KDP Termination Problem (AI Content?) 

To clarify something in the video: My comment on the international markets is that there are certain countries (you know which one I'm hinting at - the ones renown for scams) that have had a high propensity to create low quality book or set up scams. Data is showing that if you live in one of those countries, Amazon is more likely to ban your account if you make a simple mistake when uploading to a market that isn't yours. Basically the threshold to a banning is lowered. But if you live in a country that doesn't have history of that, you have less chances of a ban if you make a mistake or don't do things right.

I got my account terminated because I was "manipulating sales." I'd already appealed asking what that meant, but was terminated that same email. However, I emailed and stated I wanted to talk to a "human supervisor." Literally minutes after sending the mail my account was reinstated. So remember to ALWAYS ask for a human supervisor.

Why isn't it Amazon offering helpful videos for authors? I've never understood the lack of transparency and why we all are forced to clamor to third parties, like the excellent Kindlepreneur and also K-Lytics for any kind of trends data or meaty policy updates. Also, THANK YOU Dave!!!

A small publisher I work for had the dreaded account termination, two supposed "appeals," and when we demanded a human supervisor we were denied... until we said our lawyer needed more information from them. Boom, the account was restored within hours. Never any explanation of what terminated it in the first place and no admission of a mistake on Amazon's part, of course.

It's also important to note that the rules for tradpub aren't the same for indy. Don't jump off the bridge just because you see JK Rowling do it.

I'm so glad I subscribe to Kindlepreneur. Thanks for the updates, Dave

Sad to see how many people are saying their accounts are terminated. I hope they rally hard get it back. And i pray that the rest of us never have to suffer that. The idea of it is enough to make someone worry.

My account got terminated this evening and they stated no reason 😭 I really think if Amazon updates there terms and conditions books that has been accepted before, should remain so and the update should only apply to new books. Taking down someone's hard work for months in just a minute and not paying up the remaining royalty is not good, that's slave labour

Dave, what would we do without you? You work so hard. And yes, my husband has published many more books than I, and he says always, always ask for a human being to talk to if any issues come up. Thanks again.

thank you for the update- great video - you have such a great youtube channel and information to share - you are my go to kdp expert. It would be terrible to have account mistakenly terminated by algorithm bot. its good to contact a person that is not a bot at Amazon to discuss account - Algorithm mistakes do happen at Amazon unfortunately. PS thanks for link to your article.

Thank you - I'm brand new to self publishing and have two of my books in the "dungeon" and I've been trying to figure out why. I've watched this video 3 times already and will be watching it a few more, I think! Very helpful.

I'm so glad you're talking about this! Thank you!

For spicy content marking the checkbox on amazon has resulted in romance books being removed from search results (dungeoned). It's my understanding that Amazon gave clarification on this recently and the box only needs to be checked for explicit images or title content.

More must-have info, concisely presented. Thanks, man.

Thanks for the update!

Thanks Dave! I haven't had this problem but it's good to know.

Thanks for detailed analysis on the topic. It is very helpful.

Thanks for the info. I'll have to check and see if I'm doing anything on that list.

Damn. Just in time for my book to be published with all of the i's dotted and t's crossed. Appreciate this video greatly!

Thank you for sharing this information Dave that is great to know.

Thanks, Dave for the useful information.

This is all so worrisome. Thank you for this great video! I have a question, though. Does one need to click "Yes" for the KDP question asking if there is AI content in a book if there is no AI content inside the book, but it does have an AI cover?

Got my account terminated and I have been suffering silently. Been trying to get my books going for years and finally got up to a few nickels and baaam terminated! Thanks for this.

Years ago I got an email saying I was "manipulating page reads" and that I had to stop it. I had no clue what they were talking about or how to fix it. It was so vague, and they wouldn't elaborate. Amazon just took 50% of the income from my page reads and said I'd be terminated if I didn't stop it. With no other option since I wasn't "doing" anything, I pulled all my books from KDP and went wide. Absolutely tanked sales, and they never recovered. Went back into KDP about a year later when they stopped attacking innocent authors, and sales were maybe 20% of what they used to be. All momentum lost.

