… asking Jeff Bezos to help himself and his contributing authors.
Dear Jeff,
We all know that the only thing you fear is the loss of income. I wonder if you are aware how much you are losing from non sales of ebooks in your literary section? Currently you have several million books of ours consigned to the literary equivalent of purgatory. Why? Because of your company’s ridiculous rating system, designed to consign a book to oblivion in a couple of days after it goes live on Amazon if it isn’t instantly bought in its thousands by the general public worldwide.
Someone close to you who you trust needs to make you aware of how much lost profit is currently sitting on your electronic shelves! It’s bad enough that you allowed your minions to come up with ways of saving money by changing the rules regarding the pittance paid out to authors. I refer of course to the current KENP program (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages) read, where if the author is lucky they will receive approximately .003 of a cent/penny per page.
Instead of just looking at the books in the top one hundred Jeff, isn’t it about time you started reminding the reading public of the world via a dedicated ongoing advertising campaign using email, Twitter, Facebook and the rest, that you have several million books just waiting to be read?
Oh, by the way; instead of presenting readers with all you can read for free, do the decent thing and revert to paying proper royalties to your authors.
Kind regards,
Jack Eason – author of Autumn 1066, Goblin Tales, Turning Point, Race Against Time, The Guardian, The Forgotten Age, Celeste, Cataclysm and The Next Age…
Have We Had Help? 
Good for you, Jack, telling it like it is. 📚 Christine
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He may be the world’s richest man ($215 billion). but the way his company Amazon consigns books, in particular Indie written ones to oblivion, is financially criminal Christine!
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Reblogged this on Viv Drewa – The Owl Lady.
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Thanks for the reblog 😉 x
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Another frustration I have with Amazon is that they won’t let a reader leave a review if the writer has ANY personal connection to that person, no matter how remote. On a Facebook page for my grade school alumni (not run by me), we were talking about what we had been up to over the years and I mentioned my book. Someone I’ve never met bought and read it, loved it, and said so on the alumni page. I thanked her and asked her if she would be so kind as to leave a review on Amazon, and she did. Amazon won’t show it. I had heard about this practice from other writers, but didn’t realize how far reaching it was. I realize they don’t want a bunch of gushing relatives and friends giving overly enthusiastic reviews; but for most of us, our first readers will at least be acquaintances. Amazon makes it very difficult to lift a book out of the shadows.
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It’s no consolation MJ, but we’ve all been there. One thing that is working (sort of) is Amazon’s Report Abuse button beneath each and every review.
My fantasy anthology Globular Van Der Graff’s Goblin Tales which is on offer in the UK at £0.99 until next Thursday had a single one star review. I clicked on the button here in the UK and within a couple of days it had been deleted. The same can’t be said for Amazon.com. Despite my pressing the button twice it still exists in the US. 😉 x
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Pingback: An Open Letter to Jeff Bezos #Amazon @amazon – asking him to help himself and his contributing authors… – Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog
Tell your fellow writers…
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Methinks you forgot the “much love” followed by copious kisses when signing off, Jack. Or, on second thoughts perhaps not …
You make excellent points. As well as blogging this, are you also emailing it direct to Amazon?
Best, Kevin
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Having tried to talk to a grown up at Amazon in the past Kevin, there is no point in emailing them. Basically Bezos’ minions aren’t interested. Let alone willing to pass on something like this to him…
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Excellent, Jack.
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Thank you John 😉
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🙂
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I have heard that emails sent to Bezos’ address are looked at by higher minions with a little above room temperature IQ – worth a try. Or maybe start a petition?
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…that’s what I referred to earlier when I spoke about trying to talk to a grown up 😉
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Reblogged this on When Angels Fly and commented:
Jeff,
While you are perusing this open letter, please think about indies who have their book name and story line stolen. Think about the one who worked her tail off to get said book to print one and a half years before the title and story came out by another author. It is sad that from 2015 through 2018, KDP and Create Space were fine with me until this mess. Think about the KDP royalties, and book sales are kept by you and not given to the author. What does it take Jeff???? From mu view, you just don’t care. Mary Schmidt (pen name S. Jackson) and stolen book named Suzy Has a Secret!!!
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What you are talking about is book piracy, another subject entirely, but still one we all need to be aware of and on our guard from Mary.
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Correct.
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Reblogged this on Writing for the Whole Darn Universe.
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Thanks for the reblog Maliaann
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I completely agree with you. May I reblog?
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Don’t ask Angelique – do… 😉 xx
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I agree with everything you wrote here Viv!! This rating system is crazy. If someone buys your book it jumps from 2 million something to 100,000. Then it goes back to the original rating. How is that possible? Thank you for this and posting it on my Facebook page.
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Thank you Barbara. One tiny point – my name is Jack, not Viv. 😉 x
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Reblogged this on Dellani's Choice – Books and commented:
Thank you, Jack, for saying what needed to be said!
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All I’ve said is what we’re all experiencing Dellani 😉 x
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Thank you for saying this, Jack. Authors need a break!
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It’s the duty of every author to stand up to be counted, don’t you think? 😉
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