Amazon drives me crazy

[BobbyBrandt]

I have a friend who is a retired Navy Chaplain. He has written thirty or so books (his focus has been religion, and in particular eschatology) over the years and until recently, he has published them through different vanity publishers.

These publishers would post his books on Amazon and fulfill orders directly (print on demand) to maintain control. My friend seldom saw any royalties, and of course never from Amazon.

After his latest fraudulent experience with one of these publishers, I convinced him to submit his books directly to Amazon through their Kindle Direct Publishing option and then have all the previously published books removed from their site. I assured him that I would assist him if he chose to go this route, and he agreed.

Our first hurdle occurred when we contacted Amazon customer support to verify that they recognized him as the copyright holder for all of his books currently on their site, thus granting him the authority to have his books removed at some later date. It took a few e-mails with copies of his publishing contracts attached to gain Amazon’s acknowledgement of his ownership of the published works under his name.

Next came getting his first book uploaded and submitted through KDP. I walked him through the process and within twelve hours he had received an e-mail from KDP stating that he needed to prove that he held the copyright to the book since it was already being sold on Amazon by another publisher. We forwarded the acknowledgement of copyright from Amazon customer service, but that was insufficient. We had to send the publishing contract that clearly showed him retaining the copyright.

Problem solved. Book and e-book published through KDP. On to the next one. Wash-Rinse-Repeat. Rejected again requiring proof of copyright. Sent copy of publishing contract again and the book was published. Moving on to the next book (a four volume eschatology reference set) . This book was rejected for, “Based on our review, we won’t be accepting your submission for publication because the book(s) might result in a disappointing customer experience.” Yet, the same book selling on their site appears to be just fine with them.

Okay, I can deal with this frustratingly dysfunctional Amazon organization for him but it made me curious, other than inconsistent content policies, what experiences other writers might have had with Amazon that they would be willing to share.

 

[Ada Stuart]

Yes, Amazon is a multi-headed monster filled with chatbots and a complete lack of human intervention. I've had numerous problems with them, f.ex:

- trying to publish one of my own titles previously published by a thief. I removed the thief's copy, thanks to Amazon. But when I try to publish it myself, they suddenly decide that the thief needs to give his approval before I can do that. The book was never published on Amazon

- whenever they find the smallest error before accepting a new version, they just block the book entirely. Every time, you have to dig through their entire lists of what-might-be-the-problem before you start again to publish it. You become very good at saving every detail so that you can just copy-paste it onto their site

- and after the book has stayed on their site for years, they might suddenly decide to block it (even if it's on their bestseller lists)

- or they simply find one book they don't like, then they go through all your titles and block one after the other

- and eventually they just close your entire account, claiming that you've broken one or several of their zillion rules - but you don't know which one since they never tell you what you did wrong

I sleep better after Amazon kicked me out. That's the best part of it. Financially, I've lost about 70% of my income, but after I changed genre, Google has proved to be much easier to work with.

So, I would try to publish my books on all other platforms too, and never stay exclusively on Amazon.

 

[Codoc24]

A little over a year ago, I had a book that had been published on Amazon for a few months. To be honest, I don't remember what the changes were. But I made a change and republished it, no problem. I made another change, republished it, no problem. I did the same again, no problem. The 4th time, I changed ONLY the book description, nothing in the text of the book was changed and this time they blocked me. They said I was violating their guidelines. I sent several emails but they never would tell me where or what specific guideline I was violating. What pissed me off even more was my book was about a woman who had been kidnapped. It was really pretty tame. No rape or beatings. There was only one consensual sex scene. I pointed out to them another book where a woman had been kidnapped, sold overseas, she was beaten with a bat, raped, sodomized and forced to perform oral sex on the buyer. Then he had three friends over and they did the same thing. I quit reading the book because of how terrible she was being treated. I asked them how the hell that book didn't violate their guidelines but my book did. They would never answer my question.

 

[Ada Stuart]

Sounds like Amazon in a nutshell. I've experiened the same thing when I republished my titles. Suddenly you just come across that person (or bot) that just hate their job and ban everything because they can.

And I believe lovecraft68 had a similar experience about his book getting blocked while 2500 others which was a lot more brutal are still for sale on Amazon.

Haha, well, I'm not going to help them clean up their site, but it doesn't seem fair to the readers to allow such crap to be available.

 

[lovecraft68]

The funny thing is when looking at some complaints of amazon is it is absolutely the same BS here, but here no one wants to admit its all the same games.

 

[Duleigh]

Okay, I can deal with this frustratingly dysfunctional Amazon organization for him but it made me curious, other than inconsistent content policies, what experiences other writers might have had with Amazon that they would be willing to share.

I read their terms of service and said "Thanks, but no thanks"
I'll hock my books on a street corner before I let the bald billionaire touch them.

 

[gordo12]

1/ Yep, got blocked in India. Why, no idea. Emails got the first response I had violated their guidelines. When I questioned which one, they clammed up and never responded to several requests after that to explain themself. So, no sales in one of the largest countries in the world.

2/ Then, there were some sales that occurred at a heavily discounted rate. I can't remember what the excuse was but other members told me it wasn't anything unusual and I should be happy to make the money. If I remember right it was something to do with the sales taking place in countries where they didn't maintain a "store." Accordingly, that cost them more, and they helped themselves to more $$$$ to compensate for the extra work.

3/ Oh yeah, and I had a book selling 6-10 copies a day, and some troll went in and gave it a 1* review. The sales crashed immediately. I wrote support and asked to have it removed, as the troll in question had 20 items on his review page, of which 16 were books. Every one of them had been given a 1-star review with a complaint, and he openly boasted of getting refunds after buying and reading, including mine. Never even got a response.

Double the fees of any other sales channel and zero service. Kind of reminds me of Google!