All My Amazon eBooks Have Been Taken Off the Shelf!

Yep - This was bound to happen.

I couldn't believe there were people running wso's telling others to grab PLR content and throw it together and call it a book and build an "Amazon book empire".

All the "create a book on Amazon in less than 10 minutes" crap was like lighting the touch-paper on an Amazon clamp-down.

It's only been good for me since I always create new content for my books and don't even use PLR as a starting place, but I do feel sorry for the suckers who got told to do this by people they were regarding as experts helping them make money.

There's certainly still scope for creating useful books and using existing material as the basis for content elements, but reprinting PLR has always been a spammy way to try and bring value to people without a lot of changes to make it unique and valuable in its own right.

How would YOU feel if you bought 5 books on your favourite subject and found out they were all the same with different titles? Pissed off I would imagine.

I think it's a good thing and once again should only be a concern for people who were trying to game the system rather than offer new value to people.

Andy

I bought a WSO about and in the beginning it worked. But offcourse is was bound to happen some day

Hi Andy.

Thanks for weighing in. Yep--I learned that lesson the hard way!

Ah well, at least I'm a decent writer and, as the US Marine Force Recon is fond of saying, "Adapt! Improvise! Overcome!"

And I digress...

Have a nice day.

I was less than a month from hiring a VA and scaling this up. I guess I dodged that bullet! Phew!

What else do you expect? Online business has become a
breeding ground for mediocrity (NOT YOU IN PARTICULAR!)
and people are becoming lazy by the day.

NO creativity any more. Just REGURGITATION of all the old
stuff.

+1 wealthydon.

The whole time I was formatting those books and slapping em up on Amazon, a nagging little voice in the back of my mind kept saying, "boooooolllshiiiiiiiiiiittt. boooooolllshiiiiitt."

Shoulda listened.

Lol if it didn't work on Amazon. Try Barnes and Noble, as well as iBooks, maybe they don't have much content police in their management

You won't get a lot of sympathy from a lot of people for putting garbage on Amazon and expecting them to keep it there.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...on-kindle.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ess-model.html

Another magic pill and shortcut to success dies.

What a shocker.

Put up unique quality content that may involve...*gasp*...WORK and you'll be fine.

There are many more options available other than amazon. My advice, just don't stick to what everyone do, try each and everything.

I just got that email yesterday. Funny, I noticed that the other listing for one of my ebooks was taken down off of Kindle. That's good because it was someone else's listing for my ebook. Now, only my listing is up there which is the official copy of my book.

I applaud what they are doing over there on Amazon!

What's to stop someone from swiping your (non-Amazon-listed) ebook and listing it on Amazon as their own ebook though? If they do that before you do, does theirs become the 'official' listing? How does Amazon tell who's the real author?

Is it possible to have your eBook on Amazon published under your name (first)- and then sell it as PLR as well.

Can you have your cake and eat it too?

Wonderful, now my idiocy is truly on parade. LOL. Oh well.

I have since added a link to my sig.

As a ghostwriter for years (and a newbie to Internet marketing) I must say I'm little stunned. I was under the impression you're always supposed to rewrite PLR. In fact, unless I'm doing a specific paragraph by paragraph rewrite for a client, I just treat it like research and ideas and rewrite from the ground up.

Some PLR articles are very good. They're a great starting point. But you have to assume everybody's already using these exact same articles. It's better to combine them from multiple sources to create one good piece of work.

In fact, one of my biggest writing jobs right now is rewriting PLR for my clients so it's not even identifiable as the article it started with. People choose me because they know I can produce a brand-new interesting article from a pretty common PLR.

Mercedes
writetherightstuff.com online writing services

I've had people using this program STEAL from me by taking sections of my books and posting them as their own. Why not do something unique-- write your own damn book? Amazon may just kick you off, but I've retained a lawyer. If someone copies any of my books beyond fair use, you'll be paying in court. Already got one down. Going after the rest.

I agree that producing your own high quality content is the way to go. I also agree that using PLR material for ideas, concepts, and even good phrases and titles can work great.

These products take longer to create, but hopefully that will make you think more about the niche you're in, the customers you're targeting, and the product you're delivering before you put it up. Getting all these things right, plus high quality content, will translate to much better results anyway.

You should ask for refunds. These WSO sellers clearly have no interest in your success. They resort to outright lies.

Congratulations for discovering it that early. Failure is roadblock that you have to pass before reaching success.

You said a mouthful there, bud. It was a harsh lesson, but I'm glad I learned it before I was too invested.

I'm fairly new to publishing to Kindle but have had some successes.

I do buy almost everything available about publishing to Kindle. While I have learned a lot, there is an awful lot of crap being peddled out there too. I knew from beginning that publishing a quality Kindle book "in 30 minutes" was total BS. I stayed far away from most of the questionable methods promoted.

