Please Read: Important Info on My Books (and why I’m tearing my hair out)…

Hey peeps, I have an extremely important issue to talk to you about. I have a serious situation going on that isn’t my fault, but it’s going to impact me in some very stressful ways.

As you know, Amazon works in mysterious ways at times — and quite often it’s not for the better. I’m not sure if this has to do with the drone attacks on the data center buildings the other day, or whether it’s just one of their many AI bot screw ups, but Amazon has terminated my author account. Yes, I’ve been the victim of a terminator. (Hey, if I don’t try to laugh, I’ll be in tears).

What happened is this: when I was releasing my copies of the Otherworld books that I have rights back to, everything seemed fine. Until I started releasing print versions, and then — well — the shit hit the fan. Amazon requested copies of my reversion letters for two of the books from my publisher. I provided those — all neat and tidy and proper. Amazon said “Fine, this works.” And they approved them and pushed them through.

That was a couple of days ago.

Today, I got an email from them saying they’ve terminated my account because I didn’t provide the proof that I own the rights.

As you can figure, I went ballistic. Pure panic, because I make most of my money through Amazon. Yes, my books are up on Nook and Kobo and GooglePlay but that doesn’t earn me enough to provide for my family. So I have been in salvage mode, contacting everyone I can think of to help me — the authors Guild, ALLI, the independent authors organization, a couple of friends who have been through this, Amazon themselves, and who knows how this is going to play out.

My bookstore is almost back up, and it’s going to stay because I can’t ever chance this happening again, even if I get my Amazon account back. So none of my books are available on Amazon right now. I don’t know if they’ll give me back my account — sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, even when it’s entirely their mistake. However, you can buy my books for your Kindle through my bookstore, and that means you will own them, not just have them through a “lease” from Amazon.

All preorders from Amazon have been wiped out, but the good news is that — if you preordered them through Amazon — you haven’t been charged for them. I will have books up for preorder on my personal store within a day or two.

I’m incredibly stressed right now. I’m not sure if I will even get the money that they owe me because sometimes they just refuse to pay it to you once they terminate your account, and I’m furious. I will be encouraging people to buy directly from me from now on. Even if I get my Amazon account back, I can’t ever trust them again.

As far as print books are concerned , none of those will be available for a while until I figure out what to do. If Amazon gives me my account back, I’m not sure if I want to go through them again for print. But I have to find a program that is easy enough to use and that doesn’t require upfront fees from me. I’m truly sorry if you like my books in print, but there’s nothing I can do about this right now.

Once my shop is open, I’ll be running a shop-wide sale because I have to make up whatever I lost from Amazon. I encourage you, when that happens, to please take advantage of it, especially if you are looking to fill out your collection of my books.

I’ll keep you updated daily on what’s going on, but for now, cross your fingers for me. Thank you so much for being so supportive, and I could use some encouragement.

Bright blessings, Yasmine

If you liked this post and want to buy me a coffee, I sure appreciate it.