I just got dinged in AC - WTF moment.

[TimothyEllis]

I just tried to update my Author Central Bio, and got dinged with a content violation.

Nothing but the error message, which tells you nothing at all.

Turned out to be the paragraph which contained the link to my mailing list, and mentioning Bookbub.

Could have been either or both, but was most likely the link.

What pisses me off about that is Amazon do nothing useful with the follower list, and yet, stop people going to a list that is actually useful.

But the actual error message is really bad IT. It should at least contain what sort of thing it dinged on, not a generic you violated content guidelines.

To add insult to injury, there is no link to those guidelines anywhere on AC that I could find, and I had to google them, and then guess what the problem was.

Really BAD Amazon!

[Bill Hiatt]

On the follower list, I just got an email announcing a new release of yours on the actual release date (yesterday). Maybe someone at Amazon has made an adjustment after reading some of our earlier commentary on the general uselessness of following authors on Amazon. I'm interested to see what happens with my next release.

Regardless, Amazon should explain its error messages. That's my complaint about a lot of companies. (When Doordash had a problem with my payment method, I got "Something went wrong. Try again" rather than anything useful. In that case, the customer support person also gave me an incorrect answer.

[PJ Post]

Amazon will always do what's best for Amazon.

[Bill Hiatt]

True, but how does giving vague error messages benefit Amazon?

Or were you just referring to the not bothering to announce new releases by people in the follower system?

[Post-Crisis D]

Lots of tech companies give vague or even insulting error messages.

A long time ago, I had a webpage shut down by one of these companies for a non-specific rules violation.  The error message that displayed to visitors to the page strongly implied I was guilty of plagiarism or copyright infringement.  When I contacted them to see what the problem was, all they did was send me a list of their rules and tell me I needed to comply.  Since I could not see any rule I had broken and since they could not tell me what the problem was, there was no way I could comply.

I removed all of my pages from their service and went elsewhere.  That company is long gone now.  And good riddance.

I did use public domain content on that page.  They had no rules prohibiting using public domain content.  I didn't claim the public domain content as my own, so plagiarism doesn't apply.  Since it was public domain content, copyright infringement does not apply.  I don't know if either of those were an issue since they would not tell me.  They did not ask for proof or documentation that I had the right to use any content; if they had, I could have shown them where it was public domain content.  All I can do is guess and there is no way to bring something in compliance with rules when you cannot find out what rule you allegedly violated.

I mean, these huge tech companies have bots and AI and whatnot to write messages and even try to write novels and stuff, yet we are expected to believe they are completely unable to identify specific errors or specific rules that have been broken?

Despite whatever they say, you are not a partner or valued team member or part of their community or whatever flowery prose they use to make you feel all special and part of something.  You are nothing to them and, given time and opportunity, they will treat you like that.

IMHO, that is another reason why people need to not rely on or build a livelihood or anything around any specific tech company or companies.  Always have alternatives.  Do not be reliant upon Amazon or Facebook or whoever to reach your audience/customers.  They will always have the upper hand and they will use it.

[PJ Post]

The other day, I had a self-check out machine give me attitude. Someone actually recorded (or AI'ed) a condescending tone and thought it was a good idea. I swear to God this isn't a joke.

___

True, but how does giving vague error messages benefit Amazon?

How does giving non-vague error messages benefit Amazon? I'm not being flippant.

Who knows why Amazon does anything.

[Bill Hiatt]

Giving a non-vague error message leads to a swifter resolution, perhaps without consuming customer support bandwidth.

After all, they have to deal with ornery people like me who are more than happy to keep pushing a question like that until I get an answer. Even if a lot of the "people" in the chain are bots, all of them aren't. So their resources get consumed offering support on questions they could conceivably answer with the initial message.

This is not necessarily a small issue. I can and have cut all ties with businesses that couldn't be bothered to have good customer support. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Amazon may see indie authors (who are, after all, customers of the KDP service) are a captive audience, but you yourself can clearly see a potential non-Amazon path, or at least a non-exclusive one. It would take far less effort to address some of these simple issues with clear error messages and info rather than following the vague-error-message path.

[Post-Crisis D]

I can and have cut all ties with businesses that couldn't be bothered to have good customer support. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

 

[PJ Post]

Fixing the problem cuts into resources, too.

Further, do they care?

Amazon's going to Amazon, you know?

[Anarchist]

Giving a non-vague error message leads to a swifter resolution, perhaps without consuming customer support bandwidth.

We're not the customer. We're the product.

[Jeff Tanyard]

The other day, I had a self-check out machine give me attitude. Someone actually recorded (or AI'ed) a condescending tone and thought it was a good idea. I swear to God this isn't a joke.

I believe you.  Idiocracy is rapidly becoming the most prescient dystopian story ever written.

[Bill Hiatt]

Giving a non-vague error message leads to a swifter resolution, perhaps without consuming customer support bandwidth.

We're not the customer. We're the product.

Human language is inherently ambiguous.

Yes, we sell products on Amazon. But since Amazon refers to KDP as a service, we are also customers of that service.

[Bill Hiatt]

Fixing the problem cuts into resources, too.

Further, do they care?

Amazon's going to Amazon, you know?

This is oddly defeatist for someone like you who has so much innovative vision.

Creating clear error messages is probably a one-time process for each error. Set it and forget it. In the long run, that's less resource intensive than answering queries each time the error comes up.

Does Amazon care? I'm not a mind reader. Should Amazon care? If they take their brand seriously, then yes.

[PJ Post]

This is oddly defeatist for someone like you who has so much innovative vision.

Amazon is a massive trillion dollar company. And even with all of that revenue, they're squeezing on everyone, and pretty publicly at that. Look at the publicity fiascos centered around their warehouse workers and delivery drivers.

Should they care? Yes. Do they care? What does the data tell you?

What is certain is that they know that they have become embedded within the modern household. Service can go completely off the rails and people will still use them as a first choice. America has embraced a 'good enough' philosophy on just about everything. Apart from Bill and Ted, few care about excellence anymore. If no one cares...why invest?

I don't have to like it, but I do have to accept it when it comes to business.

[Bill Hiatt]

Past experience suggests they care at least a little if a big public embarrassment occurs. They started caring about fake reviews when there were articles about them in national publications, for example. Also, they occasionally make improvements that they didn't have to make (like improving the series page.

Large companies in general will tend to keep moving in the direction they're moving. And people will tend to continue doing business with them. But if I've understood your past statements correctly, you also think that Amazon will be gone before too long. If faced with possible dissolution, a company might change direction.

[PJ Post]

But if I've understood your past statements correctly, you also think that Amazon will be gone before too long.

No, I said that the interests of self-publishing as we've known it will no longer align with Amazon's goals. We won't have a place there, not like we've had in the past.

As for Amazon long-term, I think they'll be the first transnational, independent corporate state - the first of the cyberpunk era. "You're gonna carry that weight."