[KDP REJECTION] Reason’s Why Your KDP Account Could be Suspended or Banned

To avoid being banned we have written this article to help avoid this happening to you. In the end if you use common sense and spend a little time on research you should be fine and be able to avoid this happening to you. In this article we will share with you our thoughts the best we can. We do agree KDP can be vague when it comes to their emails, it probably is not very fair at times, but in the end, it is their company and assume if something doesn’t look right with them or is questionable, they probably lean to the side of suspension or a ban.

Some people think Amazon is currently on a ban kick right now. They are not. If you have just joined groups, and you see someone posting about a ban, then they see another one a week later and a couple more before that, that doesn’t mean they are on a ban kick. You can search google for reasons to be banned by KDP. You go through the search results for many pages, you will see many videos, blogs and group’s that mention Amazon is on a ban kick, but these posts were made in 2013, 2014, 2015, etc., all the way to current day. On the few posts made in the group, we found the reasons they probably were. Similar covers to others, using trademarks, mis-use of words unrelated to the book, etc. Be sure to understand what you can and can not do on KDP

POSSIBLE REASON’S YOU COULD GET BANNED:

Using Copyrighted Material: "Copyright infringement is the use or production of copyright-protected material without the permission of the copyright holder." (Investopedia).
Trademark Infringement: "The term trademark refers to a recognizable insignia, phrase, word, or symbol that denotes a specific product and legally differentiates it from all other products of its kind." (Investopedia).
More Than One KDP Account: You can use many pen names, but only one KDP account. Another small possibility as well, is KDP might have an issue with more than one person in a household having a KDP account. If say your spouse wants to do “Low and Medium Content Books” as well, perhaps email them first before they create a KDP account on their own Amazon account, to make sure it is okay.
Spam Reviews: Buying reviews or asking people to make reviews who didn’t buy your book, is considered Ranking manipulation.
Unpublishing & Republishing: Unpublishing a book, then creating a new book using the same cover and interior, or unpublishing and republishing multiple times the same book. If you need to edit contents of a current book that is live, just pick one of the three edit choices for that book. Make your edit’s, update your interior, or cover then save and publish. Do not unpublish it to do edits.
Misleading Title and or Sub-Title: This is considered Ranking Manipulation.
Non-Relevant Categories: This is considered Ranking Manipulation as well.
Descriptions: Again, this is considered Ranking Manipulation.
Keywords: Probably one of the quickest ways to get a ban is this, using keywords to try and get ranked higher but has nothing to do with your book and is considered Ranking Manipulation.
Copying or Have Covers Very Similar to Others: Do your research and make sure you do not do this. If your cover or interior closely resemble another book’s layout, color scheme, font’s and or images, you could get banned. Reverse search your cover’s, artwork in google. Better yet, create your own unique covers.
Using Various Covers with the Same Interiors in “Medium Content Books”: Don’t publish books with the same interior using different covers, (Activity Books, Puzzle Books, Coloring Books, etc., as amazon will consider this a bad customer experience. For low content books, Sketchbooks, Lined Paper, Journals, having various covers with these types of books, seems to be okay, but make sure the covers are different and not just a very slight variation of others.
Not Making Your Covers Your Own: We at Book Bolt do not have images. There are a lot of free image sites out there, and you need to make sure about the license and if you can edit the image. See this article here we have about this topic.
AI Art: The AI learns off Art already created in the world to learn from and something created by the AI Art program, could end up with something like an actual piece of art. Amazon has not made a statement regarding AI art that we know of, but always assume with them, if it is in a gray area, then don’t do it.
ChatGPT: It learns from reading from a multitude of sources and it could quote something, then you publish it, KDP see’s that and it was used without permission, then you will get banned.
Any Offensive Content: Please see this link on what they feel offensive content is https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200672390. Also read about all their Content Guidelines while here.
Low Quality Content: Having many spelling mistakes, bad grammar, and other weak writing skills, especially doing so every time you try to upload a new book, may get you a ban. If you repeatedly get warnings about a particular thing and keep doing it, they will frown upon that. You are making more work for the reviewers of the books. Amazon are not your editors or your personal proof-reader and repeatedly uploading books with these the same issues every time could result in a ban.
Publishing Under a Pen Name Using a Company or Celebrity Name: If you do this to try and mislead people and to get views and sales this will result in a ban as well. This is again a form of Ranking Manipulation.
Any Misleading Content or Suspicious Activity: This is self explanatory really, and a lot of things could be said about this, among them, do not buy your own book and review it, or have family and friends do so as well. Don’t get people to go to your page 100 times a day. Please use common sense. Don’t use shortcuts, if the areas are in the gray, then don’t do them.
Using a VPN Service: In doing research on this whole topic, I did see a couple of brief mentions of people using a VPN service who may have got banned for that. I could see how KDP could frown upon this. You live in California, yet you log into KDP, and your IP address looks like it is from Florida, France, Finland, or Fiji. We highly suggest you not use a VPN when logging into your KDP account, A Plus account, Amazon Advertising Account or Author Central, Basically anything to do with working on your book and if you go on Amazon as well, don’t use a VPN. In a lot of ways, Amazon could view this as a form of Manipulation.
Using Sites for Reviews: There are many sites out there you can join, pay for, exchange services for reviews on your books. You should not use these as Amazon may view it as a manipulation of their search algorithm.
Other: There is other ways then we mention above that may lead to suspension or a Ban, but we believe we have covered the most known ones. Just assume, if you try to do anything to get an edge, cheat the system, any type of manipulation, and they have just the slightest of doubt about your intentions, assume they will suspend or ban you, therefore; don’t do it! It’s just not worth it!

