# First stupid problem with KDP people



## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Allow me to blow off some steam....

Until now, I have had nothing but great service with KDP. But this morning, I got the following message:

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Dear Publisher,

During a quality assurance review of your title, we have found the following issue(s):

Title has punctuation and typo issue in it. Few examples are mentioned below:

*Location 811; Unnecessary comma - "a sofa back, and"
*Location 813; Unnecessary comma - "solid-brass, boattail"
*Location 1088; an appropriate word could be used in the place the letter "J"

Please look for the same kind of errors throughout and make the necessary corrections to the title before republishing it.

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"*...before republishing it*"?

Now, I find that my book is listed as in "DRAFT" status on my KDP Bookshelf! This book has been published and selling very successfully since June 21.

I have to assume that these two events -- plus my inability to get sales statistics for hours -- are related. I just sent a fuming letter to KDP making the following points:

Whoever on the KDP "quality assurance" staff sent this message needs to go back to school.

I'm a professional editor and a lifelong professional writer. My book was heavily proofread by multiple individuals prior to publication. My use of commas in a series conforms to "The Chicago Manual of Style," in which the next-to-last item in a series is followed by a comma. And my use of the letter "J" was in the term "J school" -- an abbreviation for "Journalism School." It was used in dialogue and intended as slang during a conversation.

I am astonished that staff at KDP (a) are wasting time proofreading books, and (b) do not have the basic skills that such a job requires. If this staff member's incompetence has caused my book to revert to "draft" status, that individual deserves to be fired.


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

OMG! I'm flabbergasted, what are they doing there, do they know?

I've had emails from them before not in proper English having obviously come from someone in India or somewhere other than either UK or USA.

I was even woken by a manager at 3am because I demanded an answer as to why they kept mislaying my cheques!

I'm really not sure what is going on over there any longer.


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

Wow, now this will be interesting to see how it pans out.  If they're doing things like that, I think about 80% of the books on Amazon will be turfed .

I wonder if it was a reader that thought they were "fixing things" and submitted those to KDP?


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

This is really weird to me, because, as others have said in other threads, a complaint like this probably originated as a reader comment (and if that's  incorrect, my post is not useful).  I'm surprised to see a warning go out about commas, which are often judgment calls.  RB is a rather accomplished writer and I'm guessing that although not every reader might agree, these commas are okay.

Did somebody really flag the use of the term "J school" as a grammatical error?

I don't think this is the right approach to quality control but maybe I'm missing something here...


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## Kathleen Valentine (Dec 10, 2009)

That is upsetting. I'd be angry too.

As an aside, Robert, I downloaded the sample of _Hunter_ last night and liked it a lot. So another book to add to my endless list!


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## DevonMark (Jan 28, 2011)

This is quite unbelievable. In fact I had to read twice to make sure you weren't spinning us a wind-up. There are hundreds of books out there with very poor formatting and many, many errors. If Amazon are going to start getting fussy then it would be better they started with them rather than (mistakenly, as you point out) with your book.

Still stunned that this is really happening.


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

Two commas and a slang term in dialog.

Consider me unimpressed with this sort of "quality control". And sadly, I've heard others with similar complaints, all with dumb fixes. I'm just waiting to get my own.


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## Lexi Revellian (May 31, 2010)

DevonMark said:


> This is quite unbelievable. In fact I had to read twice to make sure you weren't spinning us a wind-up. There are hundreds of books out there with very poor formatting and many, many errors. If Amazon are going to start getting fussy then it would be better they started with them rather than (mistakenly, as you point out) with your book.
> 
> Still stunned that this is really happening.


My guess is that Amazon is doing something about poorly-edited and formatted books because of customer complaints. They just aren't doing it quite right at the moment. Very annoying for Robert - as a writer who cares deeply about presenting my books as perfectly as possible, I'd feel the same.

Lexi


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## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

Half-Orc said:


> Two commas and a slang term in dialog.
> 
> Consider me unimpressed with this sort of "quality control". And sadly, I've heard others with similar complaints, all with dumb fixes. I'm just waiting to get my own.


They're scholars first, and they do tech on the side. (Hm, comma there, or not?)


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

I know the conspiracy theories have been scoffed at, but to me this is part of how things have changed for the worse for independent writers since late Spring.  It's shocking to me that this book was actually taken off the sales rack...


My newest book is about a guy who spent eleven years in prison.  He says "ain't" a lot, and usually says "don't" when he's supposed to say "doesn't."  If "J school" gets flagged, I'm in big trouble...


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## 41352 (Apr 4, 2011)

Very strange! Waiting to hear what they reply...


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## T.K. (Mar 8, 2011)

This is wrong on so many levels. What's next?


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## BSquared18 (Apr 26, 2011)

A glance at your sample shows clean, well-written narrative and dialogue. And your reviews are ones that most authors would die for.

Would you be willing to post the complete sentences that the Word Police are having a problem with, so that we can judge for ourselves?

Bill


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## melissafmiller (Feb 17, 2011)

Robert,

First off, just . . . wow.

Second, I know you said it is showing as "In Draft" on your bookshelf, but it does appear to still be for sale.  In fact, I just purchased it, and it is currently downloading to my phone.


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## Joyce DeBacco (Apr 24, 2010)

Yes, some kind of quality control is needed. But to take a reader's opinion on corrections is totally wrong. If they plan on instituting controls they need someone at the helm who has a good grasp of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Too much of my correspondence with them has been rife with errors. And if this is the person who decides our books are lacking, woe to all of us. 

Joyce


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Thanks for the sympathetic support, people. I just needed to ventilate.

And also thanks for the suggestion that this was probably due to a customer complaint. Now that makes sense. I've had a few "refunds," and I wonder now if somebody used such lame excuses to get his or her money back?


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## N. T. Amblin (Sep 15, 2011)

Was that message copied and pasted?

If so, then they have at least one incompetent person doing quality control. Look at the writing:

Title has punctuation and typo issue in it. Few examples are mentioned below:

They don't understand plurals, or that the second sentence makes no sense as written and should be "A few?" They also don't know how to use semicolons properly. And if they can't distinguish the difference between narration and dialogue . . . .

They have people who can't write scouring books for editing issues. I wonder how many are native English speakers? I get the impression from this message that this one might not be. Brilliant!


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## T.K. (Mar 8, 2011)

I read in another thread about someone complaining to Amazon about typos and they received their money back. Could be starting a trend. Read, complain, get money back.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Not sure if its been mentioned upstream, but this is often the result of a complaint from a customer and isn't a result of a staff of Amazon editors wading through random books.


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## N. T. Amblin (Sep 15, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Thanks for the sympathetic support, people. I just needed to ventilate.
> 
> And also thanks for the suggestion that this was probably due to a customer complaint. Now that makes sense. I've had a few "refunds," and I wonder now if somebody used such lame excuses to get his or her money back?


I'm sure that's what happened. There's no way they have people reading books for errors. Probably after a couple of refunds they flag it and have someone (who is clearly incompetent) check it out based on the complaints.

I certainly wouldn't worry about it. Your message back to them summed up your position perfectly. Hopefully they'll consider that.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Melissa, that is so sweet of you!

Okay, folks, for your amusement: the wildly offending sentences, in context. Are you ready?

First, an FBI agent is briefing people about a crime scene:



> "Ballistics retrieved a piece of the bullet from inside the house. _Way_ inside. After going through Muller's skull, it passed through the outside wall, a kitchen cabinet, a coffee pot on the table, *a hallway door, a sofa back, and another interior wall *before lodging near the bottom of a bedroom wall. We were lucky to get a big fragment. We figured it had to be a .50 caliber. But the lab determined it came from a Barrett .416 cartridge. That particular cartridge propels *a high-velocity, 400-grain, solid-brass, boattail spitzer bullet."* He noticed blank looks and smiled sheepishly. "Okay, sorry, that's a sniper round, fairly new and relatively rare. It was designed by the Barrett Firearms Company in 2005...."


So much for the offensive commas. Now, for "J":



> "Look, I'm not gonna lie to you. You're the best investigative reporter I've run into in a long time. I don't know where you got your training-but that's the point! I don't know a goddamned thing about you. Where you come from. *Where you went to J school.* Who you worked for before, where you live, whether you have a wife or kids or a dog-"
> 
> "Cat."


Are you properly incensed about my vandalism of our mother tongue?


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## 39179 (Mar 16, 2011)

That is ridiculous. Now some hired help at Amazon are dictating to authors whether they can or cannot use the serial (Oxford/Harvard/Chicago Manual) comma (among other things)? Even if this is a result of a customer complaint, it still makes no sense. These are choices made by the author, not grammatical errors.

Mind boggling! Sorry this has happened to you, Robert. It would seem none of us are safe from this nonsense.


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## Joansz (Sep 18, 2011)

So, do we now have to challenge reviews that cite so-called errors?

Very upsetting. BTW, do you have this book on Smashwords? I don't have a Kindle, although I do have my books available through KDP.


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## BSquared18 (Apr 26, 2011)

I'd say what I _really_ think, but then the Word Police might come knocking at my door too, virtually speaking.

Your writing is obviously too good for this to become a serious problem. (And honest, folks, I'm not his brother-in-law.)

Let's see: should I have put commas around _folks_ or not? And, uh, should _should_ have been capitalized? Ye Gods. It never ends!

Bill


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## wildwitchof (Sep 2, 2010)

I think you should tweet/blog this to the rafters. It's too crazy. "Amazon pulls novel for using Oxford comma!"

Have you heard this great song?


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## Colin Taber (Apr 4, 2011)

This is quite a worry.

I hate to think what they'll be making of US english versus UK english versus Australian punctuation standards?


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Yes, Joansz, the book is on Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/68383 as well as Nook and Kindle.

It just frosts me! The bizarre email message, the comment about "republishing," the listing on the KDP "Bookshelf" that my book is now in "draft" status, my frozen sales stats -- nice way to waste a morning worrying. And you can't even talk to anyone at KDP by phone to resolve such problems fast; you have to get in their endless email queue. It even took me about ten tries to send my complaining email to them via their automated form, before it was finally accepted and sent.

Listen, I've had nothing but great service through the Amazon teams, up till now. But this is astonishing. You'd think they have other priorities than to accept, at face value, any complaint from some (pick one: troll, illiterate, scammer wanting to get his money back) customer without first investigating its merits, then send a chiding instruction to the author. Perhaps this bit of unwelcome attention may cause KDP to rethink their policies about how to handle customer complaints. I'm sure more than a few of you have been scammed by customers who like to read your books for free, and so invent complaints to get refunds.


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## PJJones (Apr 5, 2011)

Sheesh, Robert! I see no editing mistakes in your writing. This sucketh big time. Who's in charge of the editing at 'Zon, anyway? 

I wonder if 'Zon feels the need to edit NY books as well, because I've seen REAL mistakes in NY books.


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## Arlene Webb (Nov 2, 2010)

Insane. It'd be nice if you, Robert, got clarification from KB as to exactly why they messaged you, placed your work into draft status. I wonder if you reloaded it without making a single change, heads would explode. You're getting alot of support on FB. Based on excellent reviews, and the actual lines in question, it doesnt make any sense at all.


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## HelenHanson (Sep 13, 2010)

Wow.  

Nobody puts the Oxford comma in a corner!  

Has Mr. McMurtry received a letter about head hopping?


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## Mark Feggeler (Feb 7, 2011)

All books have typos. I've yet to purchase one that doesn't have at least a couple. I highly doubt a traditional publisher would refund my money because I found a typo in the copy of "Holes" I was reading to my sons last night.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Now, if somebody wanted to really make a valid complaint against the book, I could give them a few.

