Is Amazon banning anyone creating low content using Canva?

[TimothyEllis]

There's been a rash of people on Quora recently who've just been banned from Amazon.

We are terminating your account effective immediately because we found that you have published titles with misleading content that have the potential to mislead or defraud our customers.

The one's I've chatted with were all doing low content books.

The latest one used Canva premium to create it with.

Is Amazon banning anyone creating low content using Canva?

Or is the flood of low content crap now such a problem they're banning anyone new as soon as they upload the 2nd similar book?

I notice YouTube has lots of vids showing people how to use Canva to create low content books specifically for upload to KDP.

Anyone seen any discussion on this in the KDP forums or anywhere else?

I just want to know how to respond to people who don't understand why they just got banned.

[Wonder]

Nope. I read the other forums pretty regularly and I haven't seen any references to this type of ban.

I can only guess...

If these authors give the impression that they're offering a book with actual content when the interior is mostly blank or full of nonsense, Amazon is probably getting complaints from customers. The whole "low content books" thing always sounded a bit skeevy to me anyway, it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon is cracking down on what's perceived as misleading or garbage products.

[TimothyEllis]

If these authors give the impression that they're offering a book with actual content when the interior is mostly blank or full of nonsense, Amazon is probably getting complaints from customers. The whole "low content books" thing always sounded a bit skeevy to me anyway, it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon is cracking down on what's perceived as misleading or garbage products.

I saw some examples of one of the pages. It was drawings children would like as part of a colouring in book. All from Canva.

The title was mainly keywords, which might have been the main factor, but as far as what it was, it was a colouring in book, and the pages were colouring in images.

The other concern though is those images might have already been used hundreds of times in other colouring in books. But that's what Canva allows.

There was a claim made that low content books are making it into the top 10k on the US paid store, and thus making 'big bucks'. And that is what is pushing the low content drive. I'm not sure if that claim is true or not, but scammers might be doing it by organizing enough buyers to fudge it.

It would be nice to know what it is that Amazon are banning people for.

[Bill Hiatt]

It would always be nice to know what Amazon is up to, but this seems a subject particularly in need of public disclosure.

I'm not suggesting that Amazon can or should discuss the business of individual authors with anyone else. But Amazon should post warnings about specific things it no longer allows, assuming those things aren't already expressly prohibited.

You'd think even Amazon would see the wisdom of that. I understand why it wants general (and sometimes overly vague) guidelines to allow itself the latitude to respond to new situations, but when it finds a specific thing objectionable, you'd think it would make that objection very clear to everyone to save itself time later.

I also believe that Amazon should tell authors exactly why they've been banned.

I think if Amazon's problem were the repetition of the same images it might have mentioned potential copyright issues, but maybe not. The "mislead or defraud" line makes me wish I could see the product descriptions, which might provide a clue.

The KDP help page on low-content books shows no sign of recent change: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GGE5T76TWKA85DJM. Nor does it indicate that any particular practices might be forbidden.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the flood of content may have become an issue.  From the article at https://lowcontentprofits.com/is-kdp-worth-it-in-2022/

Is Amazon KDP saturated? Yes, kdp is kind of saturated now! What I mean by that is the very basic kdp niches like Journals, sketchbooks, notebooks, diaries, etc. have now become extremely saturated.

The interesting thing is that this comes from an article in which the author says that low content on KDP is still worthwhile on balance, a recommendation based on the fact that some niches (found in another one of his articles) are still profitable. Also, the author has published thousands of low-content books on KDP. Thousands. (Cringe!)

Since the article was updated on October 14, I'm guessing the author is unaware of some people being banned. But it may be noteworthy that he himself is now working with less saturated areas, like Chinese writing practice books and birthday reminder books. (I'm not kidding.) So he may not have been hit yet.

At a certain point, books like journals with blank space or lines for writing become redundant. How many of those need to exist? Amazon does have a rule against duplicate content, though it's poorly enforced. When the Mueller report first came out, Amazon ended up with hundreds of different versions of the Mueller report, many of them identical (just the report text) and hence redundant. But it took a long time for that to get cleaned up. Anyway, maybe the number of pretty close to identical products finally worked its way onto Amazon's radar.

So those are my theories: saturated market, redundant content, possible product description issues.

[TimothyEllis]

The "mislead or defraud" line makes me wish I could see the product descriptions, which might provide a clue.

I've asked the person I was chatting with for them. Wait and see if I get them.

So those are my theories: saturated market, redundant content, possible product description issues.

The way I put it on Quora today, is low content is a waterfall over an abyss. It all flows in and vanishes.

And yes, the vast majority of it is not only redundant, a lot of it is using the exact same images just rearranged differently. A lot of it coming from Canva, where those images are also being used on website builds.

[writeway]

I haven't heard of this but good if so. Amazon has been banning low content for a while now and it's the best thing that can happen for genuine authors not to have all this crap taking up space. I was on Amazon the other day and saw numerous low-content books all of them with the same cover of course. It was like 50 with one cover and the same titles almost. Why these people thought this scam would last is beyond me. Now how will all those so-called book gurus on Youtube make money when "teaching" people to pump out this crap no longer works? Also, getting "rich" off this stuff no longer happens. The reportings I see on Reddit for the low-content folks are sad. One dude reported recently he has over 400 of these junk books and has only made $32!!!!! They're not even making money off this scheme anymore so what's the point? Readers are hip to these books now and won't buy this junk anymore.

