Amazon Author Central: The continuing saga.

Short but sweet: An author can have an Author's Page on Amazon Author Central. They can post a bibliography, and list their books. On my author page I noticed that two of my published works weren't showing but rather two editions that were out of print. I pointed this out to Amazon. They told me I was correct and they fixed it.


I then noticed that when you sort on popularity, those same two books showed up and not the currently published titles. Granted the out of print titles may be the most popular because they're cheaper, the two published ones should at least show up!!!!!


I also noticed that when sorting on Highest to Lowest price and Lowest to Highest, the same thing was true. The published titles of my work on those two books NEVER displayed.


I asked Amazon and here is there response:

 The order of the titles that appear on your bibliography is determined automatically and based on many factors, such as past sales history, current availability, and length of time the items have been listed on our site. It is not something we are able to manually alter. Author Page bibliographies have also been designed to be convenient and easier for our customers and readers to view while they're browsing for books on our website. In order to provide the best browsing experience, we display only one edition of each work.


For example, the paperback edition may primarily be displayed on the Author Page, although the hardcover and Kindle editions of the same work also exist.

I sincerely regret that we haven't been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction regarding this issue.

My response was to point them to several Author Central pages where several editions of the same books were in fact showing up. Actually I told Amazon Author Central that if they wanted me to, I'd sit down for as long as it took to point them to all links where this happened. LOL Really. They made it that easy.


So just know that when you go to any Author Page on Author Central, other than that of a large published author like John Grisham or Anne Rice, when you sort on price, you won't be given all the actual pricing. In fact, in most cases, as is the case with my books, you'll only see pricing, low to high or high to low for out of print books that neither I nor my publisher make any money off of. Guess who does make money? If you guessed Amazon, you're right. ;D


And to make it even more deceitful--Amazon lists two of my out of print titles for sale as NEW through AMAZON even though I've asked them time and time again to stop selling my out of print books as NEW. I even sent the reversion of rights letter to prove I have the authority to tell them to stop. Gotta love Amazon. If you don't like how they play, you can't run away.