Just the other day, a reader found a typo that about a dozen betas and many readers have missed to date: the double printing of the word "is" in a sentence.

Worse: Just yesterday, my best friend called my attention to an actual blooper. I had a character snap on his seat belt _twice_ during the same scene! The two instances were separated by about a page of text, so nobody noticed till now.

For me, an OCD perfectionist, those are hanging offenses. But _serial commas_? "J school"?


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## Sara Pierce (May 15, 2011)

I haven't been on WC much lately but last I checked a few days ago there was a thread about someone getting a $5 refund/credit for reporting "errors" in a book, and that many KBers were all for the change. I foresee however, as that information was in a widely publicized article, that there will be a LOT more of these "reporting errors" and Amazon corrective action (which in this case was SILLY, I mean really over an Oxford comma?!).


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

@ HelenHanson:  LOL!    Yeah, "head-hopping" ought to be punishable by decapitation.


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## Karin Kaufman (Jan 9, 2011)

Robert, as a copy editor for various university presses for 20 years (Chicago Manual and all that), I can tell you that your commas are correct. One hundred percent. (I wish more people would use the serial comma since it prevents confusion.) But I'm sure you already know this. I'm just stunned that this happened to you. It must be incredibly frustrating.


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## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

It's great dialogue!


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## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

This has happened to quite a few authors lately.  I hope you get your book back on sale soon.  I like to think that my own books are perfect (I have a great copyeditor), but who knows... I'm waiting for this to happen to me too.

Instead of immediately removing books from sale, it would be nice if Amazon gave authors a warning, e.g., "You have a week to fix your title before it's removed."


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

I entered 25 pages of a work in a contest once that was judged by published authors. An author who read mine pointed out many grammatical errors in the first 7 pages then wrote: _I won't be pointing out any more errors. I suggest a book on basic grammar or a course at your local community college._ Erm, I taught freshman college comp while I was in grad school and, at the time this happened, I had spent 20 years as an editor in the corporate world. The "errors" he'd pointed out were all stylistic choices. THIS from someone who purportedly knew enough to be pointing out errors.

At my job, I sometimes had folk rewrite something I'd written and make it ungrammatical in the process even though they were convinced they were "fixing" it.

If there's anything I can do -- such as chime in as an ex-editor to declare proper usage and/or express outrage in an email to KDP -- please let me know. This is pretty chilling to my mind.

@Mark: Excellent idea! I'd be happy to write a post about this with Robert's permission!

Hmm, wonder if I should complain about the typos and formatting issues in the multi-award-winning _Zoo City_ I'm reading now on Kindle


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Daniel, I checked with Author Central and they said my book still appears to be on sale. What that "draft" status is, they couldn't tell me: Author Central is a different department. So, it doesn't appear that I'll lose sales -- only my temper and a lot of wasted time trying to straighten out a mess that never should have happened.

We've discussed elsewhere that Amazon (specifically, KDP/CreateSpace) is customer-driven, not author-driven. And that is as it should be. However, this is taking "the customer is always right" to an extreme. Because sometimes the customer has motives that aren't very nice. And at other times, the customer can be an idiot.

Jon: Did you mean the "dialogue" in this thread, or in my book?  LOL!


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Since it's still for sale, I wouldn't worry too much about this. I would upload the same manuscript and republish. There's nothing wrong with it. (Well, I guess you could fix the two 'is is' thing.)

And this is good for all of us to know. If this happens to you, don't sweat it. Just upload and republish. No sales are lost. No rank was lost. If they found actual errors, fix and go on.

Vicki


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## philvan (May 26, 2010)

I am waiting to see if my 'Stone Song' is about to be subjected to a similar critique, and reaction, as someone bought a copy yesterday and it had been returned by early this morning. The spelling and some slang in dialogue is English, not American.
I know of one typo in the first chapter, a missing quotation mark, which I intend to rectify soon. 
However, I intend to wait a few days and do another read through, to see what other errors there might be, before uploading a revision.


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

I wonder how many complaints it would take to get "The Road" pulled.

Honestly, they're going to make mistakes with this stuff. What surprises me the most is that they reflexively did this with a book that actually sells.

(Apparently it's still for sale, even though? Not to freak you out, but that does appear to contradict the language of the email. I would absolutely get on them about it, in case it's just a lag.)



Robert Bidinotto said:


> Yes, Joansz, the book is on Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/68383 as well as Nook and Kindle.
> 
> It just frosts me! The bizarre email message, the comment about "republishing," the listing on the KDP "Bookshelf" that my book is now in "draft" status, my frozen sales stats -- nice way to waste a morning worrying. And you can't even talk to anyone at KDP by phone to resolve such problems fast; you have to get in their endless email queue. It even took me about ten tries to send my complaining email to them via their automated form, before it was finally accepted and sent.
> 
> Listen, I've had nothing but great service through the Amazon teams, up till now. But this is astonishing. You'd think they have other priorities than to accept, at face value, any complaint from some (pick one: troll, illiterate, scammer wanting to get his money back) customer without first investigating its merits, then send a chiding instruction to the author. Perhaps this bit of unwelcome attention may cause KDP to rethink their policies about how to handle customer complaints. I'm sure more than a few of you have been scammed by customers who like to read your books for free, and so invent complaints to get refunds.


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## Tommie Lyn (Dec 7, 2009)

Thanks for the heads up, Robert. I would be shaking in my boots, now, if I wore boots. Because if the wrong person buys _The Sands of Santa Rosa_ and objects to the use of dialect in it, I fear a notice from KDP may soon be awaiting me, too.



> Gerald pulled off his stained ball cap, wiped sweat from his forehead and laid the hat lightly atop his silver hair. "Pore boy. You know, they's people don't believe in the Sight nowadays."
> 
> "They'd do well to pay attention to things you cain't see just as well as to the things you can see. Just 'cause you cain't see somethin' don't mean it don't exist."


Now, all you Oxford comma adherents, just ignore the missing comma...please? It has taken me a looooong time to eradicate those rascally little curved entities from my writing so that I could stop worrying about a visitation from the ECP (Extra Comma Police).


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

Yeah, but what's weird about this to me is that, based on what Robert quoted, I don't really see more than one person complaining about those specific instances. In other words, this sounds like the result of one complaint. Which is kind of ridiculous.



modwitch said:


> The book seems to be on sale still, so I think this is internal stuff? I'd definitely hit the roof with KDP, but the severity isn't as bad if the book hasn't actually been pulled down.
> 
> I will say this - I think it's actually better written and/or better selling indie books getting hit with this precisely because it *is* driven by customer complaints. A lot of the really crappy books aren't actually getting bought enough to generate the 1 in 1000 customer who complains.
> 
> Sorry, Robert. This bites!


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Thanks for the sympathetic support, people. I just needed to ventilate.
> 
> And also thanks for the suggestion that this was probably due to a customer complaint. Now that makes sense. I've had a few "refunds," and I wonder now if somebody used such lame excuses to get his or her money back?


Way back when folks kept screaming that Amazon should start vetting books for errors and quality, these were the first things I thought of:

A) No way in hell do you want outsourced teams checking English grammar. 
B) Customer's will lie to get free things, or to get their money back.

I kept my mouth shut, because so many of you were hell-bent on controlling other people's books. There are just too many works being uploaded for Amazon to do this right. The only way they can do it, is via customer reports & outsourcing. That always equals a disaster. But some of you in this very thread asked for it... and now you got it. Pandora's box is open now, so not much we can do but deal with it...


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## ToniD (May 3, 2011)

This just boggles the mind.

I'm a longtime serial comma user, and I intend to continue punctuating serially.

Oscar Wilde certainly knew the value of a properly placed comma: "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

Perhaps the complaining reader should go complain about Mr. Wilde, as well. 

Hmph.

As for J-school....that's what students studying journalism CALL it.

Double hmph.


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## N. Gemini Sasson (Jul 5, 2010)

melissafmiller said:


> First off, just . . . wow.


That was my reaction. There are a lot of bestselling, traditionally published books that could get slammed for the same thing.


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## StaceyHH (Sep 13, 2010)

There was a thread on Reddit this week that went viral. Somebody posted about it here too, but I saw it all over FB and in a few other places. The OP (on Reddit,) said that when he complained about typos in a book he'd read, not only did Amazon Kindle refund the money, they also gave him a $5 credit, and promised him the corrected version when it was available. After that, the thread was liberally peppered with people who also tried complaints, and also got the refund + $5. There were a few people who had done it multiple times.

I think this "refund + $5" is some kind of new QA thing that Amazon is trying out, in response to all the unedited garbage being uploaded. The problem is that they apparently don't have a threshold or review system in place for these complaints. 

In light of how many people saw the Reddit thread, I suspect that independent publishers, self-publishers and OCR'd books, will see a LOT more of this before it gets straightened out.


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## Archer (Apr 25, 2009)

I got one of those messages awhile back. I responded immediately to Amazon, requesting that they clarify. They were complaining about the formatting of 'Elfhunter'. I have been through it many many times on my own Kindle and can find no formatting problems, so I asked if they could aid me in 'fixing' things by pointing out an example of a formatting error. I never heard another word from them.  

The second book, Fire-heart, DID have formatting issues. We figured out what was causing them, and I have fixed them, but I did so without any prompting from Zon. 

Oxford commas rule!


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## Paul Clayton (Sep 12, 2009)

This is very disturbing.  They may be relying on some kind of program to check for errors.  I had some one 'kindle a flame' on another publisher's site and they had a problem with that, insisting that I delete the blasphemous word.


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

Um, what? I only remember people stridently advocating that self-publishers apply their own quality control and standards, so that precisely this kind of thing did not happen. My understanding was that people bemoaned other's lack of standards because it would, and did, inevitably affect everybody. And oh, look, they were right. That is a long, long way from trying to control other people's books. It is, in fact, grieving over practices that would result in the locus of control of publication moving away from the author.

It's really prejudicial to assume the intent of control. Also, given the sequence of events, kind of self-evidently wrong.



Vicky Foxx said:


> Way back when folks kept screaming that Amazon should start vetting books for errors and quality, these were the first things I thought of:
> 
> A) No way in hell do you want outsourced teams checking English grammar.
> B) Customer's will lie to get free things, or to get their money back.
> ...


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

OH. There it is. So....lots of face palms at Amazon this week?



StaceyHH said:


> There was a thread on Reddit this week that went viral. Somebody posted about it here too, but I saw it all over FB and in a few other places. The OP (on Reddit,) said that when he complained about typos in a book he'd read, not only did Amazon Kindle refund the money, they also gave him a $5 credit, and promised him the corrected version when it was available. After that, the thread was liberally peppered with people who also tried complaints, and also got the refund + $5. There were a few people who had done it multiple times.
> 
> I think this "refund + $5" is some kind of new QA thing that Amazon is trying out, in response to all the unedited garbage being uploaded. The problem is that they apparently don't have a threshold or review system in place for these complaints.
> 
> In light of how many people saw the Reddit thread, I suspect that independent publishers, self-publishers and OCR'd books, will see a LOT more of this before it gets straightened out.


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

It's likely to get worse before it gets better. Is there anyway that we can point Amazon staff to this thread?


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

Could it be that this entire process was by a machine, and a real live person was not even involved?  If that was the case, it is sort of scary!


