Writer Sanctum

Corporate Sector => What are Amazon doing now? [Public] => Topic started by: Marti Talbott on January 29, 2020, 01:03:14 AM

Title: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: Marti Talbott on January 29, 2020, 01:03:14 AM
I may have just lost my mind, but this is my author page:

https://www.amazon.com/Marti-Talbott/e/B003XSYENA%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Click on any book and the product page has completely changed. It doesn't even have a buy button. All I see is the series. Click on any book there and the same page shows up. How are we supposed to sell books that way? I'm starting to lose my sense of humor.

Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: TimothyEllis on January 29, 2020, 01:06:51 AM
I'm not seeing any difference.

Author page and first book page look completely normal to me.
Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: Bill Hiatt on January 29, 2020, 01:10:25 AM
I may have just lost my mind, but this is my author page:

https://www.amazon.com/Marti-Talbott/e/B003XSYENA%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Click on any book and the product page has completely changed. It doesn't even have a buy button. All I see is the series. Click on any book there and the same page shows up. How are we supposed to sell books that way? I'm starting to lose my sense of humor.
Perhaps it was a temporary glitch. Everything looks normal to me. There are buy buttons, and when I click on a book, I go to what looks like the regular product page, complete with buy buttons. Clicking on one of the books in the series display takes me to the page for the correct book. Hopefully, you will soon see the same.
Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: Marti Talbott on January 29, 2020, 01:18:36 AM
I'm not seeing any difference.

Author page and first book page look completely normal to me.

That's reassuring.
Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: Jeff Tanyard on January 29, 2020, 08:03:52 AM
Looks fine on my end.


Perhaps it was a temporary glitch.


I'm going with this.
Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: Marti Talbott on January 29, 2020, 08:19:59 AM
They just love scaring me. I shall quietly leave the room now. Pretend I didn't panic, okay?
Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: notthatamanda on January 29, 2020, 08:54:35 AM
Pretend I didn't panic, okay?
Deal.
Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: inkblot on January 29, 2020, 10:08:44 AM
I had this same problem for several hours today for all my books. I checked because my sales were way below their normal range. I wrote to Amazon but haven't heard anything back yet. The problem, though, seems to have resolved itself. But I took a bath today with far lower sales than normal matched against a normal-level ad spend that sent clicks to pages with NO buy box. Maddening  :HB
Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: Marti Talbott on January 29, 2020, 10:47:00 AM
I had this same problem for several hours today for all my books. I checked because my sales were way below their normal range. I wrote to Amazon but haven't heard anything back yet. The problem, though, seems to have resolved itself. But I took a bath today with far lower sales than normal matched against a normal-level ad spend that sent clicks to pages with NO buy box. Maddening  :HB

Wow, I'm not as insane as I thought I was. Thanks for posting inkblot. Yep, mine have been fixed too. I can't tell if I lost sales since mine are down one day and up the next.
Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: TimothyEllis on January 29, 2020, 11:03:56 AM
I had this same problem for several hours today for all my books. I checked because my sales were way below their normal range. I wrote to Amazon but haven't heard anything back yet. The problem, though, seems to have resolved itself. But I took a bath today with far lower sales than normal matched against a normal-level ad spend that sent clicks to pages with NO buy box. Maddening  :HB

Actually I think something like this happens to every single page on a regular basis. And has been for years.

There are always unexplainable days when your sales and reads drop like a switch was turned off, and when you look, it's like most of your books were not actually there for most of the day.

It happens regular as clockwork (but the clock is broken), and never fails to knock your momentum off it's stride when you get some.

I swear it's a deliberate thing Amazon does in order to stop people getting too many up days in a row.

That it might be a bug which mutilates the product pages for an author for a few hours a day, every week or so, has occurred to me. If so, it's something that's been around for donkeys years and they've never fixed.
Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: notthatamanda on January 29, 2020, 12:05:59 PM
Well today was my first sale in three days. I swear they know when I'm about to lose it and then throw me a bone.
Title: Re: Just when you think Amazon can't make things worse - they do.
Post by: Marti Talbott on January 29, 2020, 01:08:46 PM
I wish I trusted them more, but they have so much power over our incomes.