Amazon.com and copyright violations: Is anyone listening?

I'm a big fan of Amazon.com, partly because it's been the source of 95 percent of my income for the past seven years.

But one of my pet peeves about Amazon is that it's so hard to get in touch with anyone there. Like many companies, Amazon answers most e-mail messages with a boilerplate response that doesn't even begin to answer the question. And that's if you get a response at all.

So what happens if you have a really important question? For instance, let's say that pirated copies of your work started showing up on Amazon. And you knew they were knock-offs because you purchased some yourself.

You'd think Amazon would be very interested to know that one of its third-party sellers was doing this, right? So did Joe Mefford of Screenstyle.com, a niche producer of DVDs. Here's his story:

We sell DVDs that we manufacture, and found someone had been making very lousy homemade copies of our DVDs on their computer and reselling them as "straight from the manufacturer." We know because we bought several copies from this reseller.

We contacted Amazon by e-mail -- nothing. We contacted Amazon's legal department by phone (had to leave a voicemail) -- nothing. We contacted Amazon's copyright department by e-mail twice -- nothing. Finally we got a number from someone who said they were Amazon's copyright agent and he said he'd call us back -- nothing. Finally, we had to send a nasty lawyer letter to the reseller, who quit selling our products but remains in business.

Is it always so difficult to get a response from Amazon in matters like these? This person was blatantly using Amazon to sell counterfeit goods and the lack of official response really concerns me .... We sell several hundred thousand dollars a year [on] Amazon, so it hurts their business as well.

I've also e-mailed Amazon with the claim that we should be entitled to any profits this person made selling counterfeit copies of our products, and they've not responded either.

Joe posted his story this week on an Amazon-administered discussion board. No response from Amazon there, either.

Obviously it's a lot easier for a rogue seller to copy DVDs than it is for someone to reproduce a book. But at the same time, the equipment for scanning and reproducing paperbacks is getting cheaper every day. I'm sure there are more than a few counterfeit books being sold among the millions of books currently for sale on Marketplace -- to say nothing about the evolving world of e-books and digital audiobooks.

Amazon has a variety of dedicated e-mail addresses for the public to report infractions of all sorts of Amazon policies. Perhaps it's time Amazon set up another address for reports of intellectual property theft. This issue is in Amazon's best interests, as well as publishers.

Amazon's Clickriver adds category targeting

Amazon's new pay-per-click program, Clickriver, operates almost exactly like Google's Adwords. The advertiser bids on keywords, and shows up in search results and relevant content sites. For example, if you wanted to advertise wine on Amazon, you'd bid on keywords such as "wine," "chardonnay" or "Pinot noir," and your ad would appear on the product pages for relevant books and other products.

But now Amazon has added a powerful new capability to Clickriver which could prove very effective for advertisers with deep products. Now advertisers can bid on an entire category in Amazon's bookstore. For example, if you wanted your ad to appear on pages classified by Amazon as relating to gardening, you'd create a new ad and target it using the category_gardening keyword.

This will be a powerful tool for advertisers who want to blanket an entire category. No longer must they research every title and author name in a given field. Advertisers will also be able to bid on Amazon's home page.

I reviewed Clickriver here, the program is still in beta testing.

Ads will be screened for relevance and ads not deemed relevant to a particular category may be rejected. The category keywords below are available now, and Amazon plans to expand and refine the list. The categories of pages where ads would appear are in bold, underneath are the relevant keywords:

Investing and Personal Finance
category_investing_and_personal_finance

Business and Marketing
category_business_and_marketing

Jobs and Careers
category_jobs_and_careers

Christian Interest
category_christian_interest

Food and Wine
category_food_and_wine

Dieting
category_dieting

Health and Fitness
category_health_and_fitness

History
category_history

Home and Interior Design
category_home_and_interior_design

Gardening
category_gardening

Weddings
category_weddings

Travel
category_travel

Programming and Web Development
category_programming_and_web_development

Outdoors and nature
category_outdoors_and_nature

Parenting
category_parenting

Politics
category_politics

Romance
category_romance

Science fiction
category_science_fiction

Fantasy
category_fantasy

Horror
category_horror

Mystery and Thrillers
category_mystery_and_thrillers

Would you risk spamming your audience to get a few sales?