[Post-Crisis D]

How are we defining "low content" here?  The videos I've seen for "low content" books are typically suggesting items like journals, usually lined for writing but with a quote or saying on each page.  Then they might have cool covers.  I could see where you might have the same interior but multiple covers because people like different things.  I might want a journal with a cloudy sky on the cover and someone else might want a dog.  And not just any dog but the same breed as what they have and not just the same breed but the same color.  So, right there, you've got dozens of possibilities.  So long as it's clear that it's a journal and not a novel or non-fiction, seems like it should be okay.

I could see a problem if there are copyright issues with illustrations or photos used or if the description is misleading, making people think they are getting something to read rather than something to write in.

Or, maybe "low content" means something other that what I've seen.

[cecilia_writer]

If people are publishing these via KDP as books then it's a problem - they  really should be selling them in the stationery section.

[idontknowyet]

I have a friend that publishes writing journals and series planners for authors. She hasn't had a problem. Though to be they are only a small portion of her book catalogue she a prolific clean romance author.

I have been hearing about authors being banned for books that aren't even theirs. This has happened several times in the last couple of weeks. The AI makes an oops and assigns the wrong book to the wrong author.

This wrong book had a title that didnt match what was on the cover so be super careful.
Responding to the emails don't seem to work. The only thing that does seem to be effective is petitioning your readers to complain on amazon, complaining on social media, or to get a big enough author to talk to someone in amazon on your behalf.

I have heard ALLI can help too. I should sign up for that.

[TimothyEllis]

How are we defining "low content" here?  The videos I've seen for "low content" books are typically suggesting items like journals, usually lined for writing but with a quote or saying on each page.  Then they might have cool covers.  I could see where you might have the same interior but multiple covers because people like different things.  I might want a journal with a cloudy sky on the cover and someone else might want a dog.  And not just any dog but the same breed as what they have and not just the same breed but the same color.  So, right there, you've got dozens of possibilities.  So long as it's clear that it's a journal and not a novel or non-fiction, seems like it should be okay.

I could see a problem if there are copyright issues with illustrations or photos used or if the description is misleading, making people think they are getting something to read rather than something to write in.

Or, maybe "low content" means something other that what I've seen.

No, you're defining it how it is.

Millions of variation on something on an otherwise blank page.

If people are publishing these via KDP as books then it's a problem - they  really should be selling them in the stationery section.

And that is what should be happening with all of them.

Amazon should simply be re-categorizing them as stationery, the same way they keep re-categorizing some romance as erotic.

Dump them all in the stationery bin.

[TimothyEllis]

I have a friend that publishes writing journals and series planners for authors. She hasn't had a problem. Though to be they are only a small portion of her book catalogue she a prolific clean romance author.

You should tell her to remove them.

As far as I can see, low content books are a nuke waiting to go off in your face.

Even if she hasn't had a problem to date, there is is a risk she might get caught up in some sort of purge, and get banned. And we know for fact, that KDP can nuke someone for something they did years before. So that sword is hanging there, even if it's not seen now.

For an author, putting low content up is playing Russian roulette with their KDP account. imo.

[Bill Hiatt]

Agreed. Amazon has no statute of limitations.

But again, it's worth noting that Amazon could save everyone (including itself) a lot of trouble if it just said explicitly whether it's in the process of purging all low content books or whether it's in the process of purging a specific subset and what the characteristics of that subset are. Authors would then do a lot of the work the bots or whatever have to do otherwise.

All of that said, I have a problem with Amazon banning something that it has explicitly allowed up to now, particularly if it's doing so without warning, which seems to be the case. The suggestion to move such products to stationery seems like a much more rational solution.

[She-la-te-da]

There was a claim made that low content books are making it into the top 10k on the US paid store, and thus making 'big bucks'.

I don't believe that for a New York minute. Last month I spent quite some time trying various search terms for all these journals and things that are allegedly making people ten thousand dollars a month. There were none to be found. Since Amazon made low/no content stuff not searchable in books, it has to compete with all the professionally done journals, notebooks, coloring books or whatever. The self published stuff simply doesn't appear in any search I've done.

Low content isn't searchable in KDP, and hardly so in the whole store. With people uploading hundreds a day, and 99.99999% of them not selling a single copy, they aren't going to appear over regular journals.

On top of all that, the paper and binding for this stuff just isn't proper. KDP isn't meant for stationery, and it should be dropped. IS already stopped people from uploading it. Please don't say this stuff is published, you can't publish zero content.


As to not seeing these sorts of complaints anywhere else, the KDP forums have people every day reporting terminations for using Canva for no content, and some for using it for covers. I'm wondering if there's some issue with the licensing for the images. Someone was complaining that Amazon asked them for proof of rights to use an image from Deposit Photos.

It's my hope that we not allow no content folk here. I'd like one place where we don't get over run with the junk. Same with much of the Vella stuff. I've already found one forum where a hundred or so people join every day, all asking how to make millions with a "vella", especially if they can find a cheap ghostwriter for it. By the way, it's not a "vella", it's an episode. Pet peeve alert!