Monday, October 14, 2019

Amazon is Your Frenemy, Ad Nauseum

I mentioned part of this on Facebook a few weeks ago.  Anyway, another obnoxious tangle with Amazon's idiocy.

One night I noticed a couple of gender swap age regression books by another author that I thought were being listed as erotica despite that they obviously featured a guy being turned into a little girl, which is supposed to be against the Terms of Service.  I mean they blocked a few of mine early on I mistakenly put in there.  It seemed like the only reason those ones weren't being blocked was because they showed an adult on the cover.

So what do you suppose Amazon's response was?  A couple of days later I got an email saying they were blocking one of MY books.  Because they didn't think I had the rights to the cover image.  This cover image:



I don't know what the hell they were talking about.  I bought it from a stock image site like most everyone else, including big publishers, does these days.  If they want to question me, they should question everyone else.  Being Amazon they of course took down the book's page instead of just letting me tell them I had the rights or change the cover.

Not feeling like fighting them, I just changed it to a generic cover.  But...two days later the page for the book still didn't work!  So I emailed them and all some dumbass named "Noah" could say was to repost the book.

So thanks to Amazon's typical heavy-handed bullshit they broke my book's page and then couldn't even fix it.  Nope, I had to unpublish the original and republish it, only with a different cover.

And I didn't put it on Kindle Unlimited this time.  That way if Amazon does any more of their bullshit the book will still be for sale somewhere else.

It's sort of what happened with another book, Transformed for Mother's Day Too, where Amazon blocked a book that was perfectly innocent.  This story doesn't feature any sex or anything.  It's actually a really nice story.  Sort of like a Quantum Leap episode where this kid goes back in time in someone else's body (a girl's of course) and learns an important lesson.

On the plus side, Amazon's bullshit did wipe out a stupid "review" by this ass who calls himself "Bear Hunter."  I don't know why he even read this story since he usually whines about Eric Filler books not being sexy enough and this story wasn't sexy at all.  This time he whined that "This is mostly a story about bullies..."  It's not a story ABOUT bullies, you ass!  It's a story about a boy who's BEING bullied.  And becomes a girl who's also being bullied.  Both because they're new in town.  And then the boy realizes he's leaped into his grandma and it creates a new bond between them.  Huzzah.

For about the one billionth time I wish there were some better alternative to Amazon.  Maybe a place that doesn't irrationally destroy my books.

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