Hey! I just returned my first Kindle book for a full refund!
Until now, the book industry has felt to me more like a buffet: what you see is what you get. There was no real connecting communication line between me and the publisher. I have tried many times to contact publishers of these larger publishing houses to tell them that their ebooks are broken, and the single instance of response I’ve received is “I don’t know who does the ebooks. I’ll let marketing know.”
K. Meanwhile, can I get my moolah back?
As far as I understand, the way they track the success of a book is purely through sales numbers, but how do they know the *why* of success or unsuccess of a book. That feedback loop is busted.
With small presses, you can go up directly to the publisher, in person, at a convention and tell her that their latest publication was crap and why. And they’ll listen to you, take notes and be interested in your opinion. That feedback loop works.
Supposed a book isn’t selling well. How is it possible for these enormous publishing houses to be able to determine the cause? Is it because:
- it’s got a stupid cover
- the author is unknown
- it’s marketed to the wrong audience
- the author is not a very good writer
- the subject material of the book is unappealing
- the book is badly edited
- the bookstore industry in america have collapsed and the physical mechanism of browsing for a new book no longer exists
- or what?
Well, finally here’s a way at least to return my purchase mistakes to amazon. I don’t know if this is an option when you buy from nook or directly from the publisher (as you can now with TOR), but for now I am extraordinarily pleased to get my money back for “quality issues”.
You have a short time frame in which to complete this action, and it’s done through the “manage my kindle” page.
Here’s what I returned for my money, and presumably the author/publisher gets the information that the book was purchased and then refunded for “quality issues”.
Clik here to view.
This book has the wrong coding embedded, rendering the text into garbage characters. (click on the photo for a larger image)
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
