It’s all very well sharing income reports and positive results… But what about the downsides of KDP?
Today I wanted to share some of the issues I’ve faced on KDP since I started, so hopefully you can avoid the same thing happening to you.
I will start with having books blocked on KDP. This actually happened a long time ago but I wasn’t ready to discuss it and I think didn’t even want to think about it for a while!
(It also ALMOST happened again recently, which I will touch on in a moment).
So, for anyone that this has happened to – don’t panic, it doesn’t mean your account will close. There are many people who have had blocked books and still maintained their account.
I could have actually contacted Amazon and potentially had this decision reversed, as the whole thing was down to a small mistake.
However, because I’ve found the customer service at Amazon frustrating at best – sometimes I feel more comfortable just leaving things as they are.
That’s not the case if Amazon ask you to contact them in a certain time frame – in that case 100% do contact them.
But I pretty much will only contact customer service now if it’s really important or they have asked me to do so.
Anyway, the blocked books happened because I created two very similar books, with different covers but accidently published them under two different author names.
They were a type of planner with prompts and normally, this would be OK under the same author name – but the error I made, was that I published one of them under two different pen names.
So, the books I put into review that were almost identical – but with different author names. There was just some mild variation with the prompts and interior.
Both covers were unique, but in a similar style because they were meant to be under the same brand name.
Rightly so, KDP thought this would lead to a negative customer experience because when you buy from two unique authors – you expect unique books.
They clearly were not part of the same series with two unique author names. Add to this, that there was also already one of these similar books already published out there as well.
I’m not sure why they didn’t just put the books back into draft and ask me to put them under the same pen name.
I probably very easily contacted them and asked them to reverse the decision and put the books back into draft, (it said in the email to contact them if I felt it was done in error and so on) but instead I pretty much froze, freaked out and left KDP well alone altogether for several weeks at least.
Eventually I plucked up the courage to publish something else entirely, (I abandoned the idea of those books) and it went through fine and I went on as though nothing had happened.
This was so long ago now, I basically just forgot all about it. Until recently because I almost had two books blocked again.
Which leads me on to the next mistake!
Editing Older Books!
I wanted to take a moment to caution anyone who is considering editing their KDP books, especially those published some time ago.
KDP’s guidelines have become much stricter over the years, so while your book may have adhered to the rules when it was first published, it could now be flagged for issues.
While Amazon isn’t in the business of simply taking down anything historical that doesn’t adhere to current guidelines – issues will flag up if you edit old books because this is an automated process.
This could result in your book being unpublished if it no longer complies with the current guidelines – all depending on who you speak to at the time, (or if you manage to speak to a real person at all).
One of the main problems is that certain key aspects of your book, such as the title or author name, are unchangeable.
The only way to address these issues would be to unpublish the book and republish it with the necessary changes, which would mean losing your rankings and reviews.
Additionally, if your author name itself becomes problematic, you wouldn’t be able to republish the same book under the same name.
So, due to amazon changing the T&C’s this has led to the problem of what is deemed as unnecessary repetition of words in titles and subtitles.
But this seems to extend to literally ANY repetition of words in the subtitle.
You might think it seems unnecessary to repeat words in the title and subtitle and most of the time, you’d be right.
Although I’d argue the inflexibility of this rule seems a little bit over the top. Repeating a generic word in both the title and subtitle is not going to negatively effect customer experience, I would argue that’s simply not true.
This issue has impacted several books that were published years ago when the rules were far less stringent.
Back then, these books passed the review process smoothly and had been edited multiple times without any problems.
However, I encountered an issue when trying to create a hardcover version of a book that had a repeated word from the title in the subtitle.
Amazon’s automated system flagged this as a violation and requested that I remove the repeated word.
Given that this book was published years ago, I explained that changing the title wasn’t feasible.
After several rounds of back-and-forth emails—which felt like canned responses from Amazon—I was informed that the book would be blocked unless I complied with their request.
The emails I received seemed automated, and it wasn’t until my fifth response that I finally received a message from a real person.
When I’d written that email, I’d actually put the reference number provided with a hashtag in the title of the email. I don’t know if that somehow made a difference, but I did get a response from a real person.
In hindsight, I probably should have taken the approach that had worked for me in the past: explaining that the book had been on Amazon for several years, had generated significant sales, and had accumulated positive reviews.
Previously sending screenshots of positive reviews has actually worked for me in the past. I would often get an email saying that they had, “made a mistake,” even though their point had clearly been valid all along.
But it’s possible a “real person,” may make allowances for minor issues if a book is long established and clearly a big seller on Amazon with positive reviews.
But by that point, I felt so anxious about the whole situation that I simply asked if unpublishing and republishing the book with a minor title change would prevent it from being blocked.
They agreed that this was no problem, and I proceeded to unpublish the book.
However, rather than immediately republishing, I saw this as an opportunity to improve the book. I decided to create a new version instead.
Unpublishing this book wasn’t easy, because the book is often in my top 10 sellers and had already made around $3,000 this year, including $1,000 in December alone. Clicking that “unpublish” button was not a nice feeling.
No matter how diligently you comply with the rules, Amazon frequently changes or strengthens them.
For example, another of my books was flagged due to a title issue some time ago.
I was instructed to change the title, which wasn’t possible, and was warned that the book would be blocked within five days if I didn’t comply.
I responded, but the reply indicated that they still found an issue with a phrase in the title.
Strangely enough, the five days passed, and nothing happened.
The book remained published, and I never heard back from Amazon about it again.
Shortly after, the edits I had attempted to make were accepted, and the updated version of the book was published without any further issues— what happened, I do not know!
Amazon Support Can Be A Challenge:
In general I just feel the less interaction with KDP customer support the better. The only exception being that 100% you must respond to emails when they ask you to do so.
In hindsight, I should have reached out to explain the situation so they could return the books to draft mode. Instead, I ended up avoiding KDP for a couple of months.
Incidents like these can be incredibly stressful, but they also prompt you to reassess your business
When the majority of your business relies on a platform like Amazon, you’re always going to feel somewhat powerless.
This is true for any platform—whether it’s YouTube, Etsy, or TikTok and so on.
I never wanted to rely entirely on Amazon for income but it’s something that largely happened anyway, (something I am working on moving away from, I will talk about that more in another post!).
Navigating KDP’s ever evolving guidelines can be challenging, especially for books published long ago. It’s crucial to stay aware of these changes and take action when necessary— or avoid making changes in certain circumstances.
Yet again, I have been reassessing my own situation and thinking about yet again trying to focus on other ventures outside of KDP.
I may have a complete break from KDP altogether while I focus on building these.
The tricky part is to decide what is best to focus on and in addition to that, I really do enjoy the process of creating books and putting books out there…. And I still have a lot of ideas I want to publish!
Have you encountered any problems on Amazon KDP since you started? How did it turn out and how did you respond? Let me know in the comments!
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