Online book marketing is a rough and tumble environment these days. Let's face it, bad behavior is rampant among authors, just like any other group -- it's easy to be rude and underhanded when you don't have to face people.

In some cases, the offending authors think they've done nothing wrong. In a Wall Street Journal column, author Mick Hager whines that many of his unsolicited e-mails weren't delivered for his Amazon Bestseller Campaign. As a result, the book reached an Amazon Sales Rank of only 5,000, and now his book is sliding right back to where it began, at the bottom of the barrel.

Mr. Hager calls his messages legitimate marketing, but I'm confident most of the recipients considered them spam. He admits he harvested the addresses from Web sites and claims this is legal.

Is it worth selling one or two dozen books if you gain a reputation as a spammer in the process? I don't think so.

E-mail isn't the only way authors are gaming the system, especially on Amazon.com, says author/publisher Aaron Shepard. "It's getting to be a real jungle on there," says Shepard, author of the self-publishing guide Aiming at Amazon. "Authors are spamming Amazon in a desperate effort to get their books noticed. Many don't even realize their behavior is inappropriate, because they have no experience in business. Others know but do it anyway, just because they can get away with it."

Here's the most common spamming techniques employed by authors, Shepard says:

• Writing positive customer reviews of their own books under false names.

• Soliciting positive reviews from friends and relatives who have no real interest in the book's subject and pretend to be objective.

• Writing positive reviews of competitors' books but mentioning the reviewer's book to draw off sales.

• Creating dozens of Listmania lists so that Amazon will display a book's cover whether or not it's relevant.

Authors face few consequences for spamming Amazon because the company doesn't outlaw many of the techniques, Shepard says. "In most cases, Amazon doesn't clearly prohibit them. Yes, the spirit of Amazon's guidelines does oppose these practices -- which is why Amazon can deal with them when reported. But Amazon could discourage such things much more effectively by just saying, 'Don't do this.'"

Instead, Amazon sometimes seems to actually encourage spam. Recently, for instance, it started allowing customer reviewers to link to other products from inside the reviews. "I don't know what they could be thinking," says Shepard. "You know just how this will be used. Authors will not only mention their own books, they'll link to them!"

If Amazon won't vigorously police its site, what's the answer? Well, Shepard has an idea: He's proposed a code of conduct for authors on the Internet.

Amazon buries author content with avalanche of advertising

After a year of experimentation, Amazon.com has killed the "Plogs" that featured author blog posts directly on its home page. In its place is Amazon Daily, which buries author-generated content under an avalanche of marketing blurbs written by Amazon employees.

Amazon launched the Plogs feature with great fanfare in February 2006. Its mission was enabling authors to "post messages directly to their readers via the Amazon.com home page." Alas, it seems Amazon decided this wasn't such a great idea after all.

With Plogs, customers who bought a book from a participating author were automatically subscribed to that author's AmazonConnect blog. The new Daily also appears at the top of Amazon's home page, but author content is as hard to find as a needle in a haystack. In its place are pitches for DVDs, electronics, liquor dispensers, reality TV shows, and occasionally a book or two.

Amazon calls the changes an "upgrade," a classic example of corporate double-talk. It's not an "upgrade" to replace authentic writing on a blog with schlock, spin and thinly disguised advertising. Undoubtedly this will kill any customer interest in reading author posts. I don't use my Tivo to record commercials, and people don't read blogs to find advertising.

Amazon Daily, unlike Plogs, is available to all Amazon visitors, whether you're signed in or recognized as a customer or not. You can customize the feature to delete content you don't want and to add content you're interested in. But no author-generated content has found its way into my Amazon Daily yet, even though I've added authors. All I get is the junk. Perhaps this is a glitch, or maybe Amazon prefers it this way.