I do however use quite a bit of PLR in my Kindle publishing and I thought I'd share my experiences with that.

I like PLR. I'm not much of a writer so I find this a great starting place. I look for quality PLR. I spend a lot of money on it and sort a few gems out of piles of crap. I have published a few pieces unaltered - I thought they were great as is. But I do tend to add to most of my PLR. I don't do a lot of rewriting but I do add more relevant content to improve the book. I also usually come up with my own titles and cover art.

I too have received a letter like that above on one of my projects. I put an unaltered PLR up that had been floating around for awhile. I didn't realize til after the fact. That letter kinda scared me.

Later I published a new PLR book I obtained off the WF. Turns out I wasn't the only one. But instead of blocking it, they wrote to me and asked for clarification or proof that I was either the real author or that I had publishing rights to the book. I wrote back and explained to them that it was PLR off the WF. I gave them the link, a copy of my receipt and a copy of PLR license. They published my book 2 days later. At the time there were only 2 other copies up and they both were too lazy to even change the cover art! I just checked again - now there are 5 different copies up! Mine is the only one with original artwork and a print edition available thru CreateSpace! They are letting some duplicate stuff thru. I'm guessing eventually they will evaluate for quality and knock several of these off.

After this experience I wrote back to them with some questions. And I even got a reply back! First I was worried about getting my account banned trying to publish duplicate content, ie PLR. They assured me that wouldn't happen. What they meant in this warning was something different. - "In addition to removing duplicate books from the Kindle store, please note that if you attempt to sell multiple copies or undifferentiated versions of the same book from your account, we may terminate your account." This was directed to the idiots who try to publish same book to different audiences - ie: Taxes for Doctors, Taxes for Handymen, Taxes for Taxidermists, etc. - where all same other than minor changes. Run into few WSOs advocating doing just this and knew were crap!

They wouldn't really say but I think the fact that I also publish some physical books with CreateSpace also makes a difference. They have never had a problem associating my Kindle edition with my print book; even when Kindle copies exist. This is just my thoughts based on my experience. I'm not sure is actually valid.

My adventures with PLR have educated me a lot on publishing. I'm likely to continue using some but do recognize the importance of branching out and creating my own material too.

I'm not just a publisher. I have always been an avid reader and buy a lot of books - both print and digital. I love my Kindle! I spend a lot of time carefully formatting my books; making them look good and making sure the content is good. Before publishing anything I ask myself if I would be a happy customer after buying this book? Or would I feel ripped off buying a load of crap? I won't publish anything I wouldn't be happy to buy and own. Quality comes first.

For those of you interested: I have only been publishing to Kindle for about 6 weeks. I have 16 titles up. 8 of those titles are also available as print editions thru CreateSpace as well. I haven't done any promotion. So far royalties from both sources add up to a little over $200. Its not a lot yet but I do see this as a success and will continue building my publishing empire.

Hope my experiences will help someone else out there.

Shane

Looks like it is indeed getting harder and harder to sell at KINDLE...

This have been going for a while PLR or MRR, they both going down on kindle, they are not happy with duplicate ebooks over there

I can't believe they ever accepted all the duplicate and PLR books in the first place. Slapping a new title and cover image on content that has been floating around for ages was never going to last.

PLRs are great for bonuses, building opt in listing and of course passive selling with your links in the PLRs [you give away!]...

Perhaps use the PLRs as a starting point; update the info / add to it ; or even merge multiple PLRs together [and update content]... if you plan to sell / resell...

D

I noticed this as well. The only real solution is to take PLR books and rewrite them so that they really are your own unique creation. Not the easy money that it used to be, but I knew those so called courses were a waste of time and money.

I thought I'd give the Kindle PLR book business a try and upload some ebooks, too. I put three up there sometime in June. I have many plr books on my hard drive and thought this might be a good use for them and a way to make some easy money. It was worth a shot I thought. I was too busy with my other biz at that time to put up anymore though right then so I didn't get around to uploading anymore.

About a month after I put those three up I got a similar email from Amazon saying that they had taken down 2 of the books because they were the same as many others.

However, they still have the third one up there even though it is the same as others. Probably a matter of time before it gets taken down, too.

So, any more that I put up in the future will definitely be rewritten considerably.

It is too bad that I missed out on the easy money but this is a good thing for consumers that they are cleaning house and getting rid of a lot of the spam / duplicate stuff that is out there.

i have 2 books on kindle - one has sold none, the other has sold 4 in 3 months, both took me about 3 months to write each! i can see why people opt for the easy route, however, having said that. john locke made £1 million with only 9 books!!!!! so i figure you do not need hundreds of books in the first place -- you just need a few really good ones that people will appreciate -- i think maybe the other problem is finding the right niche.

