My Week with Amazon

Amazon has mixed reviews. Some people just love it and have an Amazon Prime package waiting for them nearly every day. Some hate Amazon. They don’t like its politics or its treatment of its employees. I would think most authors have a love/hate relationship with Amazon. I do order many things from Amazon; it’s just so easy—and they have almost everything! And frankly speaking, I couldn’t live without Amazon. They certainly sell more books than anyone, like it or not. While I couldn’t live on what I make from my book sales on Amazon (at least right now!), I probably couldn’t live without it either.  But sometimes, like in any other job, being an author/publisher is frustrating! I had a doozie last week.

I assume many of my blog readers are writers and might know the procedure of getting books into the hands of the readers. Those of you will understand my tribulations of last week. For those of you unfamiliar with the process we author/publishers go through, you will get some insight.

By author/publisher, I mean an author who publishes his or her own books. Many of use the POD (print on demand) process. In other words, we don’t print 5000 books and store them in our garages. We upload our cover and inside files to whomever is going to print the books, and when someone orders a book, a copy is printed. For those of us who sell enough books, I think the printers will keep some on hand, however. 

By printers I am referring to Amazon and Ingram.They are not, of course, just printers. Amazon prints and sells the books. Ingram is a very large book distributor; they take care of printing and distributing to everyone except Amazon (and sometimes Amazon too). Many authors do what I do: we take our book files, and we upload them to Amazon and to Ingram. They then magically appear on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, and all other online retailers—and they are also available to order from any bookstore, even if they don’t physically carry the book. Now, I am talking about print books. E-books have their own process.

The arm of Amazon that takes care of print books is called CreateSpace. And of course, the arm that takes care of ebooks is Kindle. Well, recently we found out that CreateSpace was going bye-bye, and Kindle was taking over print book production as well as e-book. My saga begins.

I was hoping to get my new book, To Comma or Not to Comma by September 8, when I had two events on the same day at which I could sell books. That NEVER happens. Two events on the same day??? The book did get finished in time, so I thought I could get print copies by that date if I hurried and paid extra for fast shipping. (Authors can buy copies of their own books at print cost plus shipping cost once the proofs are approved—either digital proofs or print proofs.

So a couple of weeks ago, I uploaded my files to CreateSpace and ordered five print proofs, paying for expedited shipping. You can order up to five print proofs, and I figured if something happened and I couldn’t get any more books in time, I could at least sell the proofs, which look exactly like final books except the last page says “Proof.” Now, I already had the e-book done and available on Kindle and all the other e-readers. This was the first time I ever did the e-book first.

I was waiting for my print proofs to arrive and called Create Space (which has excellent 24/7 customer service. Fill in your phone number and the phone rings with their call) to see if they were arriving on time. They gave me the tracking number, and I checked. They were on their way to my house. So while I am sitting at my computer waiting for them to arrive—so I can quickly approve the proofs on CreateSpace (just click the box) and order some books for my events—I see easy instructions on “migrating” from CreateSpace—because everyone needs to move their books from CreateSpace over to Kindle. I didn’t read the fine print that followed the large, easy steps. I pressed three buttons and I was migrated. 

No sooner had I migrated when the proofs appeared at my doorstep. They were perfect. I went over to Kindle to see that all my titles had migrated just fine. But . . . where was the box to check my print proof approval? Oh, the fine print said don’t migrate your books if you have a book in the approval process. Oops! So I went back to CreateSpace with its 24/7 customer service to see what I should do. The screen said I had migrated and had no CreateSpace account. I couldn’t click on the Call Me button. It was after 5 p.m. by now, and Kindle customer serve was closed until 6 a.m. My books would now be held up. I was desperate and impatient. First I tried to just create the print book all over again with the same files on Kindle. No can do. Kindle wouldn’t accept the ISBN (the unique number that identifies every book) because it had been used—yes, on the print book from CreateSpace that was now in a black hole somewhere. 

 So being resourceful,  I actually created a fake CreateSpace account with another of my e-mail addresses and my old pseudonym so that I could maybe get the customer service back. It worked! They called—and told me they couldn’t do anything and I would have to talk to Kindle.

I was on the phone with Kindle at 6 a.m. promptly the next morning, after having written probably more than one e-mail already (patience is not my virtue). They suggested I upload the files again, starting anew. I told them I had tried and they wouldn’t let me use the ISBN. Kindle customer service is very polite, but all they do is refer the issue to the technical team and tell you to wait 24 to 48 hours and they will contact you. But I was in a hurry! They told me there was no way to approve the CreateSpace book, and that there were multiple technical glitches because of the migration.  What could I do?

Well, you might ask, why didn’t I just take the files and upload them to Ingram? Ingram does get them on Amazon, and I could order books from Ingram for my events. They do tend to be a little slower. And my cover designer had been on vacation and hadn’t yet gotten me the cover file for Ingram, which is slightly different from the cover file for Createspace/Kindle. I e-mailed him in a semi-panic and asked for the file ASAP. Meanwhile I talked to Kindle again and tried to upload the files. This time they had straightened out the ISBN problem, and the files were accepted. But then, they were processing for over an hour (it should take about three minutes at most), and then I got an error message that something was wrong with the interior file—which I knew wasn’t the case.

I received the cover file and went over to Ingram to upload the files. Ingram costs, whereas Kindle doesn’t. I have a perk from my publisher’s group that apparently lets you save that $75 upload fee on Ingram. I had never taken advantage of it for some reason and decided this time I would. Well, they wouldn’t accept it, so I paid. I figured I had no time for a physical proof, and I would have to approve just a digital proof and order the damn books. I uploaded and the next day got the news that the files were accepted, but there was a color issue with the cover. I could relieve them of responsibility and go ahead with the printing—or spend yet more time to get the colors fixed. I knew it was probably not going to matter, since Ingram is fussier than Amazon with print files. I told them to go ahead and print. I approved a digital proof and ordered books, paying extra for fast printing and shipping. Yay! I spent a lot of money, but I would have books in time!

Meanwhile, things got straightened out at Kindle, and I was able to upload the files, which were accepted. I approved the digital proofs, but figured I would order a print proof just in case anything was different from the perfect CreateSpace proofs I had gotten. The book went up live on Amazon. Yes!

Yesterday, a few days before the events, I received the box of books from Ingram; they are perfect, with no color issues, even though my wonderful cover designer did send new files with what they wanted (don’t need them after all). And I received the Kindle proof I ordered, which was also perfect.

Now, only one thing remains: Wouldn’t it be sad if I went through all that and I don’t sell those books!

Update: New glitch with Ingram! And I found out by mistake. Good thing. I went into my local bookstore with the book, telling them they could now order copies. They order from Ingram. The manager looked it up and saw that it was “nonreturnable.” If you want a bookstore to order your books, they must be listed as “returnable.” I KNOW I entered “returnable” on the screen as I did with every other book I have done. So after an hour with customer service (or no-service), I think I got that fixed—except they update that information only once a month, so they won’t be returnable until October 1. So basically, Ingram has cost me a month’s worth of sales because schools, bookstores, etc. won’t buy without being able to return the books. The life of an author/publisher.

 

NEXT WEEK: I think you will really enjoy next week’s (or in might be in two parts) blog post: New Ways with Old Words.