# 'KDP reports are experiencing issues' message in Dashboard



## Gareth K Pengelly (Aug 25, 2012)

Looks like we suspected right - KDP are struggling atm.

Wonder if it's just something to do with the pre-crimbo rush and they're allocating server capacity to other parts of the business?


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## great_gazoo (Jul 7, 2017)

Ahhhh... so I see.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

That doesn't pop up very often. Maybe it's a good thing the Zon is getting a lot of traffic. Usually they do maintenance in the middle of the night. It's the middle of the day. So, something is definitely going on.


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## Richard Langridge (Mar 30, 2016)

Just seen this also. Very curious.


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

I was curious about the wording: "KDP reports are experiencing issues and your sales or royalties may be delayed" ... did they mean to say that royalty payments could be delayed? -blink- I doubt it - hopefully someone's just chucked up a hastily-written note and not thought too hard about the wording.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

Anything I earned on Nov 28 took five days to finally process as royalties. So I'd say they are having intermittent delays. Plus the forum has turned as slow as a salted snail.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

It's wonky for the last couple of weeks. Maybe they're fixing it. Hope so.


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## Gareth K Pengelly (Aug 25, 2012)

Hope so too, Susanne. It's really annoying to stare miserably at the screen all day seeing no movement, then when you get up in the morning you see a bunch of page reads that CLEARLY weren't there the day before haha.


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

That's not the only issue. I have two books in KU and the period ended on 7th December, so it should start again from the 8th and I should be able to schedule free days. I can't as yet.

My dashboard is still showing the days used for the old period. I hope they sort this out before some free day promos I have paid for in December are due to start


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

I'm still seeing this as well. I hope it turns out I have some stuff (sales or pages read) that will show up. Reporting has been messed up for a  while now, maybe they've finally figured out how to fix it. Yeah. Always hope. lol


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## Author A.C. Salter (Mar 14, 2017)

Glad mine's not the only 1 😊


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Last night I could not log in, which meant I could see the books in the shelf, but not change anything the day after most books left KU. I can now sign in.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

As of this morning, there is a 10-book discrepancy in my sales between the Amazon dashboard MTD tab and Book Report. Someone else I talked to said the discrepancy on her books averaged about 6 sales.

Oh, and the discrepancy on mine is all from the US store. Foreign sales show the same both places.


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## SarahCarter (Nov 8, 2012)

I started noticing issues at the end of November, so it's taken them long enough to put up a notice about it. Just as long as we all get paid the right amount eventually I guess...


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## Stewart Matthews (Nov 21, 2014)

brkingsolver said:


> As of this morning, there is a 10-book discrepancy in my sales between the Amazon dashboard MTD tab and Book Report. Someone else I talked to said the discrepancy on her books averaged about 6 sales.
> 
> Oh, and the discrepancy on mine is all from the US store. Foreign sales show the same both places.


Same here. Is there any action we need to take to deal with the discrepancy between the sale graph and the MTD numbers?


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## great_gazoo (Jul 7, 2017)

KENPCs wonky again.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

Well, if payments are delayed it will affect taxes, and 1099s will need to reflect when payments actually arrive.  If payments due December actually arrive in early January, I'll expect the tax records I receive to reflect that.  Hopefully they'll be sorted out, either way.


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## randallcfloyd (Nov 27, 2017)

Just my luck these delays decide to crop up the first time I've ever tried to advertise on AMS. I hadn't had any sales on the 30 clicks I'd paid for, but maybe I'll end up seeing something after all. Thinking I was just throwing money away, I just paused my ads ...


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## TromboneAl (Mar 20, 2015)

nomesque said:


> someone's just chucked up a hastily-written note and not thought too hard about the wording.


That's standard operating procedure at Amazon.

Example,

'The Great Gatsby' is delivered successfully to all selected devices

instead of
_
The Great Gatsby_ has been delivered to the devices you selected.

IOW, title punctuation is wrong, tense is wrong, "delivered successfully" is wonky (can you deliver unsuccessfully?), "all selected devices" is awkward, and the period is missing.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

HSh said:


> Well, if payments are delayed it will affect taxes, and 1099s will need to reflect when payments actually arrive. If payments due December actually arrive in early January, I'll expect the tax records I receive to reflect that. Hopefully they'll be sorted out, either way.


Since your December payment will be on October royalties, I don't think this is an issue.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

I'm not sure of the technical term exactly, but I pay taxes on the money I receive during the year--not when the royalties were earned.  I believe there are at least 2 different systems.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

HSh said:


> I'm not sure of the technical term exactly, but I pay taxes on the money I receive during the year--not when the royalties were earned. I believe there are at least 2 different systems.


Yes, and the money you'll receive in December was earned in October. Amazon pays 60 days after the end of the month. So, for 2017, you will be paid for sales made between November 1, 2016, and October 31, 2017. You'll receive payment for December 2017 on February 28, 2018.


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## Dean Kutzler (May 16, 2016)

SarahCarter said:


> I started noticing issues at the end of November, so it's taken them long enough to put up a notice about it. Just as long as we all get paid the right amount eventually I guess...


We can only hope.......


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## archaeoroutes (Oct 12, 2014)

In UK an individual can choose to use 'monies received' or 'monies earned' accounting. With the latter, you can claim averaging for creative incomes. That is for writers, artists and the like. You can average your income over two successive years. Useful if one year a book takes off and would put you in a higher tax band that year, but the year before, you hardly earned anything.


