Meh: Hezîran 2024

Something curious has happened: The Art Nouveau Coloring Book: Hats, Cats, & Vintage Romance is suddenly receiving an influx of reviews on Amazon. I’m not entirely certain as to why, but I have my theories. I’ll try to lay out everything below, so perhaps anyone reading this can come to their own conclusions as to why. Also, this might help other authors and illustrators with their own titles moving forward.When I first started out with all four coloring books, there was an initial period of reviews which eventually led to a slowdown. People such as family and friends were excited to pick up my titles and kind enough to leave a few honest reviews. With each subsequent coloring book release, the momentum and review count slowed and it became almost a struggle to get any reviews.With my social media ads, people had been saying nothing but positive things, yet my review count on Amazon labored for what seemed like months between the numbers of 13 to 21. I could sell anywhere from 10 to 30 books a day (as previously mentioned at very low profit but on average at the lower end of these numbers) yet no one was taking a minute to leave a few stars.It actually got to the point where I started asking the people who were saying positive things on sites such as Facebook to leave honest reviews on Amazon. For those that know me, “asking” is not in my nature. In fact, it’s downright uncomfortable for me.One also has to walk a careful line when asking for reviews as you don’t want these requests to be improper, hence my always asking for them to be honest. On top of all this, Amazon has been cracking down on its entire catalog of products using AI to help weed out the initial round of reviews from both verified and non-verified reviews as of last summer. Some people wrote me to let me know they left a review, but their reviews wouldn’t show for a week or longer while others posted right away. I can only think that something they wrote triggered a more thorough and likely manual review process at that point, hence the delays.Another thing worth mentioning is my own philosophy: as a consumer myself, the last thing I want is to buy something which is of poor quality that had great reviews, only to be disappointed. I realized early on that if I took the “easy” route of creating something quickly such as relying on AI tools, that customers would negatively rate my books and my whole library would stop selling. As a result, I had every interest in putting in the extra time to create a better product. Even so, after a good two months of asking and hundreds of books being sold, I only managed to push the overall review count number to around 21. It appears I wasn’t alone in this camp: another author on Reddit mentioned something similar. They also said they sold hundreds of books yet only received a handful of reviews and they were asking around to see if it were the norm. At the time, I replied that I was experiencing the same thing as well.More recently, I created this website. I combined the main landing page with a message stating that reviews are essentially hard to come by, and if people would be kind enough to leave a review, that this would be greatly appreciated. Now, I can’t really tell if anyone is actually reading this message. I also can’t tell if readers even buy my books. These sort of statistics are difficult, if not impossible to even come by. So perhaps this messaging is actually working or perhaps it’s not.Which brings me to the more recent phenomenon: I have been receiving almost daily reviews now. My book title was accidentally moved to a different category, so unfortunately I lost the #1 Best Seller status and tag which definitely assisted in sales. I had also reduced my ads and increased the price slightly, so I’m at least breaking even for the time being and at times even making a slight profit, which quite honestly could take a year before I even recover all of my initial advertising expenses. Overall sales have taken a slight dip, but the advertising was unsustainable.I initially had the magic number “30” stuck in my head. I postulated that if I somehow crossed the 30 review mark, that this would signal to potential Amazon buyers that this coloring book was of higher-quality and that the overall reviews could be trusted. As to why I thought the number 30 would be an indicator, I’m still not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was a review count number in my own head whenever I’m looking for an item to purchase. Or perhaps it’s something more of a subtle or even subconscious observation that I picked up on over time.Whatever the reason, it seems that as soon as I crossed the 30-mark, the reviews started to pick up on momentum. The higher the review count has been reaching, the more speed it’s picking up. I somehow managed to obtain two ratings since yesterday alone. In the morning, the count was 45 and this morning it hit 47.The other phenomenon which I’ve wondered about is whether or not reviews and ratings are simply a function of more serious buyers. Perhaps as the review and rating count increased, it attracted a different crowd—one that is more likely to actually