Friday, June 15, 2012

Amazon Follow-up

Keys to Unlocking House History
Once the red haze cleared from my eyes over Amazon implying that I had either a) stolen another author's work and put my own name on it, or b) gathered up a bunch of free material on the Internet and placed it in a book to call my own, I turned to Google to see who else had been put in a similar situation. As it turns out I had plenty of company. In fact in the Kindle Direct Publishing forum there was quite a lively discussion that had taken place. I had to sort out the responders who were throwing around comments about KDP Select (another program entirely where you do agree to have your book listed ONLY with Amazon for a set period of time) but I finally found a couple of authors who explained what they had successfully done to satisfy Amazon that they were, indeed, the authors of the books in question.

Basically you need to relay to Amazon all places on the Internet where you have the book listed for sale and/or have published excerpts from your book. One author went above and beyond and just gave them the urls to all of her online social media. That seemed like a good plan to me - if they wanted urls, they were going to get urls. So here is my response back to Amazon:

Hello,

In response to your inquiry regarding Keys to Unlocking House History, I am the author of this ebook, which is an original work. The book is sold and/or mentioned at the following websites:

http://myhousehistory.net/
http://writeformation.blogspot.com/
http://kimwolterman.blogspot.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=hb_tab_pro_top
https://twitter.com/#!/compostqueen
http://www.facebook.com/kimwolterman
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Kim_Wolterman
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/62244
http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/kim-wolterman/keys-to-unlocking-house-history/_/R- 400000000000000444927
http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Keys-to-Unlocking-House-History/book-RVvhhafv9EqIvA_fb4KoiA/page1.html?s=zf4QceoyoUmJgTHJ-WQbwg&r=1
http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/item/SW00000062244/Wolterman-Kim-Keys-to-Unlocking-House-History/1.html
http://provenancepublishing.com/provenance-publishing-store.php
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/keys-to-unlocking-house-history-kim-wolterman/1104223740?ean=2940011387999

Please let me know if you have any further concerns about this title.

Kim Wolterman
Owner of Provenance Publishing LLC
Author of Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)?
Researching a St. Louis County, Missouri Home
;
Keys to Unlocking House History
; and
From Buckeye to G.I. LeRoy C. Kubler The War Years, 1942-1945

From what I have read it can take one to two weeks to receive a reply back from Amazon. In the meantime you just pray that they don't take your book down until they make their decision. Amazon will have you believe that they are doing this to protect the rights of authors, and to make sure that people aren't just scraping up wiki material on the web and turning it into a book for profit. The Amazon conspiracy theorists believe that this is another attempt by Amazon to try to get authors to only lists their books for sale on Amazon. I suspect there is some truth in both opinions. Another lesson learned in this new world of publishing. Stay tuned for how I make out with the Goliath.
 

3 comments:

Mrs. Wryly said...

Very good response! That should do it!

Lorna Faith said...

Thanks for the helpful tips about how to reply to an Amazon email re: this subject :)

Kim Wolterman said...

You are welcome Lorna. Luckily it worked!