The Plog feature was a combination of the words "product" and "blog." Each Amazon customer received a unique Plog based on their purchasing history. If Amazon received complaints from customers about receiving irrelevant posts from authors, it's not saying.

Q&A: Why did Amazon delete the reviews for my book?

QUESTION: Help! All five of of the Amazon customer reviews for my book have DISAPPEARED. What the? Including a review from a top 50 reviewer. Whom should I contact? Any advice? I'm freaking out and super pissed (you know how much time it takes to send people books and ask for reviews).

ANSWER: This might be related to Amazon's upgrade of its Connect author blogs. All of the Amazon Connect blogs disappeared Apr. 14, along with the reviews for some books. The blogs were due to be restored today, but they're still missing.

UPDATE: The Connect blogs were restored last night.

Fortunately, it seems that Amazon has archived all the reviews and will promptly restore them if you report the problem to community-help@amazon.com

Here's the response one author received after reporting the missing customer reviews for his book:

From: "Amazon.com Customer Service"
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 08:48:08 -0700 (PDT)
To: "xxxx@xxxxx.com"
Subject: Your Amazon.com Inquiry

Thanks for contacting us at Amazon.com and getting this situation to
our notice.

I apologize for any frustration you've experienced due to this
situation.

I have researched this situation with concerned department and found
that this ASIN: xxxxxxxxxx has received 19 reviews and which were
inactive due to an error.

I have now reinstated the all the reviews, and they will appear on
our web site soon.

We appreciate your patience in this matter, and look forward to
reading your next review submission..

Thank you for contributing to the Amazon.com community.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

Growth at Amazon outpaces brick-and-mortar booksellers

Amazon's sales of books, music and video rose 15 percent last year, while sales at most other retailers were flat. A new breakdown of the North American book market published by Morris Rosenthal shows that Amazon's media sales exceeded those of brick-and-mortar giant Borders for the first time.

Sales rose slightly to $12 billion during 2006, according to figures drawn from the annual reports, SEC filings, and news releases from Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon, and BN.com.

An excerpt:

Within the Barnes & Noble and Borders chains, book sales are falling at their small stores (B. Dalton and Waldenbooks) which are being shut down and replaced with superstores. In 2005, Amazon bought BookSurge LLC, an aggressive POD company whose performance had hitherto been limited by their lack of access to Amazon. They don't break out Booksurge in their annual report, but Booksurge published 3,980 titles in 2006 and is up past 10,000 titles overall.

Although Amazon registered strong sales growth last year, the percentage of sales resulting from Marketplace merchants selling new and used books failed to increase for the first time ever. Marketplace accounted for 28 percent of Amazon's sales during 2006, the same as 2005.

Rosenthal estimates that because of Amazon's overall growth, Marketplace sales rose about 15 percent compared to 2005. But the share of Marketplace third-party sales relative to Amazon's sale of new items stalled, perhaps because of Amazon's heavy promotion of its Super Saver and Prime shipping programs. Last year on Marketplace, Amazon began displaying listings for its own merchandise above better deals by third-party merchants -- unless sellers undercut Amazon by more than the price of standard shipping.

Internet publishing requires more than a strategy, Cader says

The Internet changes so rapidly, publishers can't stick with a single strategy, but must experiment constantly, says digital publishing guru Michael Cader.

Cader recently urged all publishers to participate in Internet marketing programs such as Google Book Search and Microsoft Live Book Search. The comments came during a conference call hosted by the Copyright Clearance Center, archived as a recording and a transcript.

An excerpt:

[T]here’s a notion, whether it’s with the Internet or e-books or any other digital element, that you [must] have a strategy. That you do some research, you come up with an idea, and you stick with it. That’s not the way the electronic Internet culture works now.

