Since the beginning of May, I have been fighting a David vs Goliath battle against Amazon. I woke up one day to find they had created ghost copies of Missing Girls & Lost Boys and Road to Eden. They were cheaper paperbacks than my own, so they we're hiding my products above these, which Amazon were never going to fulfil. They were also riddled with the incorrect meta-data.
Within a week, my books fell down the rankings, I stopped getting KU page reads as well as orders. The damage was incomprehensible, and there was no way to fix what had been done.
I had spent countless hours arguing, debating and preparing evidence, while Amazon simply did not know how to correct their own issue. I managed to get the Missing Girls & Lost Boys paperback removed, but with the approaching release of Road to Eden, I was looking at facing launch with their product stealing my pre-orders, and continuing to effect my meta-data with their incorrect image, genre and product description. It was even listed as a kids book.
But hooray––After two months of fighting, and less than a week before release, I managed to get the book removed due to trademark issues.
And a day later, all my Road to Eden e-book pre-orders were cancelled.
I don't know how I'm still standing. All energy which should have been invested into marketing and book launch strategies were pre-occupied with this battle, and any success I had gained before launch was swiped away with another error for Amazon. And I'm not alone. The variation of issues indie authors have faced with this Goliath have been eye opening.
Who knew that book ones release would have been the easiest release to date.
