Kindle Publishing Works When It Works AND When It Breaks
I don’t write many fan letters. But I emailed the following to Amazon today:
I’d like to congratulate the Kindle system and people for:
1. When it works, and,
2. When it breaks.
As an author who’s had a number of bestselling thrillers via traditional publishers, I was hesitant to go the “indie” route.
Despite my trepidations (based on my experience founding a large wine trade publishing and Internet content company) I found the Kindle system a breeze.
And, the Kindle Select program was an equally big winner, elevating my newest thriller, Die By Wire to a #1 position in Action & Adventure in a matter of days. And it’s remained a bestseller on the paid list.
Kudos to when the system works!
And more kudos for how quickly the Kindle folks fixed a foul-up that misplaced 40% of my 5-star reviews last night. My bestseller status dropped to 17 (a testament to the value of Amazon reviews).
I emailed the support team around 6:30 p.m. and the issue fixed by this morning. Nobody’s perfect. But the excellence of a company lies in how they fix errors. By that measure, Amazon is outstanding!
But I’m still working to get my bestseller rank back where it was before the reviews got misplaced.
Along the way last night, I got more than a few emails and Direct Messages from folks in the physical bookstore world, basically saying “I told you so” for going the Indie Kindle route. More than a few of those came from readers of a hot and heavy Publisher’s Weekly article thread in which I defended the indie Kindle system specifically and Amazon in general. The situation was embarrassing, but only until this morning. Most traditional publishers I have worked with have screwed up a lot worse than this … and never fixed the problem.
My hat is off (still) to the Kindle publishing system.