leave a review. The other thing worth noting is that suddenly my Amazon Ads have gone from very expensive and ineffective to suddenly expensive and apparently effective. The irony of Amazon ads is that although they appear to be working after hitting the 40 rating and review mark, the advertising expense to income ratio is still almost a zero sum game.I would also add that I suspect not every review is genuine, and in some cases even harmful. There are competitors out there which are quick to see any other title in their category as competition. I find the reviews which are not “verified” to be highly suspicious. They often are highly critical of a title, mention that the books are someone else’s or a gift (why not just write the review from a verified account then,) and these days they are quick to accuse everybody of using AI. Of course, Amazon is unwilling, bordering on neglectful at removing these unverified reviews even if the reviews have little to nothing to do with the product itself. Perhaps this is just par for the territory of being a seller. Knowing what I know now, I also feel terrible for anyone who is starting off to be hit with a few negative reviews and/or ratings in a row, especially if they’re illegitimate as that is a career killer. I was fortunate to start off mostly on good footing (aside from one weird stalker on NextDoor,) but wouldn’t know what to do if reviews started off differently.I’m currently at a major crossroad. On one hand, I’ve taken off the training wheels when it comes to advertisements and have lost the best seller status due to a category shift (hopefully this is only temporarily.) The price has also increased out of sheer necessity. On the other hand, The Art Nouveau Coloring Book keeps increasing in rank almost on a daily basis. I’m not sure what will happen moving forward to be honest—the book’s ranking and position could run off into oblivion, or hopefully it’s just a temporary glitch. I don’t know if the daily reviews and ratings will come to a sudden halt. I wasn’t even sure as to why they were suddenly increasing in the first place.In summary, my experience underscores the challenges of garnering genuine reviews and the impact of review counts on sales. As the common adage goes, authors and illustrators should really focus on producing quality content and encouraging honest feedback, as I suspect that all of these factors ultimately drives long-term success.Hello ,Thank you for your report of infringement. We reviewed your report and altered or removed the reported content based on the information you provided. The detail page may not show the changes that were implemented for up to 24 hours.ASIN: B0D1G12N3TTitle: The Art Nouveau Coloring Book Hats Cats Vintage Romance Volume 1 A Stress Relief Relaxation Mindfulness Series For Women Men Teens Complaint ID: We have provided your email address and the additional information you shared in your complaint to the reported sellers. You may be contacted by them to provide a retraction for this report. If no retraction or successful appeal is made, the original action will remain in place and reported sellers will not be able to re-list on the reported ASINs. Retracting this complaint would allow the reported sellers to re-list on the reported ASINs.To retract a complaint submitted from Brand Registry, please use the "Retract a complaint" link in Submission History (https://brandregistry.amazon.com/brand/submission-history).To retract a complaint submitted from the Report Infringement Form, use the Retraction Form (https://www.amazon.com/report/infringement/retract). You will need the complaint ID provided above to submit a retraction.If you have additional notices that you wish to submit, our team only investigates one type of infringement per submission and no more than 50 ASINs per submission.Thank you,Amazon.comAs a rights owner, you may be interested to know that Amazon offers a variety of tools and services that allow you to have more control over your brand. If you would like to learn more about these services, visit the Brand Services page (https://brandservices.amazon.com/?ldBRUSNFE).To learn more about Amazon Intellectual Property policies, review our Rights Owner Help Content (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/U5SQCEKADDAQRLZ). About that part of providing another party my personal information. Surprisingly, it's not the first time I've seen this before. For example, when requesting a DMCA takedown with Google, they ask for much of the same information as well and state that they will furnish your information to the party you are accusing of infringement. But here is where this gets strange. I had never been on the receiving end of being accused of infringing on anyone's copyright in over 25 years until a couple of months ago, Amazon pulled a swatting stunt without any warning on my title The Art Nouveau Coloring Book: Hats, Cats, & Vintage Romance in which they falsely determined my book was infringing on someone else's copyright. They never provided me with any specifics (which is by design according to one manager over at KDP) other than to tell me something vague which was that