Okay Amazon, Seriously WTF?

I’m going to start this one with a disclaimer: much like the folks who write for Rebel Media, I’m not a journalist. I’m reacting to a single social media post and the full story might be completely different. In part what I’m hoping to accomplish here is to inspire an actual journalist with more skills and resources to delve into this, get more facts, and if that story is congruent with what I write here, make as many people as possible aware of it.

Here’s the post:

Sure enough if you head over to Krauss’ Amazon page, her bio mentions the Fatality series, and that series doesn’t show. Links to the series basically come up with a 404. Next let’s head on over to the publisher of the series Dream’s Edge Publishing (and ignore that it’s a god-awful Wix site). Every work on that site links to Amazon (US, CA, and UK) and they’re all just as dead.

I suppose there could be some other reasons for this. Amazon is chock full of byzantine rules, bogus DMCA claims, and a notable inability to connect to an actual person to resolve issues. But in light of the current political environment in the US, and Amazon’s dependence on AWS contracts with the US Government, it sure bears more investigation.

No matter what the reason, this event brings home the peril of relying on Amazon’s market domination to run a publishing business. Yes, it’s a ton of extra work to make sure your books are available on the dozens of other platforms out there, all for maybe 30% of the market. But at least get onto Kobo and do direct e-book sales or you could find yourself dead in the water in an instant.

Update:

Krauss has received an update from Dreamer’s Edge:

Dear Vanessa,

We have had some bad news about publishing on Amazon and they have terminated our KDP account because of “attempting to manipulate sales.” We have contacted them to protest and ask for further information and how we can best appeal this decision. They have now replied but not given any further information and stated “After reviewing your response, we have reevaluated your account and are upholding our previous decision to terminate your account and remove your books from sale on Amazon” This has been a shock to us, if we do continue to persevere with legal action to get our account reinstated this may take some time and even then, there is no guarantee Amazon will change their decision.

Therefore, we are giving you back the publishing rights forthwith, of all your work.

Take this message as a legal right of transfer of publishing rights back to you the copyright holder.

It appears that Dreamer’s Edge has tripped over one of those byzantine rules where some algorithm has flagged the account. I’ve experienced an issue like this with one of the other behemoths in the web space, and the only thing that saved my butt is that I was actively advertising on the platform at the time. It was only when I said I was “saddened by the decision and regrettably had to cancel my ads in response” that the decision got changed from a ban to a warning. At least back then they’d tell you which rule you tripped over. Now it’s just “you broke it, bye forever.”

I suspect that Dreamer’s Edge assessment that legal action might be unsuccessful is correct. There’s no harm in sending a lawyer’s letter by registered mail, possibly going so far as Small Claims Court, but in all probability they’re dead in the water. Kudos to them for doing the right thing in this circumstance and returning the publishing rights.