An Open Letter To:
Mr. Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com
Dear Mr. Bezos,
I am a writer with several novels for sale on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Several issues have been reported over the last while about alleged sales inaccuracies, "stuttering" book rankings and inaccessible web reports on the Amazon KDP web site. I have experienced those same problems myself.
I went onto the Amazon KDP community forums to get information and see hundreds of posts from other writers. I gave up reading after a half dozen pages because of the vitriol and invectives being flung around. Authors are frustrated because they are getting contradictory, vague and generic responses from your support teams. There is no information out there describing what the issue(s) are, their cause or how long it will take to fix them.
I don't make my primary income from my book sales, but many authors do. When there are issues with royalty payments (real or perceived) it directly affects the income they use to feed their families, pay the heating bill, etc. The poor state of the global economy at the moment does not help either.
Amazon is a phenomenal platform for independent authors to utilize, dare I say the best in the world. I doubt there are many writers out there who expect you to be perfect 100% of the time. With the complex infrastructure Amazon maintains globally, things will occasionally go wrong. We understand that and know you make your best effort to keep systems operational / accurate. Those of us who live in the real world know "stuff happens" on occasion. All I request is that you keep us in the loop. A simple one paragraph statement letting us know what is going on and roughly when we can expect a resolution. That will end the speculation along with the dramatic posts on KDP and reassure people simultaneously.
Could you have someone on your KDP team post some sort of update to answer the above concerns with solid information please? I don't think it’s too much to ask to keep your suppliers up to date.
Respectfully,
SJ Parkinson
http://sjparkinson.com
Mr. Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com
Dear Mr. Bezos,
I am a writer with several novels for sale on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Several issues have been reported over the last while about alleged sales inaccuracies, "stuttering" book rankings and inaccessible web reports on the Amazon KDP web site. I have experienced those same problems myself.
I went onto the Amazon KDP community forums to get information and see hundreds of posts from other writers. I gave up reading after a half dozen pages because of the vitriol and invectives being flung around. Authors are frustrated because they are getting contradictory, vague and generic responses from your support teams. There is no information out there describing what the issue(s) are, their cause or how long it will take to fix them.
I don't make my primary income from my book sales, but many authors do. When there are issues with royalty payments (real or perceived) it directly affects the income they use to feed their families, pay the heating bill, etc. The poor state of the global economy at the moment does not help either.
Amazon is a phenomenal platform for independent authors to utilize, dare I say the best in the world. I doubt there are many writers out there who expect you to be perfect 100% of the time. With the complex infrastructure Amazon maintains globally, things will occasionally go wrong. We understand that and know you make your best effort to keep systems operational / accurate. Those of us who live in the real world know "stuff happens" on occasion. All I request is that you keep us in the loop. A simple one paragraph statement letting us know what is going on and roughly when we can expect a resolution. That will end the speculation along with the dramatic posts on KDP and reassure people simultaneously.
Could you have someone on your KDP team post some sort of update to answer the above concerns with solid information please? I don't think it’s too much to ask to keep your suppliers up to date.
Respectfully,
SJ Parkinson
http://sjparkinson.com
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