The title of this is not an exaggeration, and it is in no way a joke. I just want to say that flat-out from the beginning. It’s not a nonsense headline to grab attention. It is a real and literal thing that I am currently going through.

Part of me wants to do nothing but state the facts, but I’m an author, and even a true story isn’t complete with nothing but facts. It’s empty and devoid of all life, if there’s no feeling or explanation. So. Let me tell you the truth about everything and get into facts that I leave out of all public things that I say.

Publishing is hard. That, I’ll say everywhere and admit to. I’ll talk for days about the personal stressors and pains of it, occasionally. (Sometimes publicly, OFTEN in person.) There are a million reasons why — the isolation, the weight of personal responsibility for the words I put out into the world, so on. But the fact I do NOT speak about publicly is that, when you are self-published, unless you’re living in a bubble or just don’t care, there is more fear than can be put to words even by someone whose entire life is words.

Fear of a bad review is miniscule. Fear of enough of them that your books get shunned is a little less miniscule. Your books being lost in the ocean is a soul-crushing one. Getting on Amazon’s bad side is, honestly, THE BIGGEST fear.

I’m scared to even WRITE this, because I don’t want to piss them off. But truth is truth, and the truth (which I’ve actually stated to KDP Support multiple times) is that I have lived under a dome of TERROR for YEARS, even when doing my absolute best to try to do all the right things. And that (trying to do the right thing) isn’t about Amazon; it’s just me. But the fact that, if you do one five-minute search, you’ll find one story after another of account suspensions or terminations? It’s extra motivation to make sure you don’t even accidentally do something wrong.

Every time I see an instance of someone saying they DID NOTHING, I believe that’s nonsense.

Worrying about piracy while you’re in Select (Kindle Unlimited) causing you to get in trouble was a legitimate concern. And when you find out that a book previously published wide can look entirely de-listed from your end but still show up through Amazon’s stuff as being listed elsewhere? That will terrify you to go from one thing to the other thing.

But the truth? Is that being wide and feeling you will not even be broke but some word beyond it without the KU money... Well. That’s its own story, and it’s not for here and now.

Anyone who has interacted with KDP Support would PROBABLY say the same or similar things as what I will. They are TOP NOTCH. Especially when you’ve interacted with support from other companies. KDP Support, I’ve had dozens if not over a hundred interactions with them in the last few years, and there have only been maybe three to five instances where I was unhappy, maybe one or two where I was upset after. When KDP Support makes you feel safe, heard, even cared about, it can lull you into a false sense of security. And I believed, wholeheartedly, that if I genuinely did my best, everything could get worked out fine. Before now, I’ve ever only had one (what I would consider to be) serious issue with book stuff. But it was nothing compared to this.

Here is my current situation...

At the start of this month, I got selected for my first full BookBub Featured Deal, to be had at the end of January. I had an International Featured Deal last year. This was/is my first full one. I’ll be straight-up and say...

I spent EVERYTHING I had on it. If you’re an author, you probably know — we don’t make a bunch of money from this unless we’re one of the few who do.

I spent everything I had. And I have spent this month in a state of nervous joy that I haven’t felt since right after I did the big push to get my books out. I’ve spent the last year and a half/two years recovering, honestly, from my spirit being broken.

I was excited. It felt like standing up for the first time after being down for years. I felt...

This is going to make an actual difference. The books will finally get noticed.

And I have lived in this odd holding pattern of glee that I’ve been in some ways terrified to let actually run through me, to not have to feel disappointment should something not work out as I’d hoped.

I never could’ve expected that things not working out as I’d hoped would be me logging onto my KDP account eight days before the scheduled Featured Deal to find the thing I thought that I would never find.

‘Your account is currently suspended.’

It said I had received an email. I, at that juncture, had not. So, I contacted them, explained that I had NO IDEA why that could’ve happened or what I could’ve done, and I waited.

I believe it was a couple hours later that I got the automated email it had told me I’d already gotten. (1 ½ to 2. Maybe even thirty minutes. I was in a panic, and time sort of blurred. And I just want to say, this was (and still is) occurring during a family emergency. So. It’s been a nice week here, let me tell you.)

I will attach a picture of that email. But I just want to be clear before you read it.

I owe ONE DOLLAR on AMS ads, in Italy, because my bank rejected it as fraud. So, the context isn’t that I owe hundreds of dollars or something. I owe, literally, ONE DOLLAR. Not even two. ONE.

