BREAKING NEWS: Amazon KDP Cracking Down, What's Happening Now?!

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) announced yesterday a new identity verification system they're rolling out for account holders. This new safeguard is put in place to weed out the bad actors abusing the platform. Let's discuss what that means, if your account is safe, and what steps you'll need to do for verifying your account.


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- Dale L. Roberts

[Laura-illo]

Kind of surprised at all the people who are anxious about sharing their ID. When I got married and changed my name, I had to send out copies of that new ID and my marriage license to dozens of places. If you do business with someone, it is their right to ask for verification of your identity. Period. No one has to do business with you, especially if you don't want to be identified/verified.

[truecrimecurator]

Thank you Dale for this essential information, and to the community for the excellent questions!

[zkerr]

Nebraska, here. I had no idea. Thank you for making sure I know this, Dale.

[e-care-books]

Dale adding value again. Listening on YouTube of course. This is the first I heard about this. P.S., My Amazon advertising dashboard has said "no data" for the last few days. Not sure if their system is not updating or what.

[peachy_]

With such action, abuse is highly reduced. Not taking such precautions will not only increase abuse of the system, but it will also affect the honest writers wanting to use KDP as their platform, and not to mention put KDP in the red light when it comes to professional reputation. So, yes, highly agree and happy such a move has been made by KDP.
p.s. thanks for your informative and quick info!

[TheLadyWrites]

I am honestly surprised it took them this long to do this. This has to do with our money, and it ensures we will be the ones in control of our own accounts. Ideally, they'll create a way for us to verify from outside, should someone be able to hijack the account.

[OfficialYzaDora]

With all of their new features, etc, I hope they're planning to expand the page count for print copies!

[Crowka]

Pure gold info.
Good mov kdp.
Gr8 vid. Dale.

[ScullyPop]

Dale is the best publishing channel on this platform.

[MBucla]

Take it from a person who had his identity stolen 2 years ago and is still dealing with the fallout: if you think you can securely had over your driver’s license without fear of data mining or data breach, you’re naive. ALL companies say they’ll protect your personal information. If that were really true, no one would ever get those letters in the mail saying, “Sorry, we’ve experienced a data breach and it appears your personal information may be compromised.” This is a bad idea for KDP. I wonder, how many self-publishers will move to other platforms.

[ScterNut-zqgs]

I created an account last week and was shocked to have to present identification, but I assumed this was always the policy. I had no idea this was new.

[dmandrewsauthor]

Something needs to be done about people hijacking books, is this an answer? Maybe. But I do think that some need to realise that some may not have photo ID. You'd only have it in the UK if you have a driving license or a passport - and as not everyone drives or travels, a good few may not have it.

[Darkmasqueradeshorts]

I think it is a good thing when we sign up as authors we basically have to give them the same info anyways. I think it could make it a better platform for authors by doing this

[BruceWayne]

This is great news. Hopefully Amazon provides a mechanism to verify your identity via the KDP panel rather than through a link they send in the email. I guarantee angry scammers are going to resort to scamming authors by sending fake Amazon Identity Required emails, hoping someone falls for the trap and clicks their link. I'm hoping they also implement some kind of limit on the number of pages that can be submitted in a certain timeframe to weed out the vast majority of AI trash as well.

[pauljames]

Thank you Dale, anything that keeps your account free from scammers is a good thing right?

[theresamcevoy]

There have been a lot on facebook stating that they can help someone that gets banned and I have just started ignoring them as when I try to tell someone not to listen, I get a lot of hate response from the person.

[martymcfly]

Question: So my account was banned years ago for putting best seller in my keywords, they wont give me a second chance either. Can i still sell audio books on audible? Or are they connected?

[theresamcevoy]

There is no social security number on driver's license. I had one in Texas and now one in South Carolina and neither have a social security number.

[danielleeb]

Thanks Dale! I wish we could just automatically upload our ID (ideally from account opening moving forward). If I do get asked for verification, I’d like to avoid the account pause while they check my ID. I feel the same about book copyright. I know not everyone copyrights their book, but it would avoid the stress of those nasty rights emails if we could upload our rights material the same time we upload our manuscript (if we chose to do so). Interested to see who may have been asked for ID so far 🤔

[devinelovewriter]

I use my Pen name as my KDP name. And yes I do have an LLC with that name but I don't use my real name on anything because I don't want my books to be seen by my family (I am a teacher of sorts who writes smut) lol