Amazon begins removing poor quality books from distribution
- Written by Jelzoo Jim
From today, badly formatted ebooks, or those riddled with errors, will now come with a warning message stating that the book suffers from significant quality issues, in some instances even removing them from sale completely. How can you make sure that your book won’t fall foul?
Amazon have announced that they will now be issuing warnings to readers before they buy books that may have content or formatting errors, and in severe cases the book will be pulled from distribution entirely until the problems are fixed.
This can pose a problem to a lot of self-published authors who have produced their books themselves.

Starting today, tens of thousands of books will be issued quality warnings, with a large portion of those pulled from the site, removing them from sale entirely.
Content published through Kindle Direct Publishing is held to the high standards customers have come to expect from Amazon. If readers tell us about a problem they’ve found in your book, we will make sure you know about it and point you in the right direction to get the problem fixed.
Readers will be able to identify mistakes through their Kindle, including typos, formatting issues, and image problems, as well as being able to report other mistakes they might come across.
Once a report is made, the publisher, or self-publisher, is automatically notified and given an opportunity to fix the file. Once the changes are submitted, the new version is automatically updated.
There are currently two stages to the warning system. If a book only contains a few simple typos or spelling mistakes, but is still legible, a warning message will be displayed on the book’s Amazon page, making potential readers aware.
If the book has bad formatting issues, making it essentially unreadable, Amazon will remove the book from sale.
Some errors cause a book to be incomplete or unusable. We refer to these as Critical Issues. Because Critical Issues significantly impact the reading experience, any Critical Issue will result in the book being removed from sale until the correction is made.
How to ensure your book doesn’t get removed from Amazon
Amazon have put together a handy Guide to Kindle Content Quality, describing potential errors that self-publishers could come across, and how to identify them.
Issues that would draw a warning include:
- Typos
- Unsupported characters
- Front cover quality
- Image quality
- Formatting
- Broken hyperlinks
- Missing content
Many self-publishers decide to create the cover and format their books themselves, but due to lack of experience this can create more problems than it solves, causing their books to be removed from Amazon.
Here at Jelzoo, we specialise in making sure your book is perfect, including all design and formatting, so we’re offering discounts to anyone who has received a warning, or had their book removed.
We’re also offering eBook Healthchecks for those worried that their book might have issues.
Get your eBook Health Check hereLimited time offer
Use code "AMAZONPROBS" at checkout when ordering any design or formatting work for 15% off.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to get in contact.
Let us know what you think about the new quality standards below, and be sure to sign up to our newsletter which includes tips and tricks, and special offers for our services, including ready-made book covers and designs, eBook formatting, and promotional tools.

Jelzoo Jim
Jim is the founder and head honcho here at Jelzoo and has his hands in everything we do from design and formatting, to newsletters and marketing, and everything in-between. He's also a bit of a poet but doesn't like to talk about it.
Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.Related items
- Olly moss redesigns Harry Potter covers for eBook release
- Blah blah blah - Dos and Don'ts to turn the back of your book from dreary blah to successful blurb
- Better meta - Putting metadata to good use
- No more tiers - How to choose Amazon subcategories for better visibility
- What the font? - Amazon launch new Bookerly font, so why format?
2 comments
-
A.J. Cosmo Wednesday, 03 February 2016 17:43 Comment Link
Thanks for the update. Makes me a bit nervous since the notification process could leave books in limbo, but at least there's a way for us to correct the issues. Apple has a similar policy but will simply pull the book and then ask you to revise it.