When I realized it was over that, something SO TINY, I just BROKE. I’m telling you, I sat here, and I WEPT. I can usually keep myself mostly contained, if someone would be seeing me, but my parents saw me crying like an absolute baby that day.

My entire life got STOPPED. Over ONE DOLLAR.

I responded to that email, explained the situation. And I just want to say here...

It gave a link in the email they sent, told me to take care of it. Do you know what happens when you click on that link? Nothing. It sends you to a page equivalent to a 502 error. Because I am locked out of my account. It told me to pay something that they, in locking me out of my account, made me ENTIRELY unable to pay.

But I wrote back. I didn’t say much of anything more than I’ve already said here, apart from that when this was initially owed, I believe OVER A YEAR AGO, I tried to fix it. It told me to update my payment information, but my payment information IS the correct payment information. Because I didn’t change it, it never re-initiated a charge. (And, if it did, my bank rejected it as well.) This is a small charge from a different country that my bank flagged as fraud.

Yes, maybe I should’ve contacted Support from the get-go. I’ll give Amazon that. And I’ll say flat-out that if I owed them even FIVE dollars, I would’ve done. But in full disclosure, I had issues with Australia probably three years ago due to the same thing. They, without saying a word to me, ‘forgave’ the LITERAL SIXTY CENTS of that. So, yes, I lived under the assumption that ONE DOLLAR was not a large deal. I have successful ads and payments in multiple countries — the US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada. No issues. All the same billing profile.

Anyway. I sent an email in response to that one, after having all the information. I asked them to PLEASE try to re-charge the charge. (I CAN’T.)

I then called my bank, for them to be aware of the weird transaction that I hoped would be coming soon. (I’m still hoping, I just want to say.)

Then, I waited, and I tried to have faith that everything would/will be okay.

8:00-ish the next morning, I woke up and found a response from the initial email (the one where I hadn’t known what was going on). It said they needed time to look into it, and I could expect to hear from them within the next FIVE BUSINESS DAYS.

I obviously wasn’t sleeping well. I woke up early, checked, found it, responded SUPER fast, I think within an hour of it being sent. I explained the situation again. Begged them to try to re-charge it.

I waited all day.

Nothing.

I know it said to only send one email, but after midnight, I got into an old email thread of a helpful KDP agent. (One who had listened to me rambling about a weird situation of someone with a similar author name and a book with the same title as one of mine getting attached to my account (and actually pushing my paperback off its own listing). I digress, though.)

I in as calm a state as I could explained again. I was weeping again by the end, messed up a sentence totally. But I’m going to include that email. I don’t care about any of you seeing me begging for help. Don’t freaking care. You can skip it if you want. It really doesn’t say anything I haven’t already said.

I went to sleep. Woke up.

Nothing.

All day now.

Nothing.

Now, if you’ve dealt with KDP Support, you KNOW it doesn’t take them days to respond to stuff. I’ve NEVER had this happen. Never.

I have received one email from them, from the email I sent about not knowing why.

No response to the email I sent from the automated email they sent me (which is where they told me to send it).

No response to the email to the other KDP agent.

No response back from the response I sent the one who DID contact me, probably coming up on 40 hours ago.

And I just keep thinking about a line on the page that shows up when I try to log onto my account. About how they’d suspended my account while THEY waited to hear from ME.

They stopped my entire WORLD, and I am waiting to hear from them.

My books are still available. If the books make money right now, THEY will profit from it. How is that right?

I owe them one dollar. They owe me about a hundred. I won’t get that this month, because my account is suspended. (Yeah, authors don’t make much freaking money unless they do.)

So.

How is that right?

I was NEVER emailed about this before suspension, for me to contact support to ask them to re-charge it. If they’d told me, ‘Hey, this is actually a problem,’ I’d have stopped EVERYTHING and contacted them IMMEDIATELY. I don’t care what else I could’ve been doing. I’d have stopped ANYTHING.

If it was a big deal... Why not deduct that ONE DOLLAR from my paycheck?

Why not let me know in an email?

Why be so freaking ignorant that your SUPER SMART COMPUTER SYSTEM can’t realize that locking someone out of their account means THEY CAN’T FIX THE ISSUE YOU TOLD THEM TO FIX?

Computers and corporations, right?

I never openly talk about this stuff. In part because I don’t like being negative, and in part because I never wanted to get on Amazon’s bad side. They got on MY freaking bad side after this. I will NEVER be Amazon-exclusive again. Once these last few books are out of KU, if I get my account back at any point, NEVER again. This isn’t even an ‘eggs in one basket’ thing. This is...