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## TromboneAl (Mar 20, 2015)

>In UK an individual can choose to use 'monies received' or 'monies earned' accounting.

Much smarter than "cost basis" and "accrual basis."


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## great_gazoo (Jul 7, 2017)

For some reason my KENPCs for November recently dropped below what they previously were. Sent an email, shrug.


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## Alvina (Oct 19, 2015)

great_gazoo said:


> For some reason my KENPCs for November recently dropped below what they previously were. Sent an email, shrug.


I saw the note on my dashboard as well , and there has been no sales recorded for couple of days. I just hope my sales can come back again!

Sent from my Redmi Note 4 using Tapatalk


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## DogNamedNobody (Nov 29, 2014)

Been seeing big sales decreases since November as well.    The Amazon robots aren't what they used to be!


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

TromboneAl said:


> That's standard operating procedure at Amazon.


Very true.


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## great_gazoo (Jul 7, 2017)

Got a Zon reply this morning saying they need 2 business days to look into the matter and will get back with me.


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

Does anyone know if these means that KU reads aren't being recorded properly? I'm asking simply because normally I'd have a certain number of reads due to monthly promos, but I've only seen a couple hundred pages read and I need to know if maybe someone dropped me from the promo or if I'm just not getting any new readers.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

This is the third day that I'm seeing the "experiencing issues" on my dashboard. It must be a serious problem if it's taking them this long to fix it and I wish they'd post an update instead of simply leaving that cryptic message.


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## Cactus Lady (Jun 4, 2014)

There's always a bit of a lag between when the order is reported and when the sale and royalty earned actually show up in the "royalties" spreadsheet. It takes time to process the payment, and they don't credit you the royalty until after the payment has gone through. Sometimes it's credit card/payment method issues on the buyer's end. I once had a book sale that took nearly two weeks for the payment to go through and the royalty to show up, but it finally did. So that discrpency is nothing unusual.

Amazon does seem especially slow, lately. From the reader side, I bought two books around the 27th/28th of November, and those charges didn't show up on my card until a full week later. I think Amazon overdid it with the Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales and now we're getting the indigestion.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

Fecking hell! (Irish for- you know what) That sign is still up for days now, reporting is still all wrong. And this from the biggest player in the world of electronic gadgets and everything else.  Maybe they need an 11-year-old? Mine just fixed my computer in thirty seconds.

Not terribly impressed with Ams right now.


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## wearywanderer64 (Jan 27, 2013)

What is AMS?


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

wearywanderer64 said:


> What is AMS?


AMAZON!!! And they're not on my list of the cleverest people on the planet right now.


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## Starrling (Jul 8, 2015)

Yeah, not sure what to think.  I have a new AMS ad that I started running as a test last week, with a book that hasn't done much and was hovering around 600K rank.  AMS report is showing 21 clicks and one sale (the sale just showed up there today).  My KDP is showing a sale on Thursday. On Amazon, the book is now ranked around 60K in the store. 

Weird.  Hope they get it together so I have actual data to analyze soon.  Pretty annoying at this point.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

What's the odds that we never see those lost pages again?

Where Amazon are concerned I'm done thinking - it'll be ok, those pages will just get added - when history shows us differently.

Missing sales and pages are becoming the norm. If they do show up it'll be a nice surprise.


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## TromboneAl (Mar 20, 2015)

Harriet Schultz said:


> This is the third day that I'm seeing the "experiencing issues" on my dashboard.


Said someone at Amazon, "Hey, let's just leave that message up forever. It will cover our collective a$$e$!"


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## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

I remember notices like this before - but never one that lasted so long. Does anyone else remember if it's ever been up for this long before?


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## Gareth K Pengelly (Aug 25, 2012)

I do have to admit, I am getting peeved. Normally following a promotion weekend for one book, let alone two at the same time, my page reads are far higher than they currently are. As in three or four times as high.

Maybe it's nothing to do with Amazon messing around with things at their end. Maybe it's complete coincidence that it's happening at the same time this message is up? Who knows?


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

I'd had a certain number of sales and page reads up until December and my AMS budget was being 100% used every day. For the past few days, sales and page reads are down about 80% of what they were, and AMS ads are using only about 20% of the budget they were using. It's like a switch has been flipped.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

MelanieCellier said:


> I remember notices like this before - but never one that lasted so long. Does anyone else remember if it's ever been up for this long before?


No. And I have been with KDP nearly eight years.


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

MelanieCellier said:


> I remember notices like this before - but never one that lasted so long. Does anyone else remember if it's ever been up for this long before?


I get the distinct impression that their tech people don't work weekends.


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## Avis Black (Jun 12, 2012)

Amazon has been renting their excess server capacity to a number of businesses, and at this time of the year, a lot of those businesses have a holiday rush. These clients may have some sort of arrangement with Amazon that gives them server priority over Amazon's own processing when the client has a data processing spike, and Amazon was okay with it because it didn't occur to the almighty Zon that _all_ their clients might want that priority at the same time, and Amazon got caught short. In other words, I think Amazon rented out too much of their own server capacity and is now regretting it.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Sheesh, the Est. Total Sales column on the AMS graph isn't worth a dang, KU doesn't accurately report page reads because of Page Flip --the only thing you could always sorta count on was the KDP sales graph. But now even that's who-knows.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

To quote the Smiths, "That joke isn't funny anymore."


