Book removed from Amazon for no reason

[raemorgan]

Someone from my writers group sent me an email yesterday. Apparently Amazon suddenly removed her book from sale claiming its cover and title violated their guidelines. This is odd, since the book has been with Amazon for months, and sales are good. She sent me a copy of the cover, and it looks fine to me. Nothing inappropriate at all. She's going to run it past her lawyer to see if she has a case for unjust treatment, and sales lost as a result. I'll keep you posted. This, incidentally, is a top selling author -- she's sold thousands of books this year, and now she's talking about unpublishing them all from Amazon and going elsewhere.

[dervish]

Amazon is a garbage dump. Half their employees can't speak English.

[marcel]

It seems the author that was treated so badly has unpublished all her books. Good for her. Amazon thinks every author is so desperate for their services that they'll take any old crap, but hey, they won't.

[skyelar]

The customer service -- lousy isn't it? -- is in India. Just look at the names.

[john]

So far I’ve had no trouble with Amazon regarding my books. While I make a little money elsewhere, especially B & N, Amazon is by far my main source of income now. I agree that their use of outsourcing to third world countries is a problem at times, and their forums are terrible. They seem to be monitored by low IQ nuts. I remember skimming their politics forum about a year ago and saw threads that were something like “All gun owners are child killing terrorists and should be shot.” I was informed that it did not violate their guidelines. Of course, if someone posted the same thing about just about any other group the post would have been deleted and the poster banned.

From what I have read, writers who publish sexually explicit stuff and use covers that are too revealing are the ones most likely to run into trouble with their guidelines. One complaint about incest or under age sex and the book will be scrutinized by someone at Amazon. The fact traditionally published books cover such subjects, including highly acclaimed classics, does not seem to matter. Fortunately for me, I write in different genres.

[luvbooks]

This is what happens with monopolies.

[marcel]

Jan 20, 2014 16:51:51 GMT -5 luvbooks said:

This is what happens with monopolies.

I couldn't agree more.

[skyelar]

Well there's always Smashwords.

[marcel]

Smashwords isn't as good as Amazon. They won't sell as many of your books.

[william]

Dec 21, 2013 11:55:55 GMT -5 skyelar said:

The customer service -- lousy isn't it? -- is in India. Just look at the names.

The site is in India, yes, I can believe that, they are still showing my books that I unpublished in 2011.

[william]

If they had an author list on Amazon.co.uk like the one on dot com (where unfortunately me and my co-author are NOT listed) maybe my book(s) sales would improve as they are non-existant.

[william]

Why don't we all go and comment (look inside) favourably on each other's books.

Who wants to be first, I'll give it five stars and recommend it "A recommended read".

This isn't cheating as, although I might not like the story/genre/topic; out of the millions of readers out there I am bound to hit the mark with a couple of thousand at least.

Come on, reply with title and author, then you can return the favour and pass this on, give Amazon a kick in the n*ts and boost your sales.