KEEP THESE FOUR THINGS BELOW IN MIND AS WELL:

#1. If KDP rejects your book, they send an email to you to fix or correct something. Not replying to them in a prompt matter can go from being emailed to make corrections to a ban possibly. Don’t ignore these emails, make sure you check your emails regularly (and spam folder). If you do nothing for a day, two or three days, they may decide to just ban your account. Do not wait to respond to them, keep an eye on emails concerning your book and make the corrections they ask for and or ask them for clarification and do this ASAP.

#2. Don’t always assume your book in review is always the issue, they may have found something wrong with an older book that slipped by an employee when first publishing that book.

#3. Just because many YouTubers, Bloggers, “Influencers” and others say oh do this, and do that, and you will make thousands a month, don’t just do what they say. Most of these people are in it for the views, reads and the dollar. Many of them don’t even have books, or very few books and are not successful at it. They make their money off the views, clicks of affiliate links, etc. Do your research, as you will be the one getting a ban, not them. Also notice how very few of them bring up suspensions and bans or warn you what not to do. Why is that? Again, for the views, clicks and making a buck! How many are teaching you all the ins and outs with Book Bolt and or KDP week after week? How many give back to you without pushing 8 different affiliate links in a video? Don’t get us wrong, there are a quite a few as well, who are sincere and sure they want to make a living, but they give back, are informative, go over the good and bad, and don’t promise you thousands a month in the first month. Hard work, learning, reading, and getting better at anything you do, will pay you back and reward you, not empty promises.

#4. There are many websites out there you can join, that you can use images for commercial use, some of which specify, they must be modified. Make sure you understand the license on each image you use. As well, we highly recommend doing more than just a slight modification to them. Remember, thousand may like and use that same image that you like, and make a slight modification to it, and then you have an image that is very similar as 25 others. So, make it your own, be creative and do more than the minimum.

IF YOUR ACCOUNT DOES GET BANNED, THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU CAN TRY TO DO, IN HOPES OF GETTING IT RE-INSTATED

· Reply to their email ASAP. Don’t ignore them or take 2 weeks to reply. Do this in 24 hours or less.

Be polite and profession in your email.
If the email was not clear what you did, ask them.
Spend time looking into what you might have done. Reverse search images, word’s you may have used in Titles, Sub-Titles, Description, Keywords, and what Categories you picked. (I always have a text file make up before I ever publish a book, which includes every piece of text I will use when publishing my book. I just copy and paste it into the first step of 3 when publishing. If you have something like this as well, it could be handy to have because if you are banned, you won’t have access to what you entered for each book).
Do not give up quickly. Respond back to their replies, and with a little luck, you may end up with a different person the second or third time who is more understanding.
If you think you found out the reason why they may have banned you, and they have not given you a direct answer. Come clean and admit what you found, and you are sorry, can you have a second chance, and you won’t make that mistake again.
Put yourself in their shoes, if you were them, what do you want to hear, how do you want to hear it, etc.
If you still get no where along the way above, ask to talk to a supervisor.

We hope that this article has helped you. All these views are our own, and the purpose of this article is to make you aware of some of the ways that you may get a suspension or ban. Don’t live in fear of a suspension or ban, if you are creating unique artwork, unique interiors, filling out anything and everything you do on KDP properly, you will be fine. Find your niche, find your passion, find what you can do better than others, to give a better product to your potential customer. Spend time learning, and growing, don’t try to put out 500 books in the first month, because you were told by others you can make $5,000 a month starting out! Hard work breeds success. After quite a while on Book Bolt and KDP, I still learn every single day and sometimes think, “Wow” or “OMG, why didn’t I think of that”?