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

I get that page reads are, how do I put this nicely? Let's say... most likely in the wind. But surely sales themselves have to catch up somewhere, right? I mean surely the accounting department can at least eventually match up a book sale to a credit card. Pages may pay out in unicorn math but surely sales still use real math?


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## Maia Sepp Ross (May 10, 2013)

Gareth K Pengelly said:


> I do have to admit, I am getting peeved. Normally following a promotion weekend for one book, let alone two at the same time, my page reads are far higher than they currently are. As in three or four times as high.
> 
> Maybe it's nothing to do with Amazon messing around with things at their end. Maybe it's complete coincidence that it's happening at the same time this message is up? Who knows?


It's generally SOP for companies like Amazon to do code pushes/system changes before they freeze over the holidays. I expect that's at least partly the issue.


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## Gareth K Pengelly (Aug 25, 2012)

Maia Sepp said:


> It's generally SOP for companies like Amazon to do code pushes/system changes before they freeze over the holidays. I expect that's at least partly the issue.


I'd imagine you're right. Still quite frustrating though. Ah well, tis one of those things I suppose. Won't stop me grumbling, mind. I'm a Brit, it's what we're good at.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

Glad to see the references to AMS ads going nowhere, too.

I'm already seriously unhappy with what is a very abrupt and very worrisome decrease in pages and sales reporting that has gone on waaaaayyyy longer than we've ever seen in the past. But I wasn't sure if the spectacular underperformance on a couple new AMS ads was related, or if it was just me once again having no idea....but one of them is using only keywords that have performed well in the past, no experiments. I upped my bids, upped my daily spend, and I have piddly for impressions, even on keywords that have done REALLY well across multiple ads, never mind clicks, and NO sales. Or maybe I do have sales. Who knows?  At this point, I have no confidence that the Zon is really going to be able to restore what it appears we've lost.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

ParkerAvrile said:


> That wasn't my experience. More I don't feel free to say in a public forum.


Crap.


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## Yup (Nov 7, 2016)

Personally, I don't expect the handful of book sales that according to the reply from KDP at the time, were "pending" (around Black Friday/Cyber Monday) to ever go through. I've kissed them goodbye. Also, for about a period of three to four days this week, everything stopped. That includes pages read, ebook/paperback sales, and AMS ads. My ads didn't show clicks and didn't cost money during this time. Today I am showing some pages read and my ad data is updating. I expect no sales to show up from these past few days, but who knows? If I am wrong, that would be great.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

So, you guys about ready to consider opening a cooperatively author-owned ebook selling site?  Ala the old All Romance eBooks but with more transparency.  


I think we could should be able to do it with higher royalties if we're not paying CEO salaries or carrying other industries on the back of it.  Why shouldn't 10-20% of gross sales be enough to power a pretty danged good website for ebook sales (of all sorts and files)?


I mean, if we're driving the traffic anyway, I don't see any reason not to keep higher percents.  With Amazon acting up, it's time to think about this kind of thing.  Might need crowd funding to start, IDK.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

I stopped all of my advertising this month because it was too difficult to tell if any of it was working. I had one AMS ad on my book, Infection. I stopped the ad right around the first of the month. Initially, sales remained the same as far as I could tell by ranking, then they dipped and ranking went from 15k to 35k. It was what has happened in the past when I stopped the ad. I thought about submitting a new ad but today, with no advertising, that book got to around 15k so I'm going to hold off. It doesn't make sense to me to advertise when the data is so inconclusive as to whether the ad is even working. 

(I had a Bookbub on a free book a few weeks ago  and even though it is in another series/genre, that could be affecting the ranking.)


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## Sapphire (Apr 24, 2012)

It's comforting (well, at least I don't feel alone  ) to see others experiencing unbelievable KDP reports information. Current sales and page reads would be a nice Christmas present. My rankings are also in the pits.   Is that a bad sign or par for the course right now?


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Sapphire said:


> It's comforting (well, at least I don't feel alone  ) to see others experiencing unbelievable KDP reports information. Current sales and page reads would be a nice Christmas present. My rankings are also in the pits.  Is that a bad sign or par for the course right now?


Yikes! I feel you! Not sure what's going on but it's all very disheartening. I'm having the same experience as you.


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## mjl1966 (Feb 15, 2017)

Methinks it's time for us to start talking about how to arrange an audit of Jeff's books as they pertain to KDP.  Personally, I'm surprised their isn't some periodic independent audit for us to look at.  We're totally in the dark here.  Jeff is the shopkeeper and the cashier - we simply drop off product.  In most businesses, you know what your sales are because you're the one swiping the card.  Not so with online retailers, whom we are expected to trust without any independent verification whatsoever.  I can't think of a more suitable candidate for independent audit.  I'm thinking a distributed sample from top to bottom comparing credit card runs against sales reported would be in order.  Some from the top tier, some from the middle and some from the bottom.  i.e. - a few big names, a few midlings and a few of us down in the Mariana Trench.  Just a quick look-see by somebody who doesn't work for Jeff just to really make sure he's on the up and up.  I think such an audit would be perfectly reasonable - especially given the widely observed discrepancies in page reads and sales reported by so many for so long.  It's time.


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## Gareth K Pengelly (Aug 25, 2012)

One of my books, I see, has jumped a few ranks up to 88k. Prawny, I know, yet the sales on the dashboard don't indicate at all why it's that now, yet was 150k yesterday.

