouldn't that be so nice? No. I mean KDP's guidelines are available. You can read through them. There is a ton. But that is your best. That is your best reference would be just KDP's own support online support files. Yeah, that's your best bet. And if it's safe for kdp, it's likely going to be just fine for any other place that you're going to upload it. They are the strictest at this point. Point.

I kind of joined late to the party. Does this also apply to coloring books?

Probably, I would say it applies. We don't work specifically on them, of course, but everything I'm talking about here can happen to any kind of product that's uploaded directly into kdp. For publishing?

No, it's Library of Congress is separate from copyright proof bill.

Yes, for copyright, you Want to go to copyright.gov and that is where you will. There's an online portal where you can fill in all of your information, pay a $65 fee and upload your file for copyright. And then they'll send you a letter in the mail.

Exactly. And if your book is already out, you can still file.

Yes.

I think you, you have a window of up to six months to file for certain things. And then, I mean, at any point I think you can file it.

Just the only difference is whether you have to like send a physical copy versus being upload a digital one. But you should be able to file no matter what.

Perfect. Thank you. What is Digital News? My book summary is also there under entertainment page. Without a byline? I have no idea.

I don't either.

Is it better to acquire an unpublished copyright or wait until it is published?

Unpublished, please. So not only is it the quickest and easiest way because you can for sure upload a digital copy for them to review, which is their fastest review process. But again, if you're going to run into an issue upon publication where you have to prove your rights, you need it ahead of time. So I recommend once it's proofread, that's the step where you would submit it.

Can you remove previous editions of books traditionally published? I was told no because third party resellers can still sell an out of print book. I just published the second edition. I mean there's, there's multiple layers to this question. So you said books traditionally published. I'm assuming you got the rights back to it, but unpublishing something that somebody else published is not going to be within your realm of control. Now I would defer this. I'm going to add, I'm going to turn this question over to Alyssa, but not like remove the traditionally published piece from it and a, you know, just historically published, you know, hybrid or something else that you clearly have the rights to be publishing.

Correct. So if it's something that you've published yourself through your KDP account, you can certainly unpublish it. However, Stephen is correct. Your the ebook will come down, but the paperback will remain up. And hardcover could as well, perhaps indefinitely. It'll show as out of stock unless there are third party sellers that are selling it. But it is something that you can't predict whether it will ever fully come down on Amazon. But you are safe to put up your second edition. And what I recommend doing is unpublishing that first edition if it's in your KDP account. Publishing your second edition and then you can reach out to KDP and ask them if you've kept the same title and subtitle, ask them to merge those two listings. And so then you will no longer have the old first edition just hanging out because it will have been merged with your new one and you'll get to keep your reviews if you have any. But you can only do it if you keep your title and subtitle the same.

Yeah, and he said he was published by Penguin and so he had the rights back. So.

Yeah, that's trickier.

Yeah, but that would be.

You won't be able to take Penguins down. No, you won't be able to take.

Theirs down, but you still might be able to merge them. No, if you can.

Not if it's a different. Not if it's a different publisher. I think the metadata has to match exactly. But I could be wrong about that. That's one I haven't specifically attempted. But my understanding is title, subtitle, author and publisher need to be the same.

Got it. Okay. I mean it's worth asking Steven if you can. If you can with that. But. But yes, what you were told previously was correct about you can't get rid of it with the third party publishers.

Rights reversion lets you publish that second edition, but it doesn't mean that you own the one that Penguin published. That's still technically theirs.

Exactly. Cool. Thank you. Oh, Antoine, booking a big venue. So he's referring to Julie Bot. So inside of our author launch kit software, our book marketing software as well as inside of our author business accelerator which is a paid group marketing coaching that we have, we have Julie the book bot and Laura and some other folks in our group and using our Julie bot have said that she is as good or better than me. But what I like is that she's available at 2am when I am sound asleep. But no, Antoine, we are not monitoring your conversation with Julie Bot for his big venue that he's planning. And hopefully based on this, you're planning it well in advance of when you think you're going to have your book in hand just in case you run into KDP Fun. Does freely skimmed for AI include or considered freely available on the web? Not certain. I understand.

I don't. I'm wondering if that's like an AI tool. I'm not sure. Or assessment type thing.

