Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing is a dystopian nightmare
Imagine this scenario: You get pulled over by a robot cop. The robot immediately terminates your driver's license forever for driving an 18-wheeler without proper certification. You point to the Mini Cooper you were driving when the robot pulled you over. The robot ignores you.

Eventually, a different robot shows up, listens to your defense, sees the Mini Cooper, and watches you start the car with your own keys. There is no 18-wheeler in sight. The new robot says it will get back to you in 5 business days.

Two weeks go by, and a third different robot tells you your appeal has been denied for "driving in such a way that creates a negative experience for other drivers". All the stuff about 18-wheeler certification is never mentioned or acknowledged again.

You appeal again and again. All your appeals are heard by yet more robots, who always uphold the original robot's decision, regurgitating the same bland phrase about creating a negative driving experience. THE END

This is basically what has happened to me with Amazon's KDP. I published my paperback through Ingram Spark and my Kindle eBook through KDP. My eBook passed review and was for sale for a few days. I claimed the paperback on my author central page, where it appeared side by side with the Kindle version. I was told to wait a week and the two versions should link up automatically (so they appear as the same book). If not, I should send an email to Amazon support.

Then the eBook was blocked, and a day later I got this in an email from KDP's Content Review Team:

> During our review, we found that the following book(s) creates a misleading customer experience by impairing customers' ability to make good buying decisions.

> Land Without a Continent: A Road Trip through Mexico and Central America

> Items that can cause a misleading customer experience include:

- Similarity of the contributor name to another author
- Similarity of the title to a previously published book
- Similarity of the cover to a previously published book
- Cover text or images that do not accurately represent the contents of the book
- Title or subtitle that do not accurately represent the contents of the book
- Similarity of the description to a previously published known work

I replied to their email pointing out that there is no book with a remotely similar name, description and author name as my book. I even did a reverse image search on my cover, and the only hit was my book on Amazon. It seems obvious to me that their AI-powered fraud detection system hallucinated that I plagiarized my own paperback.

The next day, they terminated my account. I appealed. I got an automated reply saying to give them 5 business days to review my case. That stretched into two weeks. Finally, I got an email stating my appeal was denied with only this message:

> We found that you have published titles with misleading metadata (including cover), which creates a negative customer experience.

It seems like they picked the only one of the six bullet points that couldn't be easily disproven, and ran with it. I continued to email and managed to get a few more informal appeals, all denied with the exact same vague nonsense message. I even emailed jeff@amazon.com.

I had finally given up, when I got an email from Robert from their Executive Customer Relations Team. Hooray a human being (maybe)! A day later, Robert upheld the termination with the exact same vague reason above and some semi-belligerent language about how this was my last appeal.

Here's plenty more reading:

https://writersweekly.com/angela-desk/and-even-more-complaints-about-amazon-kdp-kindle-direct-publishing

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/kdp.amazon.com

https://medium.com/@peteylao/my-cover-story-aka-how-i-managed-to-get-my-kdp-account-suspended-terminated-and-finally-fd3631e84aba

https://judylmohr.com/2024/02/02/my-amazon-nightmares-2024/