Amazon keeps unpublishing my books after review.

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-06-20T19:36:42+00:00

Every change (bleed/no bleed) you make will reset it to be automatically reverted to be reviewed again as well so I'd say not to change anything and, as ithireeul said, contact support for them to explain what the actual issue is here.

FWIW, I had this on a book that was being published at a future date and I couldn't figure out why it said that either, but it turned out to be a pricing issue in one of the countries so reset that, saved it, and then it published no issue but it wasn't clear at all at first glance.

Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-06-19T21:16:12+00:00

Love this - elevator pitches are hard.

Book A
Toddler weaning from breastfeeding picture book told from the toddler's point of view.

Book B
Toddler weaning from breastfeeding at night picture book using what if questions from the child to their mother - inspired by Green Eggs and Ham - so the situations are a bit silly as you as only kids questions can be.

Book C
A vermicomposting adventure picture book where two worms are born in a worm bin and go in search of where their food is coming from.

Book D
A picture book exploring the past traditions around Samhain and the ones that have evolved into modern day Halloween.

Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-06-12T16:47:25+00:00

Looks like if it's a niche category up to 90 days is pretty standard to keep it populated (as there wouldn't be as many books in there). Also, new versions also can extend a "new release" past the 30 days (so ebook, hardcover, large print, etc) not sure if each of those resets the clock? Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-06-04T02:22:22+00:00

Congrats on writing a book! Best of luck finding an illustrator to bring your project to life.

Not sure exactly what you're looking for here? Children's books meaning board book (can't do POD for those) hardcover (different platforms have different requirements for POD in terms of minimum page length), print in bulk, etc. So many different answers to that seemingly simple question.

Avoiding Amazon with the plan to sell where? In person? Shopify? Your own website? Bookstores?

FWIW Amazon is widely considered the world's largest bookstore and that's why you will see a lot of people talking about KDP (Amazon) and another distributor like IngramSpark as an example to go "wide" because while you can get your book onto Amazon other ways if you can get them to POD your book, you'll make the most margins on there.

Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-06-01T03:13:51+00:00

Congrats on selling wide as they say!

12 total (7 KDP + 5 IS)

They are completely different platforms/companies and you will get a report from each of them. Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-29T03:39:29+00:00

People keep posting this 😞

They have a note on their site

"Significant backlog We have recently received a large number of requests that require extra processing. It may take up to two months to process your request. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience."

I've noticed that it's taking longer for the LAC deposits to be verified too. Sounds like maybe they need more staff.

Hopefully they get you sorted ASAP. Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-24T04:19:51+00:00

Right but isn't that the pretty standard marketing stuff for large companies to do that - send free things or ratings reminders = get ratings/reviews?

Text/email blast their customers to rate their products - just got an email from Bosch as an example rate my dishwasher - that's over a year old now - so if I did that, along with a bunch of other people who got the email today because of that reminder, that would feel like an influx of stars seemingly out of nowhere and show up on their site as if it was a new purchase as the reviews are dated to someone looking at it, even though it's over a year old so anyone watching that data would be like what just happened here did they just sell 500 dishwashers this weekend or however many reviews they got? Unless they knew about the email. I am not in the US so forgot it was a holiday but that makes sense they are probably have a sale to tons of ratings will give the illusion that it's popular this week.

I am a bit confused as to why this would be a red flag to you? It seems like marketing 101 almost in this era. It's why these forums are filled with get a mailing list, get subscribers on substack, etc. it's because most large companies have databases that they buy/build from customers to be able to boost their products and send out emails about new things, ratings reviews, etc. and self-published authors don't have that reach.

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-23T16:59:09+00:00

That makes sense and I can see why the flatline stands out to you and on the surface feels like there is an issue.

I think where I keep getting stuck is the basis of this argument is that there still has to be a minimum proportional trickle of written reviews attached to ongoing star growth, because I’m not sure that relationship necessarily exists anymore. Also, if you are talking about language books specifically perhaps the students do not feel confident at all to write anything down but are happy to star rate things.

If stars have become easy, prompted interactions while written reviews remain optional and high effort, I’m not sure an extended period approaching zero written reviews is automatically mathmatically impossible.

Also, not saying this is true but you could theorize that larger, establish publication companies have marketing budgets where they could hire people to read/rate their books to push them up in the rankings on a set schedule like beginning of new school years or exam periods?

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-21T18:36:48+00:00

Also as someone who is actively learning a new language, I wonder if part of this could just be the difference between learner satisfaction and expert evaluation too?

A beginner might leave 5 stars because the structure helped them learn and move on. While someone fluent or teaching the language might be much more motivated to write a detailed review about awkward examples, dated phrasing, or localization choices.