Thank you, please where is the link to to over come up with my terminated account back.

Thank you for this in-depth video Dave! Now I am gonna prey and make an offering every night to our overlord algorithm. I hope it will ease my stress to get this aweful termination message.

Please how to get back my terminated account back, my problem is with the book cover image the leads to my account termination.

Thank you, Dave. Great information. A while ago, I uploaded a new cover for my first book. One of the changes was that I shortened the subtitle. I was able to change the metadata for the eBook, but KDP won't let me edit it for the softcover. I didn't want to mess with anything, so I left it alone. As a result, the subtitle in the metadata doesn't exactly match what's printed on the cover. Do you think I should contact support and ask them to change the subtitle, or am I better to leave well enough alone? P.S. I got a copy of Publisher Rocket a couple of days ago and I'm looking forward to seeing what it can do. 🙂

Thanks for the information. I don't have anything on KDP yet, I wondered if you were going to discuss AI books, and if Amazon had a way to determine AI versus human content. I know some AI content can be pretty good, but some is not.

Thanks for the information. Can you recommend other alternatives to publish books other than amazon KDP?

Hi Dave, just to make sure regarding Amazon Ads: Does that also mean, that I must not target amazon products like KU or booktitles and authornames via keyword ads? Only via product targeting ads? Thanks for the great video.

Hi Dave, are you sure about we can’t select us market if we live in other countries. Because I live in Sweden and wrote an English book, if i can select us market it’s crazy.

Great video Dave. But on the sub titles needing to be on the cover, I couldn't see that on the KDP content rules specifically? and does your paperback and ebook need to have the same subtitle? =

Great video! Subscribed I have tried numerous times, in many different ways to get my acx and KDP account back, I have finally given up, that account was bringing me little over 8K monthly, all gone, Question Dave, If I open a LLC, New EIN, new device (laptop). new modem, new phone number, new bank, new books of course, do you think this would be enough to get back on successfully? Thanks for putting out great content brother

Thank you Dave for this eye opener. Please avoid do we avoid book blocking. Amazon is blocking books within reasonable reason

YESSS!!! It happened to me yesterday!!

Thanks very much for this important information! If a paperback cover has no subtitle, but there is a subtitle on the paperback's Amazon page, is that an issue too? (Or is only a different subtitle an issue)? Thank you. And if it is already published, am I cleared?

I'm planning to publish and this kind of scares me now haha. And I am an author outside of US planning to put my book on US market. Idk if my country is on the "banned" list, but if I do everything with the taxes right, then I shouldn't have problems?

ty for video

Hi Dave. I've been a user of Publisher Rocket for many years. Do you mind if I ask you something quickly? Over the years, I've published numerous books on Amazon. Some of them have subtitles on the paperback covers, while others don't. I've never encountered any issues and have gained hundreds of 5-star reviews. However, about 1/3rd of my book covers don't have the subtitles. I chose not to include them for aesthetic reasons. These are books published as far back as 2016. Do you think I should go back and edit them all to add the subtitles to the covers, or is it alright to leave them as they are, given that some of these books are eight years old? Thanks, mate!

My account was terminated without warning. I sent over a dozen emails and got no response. Any help? The termination email simply said I had violated their Terms and Conditions.

Thank you very much for your insightful message. I got my kdp account terminated some time ago. I had just published for the very first time. I pleaded and pleaded no avail. So I don't know if you can help me restore my account please. Thank you. Hearing from you soonest.

I had no idea my covers were supposed to have my subtitle. I will have to update all of those. Thank you!

Please my account was terminated when I've published my last book for like 2 weeks ago, then I got an email saying that my account have been terminated without violating their rules, please how can I get back my account? 🙏🏽

They accused me falsely of publishing a book that violated their guidelines. They said the title and cover were dubious and misleading. The cover was from Canva. The title was a common phrase that people use when they want to write about that particular topic. They told me to change it or redo my book. I opted for the second choice, the book passed successfully. 4 months later, they send me an email that they're terminating my account because of the book that I abandoned, and didn't publish . Can someone tell me how it makes sense?

