Writers Beware!

This is for all self-published writers, both new and old. I recently uploaded a corrected version of the text for my latest novella The Forgotten People to the original I had added and published on the 17th of March this year. Brilliant, I can now expect it to be posted to my books page on Amazon. Right? Wrong!

After communicating with the people at KDP, I realised that it was a case of wasted effort on my part. Why? Because they do not ‘update’ text on any book you’ve already published on KDP. Why not I hear you cry? Why not indeed! While they acknowledged that they could see I had done as I said when they took a look for themselves, it soon became blindingly obvious that while they are there to answer queries, that’s as far as they will go!

Instead, first you have to unpublish the original. Next, once more add the book, its cover and text etc, with ‘version 2’ also added for good measure. Then after all that, click ‘Publish’ once again, and wait for it to go live.

Once it is live, go to the ‘Author Central page’ on your Amazon Book page and ‘add’ it to your collection, as I did before writing this post on Thursday last. Then I had to wait until Amazon finally get round to doing their part by adding it to my book list, before it is seen by the book reading public. This can, and does, take several hours! Regarding my book appearing on my book pages, in this instance Amazon.com were the first to do so, taking three hours to complete the task. Unfortunately here in the British Isles, Amazon.co.uk’s woeful response meant it lagged behind, taking eleven hours…

What a rigmarole? Thank god I don’t often update a book’s content! Remember – KDP don’t help, they only ever provide us the writers with the tool to self-publish our work. As always, we do all the work – not them.

Learn from my first-hand experience. It’s in your interest to do so.

PS – By the way. If you would like to get yourselves a free copy of The Forgotten People, you have from today Saturday the 3rd, until Wednesday the 7th of this month to obtain it from the Amazon site of your choosing…

Good reading,

Jack