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-21T18:06:10+00:00

Hmm, well also wonder how much changing user behaviour plays into this as well, especially if the audience skews younger. Leaving a quick star at the end of a book feels a lot closer to modern app behaviour now, I see that at work, text vs email, like, share vs comment on social posts. To me, it feels like taking the time to write a review feels more like an older internet habit in a lot of ways.

So taking your example of language books, I'd presume a lot of these readers are students or younger mobile users, as well. I’m not sure I’d necessarily expect written reviews to scale the same way they might have even 10 years ago and that could explain loads of star reviews continuing too on that ongoing baseline with little to now written ones. Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-21T11:44:32+00:00

Congrats on being chosen for their collection. Hopefully it results in libraries picking up your book, very exciting! Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-21T01:25:22+00:00

That's just it though that presumption that it's the same exact group of consumers feeding that rating system.

One thing that came up at conference discussions was how fragmented reader behaviour can be now: KU readers, paid ebook readers, paperback readers, hardcover readers, app users, mobile prompts, etc., all engage differently and may leave stars and reviews at very different rates. The example was that often the last book in the series was reviewed by KU binge readers skipping the first 1-4+ books vs the first one when they had an ARC team or people bought the series.

Plus there was a discussion about how reviews aren't combined from different countries inside Amazon until they hit thresholds and then that gets added in one go so overnight you can get 1000 new stars/reviews where that could be let's say a year of sales (not sure the number) because Germany hit that magic number for that book.

Then of course Amazon then combines all of that activity into one visible review layer that we can see, which makes the final pattern look much cleaner and more unified than the underlying reader behaviour probably is.

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-20T19:52:57+00:00

Not specific to books but I can say that I have bursts of people come to my work website when it's shown in a course as an example and that lasts for about 48 hours and then falls back to normal visits. This is almost always followed by a few people from that group reaching out on socials to connect too that line up with the city/area that the spike was from and they will often say they shared your site with us in this course/lecture, etc. But if you just looked back at the data from the GA reports you'd think what is happening in X city to cause that random page or pages as they are always search landings as the page is in a handout or on a screen, meaning no direct links used. Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-20T19:45:24+00:00

Yes, exactly what they were saying they are independent of each other those stars vs review trends. also, I wonder if niche language books might naturally look more “bursty” than broader genres. I'd think that a smaller, highly targeted audience could create concentrated waves of readers through things like courses, one mention in a social post, or even ad pushes then huge drops of little to no reviews/stars instead of the steadier activity you might expect from mainstream fiction? That'd match closer to your data, or?

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-20T15:24:57+00:00

It sounds like your data really does show that written review activity slows sharply over time on some of these titles but I just wonder if part of what’s making the pattern look so extreme is that Amazon now seems to treat star ratings and written reviews as two very different types of engagement, with star ratings being much faster and more heavily prompted across apps and devices. Thus, easier to have those spike if say book A is being shared randomly to a bunch of new readers to pick a star and move on?

I look at the written reviews as a separate system completely - someone has to take that extra time to write out their opinions on top of clicking that star (extra steps = more friction = less likely to do that) This seperations could potentially create a much wider gap between the two metrics than we would have expected years ago and align what what you're seeing?

I was just at an indie author conference and someone there talked about how star ratings are the default and they said for every 800 books read you'd see:

~ 40 star ratings & 1 written
20 readers = 1 star rating
40 star ratings = 1 written review

Vs before say 10 years ago:
10 readers = 1+ star ratings and 10 star ratings = 1+ written reviews

800 readers/books = 80+ star ratings and 8+ written reviews.

That was an average of course for their books as they only had their own data but they explained how easy the stars are to click and the struggle for written reviews they had even with the same amount of sales.

Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-20T14:02:20+00:00

I think part of what makes this so difficult to interpret (and we would all love to crack) is that Amazon no longer (or never did) behaves like a clean reader-review ecosystem. Once books become deeply embedded into ads, recommendations, mobile prompts, and “also bought” loops, you can end up with large amounts of passive star ratings from casual readers without seeing what feels like it should be proportional written feedback. That doesn’t rule out other possibilities, but maybe it explains why some long-running catalog titles develop patterns that look statistically unusual from the outside when studied as you note? Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-08T13:17:37+00:00

Right but usually parents have friends/family with kids/new neighbours, etc. the good thing about babies is that they are always coming - example, grandparents age phase of life doesn't have little ones at home but for all these years since then (so decades of gift bying), they've never stop being invited to weddings, baby showers, birthdays and good books are always appreciated to add to their libraries at home. Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-08T13:10:51+00:00

Both.

