I’m interested in how many of you have been contacted by Amazon about your books and “errors?” I’ve been contacted about only one of my books, and I’ve heard from them on two separate occasions. Because I don’t think it’s remotely possible that the rest of my books are error-free (because I’ve never seen an error free book by me or anyone else), I think the selection has to do with volume of downloads. The book they’ve contacted me on is Saving Grace, which has about one million downloads.
The first time they contacted me, they had found errors. Now, it is interesting to note that these were flat-out typos/misspellings that their “spell check” when uploading an ebook should have caught but never did. I was elated to know about the, and I fixed them. That was a year ago, and you can read about it, HERE.
Last week, they contacted me again about Saving Grace. But this time the words they contacted me about were not misspellings. Rather, they were artistic choices reflective of voice. That doesn’t mean that they were effective or that they were the best choices. But it does mean that they were intentional, by me and by my editor. At first I was taken aback, and worried. In the end, when I wrote a fairly strong reply back to Amazon about them, I was pleased. A human answered me and assured me that the words were fine and my book could remain published as is.
My experiences with the Amazon Quality Control mechanism have been increasingly positive, and with each one I have learned. I hope this letter share shed some light on the process for you as well. I’ve copied the correspondence in below so you can see it for yourself. The most recent is first, down through the original, just like a real email.
Now, what experiences have you guys had with this process?
Pamela
Pamela Fagan Hutchins writes overly long e-mails, hilarious nonfiction (What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?), and series mysteries, like What