Once your account has been terminated, there's no way you can recover it. I've tried sending about 68 emails to KDP support team and failed 😢

Im an American living in the Philippines. Does that mean if I select USA as my marketplace Ill get shit down?! Or does the fact that I successfully registered a W-9 and have a US bank account mitigate?

How do you do this. Amazon Kdp is well known to close accounts for very vague reasons. KDP isn't to be trusted.

Please help me my amazon kdp account was terminated How can I get back my account please tell me

I teach authors to use comps in their book marketing so will "targeting other books or mentioning other authors" be a metadata violation that will get them shut down?

A thing to mention is that subtitle only needs to be put on paperback/hardcover. On an ebook, you can put whatever you want int he subtitle section and your see most authors use it to give a better description of your book, for example something like: "An Enemies to Lovers Romance."

I am a US citizen and resident of Florida but currently residing overseas. If I publish a book on KDP will Amazon use some type of IP tracking? How would they know I'm not physically in the USA at the moment?

I can't believe what you said about non-US writers publishing in America! I'm in Australia and publish to every marketplace. Should I be worried? And what is the sense in Amazon discouraging non-US writers?

thnx for the video. im on kdp germany and i cant find the exact text that you need to put the subtitle on the cover. I found two places about cover and title, but imo neither is very clear about it when it comes to subtitle. In low contend its pretty common that there is no subtitle on the cover, you really think that this point could be a problem?

This leads to some uncomfortable questions. I published in the US store from Canada before there was a Canada store using an ITIN # from the IRS to avoid double taxation. Am I supposed to Unpublish my backlist from the US store and republish them in Canada without the accumulated reviews?

So if publish my book while out of town (country) for the summer, they might shut down my account?

Your videos rule. They are the best. Thank you. People living in Japan (and I would guess England, France, Germany and some other places) have the option of publishing via a local KDP account in their country or opening a US account and publishing via that account. Does anyone know if this makes a difference or not? Just to clarify, I live in Japan. I actually have two Amazon accounts for ordering products. One in the US, and one in Japan. One day by accident I realized my Amazon Japanese account actually has a KDP account attached by default. In my case, I wouldn't use it-as it might be like publishing via two accounts. This can get you in serious trouble. But I wonder what is preferred? I even kind of wonder if the vetting process is identical or not.

They do not like you listing the contributors on the title of your book anymore (such as a map designer and a cover designer) You can still list in the book itself but not on the title. This seems to have been something new.

Jason's article lists "Offensive Content" as a common reason for shutting down a KDP account. KDP publishes thousands of books that contain pornographic material and scenes of sexual violence. Why aren't those accounts terminated?

Can you have the subtitle on the spine instead of the front cover? Does that count? Looking for loopholes! :)

5:35 So if I don't live in United States I can't publish on the US market? Can someone explain please?

What are the guidelines with sexual content? I saw in the video that this was one of the reasons they can terminate an account. Can a romance author include a PG or R rated scene and be okay? (Okay, I know those are movie ratings, but I'm using them to make it clear what I'm talking about.) Or is this primarily for books in which the more risque scenes are gratuiitous? (X-rated, to continue the prior example.) From what I understand, you can't advertise books if they contain sexual content. Obviously, that might hurt a more mainstream book that has a sex scene in it. Does the rule apply to books that are primarily erotic in nature? I just want to know where that line is.

I have a book called "The Ultimate Actuarial Joke Book: 670.5 jokes geeky enough to be suitable for actuaries" and it kept getting rejected. After months of back-and-forth it eventually transpired that using joke in the title and jokes in the subtitle was seen as keyword stuffing. So in the end just published it without the subtitle and it got through fine...

