Amazon Change Ill-Timed
Good news! Ghost of a Chance released yesterday.
Then the bad news started to come in. I ended up in the hospital yesterday afternoon after severe pain in my lower abdomen convinced my doctor I needed to be seen for possible appendicitis. I spent most of the day both in pain and being treated. Everything came back negative, and they don’t really know what was wrong. I feel better today but am not well yet. That would be, if you’ll excuse the pun, painful enough.
But there was another major problem I didn’t discover until I got home last night.
I am running a free event for State of Grace to help boost the whole Wolf Dasher line with GoaC’s release. I put notes in the description of SoG directing people to the newly released GoaC and in GoaC’s description letting readers know they could get the first book in the series for free. I also bought several ads to push SoG as free.
As I lay on the hospital bed, I couldn’t understand why the response to the free event was so weak. Advertisers that had gotten me thousands of downloads in the past netted barely 300.
At home, I discovered Amazon had decided to make a little change. You see, I offer “The Darkline Protocol” as a free Wolf Dasher short story that is outside the main story arc. I therefore label it as Volume 0 through Amazon.
Yesterday, Amazon changed it to read that it is Book 1 in the series, and therefore changed State of Grace to Book 2. I checked my dashboard. I did not make these changes. It was Amazon.
So I tried to give away the second book in a series. You know, something new readers don’t want. They want to start from the beginning.
My free event tanked, which means my book launch also tanked. It’s difficult being a struggling indie author. It’s hard to find places that will advertise your books, especially new releases, and State of Grace is my most well reviewed book, making it the one I can most reliably get placed with the major advertisers.
I called Amazon customer service. A nice young man listened attentively, validated my concerns, but couldn’t help me at all. He took notes and forwarded it all up the chain.
STATE OF GRACE is Book 1, not Book 2 in the Wolf Dasher series.
I got an email this morning telling me to go in and manually change it. The problem is, the books still show on their editing pages as their proper volume numbers. I republished “Darkline” just to see if it would work, but it didn’t.
So I have to call Amazon again today and try to get something done. I’ll blog about my results when I have them.
In the meantime, if you don’t know the Wolf Dasher series but might be interested, State of Grace is Book 1, not Book 2. It’s free today, if you want to check it out at no risk. Get it here.
Filed under: e-Publishing, Ghost of a Chance, State of Grace Tagged: Amazon, ePublishing, KDP, Kindle
newest »
Sorry to hear you were suffering too, Dwight. :( Hope you're feeling better now. Thanks for the kind words!
Best,
John
I wonder if I had sympathy pains yesterday. I was having trouble breathing without pain and had horrible pain right where the appendix is. I had a reason though. I was doing a new Yoga routine and it broke me 15 minutes into a 70 minute session. I think it was just a weird pull between my spine and heart. the lesson? Maybe don't jog 5k before Yoga.
Anyhow, just seemed interesting we had pain at the same time. Yours is worse and more serious. I hope you can find the cause or at least feel much better very soon.
Your work is good and people need to read State of Grace. I do think Passion Play is my favourite work of yours though.