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

I suspect this all stems from a small program Amazon had to quietly deal with consumers. Programs like that work just fine on a small scale. But when the scale dramatically increases, the original program doesn't work anymore. Typically, a manager at a higher level picks up the phone and says, "What's going on with this refunds for commas stuff? Are we in the editing business now?"

Then they look at what is happening and decide on a policy that handles a larger scope. One of the first questions they will ask is, "Do we want to be in the editing business now? For paper, Kindle, blogs, and OCR copies of Heraclitus? Do we send truckloads of books back to Random House and take down half our Kindle books?" Those are legitimate questions, and we really can't say what they will decide. But it's a mistake to presume what we see now will continue.

They may decide there really isn't a problem with consumer perception of quality, rather it's a problem of giving away $5 bounties.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

genevieveaclark said:


> Um, what? I only remember people stridently advocating that self-publishers apply their own quality control and standards, so that precisely this kind of thing did not happen. My understanding was that people bemoaned other's lack of standards because it would, and did, inevitably affect everybody. And oh, look, they were right. That is a long, long way from trying to control other people's books. It is, in fact, grieving over practices that would result in the locus of control of publication moving away from the author.
> 
> It's really prejudicial to assume the intent of control. Also, given the sequence of events, kind of self-evidently wrong.


Ugh sorry..early morning, no coffee yet..and at home sick! So I kinda misread the thread!

But..I'm still adamant that no way in heck should Amazon do any vetting or editorial. There's no way that can be done on a corporate scale.


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

Vicky Foxx said:


> But..I'm still adamant that no way in heck should Amazon do any vetting or editorial. There's no way that can be done on a corporate scale.


This is way, way true. I can't think of many examples of a company that was built to do one kind of thing very well suddenly turning on it's head and learning to do a totally different thing just as well, and then integrating the two.

(Can we pretend that was a well constructed sentence?)

They can't give bounties. They can't do their own editorial vetting. I would think they would crowdsource this kind of thing, but modwitch is right about the vast majority of poorly edited books just not having enough sales to generate a significant level of complaints.

I kind of wonder if they'll set up a separate vetting system, that would be voluntary and cost $. Pay $, have your book vetted to an absolute minimal standard by either Amazon or (most likely) outside vendors, get a fancy badge that says you meet the bare minimum. Don't pay, don't have your book vetted, get no badge, and have a snowball's chance in h*ll of getting picked up by the algorithms.

I'm just making stuff up, but anything with bounties will get hacked immediately. Ditto free stuff. Vicky is right, people liiiieee.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Hey Robert,

Pretty cack-handed by Amazon. Putting your book in draft for a stylistic choice. Really dumb.

It sounds like your book was still on sale, but I hope your visibility throughout the site wasn't affected in any way by being in "Draft" status. Make sure that your rankings/sales tally up with normal days. If not, make sure to have words with KDP and ask for compensation.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"I would think they would crowdsource this kind of thing, but modwitch is right about the vast majority of poorly edited books just not having enough sales to generate a significant level of complaints."_

If nobody is looking at them, what's the problem? The market has already solved it. Nobody is buying.


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## JodyWallace (Mar 29, 2011)

So what does it mean for a book to be in 'draft' but still be on sale and have its ranking intact, etc? What would happen if the author just left the book in draft? *is curious*

As far as the $5 bounty to get a book "in trouble", when I saw that thread it was the first thing that popped into my head. People are going to abuse it more than anything else and point out things like the serial comma because they are scammers, liars, have an agenda, etc.


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> _"I would think they would crowdsource this kind of thing, but modwitch is right about the vast majority of poorly edited books just not having enough sales to generate a significant level of complaints."_
> 
> If nobody is looking at them, what's the problem? The market has already solved it. Nobody is buying.


Right, but I think Amazon's concern is that those customers stop buying books on spec _in general_ because they can't be sure books on kindle will be of a minimum standard, which would definitely cost Amazon money. It goes to Amazon's reputation for credibility and customer service, which I think they take seriously.


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## Victoria J (Jul 5, 2011)

My mind tends towards conspiracies. I don't think the average reader is involved in this sort of thing but like Jody said, this can and will be abused by people with an agenda. It could be someone with a personal agenda against a specific author or someone who hates self -published authors in general. 

Or it could be any number or things like dishonest people just scamming the system. If it gets worse (and it probably will) we authors need to get together and raise our voices on this issue. Especially for nit-picky things like commas. If we don't, many of us are going to be abused


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## MichaelEgon (Jul 25, 2011)

Sorry I got to the party late. This is outrageous and I hope you kick their butts!


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

Victoria J said:


> My mind tends towards conspiracies. I don't think the average reader is involved in this sort of thing but like Jody said, this can and will be abused by people with an agenda. It could be someone with a personal agenda against a specific author or someone who hates self -published authors in general.
> 
> Or it could be any number or things like dishonest people just scamming the system. If it gets worse (and it probably will) we authors need to get together and raise our voices on this issue. Especially for nit-picky things like commas. If we don't, many of us are going to be abused


I think Amazon just tried to address something that was becoming a concern -- if nothing else, they don't want "most of the books on KDP are garbage" to become conventional wisdom -- and just kinda flubbed it. They'll figure out something that works eventually. They don't want rampant abuse either.


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## MichaelEgon (Jul 25, 2011)

Amazon is going to shoot itself in the foot, just like Netflix did.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> So what does it mean for a book to be in 'draft' but still be on sale and have its ranking intact, etc? What would happen if the author just left the book in draft? *is curious*


If the book stays in draft, it gets removed and doesn't show up for sale.


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## kisala9906 (Sep 4, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Thanks for the sympathetic support, people. I just needed to ventilate.
> 
> And also thanks for the suggestion that this was probably due to a customer complaint. Now that makes sense. I've had a few "refunds," and I wonder now if somebody used such lame excuses to get his or her money back?


you don't need to give amazon a reason to return a book but they may have complained anyway


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## kisala9906 (Sep 4, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Melissa, that is so sweet of you!
> 
> Okay, folks, for your amusement: the wildly offending sentences, in context. Are you ready?
> 
> ...


Since I have not read the book and maybe it would make more sense if I did but I may have had trouble with knowing what J school meant.


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## HelenHanson (Sep 13, 2010)

kisala9906 said:


> Since I have not read the book and maybe it would make more sense if I did but I may have had trouble with knowing what J school meant.


If you run a G search on J school, the page of links starts with the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and includes the J schools of: Mizzou, Columbia, CUNY, UNC, Indiana U, and a wikipedia article about journalism school . . .


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## wildwitchof (Sep 2, 2010)

I'm also grateful it was such a hot-button style issue they went after. Commas really get people worked up. A corporation that wants to please people cannot win by taking a stand on commas.

Seriously, though, I think it's great we have KB as a forum to publicize (or will UK readers insist on publicise?) this sort of growing pain. Because if I were all alone and got this email from Amazon, and my book was pulled, I'd be really upset. I might get stuck in email hell arguing with low-level drones who wouldn't admit I was in the right.

As a group, though, we can take these hits together (publicly) and the problems are ironed out more easily. 

Hopefully. Please keep us posted, Robert.


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

Franklin Eddy said:


> If the book stays in draft, it gets removed and doesn't show up for sale.


Not true. Go tweak something on a book already for sale, say its description, but don't publish it. It'll switch over to "draft" status. Since other people are confirming that the book is still for sale, it's pretty clear his book hasn't been removed.


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## kisala9906 (Sep 4, 2011)

HelenHanson said:


> If you run a G search on J school, the page of links starts with the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and includes the J schools of: Mizzou, Columbia, CUNY, UNC, Indiana U, and a wikipedia article about journalism school . . .


if I am reading a book last thing I want to do it stop to do a google search just saying


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## SuzanneTyrpak (Aug 10, 2010)

I'm sorry to hear about this, Robert. I look forward to hearing about a resolution.

Offering $5 to report mistakes sounds like an exceptionally bad idea.


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

kisala9906 said:


> if I am reading a book last thing I want to do it stop to do a google search just saying


It's pretty common slang IMO. I also think it's possible to deduce the meaning from the context of "two people involved in the journalism world having a conversation". Regardless, it's how characters with journalism related backgrounds would talk. I can't even imagine the sorts of complaints that could be leveled at sci-fi or fantasy books if we use "not immediately understood" as the threshold.


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## wildwitchof (Sep 2, 2010)

...or the slang in a medical or legal thriller, for instance. Many of our most popular fiction takes place in the workplace - and that is inevitably filled with jargon. To write it so that any person (or even most) would know exactly what you were talking about, your fiction would be filled with clumsy, unrealistic lines.

"Give it to me stat," the doctor said. "That's an abbreviation for the latin term statim meaning right away!"


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## HelenHanson (Sep 13, 2010)

kisala9906 said:


> if I am reading a book last thing I want to do it stop to do a google search just saying


Sorry, I wasn't suggesting you G search it. I read the book, and the term was quite understandable. My point was that the vernacular is widely accepted. Amazon shouldn't have an issue with it, especially in dialogue.


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## SuzanneTyrpak (Aug 10, 2010)

I just got a message from KDP about their new twitter account @AmazonKDP 
to help independent writers. I tweeted about this. Maybe we all should.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

kisala9906 said:


> Since I have not read the book and maybe it would make more sense if I did but I may have had trouble with knowing what J school meant.





kisala9906 said:


> if I am reading a book last thing I want to do it stop to do a google search just saying


Sorry, but I don't think it's the author's responsibility to anticipate vocubulary skill level before writing a book for adults.

However, maybe this is the potential for interactive books. Hover over any word in the story and get its definitions! Oh wait. Which dictionary would be used? Would "street" words and other slang be included? Foreign phrases? Older definitions that have fallen out of favor but that may be period appropriate? Regional variations? How about discoverable language like that in _Clockwork Orange_? Or do authors simply forsake those words for least-common-denominator ones?

Someone somewhere is not going to know a word that the next person considers common. How is that the author's fault?


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"Right, but I think Amazon's concern is that those customers stop buying books on spec in general because they can't be sure books on kindle will be of a minimum standard, which would definitely cost Amazon money."_

I can't say how many of that type of consumer there are, nor can I say what they will do. But Amazon has all the data they need to monitor their behavior. They do know. This enters the quantitative realm. They know what percentage of consumers complain. They know what percentage of total sales they represent. And they know their buying pattern before and after they start complaining. They know if they are a material factor. I don't know any of that. Amazon still doesn't call.

Companies don't take action because something might happen with an unknown effect. If they did, they would be chasing their tails forever. The opposite or any of a zillion permutations might also happen. They have to evaluate these things.

And the $5 bounty? If you want more of anything, then pay for it. If they want even more complaints, they can offer $10.

Companies like Amazon are also very concerned with their reputation. So a counter weight to the complaints is the ridicule they will take for rejecting the Chicago style in a message with a grammar error.

They know right now what is happening.


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## kindlescribbler.com (Jul 28, 2011)

HelenHanson said:


> Sorry, I wasn't suggesting you G search it. I read the book, and the term was quite understandable. My point was that the vernacular is widely accepted. Amazon shouldn't have an issue with it, especially in dialogue.


But even if the vernacular isn't widely accepted - why should amazon have an issue with anything like that? If that's the author's choice of word - it should stay that way. ( I mean I have trouble reading TS Eliot - but they shouldn't edit him - should they?) It's strange.


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

I think we are actually agreeing, Terrence. I can't be sure. But I think it might be happening.



