Publishing Woes and Complaint Work

On the 28th of September my novel “To Mix and To Stir” – Part two of the Hagen Patterson trilogy was released and available and I thought everything is fine and ordered 50 copies as I always do to sell them here in Japan. I began waiting for the Kindle version to become available as well.

Then, suddenly, without me having done anything, the book appeared as “out of print” in Amazon and I went into my project “dashboard” at Createspace to find that the title had reconverted to “incomplete setup”.

I wrote an email to the support team asking what is going on and received the following reply.

“Our system shows that somehow you were able to place your book into “incomplete” status, from “available”. I have requested our PrePress Department reinstate your book to “available” status as soon as possible. Once this is done the “complete setup” link will go back to a green check mark.”

Nope, I had not done anything, but what the heck. I was a bit frustrated but hoped they’d repair this glitch.

Then a day later or so the Kindle version became ready and I did the necessary steps in KDP (Kindle direct publishing) but it remained as “requires attention” in the dashboard and I emailed them once more asking about that and also about the progress concerning the paperback and to that received the following answer.

“I have cleared the attention regarding Kindle in your account. This was just a courtesy step you needed to close after we notified you that we uploaded your files. We still need to send you the author copy of your book, which we are preparing to do. Once we ship this, the complete set-up and cover services will appear complete again.”

Wait a second? Author copy? I got an author copy end of September already.

I went back into the dashboard and things had gotten worse, now suddenly also the cover setup was on red, not only the entire setup.

I wrote them again notifying them of that and also that I don’t need another author copy and, by the way, I have already ordered 50 books.

To that I got the following grand answer:

“It appears the project was reopened based on an internal issue with your cover file; our quality team noticed that it did not have enough bleed when it went to print, so we are currently correcting this issue. When complete, we will need to send you a revised author proof.

You may want to consider stalling your order to make sure all files are the most up-to-date. If you need to do this, please reach out to our Member Services Team at …”

WHAT???

So, it seems as if Createspace has a communication problem. The quality section does not talk to the project team and the first reply was sent by the project team in a state of not knowing what is wrong.

Meanwhile a bit more than frustrated, I phoned their service team number and explained to the dude on the other end what is going on and he was saying stuff like “oh my” and “the order has already been shipped”…. great………..

He told me to “refuse” the package when it gets delivered and in the meantime he will see to it that the order is reissued after the stuff’s been all put on green status again……… I do not trust this promise yet for one moment and have summarized it and sent it to Createspace in writing.

By the way, although the book shows “live” in KDP, the Kindle version is nowhere “live” at Amazon…

= nothing works! Ahhhhhhhhh…

Apart from this giant Createspace hiccup, I was fascinated by this customer service dude I had on the phone.

He sounded like he came right out of a customer service / complaint management seminar. He was very empathetic to my problems with comments like “oh my” and “oh dear” and other expressions of sympathy next to his very caring and soothing tone.

It was kinda funny to listen to him. Man, they got that dude brainwashed! I could see the teacher standing in front of him saying things like: “…and never forget: the customer is always right! and you have to show empathy and sympathy for his/her problems.”

I mean the guy was really friendly and all but it was a bit too thick and thus not real. It’s hard to work in the service industry, yes, no doubt about that. I wouldn’t want to have such a job. You listen to complaints and various degrees of angry, upset, and maybe even verbally aggressive and abusive people all bloody day long. Man, that’s a tough job. How do you manage to keep a positive mindset? How do you manage to not go home totally frustrated and down and out?

So, to a certain degree the guy has my sympathy, his job wouldn’t be one I’d like to have, but nevertheless – I want a good looking and available book out there……….

Let’s see how long it’ll take until Createspace will achieve that………