God, this is weird, haha.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Notice still up for me, but I did pick up some page reads for the last two days, which was surprising. I've gotten a few here and there, but was pretty much resigned to losing everything this go around. This month is pretty much sucking something nasty which I can't say on this forum.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

I'd go in on an audit of the kdp program. But I'm also filing it as 'prob never gonna happen,' lol.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

I remember that link to the old databoard that showed you what your reads actually were before amazon panicked and rushed to shut it down. People pooped on the idea that link was real, but those were the exact page read figures that I used to get before amazon shafted us. 

They will probably do what they always do, take the sign of the dash and claim that all is well on their end, and anyone querying the missing reads will be told that everything looks normal on their end. Then they add a few pennies to the pot as a distraction tactic.

I've started unclicking my titles from KU. It might be a mistake, time will tell, but I'm done giving my work away for free.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

I had one Australian sale today and 15 pages read in the US. Bringing me up to a whopping 318 pages for the month. ETA: Sorry, 312!

It's kind of funny.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Yesterday my most active AMS ad was paused--not by me. The book didn't appear on any of the usual carousels, it didn't sell a copy, and today I was charged for close to 20 clicks. As others have said, something is really wrong.


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## DrewMcGunn (Jul 6, 2017)

I put an email into KDP Friday evening, but don't expect to get a response until tomorrow, if I'm lucky.  I've been consistently getting book buys every day for the past couple of weeks, except for the day after the message appeared, when it showed nothing.  To add insult to injury, I received an email from one of my KU readers saying that he enjoyed the book so much he bought it... on the date that I show no sales.
But my KU reads appear to fall within the normal range for the month.  If I get a meaningful response from the Zon, I'll post it to this thread.


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## Loosecannon (May 9, 2013)

They'll probably get the dashboard figures all fixed up tomorrow...after the six-figure programmers/data analysts are back in the office.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Lilly_Frost said:


> I don't know how long it usually takes paperback sales to show, but I ordered a few of my husband's paperbacks off of Amazon (the order for author's copies I put in on Dec. 4 at Createspace isn't scheduled to arrive until Dec. 28 for some reason--isn't that convenient?) and even though the money has left my bank account and gone to theirs and the books are now sitting in my living room waiting to be wrapped, the Dashboard still registers no paperback sales. And if the AMS stats are correct, I may as well not even be running ads. To call the activity sluggish would be slightly insulting to slugs.


I don't think author copies count as sales. They would count if you ordered books through Amazon at the regular price, just like a customer, but not author/proof copies (because you get the discount price to buy).


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## Gareth K Pengelly (Aug 25, 2012)

she-la-ti-da said:


> I don't think author copies count as sales. They would count if you ordered books through Amazon at the regular price, just like a customer, but not author/proof copies (because you get the discount price to buy).


I think Lily was saying that because the author copies weren't due for such a long time, she ordered normal copies, which came through much faster, therefore they should be showing up as orders on the dashboard. That's what I gathered, anyway, I might be wrong.


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## BillyDeCarlo (Apr 11, 2017)

I finally have page reads showing up for today and yesterday, and a few sales showed for Saturday (which is usually a slow day), but something still seems to be off, or else people just suddenly quit buying the books for the past week or two.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Marian said:


> Yesterday my most active AMS ad was paused--not by me. The book didn't appear on any of the usual carousels, it didn't sell a copy, and today I was charged for close to 20 clicks. As others have said, something is really wrong.


This morning I received an explanation for the AMS reporting. I'm pasting it below. My KDP Dashboard still has a notice that there are problems.

_ ads may still run for 24 hours after you have terminated or paused them and you may continue to accrue clicks. Also, campaign metrics may take up to 72 hours (3 days) to appear even if they were paused or terminated. Meaning, if your add was paused the system will then take an additional 72 hours to update your campaign metrics, and that may make it seem that you're getting more clicks whilst the Ad is paused. You will the be billed for those clicks you accrued.

With regards to the sales of the book, sales take 14 days to be updated._


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## Writers Coach (Oct 18, 2017)

Same experience. For us sales and pages read have lagged since mid October. Spending more on Amazon ads hasn't helped. We have seen an increase in print copies sold, so that's a plus. It may very well be the ebook phase is dead. That said, some ebooks still sell well and Amazon ads should help compete - but they do not (at least not for us in the way they did four months ago)



My Dog's Servant said:


> Glad to see the references to AMS ads going nowhere, too.
> 
> I'm already seriously unhappy with what is a very abrupt and very worrisome decrease in pages and sales reporting that has gone on waaaaayyyy longer than we've ever seen in the past. But I wasn't sure if the spectacular underperformance on a couple new AMS ads was related, or if it was just me once again having no idea....but one of them is using only keywords that have performed well in the past, no experiments. I upped my bids, upped my daily spend, and I have piddly for impressions, even on keywords that have done REALLY well across multiple ads, never mind clicks, and NO sales. Or maybe I do have sales. Who knows? At this point, I have no confidence that the Zon is really going to be able to restore what it appears we've lost.


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## MClayton (Nov 10, 2010)

Lilly_Frost said:


> That is correct. Createspace wanted to sit on their duffers til after Christmas, so I Amazon Primed those suckers. Like a week ago now, and still nothing on the dashboard.


I'm experiencing the same exact thing. I ordered from C/S three weeks ago and the books still aren't here (book signing is Wednesday). So I ordered a handful from Amazon so I could at least have something to take to the signing. Book are here, payment isn't.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

I have to confess to not having been aware of the notice until I read this thread. I was getting a few page reads per day, but yesterday got the dreaded one page read, and today - nothing. .  I hope it is just a delay  .


