A Peek At My Week! #51

ChristinaEngela

2 years ago

Good morning, friends and fans!

Welcome to a “Peek Into My Week”, a behind the scenes look into the (I hope) noteworthy events in my life – May 09, 2022!

Here then, are some things that happened in my life this past week:

News About Writing & Publishing:

Publishing News – Forging Ahead With Problematic Amazon

With last Monday being a public holiday, I enjoyed my day off – but I also did some more work behind the scenes on the publishing aspects of my books! As I’d told you before recently, I’ve set up an account on Amazon’s KDP platform, and as time goes by, I’ll be ironing out a few difficulties wrt the books that had been previously published by Moon Books Publishing, which has become defunct since the death of its owner, my friend Brandon Mullins. The problem I’ve been facing is republishing the same books from my own KDP account in a way that they do not clash with the existing versions, and in fact it would be ideal if they replaced the existing versions. Thanks to subsequent follow-up emails with Amazon’s help desk, this appeared to be possible, and I proceeded as directed.

Last week I uploaded a new instance of “Blachart” in eBook format – and after the email conversations referred to above, I also uploaded a new instance of the paperback version – and also taken a gamble by uploading a hardcover version as well! In the meantime, while I waited to see what would happen – whether they will be automatically linked by the Amazon system, or if I’d have to request them to link all the different versions, and if this went smoothly – I waited before doing the same process on the rest of my books.

Below is a screenshot of one of the paperback full covers. I think I did a pretty good job!

As it turned out, it was just as well I waited. Amazon made a complete bollocks of the whole thing!

Firstly, they made the new eBook and paperback versions of the book disappear from my Author profile completely. These are now ONLY findable using the direct url links to those format versions. As you may know, book pages on Amazon have links on them to eBook, audiobook, paperback and hardcover versions of the book. Currently, the ones they link to take the prospective buyer to old previous versions which are out of print, or linked to Moon Books, for which I will probably never be paid. After losing my shit with two or three likely bots on their help desk, I have received several nearly identical responses, as copied in below:

“Thanks for contacting Author Central!

My name is Liliane. I’m a Senior Support Specialist with Author Central.

I understand your concern about the old edition of your book being shown on your Author Page.

Please note that the default editions reflected on Author Pages are sorted automatically based on actual customer shopping behaviors and the order is not manually adjusted for the titles shown in this feature.

We certainly understand the importance behind authors wanting more flexibility in how their titles are displayed on their bibliography.

We appreciate your comments, so I’ll be absolutely sure to pass your feedback along to the Author Central development team for consideration; we rely on input such as this when planning future changes to the website.

Thanks for your understanding.

Thank you for using Amazon Author Central,”

And it all started out so nicely too!

I most certainly DO NOT “understand”. I am in fact outraged and infuriated.

Take a moment to consider what this means to me as a self-publishing author:

1) Having the old versions of these books displayed on my author profile means that prospective buyers will only see the previous versions and not the new versions of my books if they look up my name in a search.

2) This means that there will likely be NO SALES of the new books, and only the old versions, if still available.

3) This in turn means that I will receive NO ROYALTIES for the proceeds of any sales of the old versions, since the individual who published the previous versions is deceased.

The only way anyone will find the new books now is if they are given the direct links to them, which means the onus will all fall on me to somehow see that they get it. Basically what you’re doing is tying both my hands behind my back and saying “there you go, let’s see how you can publish your books now!” In short, as an author, I might as well just fucking quit!

Essentially Amazon is placing their opportunity for profit over the author’s! Do they really expect me to believe that new editions of other authors works simply won’t reflect on their author profiles just because people have already been buying the previous versions?! This is just simply not good enough! This is your mess as Amazon, kindly sort this mess out, pronto, and get back to me!

I’m about to embark on another rant, but I’m sure you’ll understand why.

These replies are so homogenized, I’m sure Amazon’s entire “help” desk staff is populated by bots! In case anyone still thinks AI is a good idea, try reasoning with one of these bloody things! Outside of sci-fi, they’re obscenely irritating. In fact, if these are bots I’ve been dealing with, they should be given flesh and blood bodies to inhabit, just to be set on fire so I can not piss on them to put out the blaze!

The audacity of Amazon knows no bounds – using brainless, useless AI’s to field complaints is essentially like Marie Antoinette saying “let them eat cake!”

/rant.

Yes, this will only affect my older books, the ones that were published through Moon Books. But there are 23 of them – 23 out of the 33 books I’ve already published, not including the three of my parent’s books that also went through MBP. The new ones that come after will reflect correctly – but this is like being slapped in the face and told to start over again.