Terrence OBrien said:


> _"Right, but I think Amazon's concern is that those customers stop buying books on spec in general because they can't be sure books on kindle will be of a minimum standard, which would definitely cost Amazon money."_
> 
> I can't say how many of that type of consumer there are, nor can I say what they will do. But Amazon has all the data they need to monitor their behavior. They do know. This enters the quantitative realm. They know what percentage of consumers complain. They know what percentage of total sales they represent. And they know their buying pattern before and after they start complaining. They know if they are a material factor. I don't know any of that. Amazon still doesn't call.
> 
> ...


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## HelenHanson (Sep 13, 2010)

kindlescribbler.com said:


> But even if the vernacular isn't widely accepted - why should amazon have an issue with anything like that? If that's the author's choice of word - it should stay that way. ( I mean I have trouble reading TS Eliot - but they shouldn't edit him - should they?) It's strange.


I'm in the alto section of this particular choir. As a reader, I'm disappointed if I don't learn a new word or two when I read . . .


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Gotta [<---------spell check?] tell you, I didn't expect this response. I was just ventilating. I'm gratified that so many of you saw in this the seeds of something with bigger [no comma needed here] long-term [nor here] implications than my little spat.

The implications, of course, arise from the Reddit post to which others have alluded. If true, it means that Amazon is stupidly offering a $5 bounty to readers who voice complaints against our books! Not only will they read our work without compensating US, Amazon will reward THEM for their scamming. Unbelievable. Whoever in Seattle came up with this lame-brained notion deserves to be keel-hauled behind a salmon boat in the Puget Sound.

Less colorfully, we should consider insisting that Amazon initiate a policy of investigating the *merits* of customer complaints before depriving us of our royalties. If they wish to refund money to some reader, no questions asked, fine. But it should be corporate money, not ours...until and unless they determine that his complaint against our work was justified.

Just FYI, as of 4:45 pm Eastern, my Kindle sales appear to be coming through, returning to normal (they were stalled for hours this a.m.) Meanwhile, my Author Central page has displayed this banner in an anemic, [<------note comma] pastel yellow since the early a.m.:

"We are experiencing a delay in updating your sales info. Rest assured that we are working to update this page as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience!"

And KDP's "Bookshelf" page for me still lists _HUNTER_ in "draft" status. Oh, goodie!

I've yet to hear from the geniuses at KDP to explain or apologize for this stupidity. When I do, I think I'll turn the tables: I'll demand $5 in compensation for their accepting, at face value, frivolous complaints from customers who read my book without paying me.

Finally, regarding use of slang by characters in fiction. Mygod, folks. The first responsibility of a novelist is to provide his readers with, at minimum, the _illusion_ of reality in his characters. Having two people in the newspaper business refer to "J school" rather than "journalism school" adds to that sense of realism. I also have cops using the argot of the crime world and CIA officers the jargon of the intelligence community ("IC," if you care). But in all cases, I try to let the context provide sufficient explanation so that the reader grasps the meaning.

For example, an early conversation between two CIA people refers to "the Counterintelligence Center," and to "counterintelligence," but then to "CI." Soon I swap out the terms in ways that ought to make clear to any reader what "CI" means. But it would seem completely _unrealistic_ to have these people constantly using full and formal terms rather than abbreviations. Or to have cops at a crime scene referring to "the deceased" or "the suspect" instead of "the stiff" and "the perp."


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Good thing your characters never called anyone a SOB.


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## Ruth Harris (Dec 26, 2010)

Robert, this is mind-boggling. A sub-literate email from the dark alleys of Calcutta (or God knows where) berating you about the use of Oxford commas? Un-fucking-believable.  Shiva only knows what they'd make of that particular, not-uncommon usage. ;-)


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## JoanReeves (Jan 4, 2011)

I too follow The Chicago Manual of Style and use what is commonly known as the Oxford comma in punctuating items in a series. I hope they don't slam me on this because I am consistent in this usage so I have 6 books punctuated in that manner, and I know I am correct because either way is acceptable.

Different style manuals may reference one as superior to the other, but each is acceptable.


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

> I too follow The Chicago Manual of Style and use what is commonly known as the Oxford comma in punctuating items in a series.


One of my favorite things about going indie was the fact that I no longer had to bow to someone else's "house style." I added quite a few of those commas back in when I re-released my books, because I personally prefer the extra comma. I'll be a trifle more than cranky if Amazon tries to ding me for it.


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## JoanReeves (Jan 4, 2011)

> I'll be a trifle more than cranky if Amazon tries to ding me for it.


Same here. They need to hire a grammarian if they're going to start doing this.


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

> When I do, I think I'll turn the tables: I'll demand $5 in compensation for their accepting, at face value, frivolous complaints from customers who read my book without paying me.


Robert, I think you have every right to be p*ssed, and I have no idea if you're just venting, but if you're sincere about the above quote: please don't do this. I think it's a bad idea. It's their store. They can do whatever they want. There's already this thread, and I imagine they already have a bunch of headaches because of this policy.

I would complain, absolutely, but I think demanding compensation...I don't think you'll get a good response.


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## WadeArnold (Sep 1, 2011)

JoanReeves said:


> I too follow The Chicago Manual of Style and use what is commonly known as the Oxford comma in punctuating items in a series. I hope they don't slam me on this because I am consistent in this usage so I have 6 books punctuated in that manner, and I know I am correct because either way is acceptable.
> 
> Different style manuals may reference one as superior to the other, but each is acceptable.


I believe the AP style guide says exactly the opposite for commas, which is widely used in news. This just further shows the ignorance of the "editor" sending the email. There's a difference in how you write fiction and non-fiction, features and straight news. Regardless, nothing wrong with those examples at all.

Don't be surprised though if this was a legitimate complaint, not just someone trying to get a free ebook. Having worked with the public for years, the oddest complaints come in about the oddest subjects, but then for Amazon to follow through on it is really weird.


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## Guest (Sep 19, 2011)

People have been murdered over the serial comma.


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## Les Turner (Mar 13, 2011)

Mel Comley said:


> I've had emails from them before not in proper English having obviously come from someone in India or somewhere other than either UK or USA.


UK, USA... Australia, New Zealand etc etc


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Genevieve, I won't ask for the $5. I was just trying to leaven the situation with a bit of humor. I should know better than to try that on the Internet!

I don't think this is about Oxford commas or anything substantive. This looks like a corporate-style response to placate some jerk who wanted an excuse to get his money back, and who had to grasp at straws and seize upon anything he or she could find in the book to complain. 

Now, what if a couple of people did this? It's possible. Out of hundreds of sales this month, I have 6 refund requests, plus two recent 2-star reviews that stand like lonely weeds in a field of 61 Amazon reader bouquets. Perhaps some suit at Amazon interpreted a couple of faux complaints as a "trend," and then tasked some poor outsourced clerk in Bangladesh with the mission of cutting-and-pasting those complaint(s) to me.

In short, upon reflection, this has "Stupid" written all over it. But it arises from a company policy of paying people, with refunds and compensatory $5 bills, to concoct criticisms. I expect an apologetic message from Seattle -- after this Public Relations Crisis goes before some internal Standards and Practices committee, which will agonize about Amazon's standing policy of handling customer complaints and refunds. Gosh, maybe a Blue Ribbon Commission will be formed to investigate. Maybe suits will be dispatched on a fact-finding mission.... 

Ultimately, the poor clerk in Bangladesh will take the fall, of course.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

EllenFisher said:


> One of my favorite things about going indie was the fact that I no longer had to bow to someone else's "house style."


Agreed. I use my own personal 'house style', an example of which is in how I'm punctuating this sentence. I use double quotes for out-loud speech, for example, and single quotes for other cases that would otherwise use double quotes. It's clearer, that way.

But since it's my _house_ style, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone pitches a fit.


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

Amazon are infamous for giving their tech support people a LOT of power, and allowing them to make a lot of judgement calls. This is great when the individual team member actually _possesses_ judgement. 

What I suspect happened:

*Amazon Team Leader:* Hey guys, we're trialling a process of taking customer complaints about book quality. Check out the book, if the formatting or spelling and grammar suck, give the customer a refund and $5, and pull the book.

*Amazon Team Member:* Finally! My chance to rid the world of Oxford commas!!

From what I've seen, the best way to handle it is to politely query whatever odd decision has been made, setting out reasons for your case. As long as said query hits someone with sense, the problem should go away.


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## Carld (Dec 2, 2009)

I would note that people aren't doing this for refunds. You can get a refund for any ebook no questions asked already. If Amazon is offering a bounty on bad books that's another story. I'm sure there are scammers out there latching on to this with gusto, turning in every book they imagine they've found an error in, even if they have to make it up.


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## Arlene Webb (Nov 2, 2010)

MikeAngel said:


> People have been murdered over the serial comma.


Can I quote you? I had a good laugh at this one.


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## HelenHanson (Sep 13, 2010)

nomesque said:


> Amazon are infamous for giving their tech support people a LOT of power, and allowing them to make a lot of judgement calls. This is great when the individual team member actually _possesses_ judgement.


*Amazon Team Leader:* It should be "Amazon is . . ."

The guy in Calcutta, as it were, would find this perfectly acceptable


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Helen, you crack me up. Thanks for the laughs on a frustrating day.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

I think that's right, Debora. I was taking as valid the repeated claims here about the validity of the Reddit post, and we don't know that. 

But whether they get a free book PLUS $5, or just a free book, that's incentive enough for some to request it. And some people wanting a refund (for whatever reason) may feel the need to pad their claims with rationalizations, no matter how lame. I'm sure Amazon CS surveys such people asking the reasons for their dissatisfaction. If you don't have a good one, you make stuff up. Like objections to the Oxford comma and "J school."


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## Colin Taber (Apr 4, 2011)

modwitch said:


> Two things:
> 
> 1) We have no evidence whatsoever that amazon is paying people $5 for anything. One Reddit post is not evidence. We do have evidence that amazon made a stupid call about Robert's book. It may well be related to a spate of customer complaints hoping the Reddit post was true, but do you *really* think amazon said, "hey, let's pay customers $5 to complain about editing mistakes?" Without evidence, I gotta say, seems kinda unlikely.
> 
> 2) The fault here lies with amazon, not with the poor, nameless CS rep who got to write that particular email. And amazon gets the CS they're willing to pay for, which doesn't always extend to people who speak English as a first language, or understand American idiom (none of which means they're illiterate or stupid - just not as well qualified for the job Amazon's given them as we would like). If we're going to insult someone, let's pick on Amazon .


I was going to post something similar to this earlier: Simply, let's stick to what we do know and not focus on what we don't.

Robert, I'm really sorry to hear that you've got this problem to deal with.  I hope it gets resolved to your satisfaction and soon.


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## Archer (Apr 25, 2009)

MikeAngel said:


> People have been murdered over the serial comma.


Does that make them serial killers?


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## Jack Blaine (May 9, 2011)

Wow.  Just wanted to chime in with a "sorry that happened," and hope that they put your book back up.  That is nonsense.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Jack, it is live and selling -- notwithstanding the "draft" status notice on KDP or the "republish" comment in the email.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

Carld said:


> I would note that people aren't doing this for refunds. You can get a refund for any ebook no questions asked already. If Amazon is offering a bounty on bad books that's another story. I'm sure there are scammers out there latching on to this with gusto, turning in every book they imagine they've found an error in, even if they have to make it up.


I usually run an average of 5 or 6 refunds a month for the first book in my series--I figure that people get it on impulse and decide they don't like it for some reason, which is fine with me--I'd much rather have a few refunds than unhappy customers writing reviews. And it's also crossed my mind that a few of these folks refunding might be doing so because they perhaps enjoyed the book but wanted their $2.99 back, which is dishonest but at least they enjoyed the book and perhaps will tell some of their more honest friends.

