On top of being a longtime writer, I also run a small press. A couple summers ago, we set up a series of books to republish for one of our existing authors. She'd regained the rights to her thriller series from another house and we contracted with her to republish. The first book went up without issue. In the past, Amazon has just asked to confirm our rights to republish and she share the contract. Easy. But they didn't ask this of us, but did for book two. No problem. At the time of conversation, I let Amazon know three more books would follow. No one replied.
When it came time for book three, the book was approved quickly but within 24 hours, it was pulled and Amazon sent us a message that it appeared we were trying to defraud readers, then again asked for proof that we had permission from the author to publish the work. Of course, I sent the contract again, and asked what was fraudulent about our publishing the book. I received a short and terse reply that the books appeared to have been published previously. Yes, I explained for the second time, we agreed to republish the series with the author and the books were no longer available with the previous publisher. They agreed to let the book release. I again reminded them book 4 was next.
When I loaded book 4, it went right up for release. Sweet!
But hold up. I received another email accusing me of defrauding the reader and because of this, not only was the book removed from Amazon, as well as the series, but they had shut down our entire operation...keeping any earned royalties in the process!!
It took more than eight weeks to get back up and running and it was only after deferring to Jeff Bezos' executive team for help. And it still took another three weeks.
We did get back up and running, and our main contact through the process sent a written letter letting me know were had been and still were in excellent standing with Amazon. And an apology for any inconvenience.
It didn't stop there. Within a week, I received another threatening email from customer support saying I was in violation of Amazon guidelines and was potentially defrauding readers and we needed to pull the books or risk losing out account! I deferred back to my contact on Bezos' executive team who sorted it out, but holy heck, Batman, what a nightmare when it comes to dealing with Amazon's customer 'dis'service, by people who barely speak English but can only deal with issues via email, and with Kindle specifically as they have NO PHONE techs to help one-on-one.
And now, most of those call centers Amazon has used in the past have been let go in favor of AI and automated responses. Such a nightmare. We have little to no recourse, yet they have given their lower level staff a finger on the delete button.
In the end, no one ever told me how we were defrauding readers or what we'd done wrong. I'd expected my executive contact to tell me, but the reply was essentially they couldn't discuss critical details and company investigation results.
I hope you had better luck with them.
