Selective Quality Control Courtesy of KDP?

Interesting. I’d heard people were starting to get threatening emails from Amazon about pulling their books down for spelling errors. I’d even heard some had their books pulled. I just hadn’t received any emails myself. I use multiple layers of professional editing and as a result, my books (not my blog posts; they are not edited!) often contain the phrases “Well edited” or “Well written” in their reviews.

Last week I got one of the emails, about Saving Grace, my biggest selling book, and, now that it is permanently free in ebook form, the highest downloaded. Together, the result is that over 500,000 people have this book in their hands. It is the driving force behind the $75,000 I estimate I make per year from Amazon, based on sales in the last six months. And if I make $75k, Amazon makes about $30k. (I did that in my head. I’m an author, not a mathematician, so I don’t give a flying flip what the exact figure is, in case you wondered.) Anyway, that’s considered very successful in Amazon terms. The books has over 1300 reviews and a 4.4-rating. Recently I updated some common sections in all my books and reuploaded them, including Saving Grace.

And I got one of “those” emails from Amazon. They found “spelling errors” in it and a forced page break. They didn’t specify what the “spelling errors” were, but the KDP upload page has a spell checker, and it identified one, only it wasn’t an error. The page break had existed in that book for three years, but I consulted with tech support for Pressbooks, and we fixed it, and I reuploaded it.

I was unsettled, but I’m always happy to fix a problem. Here’s the actual string (read from the bottom up, like you would in real email):

***

Hello Pamela,

Thank you for your response.

Based on the information you provided, this content will remain live and available for sale.

Once you make the necessary corrections, please resubmit the content for review. Please follow the steps below to upload the updated content and replace your previous submission:

1. Log in https://kdp.amazon.com and go to your Bookshelf
2. Find the book you want to edit, and in the ‘Other Book Actions’ column, click “Edit Book Details.” (If you see a gray ellipsis (“…”) button, click there first, then select “Edit Details.”)
3. Scroll down to Section 6 and under the text “Book Content File,” click “Browse.”
4. Find the revised file of your book’s content and select it.
5. Click “Upload Book.”
6. Click “Save and Continue.”

You’ll also need to reconfirm Content Rights and click “Save and Publish.” The new file will overwrite the old file within 24-48 hours. The “Look Inside” sample should update within a week of republishing your book.

Once you upload the updated content, please write back and let us know, so that we can assist you further.

If you’ve any issue or need further clarification, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re happy to resolve the issue for you.

Thanks for using Amazon KDP.

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Kindle Direct Publishing
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—- Original message: —-

I just double checked for “spelling errors” generated by the KDP system. Here’s a screen shot. This is NOT a spelling error:

I am in touch with Pressbooks.com to see why the extra page is being introduced. However, I just looked at the file, and it is ONE blank page. I will get it fixed, but, as you can see from my 1300+ 4.4-star reviews, people think this book is well written, well edited, and well formatted. I beg you, it is critical to my sales (which Amazon benefits) from, and I have a bookbub promotion running TODAY, please leave this file up while Pressbooks fixes the one forced page break in the entire file. It is possibly the ONLY ERROR in the entire file, which is far better than 99.9% of the books for sale anywhere.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and for working with me to resolve the page break.

Pamela

***

Note text in bold in their original email above. Don’t see the words that threaten to pull down the book? That’s because they’re not there. The threat is implied. They are telling you to fix your book. And I know personally of authors I am friends with on Facebook that had their books pulled, so I take any contact from Amazon very seriously.

Today I got another email, this one accusing me of failing to fix the spelling errors from the original email. Only the original email didn’t tell me what the errors were or how many there were (see bold above, my reply, and their response), just directed me to find and fix any. I replied that the one identified error in the KDP system was not an error, and they responded positively.

But this email did specify the spelling errors. There were TWO. Two in the WHOLE BOOK.  I’ve never found a book, ever, that had that few errors. But I got a threatening email. Here’s the email string:

The errors had not been specified to me before, so thank you! I strive for perfection. They have been corrected and the file re-uploaded.

Pamela Fagan Hutchins

pamelafhutchins@aim.com

http://pamelahutchins.com

On May 12, 2015, at 5:23 AM, Amazon.com <kdp-support@amazon.com> wrote:

Hello,

Thank you for resubmitting your content to us! We have reviewed the new content, but the problem we notified you about previously still exists:

•     There are some words in your book that our spell check dictionary could not identify. If any of the words are not spelled the way you intended, please update your content. You can also email us at kdp-support@amazon.com to let us know that the words are spelled correctly. Here are the words and their locations

Error Description: “on his check” should be “on his cheek” / Error Location: 1085

Error Description: “mosty empty” should be “mostly empty” / Error Location: 3520

After you’ve made the correction, please upload your revised content through the ‘Book Content’ section in your KDP Bookshelf. If you have further questions, please reply directly to this email and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

For further information regarding specific book errors (including why some errors are more critical than others), please see the Guide to Kindle Content Quality Errors at https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=200952510.

Thanks for using Amazon KDP!

Best Regards,

Amazon KDP
http://kdp.amazon.com

Now, I want a perfect book, so I was elated to learn of errors I could eradicate. I fixed the two misspelled words and reuploaded it as requested within five minutes of reading their email. I just find it extremely odd that a book with two editing errors in 85,000-words would merit attention, and that if they truly wanted them fixed and the book to remain available that they wouldn’t identify them from the beginning.

Oh well.

I’m waiting now to hear from them on all my books. It would be great to get rid of that last .0002% of error that I assume exists in my professionally edited books, like in all professionally edited books. I just don’t want to be targeted, and I can’t help but feel that way over being pursued for two misspelled words out of 85,000 when I read books from Amazon every week with five, ten, twenty, even 100 times that many, books that I know have not been threatened with removal. Even if Amazon didn’t use those exact words.

We’ll see, I guess.

What about you guys? Have any of you heard from Amazon? What do you think of their new policy and how they are enforcing it?

Pamela

Pamela Fagan Hutchins writes award-winning and bestselling mysteries and hilarious nonfiction, chairs the board of the Houston Writers Guild, and dabbles in employment law and human resources investigations from time to time. She is passionate about great writing, smart authorpreneurship, and her two household hunks, husband Eric and one-eyed Boston terrier Petey. She blogs on writing, publishing and promotion at Skip the Jack and on her beleaguered family, and much-too-personal life at Road to Joy. She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound (if she gets a good running start). Check out her USA Best Book Award winning novel, Going for Kona, her permafree mystery (and series lead), Saving Grace, her writing/publishing/promotion Bible, What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?, and her newest mystery, Heaven to Betsy.