If someone will shut down your entire life, your entire life’s work (which has been at least somewhat profitable for them here and there), over ONE FREAKING DOLLAR?

Well, that tells you what you are to them.

Nothing. Just...

Nothing.

So. After all the fear of, ‘If I get on Amazon’s bad side...’ (often even worrying about targeted attacks from sharks causing it, which I have read about) ‘it will destroy everything I’ve worked for’...?

The fact is: Amazon is where readers are.

I’ve barely made any money yet wide. And I always ran back to KU like a scared little child going out onto the different playground and realizing the only kids getting by there were the big ones.

Never again.

I may not be able to expect a company to hold li’l ol’ me in high regard, but I can expect ANYONE to have more common freaking DECENCY than THIS.

I just wish they’d have given me a legitimate chance to fix it, and if I’d have known a dollar could’ve put my account in any sort of jeopardy, I’d have done it in a heartbeat.

But this was illuminating. And while I’ve held ‘that basket’ in higher esteem than I’d imagine some people would think is okay (and I did so due to their higher royalty rates for ebooks and good support that made me feel my work was being cared for)... I finally understand the proper order of things.

I also understand that being open and honest about this could worsen things. But I hope, maybe, that it will help clarify some things for other authors, especially if you’ve been living under a similar sort of fear.

This is my experience.

Amazon just stopped my world and put a decade and a half of work at risk. Over one freaking dollar. So yes. It can be over such a tiny thing. Please know that. And please put out some good energy for me that things will be okay, if you don’t mind. I really need it right now. Not just for this, but a family situation.

I’m scared, and I’m sad, and this should be a time of rejoicing about this beautiful and amazing upcoming thing.

I just hope they write me back soon. More than that, I hope I get one of the countless good-to-amazing KDP Support agents, who will actually FIX IT. (Some of them legitimately are amazing.)

And to anyone who I didn’t believe when saying ‘it was nothing’... Well. I’m sure it was something. It was something for me. But I see now that it can literally be so tiny a ‘something’ that a corporation wouldn’t even consider it a drop of rain off a duck’s back. Getting rid of my books, terminating my account? They would certainly lose more than a dollar from me. So. It makes sense, right? I mean, ACX (which is a different thing but still the same thing), I only make 20% of my audiobook royalties, with royalty split. They make SIXTY PERCENT of every one of my audiobooks. They make more than I do there. Certainly more than a dollar.

I have sat here for years watching pennies of page reads accumulate into a dollar. Every single one of those that I’ve ever earned from a book is a heavier weight at this point of my life than I know how to explain. I have BROKEN myself holding onto this dream, and I have just witnessed and experienced how easy to eliminate and how SMALL that is to a corporation that I’ve entrusted my work, words, and financial everything with.

I am nothing to them.

I might not have heard back from a person in a good while at this point. But I’ve heard them loud and clear.

I’m nothing.

So. If you’re wondering where we stand? Just be aware. We’re literally not worth a dollar to them.

I’m sorry to post something so negative, but sometimes the truth isn’t easy. And sometimes, it’s not very nice. I have the right to say what is going on and how I’m being treated. And I have kept my mouth shut WAY too much with work things, trying to be professional. I just can’t with this. It’s just not right.

I opened up a shop today. I only have a couple of my books up and am going to add more I hope every day until the job is done. But it helped me feel better, knowing my books are still mine, even when it feels like something or someone is holding them above your head.

And I feel better having the KU/wide debate finally settled inside me. No more turmoil and confusion about it. I’m freaking DONE. I don’t care how much money I’d miss out on or how freaking broke I am. Nothing is worth this.

We all deserve better. That’s how I truly and honestly feel. I have the right to feel that way. And I have the right to admit to it. We deserve better.

SHOP: https://shop.cmillerauthor.com

*Sorry if there are any typos in this. I'm exhausted. I mentally and emotionally can't handle editing it seventy times to find them all.

UPDATES:

1/25: I heard back from the email I attached of me begging. (I believe a different agent picked it up than the one I emailed, which isn’t unusual.) They would not do anything, because it had already been assigned to someone else.

I asked if they could at least tell me if my account would move from suspended to terminated while I waited on the other agent.

They wouldn’t even answer that, and honestly, I have never felt so put off and uncared for by KDP Support.

1/27: I heard back from the agent assigned to it. It was a literal copy and paste of their initial email (which had been sent when I hadn’t known what was going on and they said they needed time to look into it). Not one acknowledgement of anything I’d said about the situation. No answer to a single question. I’m not joking, it was a literal copy and paste from the first email. And THIS is who is assigned to it.