it was related to my cover. I'll let you read the letter they emailed below, and perhaps you can spot how it's pretty odd and also unsettling this is:On Mar 8, 2024, at 9:02 AM, Kindle Content Review wrote:HelloIt has come to our attention that the following book(s) may include one or more images on your book’s cover for which you may not have the necessary rights:B0CVR1S8MGWe've made these books unavailable for sale. To make your books eligible for sale, please complete one of the following actions:Provide written documentation that proves you have the right to include all images in the book(s) listed above. Examples of documentation include:• A signed contract or signed written statement from the photographer or other copyright holder granting you the right to use the image(s)• A license from a stock image website (including image reference number(s) and account information confirming that you licensed the image(s))Provide confirmation that the cover image is in the public domain, including dates of publication and website link(s) to confirmIf you do not hold rights to one or more images in the book(s) listed above, remove those images from the cover and resubmit your book(s) for publicationFor details on updating your cover image and resubmitting, check our Helphttps://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/G200965970Please take one of the above actions and respond to this email within 5 days and include the book title and ID for each book listed in your reply.We take violations of intellectual property rights very seriously. The submission of cover image that violates copyright is a violation of our agreement and may lead to suspension or termination of your account, among other things such as access to optional services being revoked. Please ensure that you own sufficient rights to all content that you publish on Amazon.Please make changes to your book details or reply to this message within 5 days. Otherwise, the book(s) will be unavailable for sale on Amazon.RegardsAmazon KDP For the record, they determined that there was no wrongdoing whatsoever on my part 8 days later.I decided to raise unholy hell on social media platforms after reading this. At first, I started to tear up followed by shaking uncontrollably. And if you think that's just me, feel free to go search for other authors and illustrators that this has been happening to. It appears to be a common practice and they refuse to tell us where it's even coming from or to allow us more details. A local newspaper happened to release a full-page spread about my work and I received it in my mailbox RIGHT before I opened this email. The timing couldn't have been worse. I lost rank, I lost sales, yet they let my ads continue to run (I shut it off shortly.) I even offered to send them my working files and went into detail as to the fonts that I had used as well as demonstrating the original artwork that had been cut off due to page formatting, then I asked them to ask whoever was accusing me of this to provide them with what they consider their originals or at least a location in which they determined it had appeared before. I knew that they couldn't. Oh, and by the way I probably forgot to mention that I've been hired for image forensics in presentations for government meetings before.In the end, they dared to send me a letter of congratulations as if I had won some f'n award. In a nutshell, they screwed me then they congratulated me for screwing me which sounds about right. That just adds more fuel to the fire. See their congratulatory email below that was received on 3/15/2024 at 10:38 AM:Hello,Thank you for your message and information. Congratulations! The following book you recently submitted have been reviewed and were successfully passed:The Art Nouveau Coloring Book: Hats, Cats, & Vintage Romance Volume 1Hello Charlie (AUTHOR) ID: PRI-JD2NXN71MQ4The book will soon be published on Amazon. Please allow up to 48 hours for the book(s) to become available in the Amazon Store.Thanks for using Amazon KDP.Amazon Content Review Team Let's take a step back and respond to their ridiculous requests from two emails above:There's no signed contract nor a license. I'm the creator. So how could I ever provide this?It's not in the public domain. Again, how can you provide this?I hold the rights, so bugger off.BUT I SEE, the easiest way to comply with Amazon Content Review without a fight is their "recommendation" of simply uploading a new cover. If you read that part over again, it's a hint or dare I say, suggestion for authors to avoid false (and at times, real) accusations altogether. "Wink Wink. Hey kid if you do this, we can just look the other way right? After all, you don't want to fight the machine. Our machine..."To be honest, I had thought about just creating an entirely new cover after reading horror stories of people fighting KDP as I do have images for a few more volumes. I just had a full page spread in the newspaper come out and my book was bleeding rank profusely, possibly back into oblivion never to be found again. The problem was that I had 5 images on the cover, and they refused to tell me which one they believed was