It’s the Monday after the kid’s spring break and I’m raring to go! I can’t believe we didn’t really do much doing the week, no big trips that I had planned originally because we ended up doing some spring cleaning. I set out boxes set to go to thrift stores; one for toys, another for clothes and another one for miscellaneous stuff. Interestingly, whenever I thought the kid had successfully let go of a toy and put it into the box, it somehow made its way back to his toy bin or the bookshelf.
So much for letting go, eh? But we’ve got the clothing bins pretty full and now I just need to drop them off at the thrift stores.
On the writing front, I successfully distracted myself from writing by creating a teaser for Breaking the Rules. I’d made one that had a round of gunfire going in the background but then I realized it probably wouldn’t go over well with Facebook so I tweaked the beginning to show a helicopter instead.
While I was creating it, little dude was asking me why my music was so sad. And then I asked myself the same thing, too. It’s supposed to be a romance, albeit an angsty one. But I do like it. Besides, it’s all I got right now as far as teasers go.
I’ve also decided to un-enroll my books from Kindle Unlimited and the first one to go wide is Everything She Ever Wanted on April 18 or so. It used to be my best-selling book because of KU but nothing is best selling anymore from March onwards. If I thought March was bad and I was kvetching all over the place, April just told May to hold her beer.
It could be worse. A few authors I know have lost thousands of dollars in KU page reads in the last few days. Amazon accused them of artificially inflating their page reads (either via bots or click farms or whatever Amazon means by “artificially”) and removed the offending pages read (and corresponding income) from their dashboards. To some there is no recourse at all even if they barely even make $1k a month, to begin with; in Amazon’s eyes, they did something wrong and the decision is final. Any more alleged hanky-panky and their accounts could be deleted. Morale around author groups is pretty low right now for a lot of affected authors starting out, and if it’s hit the big authors, they haven’t said a peep.
Speaking of deleted, many Amazon customers found their accounts gone last week, too. It never occurred to me that if that ever happened to me, then I’d lose all my digital content since Amazon only grants me a “license” to read those books and view those movies, even if I bought them outright. Even Alexa wouldn’t work anymore (which is probably good and little dude won’t be asking Alexa for answers to his homework). The thought made me mad, considering that Amazon won’t even tell you what you did wrong in their eyes. But it’s their sandbox, their rules.
So the first thing I did today was buy the next book I wanted in paperback form. Good thing hubby is going to take down the big bookshelf I’d forgotten he’d disassembled and put in the attic after I told him that the pile of books in the book shelf-less living room are going to stay where they are until I got one. So no more buying digital movies either. I’ll stream them if I have to and buy the DVD.
Not such great news for this blog post although it’s more like the state of affairs. But what can you do, eh? You roll with the punches, that’s what. You keep going.
Liz Durano 
Sounds so wrong. When you become a giant, there’s no one to call you to account.
LikeLiked by 1 person
True. The perils of putting all one’s eggs into one basket as well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve heard a lot about Amazon just deleting authors work recently, and it concerns me. It almost seems like doing KU is more dangerous for the author than good. One blogger even spoke about her experience with Amazon just deleting her account because she was accused of inflating her reads on KU. She had no idea what happened and said she didn’t do anything.
I wanted to start publishing on Amazon under a pen name, but now I’m not sure if I should use the platform. I’m also surprised that regular Amazon customers are losing their accounts
Sometimes, I feel you just can’t trust companies these days.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It looks like it’s tied with a sweep of bot accounts that clickfarmers use and many innocent customers got caught in the net. And maybe because of the bot-driven click farms having clicked on authors’ books, those corresponding pages read have also been wiped out, which makes sense.
I wouldn’t hesitate to publish with them though. Just don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I have my other pen name wide and my other books are going to go wide, too. I have to admit I got used to all that KU income but with the new wave of big spenders for FB and Amazon ads, my books don’t stand a chance and neither do my ad efforts that no longer give me the same ROI. It’s in the negative now. But that’s change for you, and another one of the lessons I need to learn about putting all my eggs in one basket — and needing to publish faster.
LikeLike