The only operating rule of doing something electronically is that you change all the time. You can't come up with one strategy and stay fixed, because the nature of the medium and the nature of those using the medium changes all the time. The technologies change all the time. It’s designed for experimentation.

And the other good thing it’s designed for is tracking. You get more statistics, and more measurable, observable real-time information than you can get anywhere else. So I also feel strongly that to take most advantage of a proper digital/Web strategy is to be open to experimentation and to watch carefully, to use it as a way of trying different things, and understanding that you need to be flexible and you need to keep changing.

Amazon yanks author 'Connect' blogs and some customer reviews

On Saturday Amazon.com deleted the Amazon Connect blogs that authors use to post commentary on the product pages of their books, and the company posted a cryptic message that the program was undergoing "changes."

UPDATE: I've been informed that Amazon notified some publishers via e-mail last week that Connect would be upgraded and restored by Wednesday.

On author profile pages like mine, the Amazon connect posts currently don't appear at all. Before the weekend, the most recent blog posts had appeared at the top of the profile page. On the author profiles, there's no explanation for the deleted blog posts. However, after navigating to the URL for a Connect blog, the the following message appears:

Amazon's blogs are temporarily unavailable. We're making big changes, so please try again later.

Amazon Connect has been highly popular with authors, many of whom use the program to appeal directly to their audience from Amazon's product page.

It's possible that Amazon is clarifying the rules for acceptable content for Connect posts. For example, many authors have been posting lengthy, unlicensed quotations from book reviews published elsewhere. Amazon requires such reviews to be abbreviated to 20 words or less to fit its interpretation of the "Fair Use" exemption under copyright law.

Also, within the past week, some authors have also reported that customer reviews have been deleted from their book pages, although it's unclear whether the deletions are simply a technical glitch or part of Amazon's revamping of the Connect program. In some cases, authors suspect that Amazon has begun deleting reviews for books which contain wording deemed "inappropriate."

Marketing your book with Amazon Shorts, Part II

As explained here, Amazon Shorts are one way to use impulse purchases on Amazon to bring attention to your full-length books. Amazon Shorts are e-books that cost readers 49 cents.

But for some authors, the book sales are merely gravy because customer acquisition is the name of the game. For example, perhaps the most prolific Amazon Shorts author is business consultant Lonnie Pacelli, who has 16 bestselling Shorts. The Shorts are cross-promotional tools for his two business hardcovers and 13 full-length downloadable books sold on Amazon for $4.99 apiece. All these e-books help publicize Pacelli’s fee-based seminars conducted on the Web. His most popular Amazon Short is The Perfect Brainstorm.

Shorts can also be used to test ideas for full-length book ideas or expanding into new topics or genres. It’s possible to use Shorts as a full-blown author laboratory, testing story concepts and soliciting feedback from readers. For example, fiction writers can give an update on characters from a book series, give hints on what might happen in the next hardcover installment, and use reader comments as a free focus group test.

The recommended length for Amazon shorts is 2,000 to 10,000 words, and the work is supposed to be exclusive to Amazon for six months. Amazon splits revenue 60/40 with the author, and Amazon covers the costs of payments transactions and customer service.

Some other interesting work with Amazon Shorts:

• In A Man and His Luggage, Stuart Woods departs from his tried-and-true mystery technique for a humorous essay on his wish to find the perfect travel companion. (ASIN B000A0F6JA).
  

• In Bubble After Bubble in the Ongoing Bubble Boom, (ASIN B000A0F6Q8) Harry S. Dent updated his 2004 economics bestseller The Next Great Bubble Boom. Six months later, he published an updated edition of the hardcover.

There's no copy protection for Amazon Shorts, the PDFs can be printed or copied and forwarded via e-mail. When viewed as an HTML document, the text of Shorts can be
copied and pasted into a word processor.

To apply for participation in the Amazon Shorts program, send an e-mail to Amazon-Shorts@Amazon.com. To be eligible, you must have at least one book currently for sale on Amazon.

You can browse the available Shorts here.