offending. I asked several times and every time my request was met with silence. Those 5 images ALSO are on the inside, so I would have to replace those 5 images as well. The other thing I found troubling was the potential for this to set a precedent. So instead, I decided to fight this accusation on a very public level in order to get this book quickly reinstated. I also reached out to Amazon's upper management including Jeff Bezos and even received responses from his excecutive team after he had read my email.If you look more carefully, something is missing from my removal versus the one I just had removed. Where's the information about the person who is falsely accusing me of copyright infringement. After all, in their most recent letter to me, they didn't hesitate to forward my information to the copyright thief. Where are the details? Is it a person or is it automated? Do they have one set of policies for KDP authors, yet maintain a completely different set for third-party vendors? The answer is a resounding yes - that much is obvious and also a topic for a different day (ie. third party authors can say and do things KDP authors cannot.) But why aren't we all held to or afforded the same standards? They never provided any details or afforded any due process before pulling my book without any warning. They could have at least warned me, although it wouldn't have changed the outcome in the very end. Even management at KDP told me that the Content Review Team's email was non-specific and very vague. For the record, I should add that a KDP manager told me that conversations with management are automatically transcribed so all of this stuff can be verified on their end as well. The other thing is, who is to say that they won't pull the same stunt again or what's to prevent them for doing this to other people?Also, does this by any chance have any connection to my books being sold online illegally via the SoundCloud channels I mentioned before? Or, is there a connection with the latest incident involving Personalized Joycraft which has stolen thousands of authors' works and continues to be sold on Amazon without penalty?Oh, here's another thing worth noting. A few days before my book was "mysteriously" removed, I had noticed that someone was using another company's Trademark on a bunch of titles and had reported them as they started to soar up the ranks. The email below was sent to me from Amazon on 3/6/2024 at 6:55 AM. Hello,One or more of your posts were found to be outside our guidelines. In order to help our customers make informed choices, we encourage them to review the product and contribute information about it. However, Community content that violate our guidelines or Conditions of Use will be removed.Please consider this a first warning.Before submitting your next post, please refer to our Customer Guidelines:http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/refhp_508088_bid_1594471?nodeId508088Failure to comply with our policies may result in your account being banned from taking part in Community features.Thanks for your understanding in this matter. I had actually called up Amazon and the rep there confirmed that this letter was genuine as at first I thought it was a scam. Could it be that someone from Amazon Content Review, or a group of people have been retaliating against KDP authors or others that reporting legitimate infringment? Perhaps they don't like working? One thing is for certain: their whole power structure is set up in such a way to be abusive as no one other than the executives above have access to Content Team's inner workings. And the timing is awfully coincidental.Also, let's dial it back one more time. I've been an Amazon member since 2000. That not only makes me old, but also an OG. You don't mess with OGs. In those 24 years, I have left probably hundreds of reviews and sometimes complaints, but have never once received warning of this sort until I became involved with these books. Coincidence? I've had an Amazon account that is older than some of the customer service reps that work for them. To receive this letter only to have my book removed is just crazy. Just throwing that out there...Now ask yourself, who is telling the truth ? Do I have any reason not to? Who stands the most to gain? It's definitely not me. Also as I have clearly demonstrated in my prior posts, why are some of these really freakin' dodgy groups still in operation? Why are there so many authors that make it to the top of KDP being continously swatted back down? I even had one supervisor at KDP suggest that it was a competitor. Again, those calls are transcribed.Julie Kitzes relayed my worst fears in one of her blog posts from almost two years ago that this seems to be an annual event which happens to her. Let's just say that I'm not looking forward to the next time someone falsely accuses me and they take down your titles without any due process, and their unethical double standards need to be further investigated and stopped if Amazon and it's Kindle brand identity ever stands a chance of bettering their own public image.

Meh: Hezîran 2024

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