Contrary to its promise to my publisher and me, Amazon is now listing a DRMed version of The Solomon Scandals and making it the featured choice when you type Solomon Scandals into the search box in the “Books” or “All Departments” mode. You won’t even see a cover image in the first search results, just the icon shown above.
There’s an accidental but nasty twist. When you click on the main link, you get a page with the green rectangle shown to the right—advertising the DRMed version and saying that Scandals is not available in the United States. How many buyers are going to stick around, scrutinize the page and find and try the little link that leads to the buyable nonDRMed edition of my Washington suspense novel?
Talk about a sales-killer—and Amazon’s lackadaisical treatment of small presses like my publisher! That’s the real point of this item, not just a cry for help at the individual level.
Most any first novel has tough going, and fixed listings won’t instantly propel Scandals (on which I worked on and off for three decades) to bestsellerdom. But how about at least a fair chance, especially since the Washington City Paper recommended the book (“same dark zeal Hammett held for Frisco or Chandler had for Los Angeles”) and I have some preliminary Hollywood interest? Although Jeff Bezos doesn’t mean to be Ebenezer Scrooge toward nonVIP writers, that’s how he comes off.
Only when you use the “Kindle Store” search mode with your browser or search with your Kindle, will Amazon play up the very real nonDRMed edition of The Solomon Scandals, even throwing in, miracle of miracles, a cover image. So you can see how this is costing me sales and Amazon ranking. Can’t Jeff Bezos hire competent database people? Furthermore, if you’re within the page for the paper edition, you see a picture of a Kindle and a suggestion that readers ask the publisher to do a K edition (a message far more noticeable than the link to the nonDRMed e-book). Dummies! Maybe people will actually buy copies of the nonDRMed edition—I’ll repeat the link—if Amazon will let them find it.
Look, we all make mistakes—I do—but Amazon’s handling of my book been a series of uninterrupted horrors. This is one of many reasons why I don’t want either Amazon or any other Pentagon-bureaucratic outfit to control the book business. Amazon surely isn’t so Pentagonlike toward Random House. But it certainly is toward little presses like my publisher, Twilight Time Books. Jeff’s people can be hell on small-fry. I love my Kindle’s text to speech feature, Amazon’s vast selection of merchandise and other positives and am not saying “Death to Amazon!” but, quite objectively, I must say it treats small publishers about as tenderly as Walmart behaves toward suppliers.
What Amazon promised by email on December 17: “In reference to your phone request on Dec. 4, we have suppressed the duplicate title
http://www.amazon.com/The-
Let’s parse that. What does Amazon mean by “suppressed.” Did Amazon truly zap the unauthorized DRM version from the Kindle Store database? Is the “Not available for customers from the United States” a clumsy way of dealing with the request to squelch the DRMed version? In other words, tweak a geographically related variable for all regions, but leave the damned DRM version intact on a hard drive even if it isn’t actually accessible? If so, this tramples over the wishes of both me and my publisher, whether or not it’s a violation of U.S. copyright law.
Next stop: Ian Freed’s office—at least in the virtual sense: I plan to try to reach Ian Freed, the Kindle boss. As a service to Amazon shareholders, I’d like him and others at Amazon to have a better idea of the horrors going on—inexcusable even by Walmart standards. I wish them luck in fixing the mess—not just my listings but the rickety database system that must be hurting so many people besides me. Helping me, Amazon can help itself. I don’t intend to sue Amazon. But if these atrocities persist, you never know what others might have in mind. This is a ticking time bomb, especially now that Google Editions is about to crank up. Will small publishers stick around on Amazon if Google eliminates hassles like the ones I’m suffering?
How Amazon can atone: No apology, no cash settlement needed. But native ePub rendering capability for the Kindle would be terrific, as would the
creation of a DRMless ePub Store, the equivalent of Amazon’s DRMless MP3 Store.
A caveat: I haven’t any idea what goes on at Amazon minute by minute. If a fix tonight makes this post obsolete, I’ll be tickled.
Usual reminder/disclosure: I’m a very very small stockholder in Google for long-term retirement purposes but have kicked Google around, too, and will do so yet again if Google Editions treats Twilight Times and me the same way Amazon has so far.
