This Man is Your Enemy

I republished two books and published one new book with companies belonging to this man. One company published the trade paperback of all three books, the other the e-books. A third company markets them. The titles are:

Greater Trouble in the Lesser Antilles (2 May 2017)

Low Jinks on the High Seas (8 May 2017)

Epic Trials in the Leeward Isles (13 June 2017)

For three months I have been trying to get the marketing company to list the three new editions on my “Books Page.” Twice they have been successful, but the success lasted only a couple of days. For the same three months I have been trying to get the three new editions listed on my “Author Central Page.” The marketing company has not been successful once.

Initially, I was told the problem was the new editions were linked to the older editions, as if they were doing me a big favor by listing all editions of all titles. Nobody at the Monopoly has been able to explain why if the editions are linked all but five of the book reviews disappeared. Nor has anybody been able to explain actually why a reseller of Greater Trouble has his book on my “Books Page” while my newer edition is entirely absent. The penultimate excuse was that eventually the resellers will have sold all the copies of the older edition and the newer edition will then appear automatically. As I have had the “Books Page” for ten years and have never not had resellers hawking my books, I was reluctant to accept the excuse.

Aside from the “Linking” issue, there is the “Algorithm.” Nobody can explain it either, other than it’s “Automatic.” During the last three months CreateSpace and Author Central have blamed each other for my problem. Now they blame either the “Linking” or the “Algorithm,” as neither is able to communicate with me. You can't just e-mail an algorithm. Mostly what they have done is blame me for doing business with them in the first place.

As it now stands, my newer edition of Greater Trouble is absent from my “Books Page,” and is replaced by a reseller’s book that will make money for the reseller and the Conglomerate, but no money for me. My “Author Central Page” shows new editions of my first and last titles, but my newer edition of Low Jinks is absent, so there is no sales information and no ranking.

The Conglomerate’s final word is there is nothing they can do. It reminds me of an old cartoon with a mechanic scratching his head and telling his customer “There’s still a lot we don’t understand about the internal combustion engine.”

I have better things to do—like editing my latest book or marketing the three existing titles—but I have a mission to embarrass the Conglomerate enough that it will unlink my books or fix the algorithm. I do not expect to find success. The Conglomerate giveth and the Conglomerate taketh.