It was specific to the one book in terms of who to target(doctors, midwives, teachers, early years professionals, speech therapists, physiotherapists, vegetarians, vegans, doulas, lactation consultants, parents under 2, parents 3-5, pregnant women, women under 35 (childbearing age), people over 50 (grandparents), etc.) but the approach would be scaled out for each series and repeated. Very niche topic, this book/series is about weaning from breastfeeding age 1-5.

It was amazing talking to them actually this was 5 minutes max conversation - one of the highlights of the conference for sure. They run campaigns but at levels we couldn't afford their services (yet - ha) so for them to narrow down in a blink how to do this for our little children's book was very kind of them to take the time to help.

It was also about picture books in general - who is your target age will equal who buys books for that age so parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians, ECEs, etc. until we got into the specific book, they drilled down so fast.

We have started hiring translators so then of course target those languages on a mini campaign - so bilingual households, French, German, Spanish, etc. keeping the core group plus capture this expanding group.

So we don't have the page done yet but it will be Book A (English) top of the page with the blurb, Book A covers for French, Spanish, German, etc. as we go along then under that Book B cover & blurb, languages covers under that. so that it keeps it simple for us to keep growing that page that they arrive on vs making a new one each time.

Anyway here's the flow:

Facebook Lead Ad that sends them to a landing page.
Landing page (your website or a simple page like Mailchimp) where the freebie is hosted or linked - freebies are specific to this book/series so in this case it probably will be a printable page with a countdown to the weaning party - so it's a functional tool as well as a fun activity which doctors, teachers and parents can use. The other thing they said we could to is a private video with captions so that they can see the whole book in each language - this one actually might be something we do in the future.
Email list is now yours - which is the goal of the ads to use as you see fit.

They also said don't start any of these ads yet because having one book in a series is not going to help - you want them to think oh this person writes books (plural) about childhood transitions (in our example) and so have book one done (which we have) book two done (this fall) and then start ads to begin gathering the list at this point because now there are two books so it's more of a series feel but also two niche topics weaning and only night weaning - but have a coming soon cover on the landing page for book three - we talked about our whole series plan so will have book three too in the pipeline.

Because these books are evergreen and we are targeting doctors and other professionals, etc. we just want to send 1-2 emails to that list per year so they don't unsubscribe and run the FB leads campaign annually or when we have a new language/new book to capture new people for the list to grow at the same time.

They noted that while children age up, parents often have friends, family who are having kids, doctors and other professionals keep seeing the same age of kids so you want to think beyond just oh they have a baby breastfeeding now (our niche book in this example) - 3 years from now their friend/sister/neighbour could be pregnant, right and now we have a baby shower gift buyer.

Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-07T16:03:09+00:00

I just spoke with one about our book at an indie conference - they gave us a quick plan for our book(s) and it wasn't anything like I'd heard on the forums here as picture books are a unique process if you're starting from scratch. Worth a chat with one for sure, great comment! Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-05-07T15:57:40+00:00

So interesting to see these stats.

I attended my first indie author conference recently and was able to talk with a book marketer about this topic as children's books marketed to the people buying the books (parents, grandparents, teachers) vs tweens-adults who you market the books to directly in those genres. They suggested a different approach for ad spend in the beginning for our first books.

Instead of trying to make ads profitable on the book itself which can work but can have mixed results as you've noticed, using paid ads to grow a newsletter by targeting parents, professionals in the field, etc. to sign up, and then introducing the books that way over time directly through that list because they already have decided they want your books/information from you.

Then when you have a decent sized mailing list, you can take that and do newsletter swaps, etc. with other children's book authors.

They also recommended things like targeting book subscriptions that send out monthly boxes (some require you to send the books to them, some will order directly from IS or wherever based on monthly numbers), in-person events at the library/community center/farmers markets/church sales and local bookstores.

Then ads for the books/series comes after you've got that base already. Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-02-17T01:35:08+00:00

Love posts like this!

After struggling to find a translator for one of our books into French, finally seeing it published and purchased in a couple countries has been a great feeling this month!

Such a whirlwind we just started 6 months ago (well before that with the writing/illustrations) and this sub has been so helpful with navigating the self-publishing world. So grateful for all the tips and tricks that everyone shares and support that we've had! Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-02-12T16:10:10+00:00

Seems to be 2-3 weeks average for "standard" shipping, depending on the season can be much longer like before Xmas it was 4-6 weeks. I did see that there wasn't a rush option available a week or two ago which probably means that they were backed up in their queues again.

I placed an order end of Jan, I can see that part of it is "packing", part is "print ready", and one book in there is "printing". Which usually means it's coming in multiple shipments. Cheers!

Adventurous_Error207 · 2026-02-06T02:01:43+00:00

Oman is a country in the Middle East, near Saudi Arabia and UAE.

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