Help with Amazon
As Amazon grows (along with our dependency on it), I thought I’d take a moment to offer what might be some useful advice: points of contact.
If you find an error in your Amazon book listing, your name, etc., this is the email you want to use to try and sort it with the powers-that-be: book-typos@amazon.com. If that doesn’t work, or if you don’t receive a reply, you can also try community-help@amazon.com; at least one major distributor that I know of was able to correct some errors using that route.
With so little of what is “out there” on the web under our control, it’s good to be able to find some places where one’s voice can be heard. Email me and let me know if you have information on others, and I’ll share it here, too!
Amazon in particular does seem to experience more than its fair share of glitches. Any time Amazon launches anything new, it’s a given that something will have to be done to fix something or other that’s gone wrong – usually when Amazon lists something for sale that shouldn’t be. A colleague of mine guesses that they just snatch all the files in storage and do whatever they want with them, not bothering to check to see if the files are, in fact, available for publication. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that any ebook vendor that maintains libraries for their customers has to keep even out of print books in storage so they can be accessed by people who bought them.
It’s mostly sloppiness rather than any ill intent when this sort of thing happens, which doesn’t make it any less a pain for those of us who then have to jump through hoops to get it fixed. On the other hand, it always does get fixed, eventually.
So there’s hope! Contact Amazon today, and you’ll find yourself … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Frustration, Books, Publishers on January 10th, 2008