Thank Goodness Amazon is doing this. It only makes sense.

Why would they want to give their customers bad service?

You should write your own unique books or hire someone to do it for you. Let's clean up the internet garbage.

Wish PLR didn't exist.

This is a good move by amazon.
It not only protects its brand.
it removes all that duplicate content that diminishes
the buying experience on amazon.
Kindle success will now require more originality
and continued marketing efforts.

Hey, amazon is just not the same company even. There have been a lot of changes guys. For example, people are claiming that they are removing reviews. It gets worse. Accounts are being taken away. Still remember liking the old amazon. Yeah, that was a very long time ago.

I had planned on doing the "easy, fast" way myself, but I definitely won't do it now.......hehehe

I'm not so sure Amazon is acting as suggested above: look at this author :Amazon.com: Mike Morley: Kindle Store

He has 236 book and most are PLR..he has done this all of 2013 and is still there

It was really just a matter of time before this happened...

Amazon was originally in search of content, so they were pretty relaxed about the content they got... (Not saying your content was necessarily bad, just not overly unique)

Now they have more than enough quality, UNIQUE content, so they are doing this.

Good post, and again the moral of the story is that there aren't a lot of shortcuts out there that work for the long haul. When you produce quality (UNIQUE) content that benefits others, you'll have success.

Thanks,


Josh

To be honest, the only way PLR content can really be utilized in a Kindle situation is NOT by
posting up some mediocre PLR book.

You can use PLR content, but don't copy paste 'your entire book into microsoft word' kinda thing. Use it for ideas/content/etc.

You could honestly use an entire bit of PLR for a chapter or what parts your book is appropriate for it, UNDER 2 CONDITIONS
It has to be good, and flow together. If you were to buy this, would you feel ripped off? can you stand by the eBook yourself?

and you need to either A) Reword/Rewrite it or B) Expand upon it by writing more with it.

Atleast this way, you can still tuck in the PLR while having a GOOD QUALITY product. You just have to make sure you're not sticking up a steaming pile of crap and expecting people to buy it.

Yes, you can put hard work in and create an awesome quality ebook using PLR. You just gotta think outsite the box, only use PLR for parts of it and be expansive on it.

HOWEVER, Like always it's best to rewrite the PLR content entirely. Those that are lazy are going to want to stuff their books full of different PLR content but the more unique, the better!

I'm curious, has anyone every taken DIFFERENT PLR content and put it into a QUALITY ebook with their own writing changes/additions? I could totally see this is a faster way to produce a optimum quality product. You just have to make sure the PLR isn't old, used everywhere and isn't crappy.

I'm so sorry to hear this, brobdingnagian; and for everyone else that it's happened to, as well. It was bound to happen, but still an awful blow.. I've given your initial post a well-deserved thanks, because I'm sure you'll have given a heads-up to many people in a similar boat. I hope you can turn things around quickly; losing an income stream - something that's happened to me, too, on occasion - is always very painful.

PLR has it's place and it's uses. Simply slapping a bunch of PLR articles into an ebook and then having a $5 ebook cover made up on Fiverr is not a good way to use PLR IMO. I've always just used it for ideas. I've rebranded PLR video products in the past, but I've always added my own content as well and my rule is that if I'm going to use PLR to create a new info product, then it has to be rewritten and must be less than 50% of the product. And as for using PLR videos in your info product, I only use videos that are on general topics and that are exactly like the video I would have made myself. It's a time saver.

For instance, let's say I wanted to create a basic affiliate marketing product for newbies. It's perfectly OK to include PLR videos that demonstrate things like how to buy a domain, set up a hosting account, set up a WordPress blog, etc. However, when it comes to the actual meat of the product, I believe that the customers want to hear my voice and see me doing it and speaking to them in the videos.

I have personally purchased info products before only to open the videos and see that I have the product already and it's just a 2 or 3-year old PLR video course that someone made up a new sales page & graphics for. Not a good feeling. And it ends up in me asking for a refund immediately.

Like I said, PLR is great and has its uses, but it's important to know just what the uses are and not to go too far with it.

you know the drill. w.s.o. about method = death just around the corner.

I was wondering how Amazon was allowing PLR to be sold. Well that settles it.
Thanks for sharing.
All the best. Regards.

Now you are talking!

Although it is not a good idea to base your eBook on the PLR structure since they are too rehashed and unoriginal for the purpose, you can still get the fundamental list of topics to write about.

So yeah, it is good.

And I always believe, it is always better to write ONE awesome eBook than to crank out a hundred CRAPPY ones.

What say?

Thank God I Found this Thread. I was Actually Planning to start Publishing PLR Ebooks on amazon.