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Marian said:


> This morning I received an explanation for the AMS reporting. I'm pasting it below. My KDP Dashboard still has a notice that there are problems.
> 
> _ ads may still run for 24 hours after you have terminated or paused them and you may continue to accrue clicks. Also, campaign metrics may take up to 72 hours (3 days) to appear even if they were paused or terminated. Meaning, if your add was paused the system will then take an additional 72 hours to update your campaign metrics, and that may make it seem that you're getting more clicks whilst the Ad is paused. You will the be billed for those clicks you accrued.
> 
> With regards to the sales of the book, sales take 14 days to be updated._


Hello? Sales take 14 days to show? How are we supposed to monitor ad effectiveness? That's the first time I've heard that one.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

What about rank? Is that experiencing a lag as well?


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

Also boughts aren't populating on new books as fast as they were, but here is the most interesting thing that I've noticed - you know when you put up a new book and in like two seconds you have a row of sponsored ads beneath it? Well, two days into a new release and I still don't have any sponsored ads showing under my book.

Amazon are very, very broken.


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

Atlantisatheart said:


> Also boughts aren't populating on new books as fast as they were, but here is the most interesting thing that I've noticed - you know when you put up a new book and in like two seconds you have a row of sponsored ads beneath it? Well, two days into a new release and I still don't have any sponsored ads showing under my book.
> 
> Amazon are very, very broken.


GAAAAH! Don't get me started on the also-bought situation. I've got a new release that has sold well over a hundred copies and I still don't have any also-boughts. My previous release, back in October, had also-boughts within a couple of days--if that long.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

I had a reader contact me a few weeks ago, shortly after a Bookbub. Here's what he said:

" I just finished reading your book No Good Deed. I tried to write a review, but when trying to access the page to do that, I kept getting an error message and was sent to a location that was all in Spanish."

The reader's email was a comcast net addy, so I'm assuming he's in the US. After giving away about 25,000 copies from 11/27 to 12/1, when I received this email, I have to wonder if that is why I had so few reviews in the first few days. I've had Bookbubs before and there's normally a day lag as the early readers finish the book, but then there are generally a steady stream of reviews for several weeks. That hasn't happened this time. They've come in spurts, and in between, I've had one or two reviews lost. Yeah, I know Amazon removes reviews it finds suspect, but this book has been out for 7 years with 1400 reviews, many post Bookbub runs. Never had friends or family review even in the early days so clue why I've lost reviews and if this part of the whole glitch or what. If others who tried to review found my page in a different language, that can certainly explain a lot.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

What about those weird tooth flossing reviews I got and other authors too? I got 120 of them. Could that also have been something to do with the broken Amazon machine?


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## Mercedes Vox (Jul 22, 2014)

This is insane. As BR Kingsolver said a few posts back, how are we supposed to monitor advertisement effectiveness under these conditions? Fourteen days for sales to register, seriously? And then there's the no-payment-for-page-flip-reads problem, which has been proven by numerous authors and completely dissed by Amazon as an actual problem. Other issues cropping up, like the weird reviews for unrelated products that several authors have reported.

Maybe it's just overtaxing on Amazon's system due to holiday shopping and their server time has been allocated to other clients. Nope. I can't buy into that theory. Amazon isn't that dumb or without foresight.

Or maybe something is indeed very broken, something those six-figure-earning coding-wizards are having a rough time figuring out. Or maybe they've been instructed _not_ to figure it out.

I really, really, _really_ don't want to be a harbinger of doom or sound like a wacko conspiracy theorist, but having been a computer systems analyst in my previous career, rampant system problems neglect is typically an early indicator of system abandonment.

Might Amazon be done with their great self-publishing experiment, especially now that they have Kindle Scout running well and their own imprints in all the best-selling genres, and they obviously have the staff to curate them and the advertising infrastructure to promote them?

I have to admit that I'm at least marginally worried at this point.


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## Guest (Dec 11, 2017)

Mercedes Vox said:


> This is insane. As BR Kingsolver said a few posts back, how are we supposed to monitor advertisement effectiveness under these conditions? Fourteen days for sales to register, seriously? And then there's the no-payment-for-page-flip-reads problem, which has been proven by numerous authors and completely dissed by Amazon as an actual problem. Other issues cropping up, like the weird reviews for unrelated products that several authors have reported.
> 
> Maybe it's just overtaxing on Amazon's system due to holiday shopping and their server time has been allocated to other clients.. Nope. I can't buy into that theory. Amazon isn't that dumb or without foresight.
> 
> ...


Yes. Good post. The bookstore and book publishing operation is apparently collapsing or on the verge of collapse. An optimist might say it's merely a server problem. But I fear they have created a Godzilla by assuming it's possible to run a bookstore of 14 million plus titles (print and ebooks) and a publishing operation, all by AI and algos with maybe only a handful of people behind the curtain acting as Wizards of Amazon. Sorry, computers and computer "science" are not yet ready to substitute for the human brain. And my guess is that won't happen until we understand how the human brain works, and that is far away at the moment. In sum, with books, Amazon appears to be in over it's head. BTW is that Merlot in the wine glass? If yes, I'll have some.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

{Gone}


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## The one with all the big dresses on the covers (Jan 25, 2016)

Lilly_Frost said:


> That is correct. Createspace wanted to sit on their duffers til after Christmas, so I Amazon Primed those suckers. Like a week ago now, and still nothing on the dashboard.





