**FINAL UPDATE: Thanks to the hard work of indie author Marie Force and her Indie Author Support Network, my Kindle Direct Publishing account has been reinstated! I cannot thank her enough for her help, and I highly recommend other indie authors join the Indie Author Support Network, one of the best advocacy groups for independent authors out there.**

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been dealing with a behind the scenes problem that has me just this side of pulling all my hair out.

In early March, I saw a sudden, inexpiable spike in page reads through Kindle Unlimited. Kindle Unlimited (KU) is a program you can enroll your Amazon Kindle ebook in that allows people to “borrow” the ebook. For a flat fee ($10/month, I think), you can download any books enrolled in KU at no extra cost. Authors are paid by the number of pages read, called Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP). Each page read is worth a tiny fraction of a penny. Prior to this past March, I averaged between 300 and 600 KENP per month (which means, like, two people read the book that way).

Suddenly, though, I was seeing thousands of KENP each day. Within the first week of it, I was seeing upwards of 8,000 KENP per day, all for the first book in my series, The Invisible Crown.

Now, there are a few possible explanations for this. First, someone out there might’ve found my book and recommended it on a big blog or YouTube channel or something. One of my AMS ads might’ve suddenly started working. Maybe Oprah added it to her book club. None of those were what was happening, though. I used by best Google Fu to search up anything that might explain why hundreds of people were suddenly reading my book. I came up with absolutely nothing.

When I mentioned it to a writing group I belong to on Facebook, a less-than-positive possibility was brought up immediately: click farmers.

See, there are people out there who want to scam the system. They pay someone a bit of money to set up a bunch of bots to read a book on KU, giving them tens of thousands of page reads and helping them rake in the cash.

Occasionally, to throw Amazon off the scent, these click farmers will throw some attention at a book that didn’t ask for it. That’s what probably happened to me.

I did the right thing: I emailed Amazon and let them know what was going on, that I had done nothing to bring on these illegitimate page reads and asked politely that Amazon didn’t do anything to punish me for the actions of someone I wasn’t affiliated with. Amazon did what I expected them to do: they stripped me of the illegitimate page reads, which was perfectly fair.

But the extra page reads kept coming, though at a slightly lower rate. Instead of 7,000 or 8,000 KENP per day, I was now seeing 2,000 to 3,000 on strong days. Amazon sent me an email telling me they were again stripping me of the illegitimate KENP page reads, which again I was totally fine with.

And then Tuesday rolled around. On Tuesday, I received an email from Amazon telling me they were freezing my Kindle Direct Publishing account due to the continued illegitimate page reads. I was pretty upset. I emailed them, letting them know I had no control over the issue and that I had done nothing to attract the illegitimate page reads. They reinstated my account Thursday evening, thankfully.

And then, Friday morning, I discovered that all of my Kindle ebooks were not showing up on Amazon.

My print books–which are done through Createspace–still appear when you search for my books, but the Kindle versions are just…gone. Checking my KDP account, all three books show as being live, which means they should be available on Amazon for purchase. But they’re not.

It’s frustrating. I’m sitting here in fear that my books won’t come back up, or that they will and then my account will be terminated because of some click farmer bot guy in Russia who decided to use me as a target to throw Amazon off their scent.

I’m working on a solution now. Book Three, Death Comes Calling, was never enrolled in KU. The other two are in it until mid-July, at which point they will no longer have to be exclusive to Amazon (a condition of using KDP Select, which is the program that puts your books in KU) and I can post the books on other sites as well. Getting out of KU will solve the illegitimate KENP problem, though it does take my books away from those folks who read things through KU. Of course, if the numbers I’ve seen are at all accurate, not many real people were actually using KU to read my books anyway.

As of early Friday afternoon, my ebooks still aren’t available on Amazon. I’m hoping the issue is resolved soon, because it’s pretty damn frustrating.

**UPDATE: My ebooks have returned! And they finally linked the ebook version of Death Comes Calling to the print version! And my KENP have dropped back down to literally zero, so I guess whoever was sending all the illegitimate reads my way got caught and shut down.**

**ANOTHER UPDATE: As of Tuesday, May 15, my KDP account has been terminated. I can’t sell my books (ebook or print) on Amazon. I’m working with some other folks to rectify the situation, but I have no idea when (or if) I’ll be able to sell stuff on Amazon again. However, if you check out the Books page above, you’ll find links to buy the book on a variety of other platforms.**