I don’t know why Amazon can't give authors access to these violation scanning tools. Then authors can just scan their own account to make sure it is compliant and take steps to correct any flag issues. Most authors do want to comply with the rules. But it can be easy to make an honest error, especially when Amazon change their guidelines.

What do you mean by publishing in a market outside your home country? We're allowed to publish in all KDP markets. Do you mean the MAIN market?

The idea they would terminate someone's account (possibly their only or main source of income) without a Human decision is shocking. Also the short amount of time a Human might spend making that decision. And they rarely seem to give enough information to be able to appeal it. Shouldn't be legal.

I am about to launch my first series. What does "sexual content" mean? That is pretty vague. Is this a radio button you need to select for sexual content when loading the book? Is it in the description? I have to say explicitly "sexual content"? I do not see that on any book listing that I know have extensive sex and violence. Anyone know?

Pls @ everyone I don't understand thjs Published on the Us market..located outside the Us what do they mean pls Or are they telling us not Publish our boss to other market or ? What pls i need someone to explain better cos i don't understand 🙏

It would be interesting to know if the age of an account influences the cancellation decision. Perhaps a mistake made by a profile with 8 years of creation and an impeccable track record is not considered the same as another with just 6 months.

What's the issue exactly with AI content?

I have heard people suggest that KDP creators can and do report there competition as a means of "swatting". Does anyone know if this is true or have real world examples of it?

Regarding titles and subtitles, here is the quote from their terms of service. "For print books, your title must be listed on the cover (on the spine or front cover). It must also match the metadata you entered during title setup. Title information doesn't need to appear in your manuscript, but it must match the metadata if it does".

04:05 You cannot always have the possibility to put the whole subtitle in the front or back cover, because often contains lots of words or repeated words. Talking from a low, medium content publisher.

Actually, what you're talking about with authors selling in the US market, but are located outside the US *doesn't* make sense to me. I'm a US expat, and it's hard enough trying to publish on KDP from outside the US without the threat of getting my account terminated. Are they mostly going after people in places that are known for piracy, or just anyone living outside the US?

Hi, Dave! I'm preparing a childbirth book for publishing. I'll have a few hand-drawn illustrations in the book showing poses during labor. Do you think I should mark it as sexual content?

I lost my account since February and there’s no message that I haven’t sent to Amazon but it’s not working

😮According to this video, I've gone against several rule. Subtitles. Publishing outside U.S. When I first started publishing, I was living in the U.S., but have since moved to Germany. Well, I guess it's only a matter of time.

Mine was terminated for something that i never did. This went back and forth for months and they never answered any of my questions. Madness.

You don't need your subtitle on the book. The problem is, people are keyword stuffing the subtitles instead of it being an actual subtitle. Also making claims be it in the title, subtitle or description how the book is in someway good for your mental or physical health and having no credentials to back it up. Using a non human name for a pen name will get you in trouble. And low content books are especially getting the boot and the rash of AI art coloring books. Smut is fine as long as you answer truthfully if there is anything on the cover, title or subtitle of a sexual nature. It doesn't matter what is between the pages as long as no incest, rape, underage sex or sex with animals. And like you mention, copyright or trademark infringement.

Thanks for watching out for us so well, Dave. I'm finishing up a guided prayer journal focusing on praise. Knowing pretty covers really help sell journals, I'd rather not have a subtitle on the cover and maybe not my name. So, I have 2 questions. 1) Is the issue that I need a subtitle on the cover if I list a subtitle on my sales page? Could I have a subtitle (and my name) on my title page inside the book as long as I don't list the subtitle on my sales page? 2) Or does Amazon frown on not having a subtitle on the cover period? I think prayer journals often don't.

I know that there's a checkbox for sexually explicit images and sexually explicit language on the cover, but how do we notate sexual content that isn't images and isn't on the cover?