MClayton said:


> I'm experiencing the same exact thing. I ordered from C/S three weeks ago and the books still aren't here (book signing is Wednesday). So I ordered a handful from Amazon so I could at least have something to take to the signing. Book are here, payment isn't.


I remember this sort of thing coming up last December and Phoenix explained that Amazon will print books to sit ready in their warehouse for the Christmas rush. Apparently if they choose to print some copies of your book, you get paid then, but then of course you don't get paid again when they're actually ordered. Could that be the case here?

The other thing (and apologies if this isn't what you meant!) is that if you've done your paperbacks through Createspace, sales wont show up on your kdp dashboard. (That's for kdp print books.) You'll have to log into Createspace to see your sales.


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

Susanne. said:


> What about those weird tooth flossing reviews I got and other authors too? I got 120 of them. Could that also have been something to do with the broken Amazon machine?


120 wrong reviews?!!??!! One was funny. Hundreds...not so much. Wow!

Not to mention 14 days to post sales. Really?!

What did Amazon do? Outsource all their computer and management operations to a back street operation in Mumbai


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

And now even Smashwords is going weird. I just tried to log on and all I could get was a message that says "We are down while our hamsters are taking a nap. We will be back soon."


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

loraininflorida said:


> And now even Smashwords is going weird. I just tried to log on and all I could get was a message that says "We are down while our hamsters are taking a nap. We will be back soon."


Last I looked, Dashboard was down but enrolling in End of Year sale was still up and running fine.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

I wouldn't worry so much about this. Their entire system is wonky right now. On the product side we've had a package delivered on time followed by an email from zon saying "you haven't got your package yet, we're sorry we're late, it will arrive shortly.".  Then we got a package that actually was late, but no email saying sorry. I think their system in general is a big fat mess right now. 

And I really don't think zon is abandoning ebooks anytime soon (KU maybe in 12 months, but not ebooks). They could easily manage 2 billion books. Every book goes through an automated process; managing 1,000 books or 10 million books makes no difference to zon. 

It's KU that will be killed off because of rank manipulation and eventually the inability to make the numbers work for all involved.


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## Trina Lee (May 4, 2011)

Amazon just plugged Kindle and KU on the Ellen show today during her 12 Days of Giveaways that she does each Christmas. So I don't see them ending either in the immediate future. But as far as Amazon goes I've learned not to make assumptions or hold my breath.


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## ThrillerWriter (Aug 19, 2012)

Okay.

Let's take a breath.

The apocalypse isn't happening. Amazon is not giving indies the book. KU is practically based off of us. Companies have problems all the time with tech, usually because they refuse to hire enough people to actually keep everything up and running. How many bugs has iOS11 had? Almost innumerable. Amazon isn't breaking and this isn't the end of ebooks. 

Just breathe. Meditate. Have some wine. Everything will be okay!


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

I recently ordered 20 author copies from Createspace. They arrived a few days ago, three weeks ahead of the scheduled time quoted on my order. I'm in Ireland. 

Other than that, anything I've ordered from Amazon lately has arrived right on time (but I get it from Amazon UK, even though Ireland is not in the UK, but that's another matter). My sales figures seem correct too, but I'm not in KU and haven't been in over two years. 

I have a feeling the glitch, or whatever it is, is happening to KU books.


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## Accord64 (Mar 12, 2012)

I don't think we'll ever know what technical issues are behind this. It could be related to a spike in activity, or perhaps a hack attempt did some damage. It fits standard corporate protocol not to disclose details behind system issues.

I recently alerted them to an issue with AMS SP ads. In some ads, partial characters, entire letters, and even small words on the far end of a sentence are getting cut off. I ran an ad where the last character was cut in half, making it look like there was a typo in the blurb. I sent screenshots to Amazon and they looked into it. It took a couple of weeks (and me pestering them) for them to finally acknowledge the problem and that their web services was addressing it - although admittedly slowly. It's perplexing that such widespread issues are taking them so long to correct.


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## Yup (Nov 7, 2016)

David Beers said:


> Amazon is not giving indies the book.


Wonderful typo.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

I've got a countdown on But Can You Drink the Water? scheduled for 12-16th December. My dashboard says it is 'in progress' for the UK, but is still sitting in 'scheduled' for .com  . It is not showing the lower price on .com. Fortunately I have only done advertising in the UK. I am now wondering whether I should start advertising the .com countdown. Readers are going to be fed-up if I advertise it at 99c and it's still showing $2.99


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Accord64 said:


> I don't think we'll ever know what technical issues are behind this....It's perplexing that such widespread issues are taking them so long to correct.


My mom is beside me checking her email. She just got a 'sorry, we can't deliver your package cause it was damaged' email from Amazon on something she ordered yesterday. (I'm guessing they meant to send the 'we shipped your stuff' email instead) I reminded her of our 'Amazon is fubar' conversation we also just had yesterday and advised her to reply asking if they were going to send out another one then, telling her to fully expect a real person response of 'gee, sorry, not sure why you got that email but your stuff is fine.'

Since the fubar is starting to reach the customer maybe they'll finally start fixing their stuff.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> I've got a countdown on But Can You Drink the Water? scheduled for 12-16th December. My dashboard says it is 'in progress' for the UK, but is still sitting in 'scheduled' for .com . It is not showing the lower price on .com. Fortunately I have only done advertising in the UK. I am now wondering whether I should start advertising the .com countdown. Readers are going to be fed-up if I advertise it at 99c and it's still showing $2.99


Is it 8am where you are yet? I think Countdown deals autostart at 8 if you don't back em up to midnight when you schedule them. Or something. Might be about to start.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Going Incognito said:


> Is it 8am where you are yet? I think Countdown deals autostart at 8 if you don't back em up to midnight when you schedule them. Or something. Might be about to start.


