To say I was excited about the book launch of Super Sonya vs the Woodpecker would be a major understatement. I talked about it. I told people in places I’d never used before. I promoted it a lot.
I had high hopes it would pay off.
Imagine my disappointment when I checked the numbers with my distributor. Single digits. How was that possible?
The book page looked fine on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. I went to Amazon.ca (which I expected would be my initial best selling spot since I am in Canada). The book was there. It had been there for weeks, available as a preorder. Except, this time, it was only available from a single seller (not Amazon) with a price of $78.05.
Yup. You read it right. It was only available from a single seller for over $78. Amazon had pulled their preorder listing. Obviously, no one is going to pay that for a children’s book. All my promotion was shot.
I heard from people who had preordered the book. Amazon had contacted them to say their book order was “delayed”. No explanation.
I started investigating. My distributor, IngramSpark, had it correct. I tried to find a way to contact Amazon Canada.
You will be surprised (or maybe not) to learn that, unless you use KDP, there doesn’t appear to be anyway to contact that company as an author or as a publisher. I called the KDP support anyway. Nope, they cannot help me. I tried contacting the Amazon Help on Twitter. Contact KDP they told me. I explained my situation and how I was refused help by KDP. Nope, contact KDP anyway.
We are now almost a week past launch and Amazon STILL is not carrying my book. Several other resellers are, for the record. They are even at a more reasonable price. But still nothing.
If you have any contacts within Amazon who might be able to help, I’d love to hear from you. For now, I am gobsmacked that all my preparation and marketing are for nothing. I can only hope it corrects itself soon so people can get the books they ordered (and order books they wanted to purchase).
