Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Simply maddening - Amazon lost my ebook listing today

What possible hope do debut authors like myself have when Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing go and lose our ebook listings?

I have been getting steady sales over the last few days of 1 or 2 sales a day, sometimes three or four. I had hoped I might slowly be building up a momentum, and then this happens. My ebook listing has simply disappeared from Amazon and I have no idea when it will go back up.

I had a nice email from KDP Support this afternoon apologising and saying they were aware of the problem and would get it fixed as soon as possible, but I have no idea when that will be.

But it is hugely frustrating - to anyone searching for the book it simply looks unprofessional that it should suddenly disappear. If you click the links to my book on the right hand side of this blog you'll find they won't work (as of 6pm Weds). From a couple of tweets I have seen on Twitter, it sounds like other people have suffered the same problem.

I mustn't be too hard on Amazon / KDP - it's still the best indie publishing platform around - I suppose it's when things like this happen that you realise how much one's novel-writing dreams rest on their technology. So please, Amazon, get this problem fixed soon!!

* UPDATE 7.40PM - And they have, the listing for my ebook Smugglers at Whistling Sands is now working again. I would guess, however, having lost most of the day, that I am set for zero sales. Let's hope this sort of glitch doesn't happen too often.

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