It's now appearing 'in progress' .  Showing as 99c. Now I can start advertising.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

I had an email saying there would be a delay in sending an order, but when it's back in stock they'll ship it - it arrived a few hours later, which is a lot faster than their prime stuff has been arriving. 

I also just had quite a few reviews go on my books all at once. I wonder if they have one of those little internet worms crawling through their systems, a gremlin at Christmas, now where have I heard that story before? 

Now I have a mental picture of the Gremlin flasher in my head!


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## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

How many days has this message been on the dashboard now? More than a week, no? (Edit: about 5 days, it seems)

I really, really want to know what the heck is going on behind the curtain. Nothing seems to be moving smoothly on Amazon.


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## DogNamedNobody (Nov 29, 2014)

3rotic said:


> How many days has this message been on the dashboard now? More than a week, no? (Edit: about 5 days, it seems)
> 
> I really, really want to know what the heck is going on behind the curtain. Nothing seems to be moving smoothly on Amazon.


Since December 7 by my reckoning.

David Gaughran also left this message on my Twitter account. "Post Black Friday/Cyber Monday system issues - happens every year but this year more severe than ever. Lots of stuff broke on Amazon."


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

J.S.Chapman said:


> Since December 7 by my reckoning.
> 
> David Gaughran also left this message on my Twitter account. "Post Black Friday/Cyber Monday system issues - happens every year but this year more severe than ever. Lots of stuff broke on Amazon."


Yeah. Seems like it's lasted longer this year than ever before. I've got sales appearing and KU page reads, but not sure if this is the real amount or whether it will catch up. Of course, wondering if any KU page reads are getting missed because of all this.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

J.S.Chapman said:


> Since December 7 by my reckoning.
> 
> David Gaughran also left this message on my Twitter account. "Post Black Friday/Cyber Monday system issues - happens every year but this year more severe than ever. Lots of stuff broke on Amazon."


It's been there since Dec. 7. I know this because the day it appeared was my first zero day in a very, very long time, and sales have been substantially lower since then.

I don't recall something like this ever lasting more than 2-3 days before.


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## Randall Wood (Mar 31, 2014)

I've stopped writing. 

Also, eating, bathing, speaking to anyone not online, and even drinking.

All so I can do nothing but worry about this and post wild speculations on the interwebs all day-every day until it clears up!

Who's with me!?!

(Seriously, gang. Go write something.)


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## juliatheswede (Mar 26, 2014)

Randall Wood said:


> I've stopped writing.
> 
> Also, eating, bathing, speaking to anyone not online, and even drinking.
> 
> ...


Hahhaha... I agree!


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Randall Wood said:


> (Seriously, gang. Go write something.)


Easy for you to say. Releasing into this mess is a little bit stressful.


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## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

brkingsolver said:


> Easy for you to say. Releasing into this mess is a little bit stressful.


I don't know how you can honestly say releasing a new book in the present climate is stressful. I just released the first book in a new series, and it started with a ranking of 4.8 million in the Kindle Store. Couldn't have been easier.


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## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

I want to claw my eyes out every time I log in and find that message is STILL on the dashboard.


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

Arches said:


> I don't know how you can honestly say releasing a new book in the present climate is stressful. I just released the first book in a new series, and it started with a ranking of 4.8 million in the Kindle Store. Couldn't have been easier.


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## Writers Coach (Oct 18, 2017)

Dragovian said:


> It's been there since Dec. 7. I know this because the day it appeared was my first zero day in a very, very long time, and sales have been substantially lower since then.
> 
> I don't recall something like this ever lasting more than 2-3 days before.


Right going on one week, plus.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

LPC Books said:


> Right going on one week, plus.


Of course, that's when they admitted a problem, not when the problems began. I suppose that they got fed up with all the author emails and wanted them to stop. Maybe we should all send an email asking when they are going to fix it and copy Jeff in on it just to drive them bat crazy.


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## mjl1966 (Feb 15, 2017)

Arches said:


> I don't know how you can honestly say releasing a new book in the present climate is stressful. I just released the first book in a new series, and it started with a ranking of 4.8 million in the Kindle Store. Couldn't have been easier.


LOL - I didn't know it went that low.


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## 3rotic (Mar 28, 2013)

I just logged in and it's gone. Anyone else?


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## Jacob Stanley (May 25, 2015)

I'm not seeing it either.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Gone for me, too.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

I've been doing a countdown since 12th and have had (a few) sales each day, but I haven't had any page reads since 9th (but I do seem to get gaps, so it's not that unusual). 

The message has also gone. I wondered if they put it on everyone's dashboard, but were perhaps checking on certain author's sales before crediting them. However, quite a few authors have been reporting fewer sales, so maybe there was a glitch  .


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## 91831 (Jul 18, 2016)

The message is gone for me too... but what has appeared, are some page reads... I haven't been in KU since October!