What? No this can't be right about not publishing in other countries. Every author I know and follow, including teachers and mentors, all publish outside their own countries!

this happened to me. Had my account shut down for 4 months. I called the better business bureau and they fixed it for me. wish i had called them sooner. My guess is Amazon flagged my book for not fitting in the correct category because my LGBTQ book wasn't gay enough? I know it sounds like a stretch but this appears to have happened to a few other gay authors and isn't an isolated experience. My book doesn't use the word "gay" and the sexual innuendos may be too subtle for an AI to pick up on.

So... are they terminating accounts that publish books with AI content? The fact that they're now asking that question makes me a little nervous.

Plz can help me. Mu accont termined without resean ni copyright ni tradmark? > Hello, >> > >> > During a recent audit of your account, we found content and/or >> activities >> > that are in violation of our Terms and Conditions. Therefore, we are >> > closing your account effective immediately. >> > >> > Examples include attempting to publish books that violate our Content >> > Guidelines. >> > >> > As part of the termination process: >> > • We will close your KDP account >> > • You're no longer eligible to receive any outstanding royalties >> > • You'll no longer have access to your account. This includes, editing >> > your titles, viewing your reports and accessing any other information >> > within your account >> > • All of your published titles will be removed from sale on Amazon

People were laughing at me when I pointed out years ago that Amazon is regulary "swiping" people from ceirtain countries, and it does it in intervals, with a generic reason in the "what's the reason", and "sorry, we can't disclose why" response. Because, good luck paying international lawyers, and Amazon knows this.

They didn't say why I was booted from kdp

I would love clarification about the s*xual content. I write darker romance that has spicy times. The only thing to click is the explicit button for images on cover or inside. I def do 18+ but how else can we confirm that yes, it’s in there. I don’t want to put all my books into the er*tic category because that’s not what I write.

I'm a natural born American over 35 years old and hence am qualified to run for President of the USA. But, in this video you said Amazon might be targeting folks who publish to the USA marketplace but living outside the USA. I have been living in Europe for almost 2 years. If I were to write/publish another book, I'd be accessing KDP from a European IP address. So.. you're saying Amazon might target me, an American citizen, who happens to be outside the USA for the time being? Will a VPN fix this problem?

Wow I came here thinking ai content is a reason for amazon bans....what a relief this video brought me...thanks Dave!!!

So, I appealed, and again, it's nothing but bots. I've been on KDP for 12 years, all of a sudden they are nit-picking stuff. It happened after I went in and changed the keywords on a bunch of my titles after I used Publisher Rocket earlier that day (the 17th) I got a warning email June 17th evening, on one title I'd changed keywords to that day, it was an erotic novella I released under a pen name. But at first the reason said it was because of the metadata, and then later it was because of pornographic content the following day. But before I could unpublish the book because I just felt like it wasn't worth it because they'd targeted another books in that same series - I rec'd another email the morning of June 18th, my account was terminated (due to pornographic content!) So, your email on termination that luckily came in that day. So, I've hired the attys, and we'll see what happens but prior to that, I'd been shooting appeals to KDP because another recommendation was to be "persistent." I don't think that helped.

Copyright infringement and detecting ai written books is another reason for terminating

There is no way to sell a new book without using known competitors keywords. After new update it is time to leave this sh***. NOt everyone has huge mailing list, tiktok or instagram to advertise a book. Now it is not possible to do any positioning while ads don't make our book higher when we don't have popular (now banned) keywords in 7 boxes, title o subtitle. Funny becuase you can't use "coloring book" in 7 boxes now. So I have no idea how to rank my books now.

What's the point of having sexual content in our books?

It doesn't matter, none of my books are selling anyway! I feel like their shadowbanned!

I've published quite a few books on Kindle for which the raw text was AI generated. But I do extensive editing and have not had any complaint from them.

I've written and published 27 ebooks so far, and I only do it for fun because I love to write and publish for my own entertainment purposes. However, I thank God for this opportunity. Lord, please protect all of our accounts. Amen🙏 Thank you, Lord. I love you 💚💙❤️😇

Why bother putting in the effort of writing and self publishing when you can get your account terminated for no reason.

Thank you, please where is the link to to over come up with my terminated account back.