Publishing delay with Amazon ebooks

[alhawke]

Anyone noticing this? Usually I put a new book up and, even during review, an ASIN pops up within a few hours. My newest book is just dragging x48 hrs as "pre-order in review". It's a preorder--not sure if that's the reason? Tomorrow I'll message them as it'll hit their 72hr mark. I've seen delays like this with paperbacks before but not my ebooks.

[TimothyEllis]

With or without the book content itself?

[alhawke]

Without. And I've never put a preorder up with over a month before release. Not sure if that matters??

Have you seen delays when the manuscript isn't submitted? It's annoying becuase I could have submitted it if I had thought it'd matter. The body of the book is ready to go too.

[TimothyEllis]

Without. And I've never put a preorder up with over a month before release. Not sure if that matters??

Have you seen delays when the manuscript isn't submitted? It's annoying because I could have submitted it if I had thought it'd matter. The body of the book is ready to go too.

I've not seen a delay without the book content, no.

The content can often trigger the bots, and that delays things while they go through additional checks. But the raw pre-order shouldn't be taking that long.

Unless something on the cover also triggered the bots, such as keywords in the title and sub-title, or not allowed words. That's what gets a lot of low content rejected.

I'm due for a new pre-order next week, but mine always have 2 months minimum to allow for something going wrong. I'll see what happens to my next one.

[alhawke]

Unless something on the cover also triggered the bots, such as keywords in the title and sub-title, or not allowed words. That's what gets a lot of low content rejected.

I hope it’s not keywords. Could be. I’d take a look, but I honestly can’t recall the words I used—and since it’s frozen, there’s no way for me to check. Plan is to contact them tomorrow at the 72 hour mark.

[TimothyEllis]

Unless something on the cover also triggered the bots, such as keywords in the title and sub-title, or not allowed words. That's what gets a lot of low content rejected.

I hope it’s not keywords. Could be. I’d take a look, but I honestly can’t recall the words I used—and since it’s frozen, there’s no way for me to check. Plan is to contact them tomorrow at the 72 hour mark.

Post the cover?

[alhawke]

Post the cover?

It's live as a preorder everywhere else:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/candy-crone-a-l-hawke/1146350695?ean=2940186140306

[TimothyEllis]

Post the cover?

It's live as a preorder everywhere else:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/candy-crone-a-l-hawke/1146350695?ean=2940186140306

Nothing wrong with that, other than my blood sugar spiked just looking at it.

Just wondering though if the bots thought it was AI generated, and you answered no? Just guessing.

[alhawke]

Nothing wrong with that, other than my blood sugar spiked just looking at it.

It's not AI generated. I found the model myself on Deposit Photo. But the veneer of illusion with the food is AI-esque, so I could see it being thought of as AI. I'm gonna contact them.

[writeway]

This happens sometimes, it's normal. It's been times when my books took a day and a half to come up. That's why they say it can take up to 72 hours. No need in contacting Amazon because they can't do anything about it. Once it's in the system all you can do is wait. The most they can tell you is if it's a glitch but they can't manually move it along.

I do preorders all the time but I don't do placeholders. I only put my books up when they are finished.

[TimothyEllis]

First in series always take longer.

But not that long usually.

But I've noticed the pre-order lock down gap got a little longer a while ago as well.

My guess is Amazon are playing around with more extensive tests of what gets uploaded, and some of them are taking too long.

It's also possible so many people are answering no to AI, but the submission is obviously AI, that Amazon has had to up it's detection abilities, and that is slowing things down.

[alhawke]

Well, it's up. The ASIN was created an hour after I emailed them, but I haven't heard from them yet. I'm guessing it's because it's a long preorder. Maybe Amazon puts these at the end of the queue with later release dates? That'd make sense too.

Anyway, I'm thrilled it's up. Thanks for your help!

[LilyBLily]

I put up a book for pre-order with only the cover and no ms., and Amazon confirmed it within about three hours. Neither slow nor fast.

Of late, the confirmations of buying a book have arrived fairly late, even when the book itself loaded on my Kindle promptly.

I think this calls for a 

[alhawke]

Well, I figured it out the delay... sort of. The book's been catalogued as Fantasy Erotica. Why? Who knows.

I emailed them to see what's going on and to change the category to avoid reader dissatisfaction--readers expecting erotica are sure going to be disappointed. Irony is, this book has the lowest heat levels of all my books in series.

I can't rummage through my keywords again because, for some reason, the book is still in "updating" 

We talk of AI all the time. Ever notice how we're already at the mercy of computer bots in the largest ebook selling retailer in the world?

[TimothyEllis]

That's the danger Romance novels always have.

It only takes the wrong keyword, and you get dungeoned. Presumably one of them triggered a bot, or something in the blurb triggered it.

So maybe post the blurb in the blurb private area, so those who know can check it for bad choices.

[alhawke]

I already have my suspicions. I'm waiting to gain access back to book info. Right now it's locked. I'm planning on just deleting all words that could be construed as sexual when I gain access back to KDP--probably will just do it anyway for fear of it returning back whenever I update the book, even if customer service can delete the category.

We had a thread about keywords. You can see how focused I get on keywords, I have no idea what I entered. But here's another area we need to be careful about there.

[TimothyEllis]

I already have my suspicions. I'm waiting to gain access back to book info. Right now it's locked. I'm planning on just deleting all words that could be construed as sexual when I gain access back to KDP--probably will just do it anyway for fear of it returning back whenever I update the book, even if customer service can delete the category.

We had a thread about keywords. You can see how focused I get on keywords, I have no idea what I entered. But here's another area we need to be careful about there.

Quora has a set of moderation bots which trigger on keywords. They started out deleting answers which touched on underage sex in any way. Then it became under 20 sex. Then under thirty. Now it seems you can't mention it at all without the bots deleting the post. The stupid thing is they don't delete the questions, which are asking for that kind of answer, so now there's questions which never have any answers, and people complaining theirs got deleted. It's just an insane version of woke.

The danger is that Amazon's bots head down the same path.

All the bots are just bad code, and the more they monkey with them, the worse they get. And they were bad enough with Romance already.

You just have to be so careful now. I've stopped going there in my novels completely. Both my last two MC's haven't been involved with anyone at all.

[LilyBLily]

I write romance, so that's not an option, but I frontload my book descriptions with "sweet" and I'll even check the "Clean & Wholesome" category although, obviously, closed door premarital sex is not what most people would call clean and wholesome.

Amazon's bots and their live humans are inconsistent about language, but to be fair, most live humans are when it comes to rules. Interpretation is all. 
 

[TimothyEllis]

Amazon's bots and their live humans are inconsistent about language

Probably because the programmers have English as a second language.

And most of the help people are not American.

The second last one I had contact with on a recent issue was South African, and the last one was Indian.

[alhawke]

Well, all is finally back to normal. Amazon changed the category somehow on their end right after emailing them. My concern now is if I alter things in the future and it shifts back to erotica based on past algos--something to look out for with all of us who write romance. I'm still locked out as of updates as it reads "updates in review". I'll do all some flushing of "dangerous" language when it finally unlocks as well.

So guess it's time to be hypervigilant on book categories. Unless the word "candy" is a strong trigger word for sex--could be?--Amazon is getting stricter on categorizations. Out of all books in my witch series, Candy Crone is ironically the most tame with little sexual content.