If I got an e-mail from KDP like the one they sent Robert, I'd be very frustrated. Robert, I'm sorry to hear you've had this issue with KDP. Thanks for sharing your experience, as it's helpful for the rest of us if we find ourselves in the same position.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

modwitch said:


> Absolutely - that seems pretty likely to be what happened here. I apparently had someone return A Modern Witch because they don't like witch books, and they thought I should put in the description that it had witches (they contacted me as well as amazon). Um...
> 
> Is your head ready to explode, yet . What a day .


Huh? You have the word "witch" in your title--did this person not read the title? Usually I read the titles of the books I buy, but I guess different strokes for different folks . . .

I had someone who returned my book and then wrote a nasty review about how it was "soft-core porn," which made me laugh when I read it--this person probably helped me sell more books than I would have otherwise. Apparently it was some poor fantasy purist who didn't like his peas getting mixed in with his mashed potatoes (i.e. romance and fantasy mixed together.) What I wondered when I read that review is how this person missed my book description--it states romance in the description and is pretty clearly a love story. I just hope all the people who bought it looking for porn weren't too disappointed. The love scenes are pretty tame, IMO.


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

modwitch said:


> Absolutely - that seems pretty likely to be what happened here. I apparently had someone return A Modern Witch because they don't like witch books, and they thought I should put in the description that it had witches (they contacted me as well as amazon). Um...
> 
> Is your head ready to explode, yet . What a day .


OMG. lmao. Um, yeah.


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## SteenaHolmes (Sep 20, 2011)

Thanks for posting about this. I actually stopped my lurking and signed up because of this issue. Someone posted a link on facebook about it. 

One one hand - it will force people to get professionally edited, but on the other it worries me that they are not taking things in context either. 

I had someone purchase one of my books and request the refund because they didn't realize it was erotica. LOL

Steena (write erotic romance as Anya Winter)


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> But whether they get a free book PLUS $5, or just a free book, that's incentive enough for some to request it.


Hmm. Been getting refunds on my free books for the past couple days. I'm starting to connect the dots.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

modwitch said:


> However, my point is - customers sometimes want returns. Sometimes their reasons are eyepopping. And amazon issues them a return. So the whole Reddit post has always smelled to me, and I have no problem visualizing someone complaining about the one serial comma they found in Robert's book .


Yeah, unfortunately, I have no problem visualizing that either. I can be a strict grammarian when I reading for my critique group but I couldn't imagine reading something for pleasure and counting the commas. What gets me is whoever lodged the complaint apparently believes he or she has stellar grammar skills and feels in a position to pass judgment when in fact . . . well, I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised, human nature being what it is sometimes. As Andersen would write, the Emperor has no grammar skills . . .

Eyepopping--great word choice, btw. That's how I felt when I read that "soft-core porn" review for the first time. It was my first one-star review--I've actually grown quite fond of it. I don't read reviews anymore, though, even the good ones.


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## SuzanneTyrpak (Aug 10, 2010)

modwitch said:


> Absolutely - that seems pretty likely to be what happened here. I apparently had someone return A Modern Witch because they don't like witch books, and they thought I should put in the description that it had witches (they contacted me as well as amazon). Um...
> 
> Is your head ready to explode, yet . What a day .


How do they feel about pink bunnies?


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## William G. Jones (Sep 6, 2011)

Wow. That's nuts. I've authors say they got emails from Amazon editors alerting them to typos, but I always thought it was more of an editorial review for books they feature on the front page of the Kindle ebook store. This comma use thing is kind of crazy, and especially asking authors to correct and republish. 

I'd be interested to hear what KDP's response is, if one ever comes.


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## KR Jacobsen (Jul 19, 2011)

Robert, I saw your tweet earlier (obviously) but didn't get a chance to until now to see what was going on. I'm sorry you're dealing with this and can only imagine how frustrating it must be.

Here's to hoping Amazon responds positively, and quickly.

As a side note, Archer wins.


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## Gregory Lynn (Aug 9, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Thanks for the sympathetic support, people. I just needed to ventilate.


I hear Tommy Guns are good for vigilante ventilation.


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## privateerclause (Aug 13, 2011)

As authors become closer to the reader through Kindle publishing and Amazon becomes the huge retailer of our books, we can expect several things to take place.  The "10-percenters" of the public, those who are a real pain in the rear and take up 90 percent of the complaint time of retailers and small business owners with their, often-imaginary, gripes, Amazon will want to quickly placate them.  Authors will also feel the wrath of the unsatisfied by way of rank reviews and letters of outrage to Amazon. A good deal of the public can be a real torment just as the internet is full of scam artists.  At some point, a "Writers Guild" will appear to find ways to deal with Amazon's silly stuff like was laid on Robert's usage of slang in his book and as a serial comma perp, I shudder to think what they will do with me.  At the end of the day, Amazon will find they need to hire writers as customer service reps, or retired English teachers.  Good luck to all.  Ken


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Robert,

My book is professionally edited and at 4:28am this morning, I received the same email saying they were taking it down for errors in the title ?
and in the book. The only one they pointed out is a space between "I 'm". I use quite a bit of slang and have some nontraditional names in my book, so I'm sure that is part of the problem.

I'm paying for a Kindleboards ad to run on the Sept. 23rd & 24th. Could you PM me about how to handle this? I sent a message to about ten different departments asking them not to take it down, and that I can't fix problems that don't exist like my title and slang.

I had one customer complain because one of teens said, "That's beast!" (She thought it was a typo for best, but beast is a common slang word) I also have text talk which might trigger an error, and the _Chicago Manual of Style_ has not made an official ruling on it yet.

I'm not saying my book is perfect, but I did hire a professional editor so it should be relatively error free.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Okay, I finally heard back from KDP. And I just have to share:

----------------

_Hello Robert,

I am truly sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Your title was moved to the "Draft" status, so that you can make the required changes. However, you are not required to make any revisions to your book now, and therefore, please republish your title "HUNTER: A Thriller" by following the steps below:

1. Visit http://kdp.amazon.com/ and log in.
2. Click "Action" for the book you want to publish.
3. Select "Edit rights, royalty and pricing."
4. Click "Save & Publish."

Your title should be available for sale once again within 24 hours.

Further, thanks for your feedback on following different editing styles. Feedback like yours really helps us continue to improve our author and publisher experience.

Thanks for taking time to offer us your thoughts.

Did I answer your question?_

---------------

Note there is no acknowledgment that they blew it, except for their thanking me for my "feedback" (ahem...it was a bit more strongly put than that) on "different editing styles." Note, too, the use of the word "required" pertaining to the changes -- but immediately negated by the following sentence, which says they are "not required." (!!!) Note, also, that the writer is saying the book is currently NOT for sale, but will be available within 24 hours of my republishing it (which is not even true: The book IS available for sale.) And note, finally, that the "republishing" of my book is now _my_ responsibility: They can stupidly put it INTO "draft" status, but they can't take it OUT of draft status; that's on me.

Now, I'll spare the writer who was conscripted for this customer-service chore the embarrassment of publicizing his or her name; but I say "his or her" because that name clearly confirms that he or she is from somewhere in Southeast Asia, and I can't tell the sex. So, as we suspected, this is some poor, English-as-a-second-language slob in a foreign nation, hired to police customer complaints about the use of AMERICAN ENGLISH IDIOM in U.S.-published books. Marvelous. Besides, the real embarrassment should be Amazon's, for hiring such a person in such a role.

You just gotta [<---------_use spell-check, Bidinotto_] laugh.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> I use quite a bit of slang and have some nontraditional names in my book, so I'm sure that is part of the problem...I had one customer complain because one of teens said, "That's beast!" (She thought it was a typo for best, but beast is a common slang word)


I wonder how long before people start asking for refunds for fantasy books because of misspelled a.k.a. 'invented' languages and character names.



Robert Bidinotto said:


> Okay, I finally heard back from KDP. And I just have to share:
> 
> ----------------
> 
> ...


_

Happy to hear your situation had a positive end, Robert. Now you can get back to the business of selling books without any needless distractions. _


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

Wow.  Well... on the up side, they're just dropping the matter.  That's good, given the circumstances.  On the down side, would it have killed them to apologize?

In any event, I'm glad they saw the light.  Go forth and republish!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Well, I don't trust 'em anymore. I don't even know for sure if my book is available, now that I hit the "republish" button.

Oh, hey! I have a _great _idea! Why doesn't everyone reading go try to BUY my book, just to make sure


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Robert-

Did they stop selling your book? Or was it always available? I think your book was always for sale even while in draft, right? I'm worried because I have the ads slated to run Sept. 23rd & 24th.  Mine isn't in draft; it still shows as live. I'm in waiting mode to see what they will do next.


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## KR Jacobsen (Jul 19, 2011)

Robert, so much for an explanation! I hope this isn't a harbinger of things to come, especially since Lisa was hit as well. Just all around crappy. 

So far as I can tell, both of your works appear to be available still, so that's a minor consolation, if true.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Mine is still live. I have a major Christian publisher reviewing picking up the paperback rights for the series in October. I'm in the process of negotiating the movie contract options. 
Both my books are currently in the top 10 for teen horror on Amazon and they are professionally edited, so I'm not sure why they are "picking" on me. I hope this is a glitch with a new employee who doesn't understand the intricacies of the English language and punctuation.

Again, since their complaints are based on issues that aren't a problem (like the title), I can't fix them.


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## wildwitchof (Sep 2, 2010)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> Mine is still live. I have a major Christian publisher reviewing picking up the paperback rights for the series in October. I'm in the process of negotiating the movie contract options.
> Both my books are currently in the top 10 for teen horror on Amazon and they are professionally edited, so I'm not sure why they are "picking" on me. I hope this is a glitch with a new employee who doesn't understand the intricacies of the English language and punctuation.
> 
> Again, since their complaints are based on issues that aren't a problem (like the title), I can't fix them.


I've just got to say I'm still amazed by this situation. I wish there were a formal, real-time venue for communicating with both Amazon and BN about these issues. Relying on KindleBoards for communication is too flawed. Depending on the Selena Kitts (with BN) and Joe Konrath (with Amazon) to speak for all of us is unsustainable.

Best of luck to Lisa and Robert and everyone. And congratulations, Lisa, on your huge success.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

I wouldn't look for apologies or acknowledgment that they screwed up. That might satisfy the individual author, but it doesn't further any business goal of Amazon. Actions speak far louder than words. I think the suits who made it possible for all of us to publish our eBooks know what happened.


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

modwitch said:


> Absolutely - that seems pretty likely to be what happened here. I apparently had someone return A Modern Witch because they don't like witch books, and they thought I should put in the description that it had witches (they contacted me as well as amazon). Um...
> 
> Is your head ready to explode, yet . What a day .


The mind boggles!

Robert - thank you for sharing this stressful episode with us, it's good to know about potential issues like this.

I saw someone re-tweet this on my Twitter feed:

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/115915581584191488
It's from one of the founders of Writer Beware and she is asking people who have had e-mails from Amazon about quality assurance reviews to e-mail her.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

I returned _Moby Dick_ because I don't like fish.


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

I returned _Fight Club_ because I don't like conflict.


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## MindAttic (Aug 14, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> I returned _Moby Dick_ because I don't like fish.


I have you beat. I returned Moby Dick because I figured it was a romance between a man and a whale. I mean, just look at the title!


