Saturday, June 16, 2018

The Cheeky Wench: AN OPEN LETTER TO JEFF BEZOS by Suzan Tisdale

The Cheeky Wench: AN OPEN LETTER TO JEFF BEZOS by Suzan Tisdale
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3 comments:

Terry W. Ervin II said...

My publisher had a few titles in KU, and it represented less than 1% of the publishing house's income. Still, he received a letter claiming that activity which broke Amazon's terms of service leading to illegitimate reads, and to only use legitimate forms of advertisement...etc. etc. etc. The standard bot-generated letter. My publisher wasn't doing anything wrong, using a few FB ads and mostly Amazon ads. He could not get any information from Amazon about the concern. That happened to many authors and small/medium sized publishers.

Then the next month my publisher got another bot-generated letter, an account suspension, so no access and a few hours later all ebooks on Amazon pulled (not just the few in the Kindle Unlimited) service.

Through contacts, my publisher got a number to talk to someone, rather than exchange emails with boiler plate replies that did and said nothing. The account was reinstated. And the titles were immediately pulled from KU.

It's not an isolated incident. The scammers are targeting legitimate authors to hid themselves with the herd. If they get caught. Close up shop. Open up and start scamming under a new account.

In my opinion it will require Amazon to hire actual people with actual power to take action, rather than rely on automated systems and individuals that have a menu of pre-written replies to problems. That, I do not believe will happen, until it gets to the point of affecting readers adversely in a major way. Publishers who are not among the big five and self-published are simple providers of 'widgets' that can be easily replaced. Not authors and small business people who are trying to earn a living and generate top quality books for readers.

7:16 AM
Terry W. Ervin II said...

Details on my publisher's experience can be found here:

http://woodonwords.blogspot.com/2018/05/55-my-kindle-nightmare.html

7:16 AM
Kevin R. Tipple said...

I was thinking about what I knew of your publisher deal, Terry, when I read the piece before posting the link here. I agree with your conclusion.

10:49 AM

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