Friday, May 24, 2024

Amazon Is Your Frenemy, Episode XXX: The Battle Of Who Could Care Less

Since Monday is Memorial Day, how about a war story?  Yes, another thrilling story of a war with Amazon over publishing a book.  Or re-publishing a book.

Really starting last year after the failure of the "Kelly Counts" pseudonym to try to get into the "feminization" game, I decided to start moving books from old pseudonyms I wasn't using anymore under the Eric Filler banner.  Mostly so maybe the stuff would sell a few copies and get some pages read with Kindle Unlimited and make me some money.

What I found out with the Kelly Counts ones were they don't like it if you just change the author name on the cover and on the listing and on the interior.  So, fine, I put "Eric Filler Writing As Kelly Counts" and that seemed to placate them.

So I did all six of the Kelly Counts books and a couple of Ivana Johnson books without too much of a problem.  But when I wanted to update Roomie Swap, published under "Naomi Caged" in 2019 as an experiment to see whether a new name doing erotica could sell more than a new name doing age regression, for some reason Amazon's minions dug in their heels.  They insisted that it would be "confusing" and ruin "the reader experience" and I had to change back to the original.  Seriously, how "confusing" is this:

I mean the cover clearly says, "Eric Filler Writing As Naomi Caged."  The listing features both authors.  The interior also says, "By Eric Filler Writing As Naomi Caged."  What the hell is "confusing" about that?  I mean, for those who can actually read English.

So when they unpublished the book instead of approving it, I just resubmitted it.  And we went through the dance again.  So I resubmitted it a second time.  Then they left it in "In Review" status for 3 days!  Meanwhile, when I would contact them, the smartasses would send a boilerplate email explaining what "In Review" status means.  Which only irritated me more.  I mean, really, I've been doing this for 15 years, much longer than you clowns in India have.  I don't need you to explain that to me.  I need you to get the fuck out of my way.  And really, the story is 32 pages so in three days I could have flown to India and read the thing to them (several times) and flown back home.

Then of course they unpublished it again.  Some genius named "Natalia" claimed:

During our review, we found that the title and author] listed was significantly changed which may cause a misleading customer experience.

We found that your book(s) are misleading because:

• The author name is completely different.

Original author was: Caged, Naomi (AUTHOR) and current author is Filler, Eric (AUTHOR); Caged, Naomi (AUTHOR). Original title was:

Roomie Swap (Gender Swap Erotica) and current title is Roomie Swap.

Um...really?  "Completely different?"  Caged, Naomi is completely different from Caged, Naomi and Filler, Eric.  And Roomie Swap is completely different from Roomie Swap.  Uh-huh.  Sounds legit!

Like with my Vine, it's pretty easy to see why Amazon flunkies stick to vague boilerplate, then shouting "WE HAVE SPOKEN," and finally ignoring customers entirely because when they try to explain the idiotic things they do, it just exposes that they're idiots.  It was very clear and obvious that this was not "completely different" or "confusing" if anyone with a functioning brain cell and basic grasp of English looked at it for more than two seconds.

I fired off another salvo then, listing some of the big-name authors whose publishers have done this same thing and Amazon has no problem with it at all:

Before you reject my book again, maybe you should take a look at all these books that are doing the same thing: 

So why is it you can sell these books but when I do the same thing my book is being rejected and I'm told to keep using a name that hasn't sold a book since 2021?  You wouldn't tell Blackstone Publishing and Michael Crichton's estate they have to keep selling his old books as "John Lange" because that's how they were first published.

And that's just one example.  Here's another one:

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Off-Novel-Violence-Crime-ebook/dp/B004LROX9M

Again, you have no problem with Hard Case Crime and Lawrence Block doing this.  

And of course you have no problem with Scribner putting Stephen King's name on Richard Bachman's books: 

Why do you keep discriminating against me?

You can go look up any of those books and you'll see where the publisher was doing the same thing I was trying to do.  Why?  Because "John Lange" doesn't sell as many books as Michael Crichton.  "Richard Bachman" doesn't sell as well as Stephen King.  By the same token "Naomi Caged" doesn't sell as well as Eric Filler.  I mean, pretty much by default since no one had even bought a copy since 2021.  And it was only 99 cents!

This is one of the most annoying things about publishing with Amazon.  There is such a double standard between "real" books by big publishers and books by indie authors.  It's OK for Amazon to sell Game of Thrones, Flowers in the Attic, American Psycho, and probably millions of other books featuring rape, incest, bestiality, and other things that if I do it, my account could be suspended, if not completely shut down.  It's not that I want to write about rape, incest, or bestiality, but it is a double standard that GRR Martin, VC Andrews, or Bret Easton Ellis can write those things and be sold by Amazon and I can't write about those things.

In that case, I think a big part of it is that with indie authors, Amazon can be considered the publisher.  So if some "parents' rights group" gets pissed off and wants to sue, Amazon faces more of a liability.  Whereas with a book published by a "real" publisher Amazon can pass the buck to the big publisher.

In this case, Amazon was trying to stop me from using a tactic that big publishers have used to try to pump up sales of books written under a pseudonym.  That doesn't seem fair, does it?

While they didn't directly reply to me, they did finally publish the book, so that was something.  I can't do a Virtual Voice audiobook but there's no way I'm going to press them on that.  One war is enough.

But it didn't take long for a second skirmish to start!

I published this book May 6th without really any problem:

But it wouldn't do an audiobook and I realized I had left my table of contents in.  So I thought I'd reload it with one created in their stupid Kindle Create program.  I uploaded that that night and waited and waited.  The next morning I check at ten or so and they rejected it.  Why?

Well, it took like 4-5 hours for their email to show up.  They whined that the cover could violate a copyright.  Um, so why did you approve it yesterday?  I didn't change the cover; I only changed the table of contents.  And the cover is two images, so which one do you have a problem with?  Though by then I had already resubmitted it without any changes since I had no idea what they wanted to change.

So of course the smartasses sent me their "In Review" boilerplate again.  Ugh.  Fortunately this time they just approved it the second time.  Hopefully they just leave it at that.

Buuuuut of course not.  About 10 days later I published a bundle of old books.  


I published it without a problem but the next day realized when I copied the table of contents for the description listing the books, I left "Part One Part Two" in one's description.  So I take that off and resubmit the thing.

And the next day get the same bullshit message about the cover.  Um...why?  You approved the cover already and I didn't do anything to the cover.  It's not relevant.  And when they do it twice in a row it's creating a pattern of harassment.  Really it's like cops pulling over people of color in rich neighborhoods; it's hassling people for no actual reason other than to bother those people so they don't go where some assholes think they should be.  I mean I've used stock images for about 15 years now; why are you hassling me about this now?

Anyway, They weren't happy with me saying their question was irrelevant and I take being harassed seriously.  So they didn't approve the changes, so at least for now I left it for sale with the extra words on the description.  Whatevs.

I don't know if someone has been making a fuss about illegal use of stock photos or they just want to steer people to use "AI" or their very limited supply of template images.  It's just another hassle I really don't need right now.

Anyway, have a pleasant Memorial Day weekend.

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