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Glad to hear it's nearly resolved, Richard. Did you ever recover sales/rank from earlier in the day?

Also, it being a slow news week, I riffed off your plight for my blog: http://phoenixsullivan.blogspot.com/2011/09/everyones-copyeditor.html.
I'll update on Thurs re: the outcomes for you and Lisa.

Good to know V. Strauss is collecting emails! It'll be interesting to see who Amazon is targeting and what percent are legitimate complaints.

@Lisa: Fingers crossed for you in resolving this soon AND in your continued success!


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Thank you for sharing the information about Victoria at Writers Beware checking into it. I sent her a copy of the email. In August, I had 221 ebooks ordered of Book 1 and only 1 return. In September, I'm showing only 114 sold, (I know it's not updated because several people emailed me they had ordered the book this morning, and it's still not showing their orders) with 5 returns, but 4 of those all happened on the same day! It's kind of suspicious.


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## Carld (Dec 2, 2009)

Urban fantasy author Harry Connolly just tweeted...

byharryconnolly Harry Connolly
Supposed punctuation errors spur Amazon.com to pull Kindle book http://j.mp/p30A1X

Oh, and if you're reading this ... Hi Harry, love your books.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

@ Lisa,

I think what you are experiencing is _exactly_ what happened to me: that your grousing customer, looking for a refund, cited some lame typo as his or her excuse. It's looking more and more as if some moron at KDP got his or her panties in a bunch over customer complaints about indie ebooks; that he or she then decided that the solution was to order the non-native-English-language customer service crew in Bangladesh (or Zimbabwe or wherever) to respond to customer complaints by (a) automatically accepting their validity, (b) putting the "offending" book into "draft status," and (c) ordering the author to "fix" the book before "republishing" it.

Now, it's clear that this policy is chaotic even within KDP. The person who wrote me, both times, is clearly working under the assumption that the book isn't for sale. I don't know if it is or isn't. I DO know that not a single sale has been reported for my book for at least 9 hours -- which is absolutely unprecedented. When I hit the "republish" button, as instructed in the KDP letter quoted above, my book's status on the report page turned gray, and the word "publishing" now appears under "status."

It remains a complete mess.

One thing you should know, Lisa, is that when they write that something is wrong with your "title," they apparently don't mean the BOOK TITLE. They use the word "title" to refer to your book, generically. Another subtlety of the English language that non-native speakers and writers wouldn't realize is ambiguous.

You just have to bang your head against the desk.

Oh yeah...have I mentioned that my internet and phone service were out for the preceding four hours?


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

Robert, I just bought Hunter, and it downloaded to my Kindle quite promptly.  I've noticed a lack of sales today, too; I think KDP is just frozen again.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"When I hit the "republish" button, as instructed in the KDP letter quoted above, my book's status on the report page turned gray, and the word "publishing" now appears under "status."_

I've done a republish to fix some things, and what you describe is the first step in a normal republish. It will stay like that until each step in the process finishes. The book will be for sale during the entire process. In about two days, the "publishing" will simply change to "live." Since you are not making any changes, it's hard to track the progress. Normally, the book cover, text, sample, Look Inside, blurb, etc change over the course of the process giving some indication of progress..


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## BSquared18 (Apr 26, 2011)

Robert,

Concerning the note you received from Amazon: _"Your title was moved to the "Draft" status, so that you can make the required changes."_

You could make a case that the comma between _status_ and _so_ isn't needed and that they should shut down their entire operation until they fix the problem!

Bill


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

@ Bill -- LOL!  

@ Ellen -- thanks, both for the purchase and for the reassurance. Regarding the former, I hope you thoroughly enjoy it as a reward for your leap of faith!

@ Terrence -- You've just explained what Ellen's purchase confirms. And the big yellow banner announcing slow reporting problems continues to stand like a big CAUTION sign over my author page. So, I assume that this issue of no reported sales is not unique to me. In the past few minutes, a couple of sales have been recorded. If one of those is Ellen's, then I assume that there is a backlog still to be reported.


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## jdarrollhall (Sep 20, 2011)

With near 40 books in our library I can't wait to see what begins coming our way. For both me as an author and Fantasy Island Book Publishing this has yet to happen for any of our authors. Very interesting post, thanks for the heads up.


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## kea (Jun 13, 2011)

I'm going to be in trouble ... I love my Oxford commas.


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Note there is no acknowledgment that they blew it, except for their thanking me for my "feedback".


Yeah, you're just reading too much into it.

You're in what I call "button punching monkey" terroritory only humans are unfortunately forced to do the dronish work.

First level customer service are there to basically handle as much as they can through cut/paste scripts.

They don't think in the traditional sense. They categorize a complaint (refund request due to many typos) and follow a scripted response (collect location list from customer, process refund, revert book to Draft status, pass location list to publisher along with scripted message X.)

They typically handle hundreds a day of scripted responses never spending more than a minute or two on any of them. And a percentage of the scripts turn out to not be entirely applicable to the situation. Just the nature of the beast.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

J.T., I realize all that. The problem is not with the clerk sitting behind a computer in the Third World. The problem is the _policy_ decisions that led to (1) assuming the validity of all customer complaints, (2) outsourcing to foreign nationals the handling of customer complaints about the use of English, and (3) putting on autopilot a response that includes (quoting you) "revert book to Draft status" and send the author a "scripted message" that ASSUMES his fault and orders him to do something about it.

None of those decisions are made by the poor slob behind the computer screen in Lower Blavaristan. They're made in Seattle. And that's where I'm directing my complaint.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Debora, this sort of thing could have been avoided with just a little common sense. An "escalation" program, as you suggest -- perhaps where a complaint is filed; the author is notified, relayed the complaint, and given an opportunity to respond; then some quick-response communication method is put into place if clarification is needed right away -- that's all just common sense. But this policy was "ready, fire, aim." Action is taken, then the author has to protest and correct any company errors.

Moreover, if you reread the emails I received, it's clear that the geek in Lower Blavaristan actually _believes_ -- and communicated to me his belief -- that my book _had_ been taken offline, pending my adopting the "required" changes, then "republishing." In other words, even the customer service person advising me wasn't trained to understand how the actual procedure works.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Well, suppose we stipulate Amazon is run by incompetents. Then what?


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> J.T., I realize all that. The problem is not with the clerk sitting behind a computer in the Third World. The problem is the _policy_ decisions that led to (1) assuming the validity of all customer complaints, (2) outsourcing to foreign nationals the handling of customer complaints about the use of English, and (3) putting on autopilot a response that includes (quoting you) "revert book to Draft status" and send the author a "scripted message" that ASSUMES his fault and orders him to do something about it.
> 
> None of those decisions are made by the poor slob behind the computer screen in Lower Blavaristan. They're made in Seattle. And that's where I'm directing my complaint.


Fair enough. My guess is the script is right 99% of the time an that's why it exists. It was wrong in your case and hard not to take personally, but basically I think it wasn't personal. The $5 bonus is unvarinished stupidity sure to generate abuse now that it's known and I expect it to end soon enough. I actually think the reversion to draft--assuming books remain on sale for a decent period before being ineligible for sale as your experience showed--is a reasonable policy. It forces some action, even if it's just pressing the publish button again in a case of a mistake. If I go and tell the clerk at a retail store there are a number of books with pages torn out or some other defect (excessive OCR scanning errors or typos count to me--things that did not exist in your book) I'd like the clerk to do something that would minimize other customers from getting stuck with those books. Digital equivalent to me. <shrug> I sympathize with you having to go through it basically in the dark, but we're all all better prepared for similar cases in the future--a silver lining to your unfortunate experience.


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## Ruth Harris (Dec 26, 2010)

More of the same but slightly different. Here's DD Scott's KDP communiqué from KDP-land: Amazon KDP Attention Required Tickets http://bit.ly/rtmYAX


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I'm a brand new author (just published last week) so I'm closer to buyer/reader and here's my thoughts: Amazon is ALREADY full of junk! I mean we think about Amazon as a book seller, but they sell what, a million other products? Everything from flimsy plastic As Seen on TV to replacement parts that are hard to find, to clothing, household goods, etc. To me, unless they are going to test every single product they are selling, then they should leave the ebooks alone. The market already adjusts for junk. Silly people buy it, the smart buyers stay far away. 

Should I send a bounty on the bestsellers I read that have a typo or formatting issues in the ebook? Bottomline is when I'm just reading, I generally don't care about the typos or formatting. Think about it, we all pay $20 a head to go to the movies, and there are mistakes there, too. We're humans, and perfection is out of our reach.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

The problem is my punctuation like en and em dashes are there on purpose, so is the slang in dialogue, so is the texting. It's written for teens. My work is professionally edited. 
I highly doubt I would stay in the top ten for my genre for months and keep receiving four and five star reviews if there was a real problem with the editing.

I still have not received a reply, but my book is still marked "live" too. Maybe they realize they have a problem with their error recognition program.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> I still have not received a reply, but my book is still marked "live" too. Maybe they realize they have a problem with their error recognition program.


Or just with the people abusing it! Should be if you report a book and found to be dead wrong, YOUR book gets removed for "x" period of time. Fair is fair.


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## melissafmiller (Feb 17, 2011)

I do find it interesting that Amazon is putting books in draft status for the horror that is the serial comma, but when I instant messaged with their customer service folks over the fact that the stainless steel, leak-proof sippy cup I shelled out for so the baby would not have to suck down BPAs with her water was not, despite its name, leak-proof, the original response was TOUGH noogies, lady.  I was told I could return it for a refund, minus return shipping.

After I went on and on about how it leaked, not only from the spout, but also from the cap and where the bottom met the decorative/protective rubber cover; how it leaked when it was just sitting there upright, not even in use, yada yada, the guy sprung for shipping.

Great, but they are still hawking the blasted thing on their site. They apparently didn't fire off an email to the maker and say "we are placing your overpriced piece of crap cup in limbo until you either fix it so it doesn't leak or change the name to the waterfall cup."

So, it's buyer beware for the stuff they sell, unless it's a book? In which case any complaint no matter its merit is acted upon?


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## J. Tanner (Aug 22, 2011)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I'm a brand new author (just published last week) so I'm closer to buyer/reader and here's my thoughts: Amazon is ALREADY full of junk! I mean we think about Amazon as a book seller, but they sell what, a million other products? Everything from flimsy plastic As Seen on TV to replacement parts that are hard to find, to clothing, household goods, etc. To me, unless they are going to test every single product they are selling, then they should leave the ebooks alone. The market already adjusts for junk. Silly people buy it, the smart buyers stay far away.


An ebook on Amazon is an "accessory" for their Kindle device. They have a vested interest in people not souring on ebooks due to excessive quality issues and some (not all, and not Robert's book) excessive quality issues exist.



> Should I send a bounty on the bestsellers I read that have a typo or formatting issues in the ebook?


If there are so many issues it's clear there was not a good faith effort to put out a quality product, you might consider complaining. Some of the reported OCR scanning errors are 20+ mistakes of such an obvious nature it's clear no one even read the manuscript after the conversion to e-book. That's generally unacceptable. I don't think you deserve a prize for reporting it, but I do think you typically deserve a refund.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

The D.D. Scott post and subsequent thread are fascinating, because they confirm (1) that my case and Lisa's are not isolated instances, and (2) she got a confirmation from KDP that her "ticket" (that's what they call the citation issued by the Word Police) was prompted by some grousing customer:

http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com/amazon-kdp-attention-required-tickets/comment-page-1#comment-6343

Now, as an indie book increases in sales, the likelihood of it attracting some complaint becomes almost a dead certainty. If KDP's current policy isn't reformed, we're going to be facing constant interruptions to respond to such nonsense. I hope the attention it has gotten here and elsewhere prompts them to define a more common-sense way of handling this.