We're not sure, Laura. We're unfamiliar. I mean if we only knew. Why is there such a difference between Katie and ACX considering it's owned by the same company? Why is it so difficult to publish an ebook versus a print book versus a hardcover? And then why is it so difficult to have it all function despite being Amazon, but having it sell in Canada with totally different categories, in another country with totally. So, Laura, we could go on for days about asking and pondering why these things are the case. We do not have the end. Is there an issue to refer to another author in the body of a book giving them credit?

Not at all. The only issue is if you, like, were to quote large sections of someone else's book, but simply referring to them, even quoting them, you know, briefly and, you know, citing where you're getting that content from, or even just, you know, crediting them with, you know, inspiring an idea for you or something. That's completely fine.

Yeah. All right, I'm gonna do. We've got. Hold on, Angela. I'm gonna do one more prize and then we will rapid fire the last couple questions so that we still wrap at the top of the hour. So. And I saw Alyssa, she's getting ready. Ready. All right, last prize of the day. So let's see who our final winner is for today. And I didn't actually pull. I completely forgot. Last time Angela didn't have the list and this week I forgot to pull the list of people who comment on Tuesday and Friday. Right. So. And that's just because we did a different time because I have to rush off to an in person meeting and I wasn't going to make it if we did our usual 2 o' clock Pacific Standard Time start today. Kevin YouTube bestie, amazing supporter Kevin Hall. Congratulations. What have you not won lately, my friend? You can email Angela at team@book launchers.com and I know recently you said that you just, you don't need to win things, but apparently you do. Like the computer says, you do need to win. He says, please select again. All right, See, I knew he was going to say that. I should have just stayed on the screen and done it because he, he does win all the time. But he's such a fantastic contributor to our community. I'm so grateful to have you around and I'm happy to send you prizes every time you win, but. All right, we'll draw somebody else at your request.

Okay, let's see.

I saw Kate keeps flashing by. I'm gonna laugh if Kate wins too. All right, Nurse Peter, there's a new winner. I don't think you've won before, so congratulations. And what you need to do is email angelaeamooklaunchers.com with your mailing address and your choice of book. So self publish and succeed or self promote and succeed or. Or we usually have some oh so soft journals and sometimes we also have mugs. I can't promise on the mug though. Angela has to check her closet and see what she has left in stock. And Kate says she won two years ago a mug that she still uses. Kate works for us, you guys. She's on our team. She is one of the fabulous folks that run our processes behind the scenes. So when somebody works with us and is going through the whole journey, Kate takes care of them and helps them through all the fun. All right, we've got three minutes, Angela. Let's see what we can do. Does all this apply to new books or are they going back to previously published books?

It does not only apply to new books. The author proving your identity can happen to your KDP account regardless of age. I'd be prepared for it. And yes, previously published books. If you try to do any kind of update, you will then be subject to to all of the. You can also just get flagged for it. I know that's not fast, but yes, the answer is yes, it all applies to all of them.

It's most likely if you do do something in your account that that can trigger all the checks.

But I don't want to say that's the only time because it can happen otherwise too.

100%. What is a.

Would love to know. I'm convinced it's just a catch all for hey, you did one or several things that we think are kind of not maybe okay. And we're going to put this label on it. Unlikely. It's not the number of references that would be a concern. It is the amount of content utilized from other books that could be a concern. Fair use is your friend.

Exactly. Exactly. But some books have hundreds of citations and sources, so. And that's a good thing in a lot of cases in a nonfiction book. We're done. We did it.

Did you do it?

I gave you two. Two high fives. Yay. Thank you so much for being here, Alyssa, and sharing so much juicy goodness that I could not have done justice. So. So I so appreciate you joining in and thank you to everybody for being here for our 1000th video. I am so grateful to each and every one of you for being here and commenting and, you know, joining us on the channel and making it so fun to do what we do. All right, there's a new. There's another video on Friday that I'll be releasing on the Alex Hermosi. So that whole recap that I promised you guys a while ago, it's coming out on Friday. And also on Friday, Shane is going to be doing a live at 12pm Pacific Standard Time for anybody that has author launch kit or wants to see see it in action for I think it's on websites. I'm not specific. I can't remember the topic. I showed it to you earlier. But he'll be there at noon so you can catch the replay or join him live as well to learn a little bit more about how you can make the most of your author launch kit software. All right, thanks for staying up. Henning and Timothy, thanks for getting up early to be here with us from Australia. I appreciate each of you and we'll see you next time. Bye. SA.