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## Writers Coach (Oct 18, 2017)

ddg said:


> The message is gone now but it still shows zero sales over the last 4 days.
> Also as others have noted, the numbers under the 'month-to-date' tab are much higher than those reported under the "sales dashboard" tab.
> I'm checking back every 30 minutes or so.
> Has anyone noted any actual corrections to their reports?
> Thanks


You are correct. The message is gone from our account. The sales and pages read reflect the same numbers as before the removal of the message. This suggest that KDP experienced a problem, perhaps fixed it, but any lost sales and pages read are gone for good. Since there is no way to request an audit or verify how many pages are read (all that is part of KDP's secret recipe) we must accept the results and move on.

To put this in context, we spent $840 over a seven day period advertising our books through Amazon Marketing. We began Dec 5 and ended the campaign Dec 12. This was during the reporting glitch. Our KDP royalties during this time were almost exactly the amount we spent on ads so we stopped the campaign. Normally advertising our books will boost sales and pages read. In this case, according to this month's reports, it did not.

Since the first of September we have released over eight new fiction titles. With our backlist of titles and these new releases we should be selling more copies and enjoy more pages read than in previous months. In fact, sales and pages read fell and continue to fall. I can only conclude that ads through Amazon Marketing no longer work and that Kindle ebook sales and reads are in a death spiral.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

I had a sale on November 23rd. It has never appeared on the Units Ordered part of the KDP graphs page. However, it _is _reported [correct $ amount] on the Royalties Earned part of the page. It is also [correctly] reported on Book Reports. It's just never made it onto the Units Ordered graph.

I'm doing AMS ads right now and they are doing well (for me!).


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## Scrapper78 (Jun 11, 2017)

I have 2 random page reads.... and haven't been in KU since June.

Sales numbers are still higher than orders in dashboard. 

IF this is what 'fixed' looks like I remain underwhelmed. Fortunately, iBooks and Kobo numbers are increasing steadily.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

Maybe the company just needed some extra cash flow to buy MacDonalds to round out their whole foods purchase. Still not holding my breath that I'll ever see the cash for the sales or page reads. It's amazon - enough said.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

I've heard that because of the reporting mess Amazon didn't report Kindle sales to USA Today this week. Does anyone know if that's true?


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

My message is gone and today my sales are messed up. Oh Amazon.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Never mind, I figured it out - well maybe. I think something is wrong, but I can't prove it.


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## Gareth K Pengelly (Aug 25, 2012)

Just noticed my page reads have started jumping up again today. Double now what they have been this time of day the last few days.

Very bizarre.


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## IoneKeeling (Oct 14, 2017)

Scrapper78 said:


> I have 2 random page reads.... and haven't been in KU since June.
> 
> Sales numbers are still higher than orders in dashboard.
> 
> IF this is what 'fixed' looks like I remain underwhelmed. Fortunately, iBooks and Kobo numbers are increasing steadily.


If someone borrowed your book in the past and remained a KU subscriber, they will forever be able to access your book (so long as they stay in KU -- maybe not if they unsubscriber for a while then re-subscribe, but, otherwise, it remains to be read even though it is no longer in KU). So they could have finally gotten around to opening it. But, with the inability for Amazon to accurately determine page reads, they could have not only opened it but read every last word but you only received 2 pages.  I suppose the silver lining is you didn't wake up to negative page reads.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

I'm not in KU. But there is a huge difference between the sales graph and the month-to-date today. Sales graph: 0, Month-to-date: 20.

Is it 'fixed?' Not as far as I can tell.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

Susanne. said:


> I'm not in KU. But there is a huge difference between the sales graph and the month-to-date today. Sales graph: 0, Month-to-date: 20.
> 
> Is it 'fixed?' Not as far as I can tell.


I think it's fixed like the fix from Office Space.

Bob Slydell: So we just went ahead and fixed the glitch.

Bill Lumbergh: Great.

Dom Portwood: So, uh, Milton has been let go?

Bob Slydell: Well, just a second there, professor. We, uh, we fixed the *glitch*. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally.


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## Writers Coach (Oct 18, 2017)

From KDP:

"I've had a look at your account and can confirm that the reports are working as designed."

Not the response we'd hoped for. Going forward we will focus on print book sales.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

LPC Books said:


> From KDP:
> 
> "I've had a look at your account and can confirm that the reports are working as designed."
> 
> Not the response we'd hoped for. Going forward we will focus on print book sales.


This is their standard response and happens whenever amazon mess up and scam us. I no longer bother chasing them around for lost pages and sales. You'd have more success in catching Santa coming down your chimney.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

I was doing a lot better when the glitch sign was on my dashboard. Since it came down...zilch.


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## DrewMcGunn (Jul 6, 2017)

Since the error message came down, my numbers have stabilized about where I was expecting.


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## Writers Coach (Oct 18, 2017)

Atlantisatheart said:


> This is their standard response and happens whenever amazon mess up and scam us. I no longer bother chasing them around for lost pages and sales. You'd have more success in catching Santa coming down your chimney.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

All my page reads from today are now missing. I went back 90 days and they are all missing.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

My stats have been frozen since around 9:00 am PT, but they froze at higher levels (sales, KENP) than would normally be the case at that time of day.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> All my page reads from today are now missing. I went back 90 days and they are all missing.


They came back pretty quickly.


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## great_gazoo (Jul 7, 2017)

So is everything fixed now?


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

great_gazoo said:


> So is everything fixed now?


Not sure. I mean, the message is gone. But page reads and my freebie promo running right now seems to be recording something. It seems to be falling along the numbers of one of my promos from before. So, it seems to be running back to normal.

Weird that it's happening during the busiest time of year, or of course, that's why it happened in the first place. We will most likely never know.


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