BTW: Used as an adjective, is "common-sense" hyphenated?


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"BTW: Used as an adjective, is "common-sense" hyphenated?"
_

You also should have spelled out "By the way" rather than using the ambiguous BTW. If J-School is too much for us, how can we ever deal with three letters?


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

I just received a response. Here it is:



> Hello Lisa,
> 
> I'm sorry for the inconvenience caused to you.
> 
> ...


 This doesn't really answer the question, does it?

Robert and everyone-
I do have some disgruntled people out there ( I actually had my membership yanked from a Christian writers' forum website because I started a self publish social club that had too many people join. I was accused by moderators of starting a clique. LOL, I never turned anyone down from joining, two mods even joined. The way the forum was set up, anyone could read our helpful info. and links. You just couldn't post unless you were a member and agreed to the rules. 1) No bashing self-publishers. 2) No talk of how badly edited your work must be, or "You're not ready. Wait for a traditional house... blah, blah, blah.", if it was self published.

They pulled my membership along with two others I'm aware of, and then dissolved our "club". Since I don't have the time, personality, or will to set up a clique, I just joined the Writers' Cafe instead. You guys are great. More Christian than some Christians. (I don't mean that as a negative.)


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## marshacanham (Jul 30, 2010)

Okay, first off...same thing happened to me...three times, twice with the same book.  First time it was for three obvious type-0's, but in a 450 page book I thought that was a little anal even for a "Quality control" check. Especially considering the ebook I put up was basically downloaded from the publisher's copy of my book before I got the rights back. And I had gone through it with a fine tooth comb already and corrected a few dozen mistakes in the publisher's copy. So to me, the three type-o's were something I noted but would wait and fix when I uploaded a newer cover I was playing around with.

Flash forward three weeks. Got the second letter about the same book, noting two punctuation errors and another type-0. Plus, they advised me that since I hadn't made the corrections pointed out to me in the first letter, they were PULLING THE BOOK FROM SALE until the corrections on both letters were made and the book was uploaded again.

I was both flabbergasted and pissed off.  I checked the book page and sure enough. Gone. Checked my KDP Page. Yellowed out and said unpublished.

I did the corrections, uploaded the book again, waited for it to reappear on my Amazon page (granted, it showed up sooner than a new pub and had all the reviews etc in place) then wrote to the "quallity control" people inquiring politely (through gritted teeth) how they chose MY book to do their quality controls on, and why they didn't pull down books from the big six publishers, some of which are riddled with spelling mistakes and formatting errors (oh yes, one of my uncorrected errors was a line that was indented too far!!!!!)

The answer I got was that heavens no, they didn't have time to read every book that gets published. They only take a closer look at books where readers have noted errors and complained.  

Here's the kicker...which another author friend of mine found out....readers who complain and point out errors get coupons for free books, or 5 bucks off Amazon products!

Now I don't have any complaint with "quality control". If my books have errors I want to know about it because it doesn't take that great an effort to make corrections and re-upload it.

I do object to Amazon pulling the book for what I would consider minor errors without TELLING me they were going to pull the book BEFORE they pulled it.  And I object to them rewarding readers for reporting a misplaced comma or indent.  

When I got yet another letter for a second book pointing out mistakes caught by their "quality control" check, two of the type-o's they cited were in dialogue and the words were spelled the way the character would have said them.  I sent back an email explaining that and haven't heard back. If that book gets pulled, I'll be having fits.

And just to add a bit of gravy to the meat...readers don't even get advised that a new, corrected version has been uploaded. Nook readers do, but not Kindle readers.

Humphf!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Marsha, I suspected as much. You've confirmed that this is not just a petty matter: If you fail to comply with the editorial demands of some coupon-seeking troll -- as arbitrated by a "Quality team" of folks who may not even have English as their first language -- your book may actually be UNPUBLISHED.

Suppose you're selling hundreds of copies per week (as I am). Having your title pulled offline because the editorial watchdogs are incompetent is not exactly going to help your credibility as an Indie author, let alone your personal finances. No, not a petty matter at all.

Anyway, I got my apology from KDP on Wednesday, as well as a hint that the fuss I helped to raise may prompt them to take remedial action:

----------------

Hello Robert,

Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience this situation might have caused.

First, let me assure you that your book "HUNTER: A Thriller" is available for sale on our Kindle Store. Please click here to verify: 
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0057CTIJA

It appears that our Quality team reviewed your book, and were able to locate some errors; *hence, your book was unpublished from the Kindle Store*. Further, I see that you've informed us about the usage of "Chicago Manual of Style" in your book, *hence, our Quality team has decided to make your book available for sale on the Kindle Store.
*
Please know, we perform random quality audits on books in the Kindle Store to ensure high quality content is provided to our customers. When errors are identified, we notify publishers so they can take action to update their content accordingly. Please know that our motive is to provide the best possible eBook experience to our customers.

Further, I've forwarded your mail as a feedback to our development team and we'll consider your feedback as we plan further improvements. Customer feedback serves an important role in helping us to improve our platform and provide better service to our publishers.

Please be assured that we're constantly working to improve our authors/publishers experience on Amazon KDP.

I hope this helps. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Thanks for using Amazon KDP.

Did I answer your question?

-------------------

The signer's name was clearly from somewhere in South Asia.

Now, take a look at what I put in boldface type. Was I mistaken to be concerned about my book being taken offline, when the KDP staff sending out these "tickets" for alleged English infractions apparently STILL BELIEVES that's exactly what they did

I also shudder to think of the "quality" of the "Quality team" that is doing random spot-checks on our books -- based on troll complaints -- to determine if they meet the high literary standards of well-meaning people who may have learned their English from a Berlitz course.

Anyway, this, combined with the worst sales in weeks, made yesterday a crappy day.

However, today I had record sales, thanks to a fabulous online review.

Never a dull moment in Indie Land .


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## Courtney Milan (Feb 27, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> The signer's name was clearly from somewhere in South Asia.


This is the second time you've made that assertion. As someone who's had to put up with people asking me where I'm *really* from all my life, I really have to call you on that assumption. There are a lot of people with South Asian names who were born and raised in the United States. There are especially a lot of them on the West Coast, where Amazon happens to be situated.

There are a lot of people in the United States who have names that are not of European derivation. If the person admits they're not in the U.S., you know they're not in the U.S. Otherwise, a name does not tell you anything about that person's country of origin or native tongue.


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## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

Courtney Milan said:


> This is the second time you've made that assertion. As someone who's had to put up with people asking me where I'm *really* from all my life, I really have to call you on that assumption. There are a lot of people with South Asian names who were born and raised in the United States. There are especially a lot of them on the West Coast, where Amazon happens to be situated.
> 
> There are a lot of people in the United States who have names that are not of European derivation. If the person admits they're not in the U.S., you know they're not in the U.S. Otherwise, a name does not tell you anything about that person's country of origin or native tongue.


Hmmm I second this. 
And I will take it even further. Many of us who are not in the US are English second language speakers and yet we still manage to speak and write it quite well  In fact, being bilingual makes one sensitive to aspects of language that people who can only speak one language are often not aware of.

Surely the problem here is not the lack of English skills of the person who "edited" your book, but Amazon's absurd process.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"In fact, being bilingual makes one sensitive to aspects of language that people who can only speak one language are often not aware of."_

English example, please?


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## marshacanham (Jul 30, 2010)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> The signer's name was clearly from somewhere in South Asia.


Ummm...shall we assume then, that you are writing in Italy or thereabouts?


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

One by-product of having a book unpublished that needs author/publisher intervention to republish is that as Amazon changes the metadata allowed in its input form, books with more lenient metadata allowances will lose those.

For example, books published in 2010 and early 2011 were allowed to be placed into up to 5 Categories and more than 7 Subject Keywords could be input. Titles that included words not on the cover were allowed. Republishing means losing any advantages a book MIGHT have had in order to conform to more stringent standards.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

*taps foot*

*muses over that improperly-punctuated "I see that you've informed us about the usage of 'Chicago Manual of Style' in your book, hence, our Quality team has decided to make your book available for sale on the Kindle Store."*

*goes over to AuthorCentral and edits her bio to add a note for grammarians*


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## BRONZEAGE (Jun 25, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Marsha, I suspected as much. You've confirmed that this is not just a petty matter: If you fail to comply with the editorial demands of some coupon-seeking troll -- as arbitrated by a "Quality team" of folks who may not even have English as their first language -- your book may actually be UNPUBLISHED.
> 
> ...[delete letter from KDP] --The signer's name was clearly from somewhere in South Asia.
> 
> ...


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Just to be clear: I meant no ethnic or national put-down. My issue is with the _competence_ of anyone making editorial decisions, whether they be from Seattle or Siberia.

If it is true that KDP is outsourcing editorial oversight of the use of idiomatic English, contemporary punctuation conventions, and American slang to customer-service personnel in a foreign nation -- _any_ foreign nation -- that ought to give everyone here pause. Especially since the "tickets" that KDP is issuing demonstrate that the individuals charged with policing these matters are unfamiliar with common conventions of contemporary English grammar, spelling, punctuation, idiom, etc. I would have objections just as strong if I were lectured by someone in London for not abiding by British punctuation conventions, which differ from American style. Or vice-versa, if I were a British author being instructed by some Yank in Seattle about a "failure" to add periods after "Mr" -- or the "error" of placing closed quotation marks inside final punctuation marks in sentences.

Besides, outsourcing editorial oversight of English to foreign nationals is only one of the issues here, as we've seen.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

I sympathize with the OP and the many genuine concerns raised by this post, and I think most are justified.

But on this (though Robert clarified he meant no ethnic put-down, and I fully believe him, I had written this earlier in a lighthearted mood):



Robert Bidinotto said:


> The signer's name was clearly from somewhere in South Asia.


The name couldn't have been Sonny Mehta or David Davidar, could it? Sonny, as the President of Knopf, sometimes gets to decide which Nobel Prizewinners Knopf will publish or won't and, David, ex-President of Penguin Canada, is too rich to need the job (and has a nice new job).

Couldn't have been Ralph Nazareth or David Timothy, both 100% South Asians, whose skin color is somewhere between brown and black? Ralph is a senior Professor of English at Nassau Community College, and writes English prose and poetry that would put Robert Ludlum to shame; I sometimes write to him when I need a grammatical question clarified; he probably earns over $70k a year and doesn't need the job. David works in a Bangalore publishing NGO at a senior level.

Couldn't have been Sonia Gandhi, could it? Though she was born in Italy, she rules India's 1.2 billion people, and couldn't possibly have the time to moonlight for Amazon even if she did need the extra cash.

Couldn't have been Richard Crasta, could it? That's me, and though I am the only amongst this otherwise illustrious South Asian bunch who needs the cash, I doubt I would pass an entrance test for Amazon staff.

And though I do make a few grammatical mistakes (using 92% American English, 5% British English, and 2% Indian English in my writing), I happened to teach the natives of Long Island (not the original ones, who are dead, but the descendants of the Europeans who took their land) English Composition for two semesters. Their English was had many more grammatical mistakes than mine, and it's of course quite possible that a handful of them couldn't get jobs, decided to become Hare Krishnas, and changed their names to South Asian ones.

