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When it All Goes Horribly Wrong…

What to do when your book just... randomly vanishes.

IT’S ALMOST GUARANTEED – that something will go wrong at some point during your author career. It’s pretty inevitable.

And especially with Amazon – where they have an army of bot soldiers on the prowl for copyright theft and fake reviews – the impact can be pretty substantial. And it can also be pretty terrifying if it’s the first time this has ever happened to you.

(NB: it’s happened to me LOTS of times… now it’s more of an annoyance than a world-ending crisis, but still…)

Case in point – our charity boxed set, Galaxia, was randomly pulled from the shelves on Amazon for seemingly no reason – right in the middle of a promo campaign.

Fun times.

So in this video, I’ll talk about what we did about it, and what we’re going to do next to make up for 6 days of lost sales. So, if this (or anything similar happens to you), you’ll know you’re not alone!

Enjoy!

Oh, and tell me in the comments – has Amazon (or any of the other stores) ever done anything totally arbitrary to your books? This might be removing them completely, un-indexing them so they don’t show up, stripping your reviews / ranks, or sending you scary emails? If so, let me know in the comments!

WANT SOME FREE TRAINING?

I’m supporting a charity promo right now and offering some detailed training on how to run successful boxed-set launches.

Normally this training would be $97, but I’m giving it away for free for anyone who supports Well Aware (a clean-water charity) by purchasing a copy of our new sci-fi boxed set, Galaxia.

We’ve already cleared well over 2,500+ copies during pre-launch and I’d love to show you how we did it.

Just buy a copy for 99c, support a great charity, and I’ll send you the training during the last week of September.

Click below to get the boxed set and receive the free training:

^^ I’ll email you with a link on September 17th (when the book officially releases) where you can enter a password and sign up for the training. The password will be hidden in the book, which you’ll get delivered to your e-reader on that date. So grab it on pre-order while it’s only 99c and I’ll do the rest!

Not on the email list? Sign up here to make sure you’re notified when the training link is released (mid September)

And please leave a comment!

has Amazon (or any of the other stores) ever done anything totally arbitrary to your books? This might be removing them completely, un-indexing them so they don’t show up, stripping your reviews / ranks, or sending you scary emails? If so, let me know below!

Comments

  1. Ian Worrall says:

    I ended up getting the boxed set ordered, looking forward to reading it and looking forward to the training.

    1. Nick says:

      Thanks Ian! It’s going to be great 😀

  2. Leslie says:

    Hello! Bought the set and await the boxed-set launch training. Thanks!

    1. Nick says:

      Awesome, thanks Leslie!

  3. Keith Robinson says:

    I love how you show the Galaxia book cover along with that silly “woooo” noise every time you mention the title. 😀 But you missed an opportunity; maybe the third mention? Very, very disappointing.

    But aside from all that… great video, and good luck with the box set!

    1. Nick says:

      “Silly woo noise”? I think you’ll find that’s a very serious and contemplative “woo noise”… LOL. Have to keep you on your toes somehow!

  4. Peter Darley says:

    Amazon have deleted countless five star reviews from my books, when if fact, they are completely genuine and sent by strangers from thousands of miles away. No reason is ever forthcoming from Amazon. Recently, a well-meaning reader wrote a lovely review for one of my books, and stated in the review text that she rates it as four stars. However, she accidentally clicked the ‘one star’ button. I tried to contact her through ‘comments’, but no joy. I then took it to Amazon. They ignored me – and then deleted another innocent five star. This is worrying because of the way the system is set up. If a book slips below a four star average, most of the promotion sites won’t even take your money to promote it, and a lower average deters readers anyway. I put writing on the backburner because of all this. I just don’t see how anyone can risk investing money into a project when the primary platform is hell-bent on destroying everything you’ve worked for – and with no right to a fair trial.

    1. Nick says:

      it can be very frustrating… take a little solace that you’re not alone, at least!

  5. Cynthia Westland says:

    I had the problem with review stripping on two of my five books. Of course, they always remove the 5 star reviews and leave the troll review behind. I had one of those days too, Nick, and I understand why pajamas at the Theme Park sounds like a great idea!!

    1. Nick says:

      I have some Daddy Pig PJ’s I was very tempted to wear… and yeah, I lose reviews daily. Totally bogus.

  6. Alessa says:

    My pre-order was still valid, despite everything 🙂

    1. Nick says:

      Awesome, thanks Alessa!

  7. Linda Hill says:

    Oh boy! I hope you didn’t lose all the pre-orders you already had! I pre-ordered mine on Kobo. 🙂 I do love Kobo for their lack of such tricks.

    1. Nick says:

      thankfully not! I love Kobo – by far the most author-friendly store out there 🙂

  8. Karen says:

    Sorry you got “Zonned”… My pre-order is still there 🙂 Looking forward to it and the training!

  9. David Emil Henderson says:

    Amazon’s efforts to protect buyers from bogus reviews could help authors with honest reviews. But if the policy hurts legitimate authors and reviewers, perhaps the Writers’ Guild and a few established authors could intervene against unwarranted censorship, to assure literary vitality worldwide.

  10. Jill James says:

    With the change-over from CreateSpace to Kindle Print my books are no longer everywhere like they were before. Amazon has no answer to why this is so or how to fix it. Grrrr Arghhhhh.

  11. Cyril Godefroy says:

    2 years ago, Amazon pulled a f**ck-up like this on me. Asking me contract or proof of intellectual property, then 2 hours later, pulling the book and closing my access to my account.
    The most funny times were when all the emails I got were coming from an unmonitored email address, or even worse, an unworking email address. All my answers, comments, questions were rejected with a nice “500 Error” instant return.

    It took me 45 days to get back access to my account. Of course, this book hasn’t been published.

  12. Hilary says:

    I’m curious about what happened to your preorders when your book vanished from Amazon.

    Presumably those didn’t get erased as well, because it sounds as if they’re still intact, even though the book was pulled.

    Were you still able to see them while the book was unavailable?

    1. Nick says:

      I can’t “see them” myself anyway, as it’s not me publishing it – but no, the pre-orders didn’t go anywhere, we just couldn’t get any new ones during that time – which cost us a lot of momentum 🙁

  13. Norman House says:

    Good video. Good luck with Pepa Pig World. No envy here 😉

    1. Nick says:

      it’s like someone wrote down my worst nightmare, built it, and then charged me entry.

  14. H.M. Clarke says:

    I don’t mind Peppa Pig… it’s preferable to Yo Gabba Gabba. 🙂

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