I have always seen people remarking about KDP Support bots. I have never ONCE questioned whether I was dealing with a living person. Until now. I feel like I’m stuck in a bot loop while I wait for something that a computer can’t figure out. And I could be wrong. But that’s what it feels like. All the while, my account is hanging suspended above my head and hands.

1/27: I emailed Jeff Bezos (or his support team) to explain the situation and am waiting to hear back.

At this juncture, this post is unpublished from where I posted it initially. I really, very much, don’t like saying anything that isn’t nice even if it’s true. And I don’t like having to seem like a jacka** to stick up for myself. But if I can’t get any help, I honestly don’t know what else to do but repost it and be open and honest. Even honest about the fact that, yes, I screwed up a tiny screw-up. It might sound ridiculous, but I am actually proud of the fact that I didn’t freak out about it, because I’ve spent so much of my life and energy agonizing over every it’s that should’ve been its that I missed. And who would think something equivalent could stop your entire world?

I feel I need to email BookBub to let them know this is going on, in case things get worse from here in the next three days, before the Featured Deal. I am honestly so embarrassed and upset. I might give it a couple hours and hope I get a fast response from the ‘jeff’ email. Hopefully, I’m writing this up for nothing and no one else will ever see it. But some part of me really does feel I should post this, even as a cautionary tale — both about KDP and that tiny mistake that someone else might think isn’t a big deal. I think people should know about the wrongs done. I just hate feeling like a loudmouth to do it. I am a quiet person and don’t like shouting. But this just isn’t right.

Everyone always says to contact Alliance of Independent Authors in this sort of situation, but I am too freaking broke to get a membership to do so. I feel, very much, alone in the ocean. And because this is taking place during ‘hell week’ with my family, I can’t ask for help (if I would even force myself to do so). The way I feel is that I shouldn’t have to. And maybe that’s wrong. I know we all need help sometimes. But this just, as a whole, is not right.

I guess alone in the ocean isn’t right. I have my family here. We’re all just waiting to get through this figurative storm together, with our own things.

(Later) I did email BookBub to let them know.

1/28: I heard back from the agent assigned to it. Only... it WASN'T the agent assigned to it. Maybe it's someone from 'Technical', where it got upgraded for them to look at? No idea. But it's in that thread. They said legitimately the exact same thing as the other person--five days to check out what's going on. It at least wasn't a copy-and-paste situation like the two previous emails.

I have not heard back from the 'jeff' email.

I was going to just leave the newest email and wait and see if this new person could get it solved without me pestering them, but at the end of the day (on 1/28), I sent a response asking them to please unlock my account to where I could at least TRY to take care of this on my end. I feel like, even if I got in a situation where trying to change the billing information to the same billing information won't work as before, I could at that juncture (if it were unlocked for me) get on a chat with support instead of being confined to this one email thread, where I could then ask that person to re-charge it to that billing info. It was all I could think of. Ideally, they could just get this fixed by THEM re-charging it, like I asked them to do a week ago. *shrug* *sigh*

This seems like SUCH an easy problem to fix. CHARGE THE CHARGE, done. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. I'm still wondering if I'm in a bot loop, but I'm hoping so much that I'm not.

I did hear back from BookBub, and the lady was both straightforward and extremely kind. After the week I've had (both with this and the family situation occurring alongside it), I honestly can't express how NICE it was to have someone handle that the way it was handled.

1/29: Nothing of note today. Still waiting. Still suspended.

I took down all mentions of this situation outside where I've talked about it on my website. Every time I log onto social media, I just feel... it's not where I should be. But there was something so nice about being out in the open talking freely about this, not worrying it would lead to pain and suffering for me or something. Or more trouble. It was nice. BUT. Still not for me. I prefer my quiet and my peace. Maybe someday that won't feel so lonely. I just have to be me, and I accept that social media is not for me. I do at times feel the weight of isolation is in ways crushing, especially when something bad is going on. I have to believe the weight will be gone soon. Or not so heavy on me.

Tomorrow is the BookBub Featured Deal for Reave. If anyone sees this before then... Please be hoping with me that everything will be okay tomorrow, that it will be able to run. I'm so scared, and I'm so tired. But still hopeful. 

'Able to run' is more fitting a wording than anyone knows. I hope it's able to run, and I hope they're able to run. And I hope, honestly, that I am able to finally run. Not being able to has been killing me.

Wish me and it luck tomorrow, please. And please be hoping this suspension madness is over soon. I hate it so much.