But I admit my accent is funny. It's because of all that tandoori goat stuck in my teeth and because of all that low-fat camel milk that I drink along with my bourbon.

Richard
(P.S. All in good humor; I am not taking this issue all that seriously any more, though I did in a couple of my books. Or, as we all sing in our funny accents: 
But it's all rightu Jacku, 
Inna factu itsa gassu!)


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

However, to contribute my 2 cents to this important discussion.


In my humble opinion:

Robert's case is of course black and white--his language is impeccable, but speaking of the larger issue:


For "errors" that are matters of interpretation, artistic choice, British/American English: I suggest, let them be.

For blatant errors: For me, it is a matter of context proportionality, one that takes into account our human capacity to err.

For example, an average of one error every two pages is something I would forgive in an original otherwise sparkling work.
Perhaps an average of one blatant error on every page would justify requiring the author to make corrections.
Three to ten errors in an entire book? It wouldn't bother me if I had chosen to read that book--which I probably would have done after reading a 10-page sample which gave me a pretty good idea of the book's quality.

Richard


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

An error every couple of pages?

Actually, Richard, I'm far more exacting than that, for my own work. I take great pains to edit and proof my stuff, and it just _kills _me to find errors that I missed. Why? Because that violates the main goal I have as a storyteller:

_Do NOTHING to distract the reader from staying in the fantasy world that you have created._

That's what it means when we say a book is "spellbinding." But every error of spelling or grammar or punctuation, every formatting glitch, every factual blooper, _breaks the spell of the story_. They suddenly call the reader's attention to the fact that he's not a participant IN the story; he's on the outside, READING somebody's else's story. They are interruptions, reminding him that he's sitting in a chair with a book in his hands -- and not immersed and lost in the experience of another, far more interesting world.

This is why I have no sympathy for those quote writers unquote who imagine that simply because they've come up with a story, they can deliver it in a messy, poorly formatted, error-riddled fashion. Craftsmanship matters.

Now, I do NOT say that my book is perfect in this regard; I know that it isn't. But I also know that I strove to keep errors to an absolute minimum.

So, I greatly sympathize with the _motive_ of the Amazon folk in wanting to raise the bar for indie works. My objection is to the ham-handed, foolish way they've gone about this. I love the opportunity that KDP provides to us indies, and I want it to continue to be a thriving platform for cutting-edge writing. I just want them to use some common sense when developing and administering "quality control" policies.

Of course, Richard, I take your prior post with all the good humor you intended.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Common sense is a very relative standard.


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Common sense is a very relative standard.


This is pretty much a summary of the woes of philosophers, moralists, and engineers through the ages. In seven words. Not bad!


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> An error every couple of pages?
> 
> Actually, Richard, I'm far more exacting than that, for my own work. I take great pains to edit and proof my stuff, and it just _kills _me to find errors that I missed. Why? Because that violates the main goal I have as a storyteller:
> 
> _Do NOTHING to distract the reader from staying in the fantasy world that you have created._


Oh, me too. Every time I find a mistake that I missed, I am mortified. In a hurry, I let a previously published IMPRESSING THE WHITE online without realizing some errors had crept in while "improving" the book (a dangerous pursuit!), so I am grateful for every mistake I discover.

However, I am less judgmental of another person's work if it grips me otherwise with humor, originality, or passion. So one mistake in every 2 pages is a loose and compassionate standard, and I can see that you are a far more demanding writer--in fact, the "errors" were not even errors.

Besides, what if the error was intentional: satirical, for example? Even the most sophisticated readers have sometimes missed these. My novel THE REVISED KAMA SUTRA has quite a bit of wordplay that depends on misspelling.


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## Tim Greaton (Sep 8, 2011)

We just received a very similar letter early this morning about our "The Santa Shop" title. My book, however, was not removed from the market nor put in draft mode. A number of the errors pointed out were carryover hyphens from the original hardcopy release, and the other few seemed to be legit editing misses. We're correcting the issues now. I, like others, wonder what prompts something like this, but I'm thinking it is probably because we've had 50,000 free downloads in the last three weeks. More chance to rack up complaints or notice, I guess.

Thanks for exploring the issue, everyone


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## jambalian (May 11, 2012)

It seems Amazon have changed tactics.

On Friday I came off a great KDP free promo, having given away 13,000 books.  The post-KDP effect kicked in and despite hitting the paid list at 20,877 I was in the top 1000 within hours, and by Monday morning I was approaching the top 100.  I got to 97 by Monday afternoon, but the next time I looked I found something new on my book page:

Item Under Review

The text underneath said that there had been customer complaints about the book description, content, or the way the content was displayed.  It went on to say that Amazon were working with the publisher to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

First off, that was a complete lie.  Unlike others, including the OP, I received NO notification from Amazon that my book was going to be taken off the shelves.  I immediately emailed them, and emailed twice more before getting a reply 20 hours later!

It turned out that the new Kindle allows the user to change the background colour from white/grey to black, with white text.  I had no idea that this was possible, and apparently one of my readers preferred this approach.  It turned out that I had chosen black as my font colour rather than 'Automatic', and once I found the solution I uploaded the new version.

However, for me, the damage was done.  I slipped from #97 to below 500 during the 48 hours that my book was unavailable, and any readers seeing me on the Most Popular list and coming to buy my book will have been out off by the fact that Amazon had removed it from sale.  

When I asked why they took my book offline without contacting me, I was told: 'we removed your book from sale as it might also cause refunds, negative reviews and affect the sales rank of your title.'

I have questioned this statement, pointing out that a refund costs Amazon nothing, and having had 12 prior to this incident that didn't stop me getting into the top 100, it wasn't a factor.  I also said that if I got a negative review I could leave a comment and no real harm would have been done.  The final statement really pissed me off.  The only thing that could have damaged my sales ranking at that point would have been if - you got it - some idiot took it off the shelves for 48 hours!!

I sent another email complaining about their response and demanding that they tell me how they planned to make amends.  Surprisingly, over 48 hours later, they haven't chosen to respond.


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## Greg Banks (May 2, 2009)

I think they should have reviewed the ebook first, then contacted you, and then maybe taken it down or given you time to make a change. However, I don't think what they did was _that_ horrendous given that it originated with a reader complaint. They are in the business of selling books to readers, after all, and I generally expect them to put the customer first.


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

Greg Banks said:


> I think they should have reviewed the ebook first, then contacted you, and then maybe taken it down or given you time to make a change. However, I don't think what they did was _that_ horrendous given that it originated with a reader complaint. They are in the business of selling books to readers, after all, and I generally expect them to put the customer first.


But don't they have two customers? Without us, the suppliers, they have no customers (end user). Amazon is a delivery channel, nothing more. They're renowned, rightly so, for customer service, but a balance must be kept. If Google ever get a a competitive delivery channel going, authors who feel unfairly treated by Amazon will be the first to migrate.

I love Amazon and 90% of my online shopping is done with them, but they need to be proportionate and fair in all dealings - and, importantly, be seen to be fair.

Joe


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Greg Banks said:


> I think they should have reviewed the ebook first, then contacted you, and then maybe taken it down or given you time to make a change. However, I don't think what they did was _that_ horrendous given that it originated with a reader complaint. They are in the business of selling books to readers, after all, and I generally expect them to put the customer first.


No, I do not think a _single_ customer complaint justifies removing a novel from sale without giving the author a chance to correct it first.

Putting the customer*S* first is a good idea, but there are also some definite nutcases out there. We know that from reading some reviews. (Not most, just _some _, so readers please don't lynch me. That is true of any class of human beings)

It should take several customer complaints or truly egregious errors that would affect all readers for that to happen and it should NEVER happen without a notice to the author.


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## Greg Banks (May 2, 2009)

I absolutely agree that screwed up how they handled this, and yes we are their customers too. However, this was their customer and OUR customer who initiated this, and to discount that as an author is a mistake. Not to mention the fact that the reader is the one who paid Amazon money for our book. We don't pay money to publish. If you're a huge corporate entity whose obvious goal is to make money, which customer do you think has more clout with them given a choice? Let's not forget, Indie Authors are a dime a dozen from their perspective. It doesn't mean they should discount us, but we can't demand greater consideration than the very people who are paying both Amazon and us authors.


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

Jambalian, I recommend you proofread the mobi in Kindle Previewer app and Kindle for PC/Mac app before publishing. While reviewing in those apps, choose every single setting variation possible, so you can be sure it works correctly for all users on all settings.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sv_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261


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## Dragonfly Editing (Janet) (May 29, 2012)

It's okay for customers to not like the way an author chooses to use a comma, or an abbreviation, but when the work is grammatically correct an author should not be called on the carpet for a reader's or anyone's *opinion * of how the sentence should read. There is artistic license, and as long as you don't mess too much with correct grammar....I'm good. Can't tell you how upset I am to hear about this issue you've had, Robert!


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## Greg Banks (May 2, 2009)

I'm pretty sure this is a reaction (over-reaction, more like it) to the unfortunate flood of actual bad writing that I'm sure the Kindle Store has been flooded with.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

jambalian said:


> It turned out that the new Kindle allows the user to change the background colour from white/grey to black, with white text. I had no idea that this was possible, and apparently one of my readers preferred this approach. It turned out that I had chosen black as my font colour rather than 'Automatic', and once I found the solution I uploaded the new version.


Do the KDP formatting guidelines mention anywhere that font color has to be set to automatic? I don't think so. If this is so important for Fire readers, the KDP should strip out font color codes.

I bet there are about 2,000 authors checking the font-color settings on their mss right now. I know that's the first thing I did. Sheesh.


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## scottnicholson (Jan 31, 2010)

At one time, I had my best-selling UK novel unpublished because quality control found that "Chapter Thirty-Seven" (the heading, not the chapter of text) repeated. I wasn't aware that anyone actually read chapter headings. Now I know.

I feel these checks are just a knee-jerk reaction to reader complaints over the deluge of crap. Amazon can't weed out the crap so they do what they can--which is randomly nitpick a book here and there.


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

Becca Mills said:


> Do the KDP formatting guidelines mention anywhere that font color has to be set to automatic? I don't think so. If this is so important for Fire readers, the KDP should strip out font color codes.
> 
> I bet there are about 2,000 authors checking the font-color settings on their mss right now. I know that's the first thing I did. Sheesh.


The font color options, which are really background color options, with white being used for a black background, are part of the Kindle for PC options: background white, sepia, or black. If you had red font for instance, it would show on all 3. There is really no reason to use font=black because the 'no color/auto' appears black already.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Victoria Champion said:


> The font color options, which are really background color options, with white being used for a black background, are part of the Kindle for PC options: background white, sepia, or black. If you had red font for instance, it would show on all 3. There is really no reason to use font=black because the 'no color/auto' appears black already.


I know that, but some people may not have thought of it. Some people might assume it's "safest" to nail down your font color by selecting black, rather than leaving it on auto. Even if that weren't the case, there's a difference between "there's no reason to do X" and "you absolutely must not do X under any circumstance, or you will be unpublished." If the latter is true, it really should be in the formatting guidelines. I think so, anyway.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

I accept I am not important to Amazon. If I left, they wouldn't even know. It doesn't matter to them if I like the way they run their business. It's like sailing. The wind doesn't give a hoot about me, my thoughts, or what I want it to do. It's my job to deal with whatever comes my way.


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

Becca Mills said:


> there's a difference between "there's no reason to do X" and "you absolutely must not do X under any circumstance, or you will be unpublished." If the latter is true, it really should be in the formatting guidelines. I think so, anyway.


I agree.


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