People are funny animals. If they click on something and don’t find what they’re looking for, they close the window and look for something somewhere else. This is blatant sabotage.

The only other apparent way around this, is if I were to create a new KDP and Author Central account under another name, and then also retitle all my books and series as well, so that I could have a fresh start and not have them hijacked by Amazon’s pedantic obsession with profit. Of course, there’s no point in me doing that, since I’d have to start a whole new marketing campaign from the ground up for someone who doesn’t really exist.

The unfortunate thing about this is that I can’t “just take my business somewhere else”. There is nowhere else. The problem with publishing, is that ALL roads lead to Amazon. I’m already on the ones that don’t – or have been on them – and they don’t lead anywhere.

Writing is my life. It always has been. If I can’t get through this and get this mess sorted out, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Perhaps if the previous versions published via Moon Books come down eventually, this may change the order in which the versions are reflected on Amazon… But in the meantime, I’m forging ahead regardless.

Over the weekend I published book 4 in Galaxii and then uploaded new versions of books 2 and 3 as well. I will focus on uploading new versions of Quantum to my own KDP profile this week.

Finally! The Long-awaited Book 4 in Galaxii!

I’m very, very pleased – and proud to announce that the long-awaited fourth book in Galaxii is now available on Amazon in eBook, paperback and hardcover format!

I’m sure some of my readers who’ve enjoyed the other three books in the series have wondered for some time when the next title was going to arrive, and I must apologize for the delay! Without further ado, let me introduce you to Sentinel and the characters of this new story arc!

A little more about the book:

The starship Munray is an old ship, crewed by a lot of malingering, negative, troublesome embarrassments to the Imperial Terran Space Fleet – in fact, even assignment to the Munray itself is viewed as something of a punishment; a place where the fleet’s ‘problem-children’ go to disappear, a manifestation of the truism “out of sight, out of mind”. The trouble is, even under those circumstances, the Munray and her crew have been a thorn in the side of those who have to answer for them – being chiefly, one Vice Admiral Beens. The Admiral has become most displeased with the erstwhile master of the Munray, one Captain Wynne Polluk.

Polluk, sensing an ignoble end to his foundered Space Fleet career, has put in for a Section 80 in order to leave the Space Fleet on his own terms, leaving the Munray at the quayside of the space dock orbiting the Terran colony of Tremaine. He’s done so with a self-satisfied smirk on his face, warmed by the knowledge that Lt Commander Shaw, the enigmatic Chief Entech, has taken it upon himself to field-strip both warp engines, rendering the ailing starship immobile and about as dysfunctional as its crew.

Unfortunately for Captain Polluk, things do not go exactly according to plan. Admiral Beens is nothing if not strict and partial to exacting a little retribution on the part of the Service, and has blocked Polluks exit strategy. He has a rather ironic fate in store for the enterprising Captain Polluk – one which should give a new and chilling meaning to the idiom “flying a desk”. In the meantime, the Munray remains stuck in port, her crew on extended shore leave, one step away from being AWOL, and growing less useful by the day. It was time to reach for a new broom.

Enter Captain Sonia La Belle. Unlike all her recent predecessors, and the crew of the Munray, Sonia has a perfect record. After a brief stint commanding a battlespringer – a small patrol vessel, she has spent the last four years working in Space Fleet’s Special Operations office on Tremaine. She’s been aching to be given command of a starship, and feels her skills are wasted sitting at a desk. Beens offers her a deal that will make her dreams come true… or at least, so it seems until she meets her new command. Beens explains her assignment: Whip the Munray and her crew into shape and get her back out into space again – and gives her six months to do it.

Sonia takes the bull by the horns, and begins to fight against the ingrained culture of malingering and negativity amongst the crew. It’s a long hard fight to win their trust, but it’s something she is well prepared for. She makes inroads by gaining the confidence of the ship’s officers and department heads, and offers the crew clean slates and a fresh start. Much to the surprise of Admiral Beens, the I.S.S. Munray resumes its regular patrol route between local colonies, and Sonia and her crew begin to settle into a comfortable routine.

In the meantime, a pair of fugitives have escaped from a maximum security prison in deep space, but just as Kobarr was no ordinary prison, these escaped cons are no ordinary fugitives. They are two of the more notorious Corsair figures captured after the fall of Meradinis, and their goal is not just escape, but vengeance! The form of their vengeance against the Terrans for the collapse of the center of space piracy – the destruction of Earth! Unfortunately, the pair have laid their hands on exactly the right sort of tool to do the job.

Through a sequence of rather unique and ironic circumstances, it will be up to Captain Sonia La Belle and the shady characters crewing the Munray to stop them!

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