[Hitch]

Originally Posted by dgatwood

At this point, I think we need to send this thread and the embedded fonts thread to jeff@amazon.com. KDP's publishing workflow causing content breakage has been an ongoing problem for three years now. It is well past time to light a fire under someone's you-know-what.

And..you think that might actually do it? Listen, I'm all "up with Amazon." I am. I wouldn't have the biz that I do, without them, and I damn sure know it. BUT, there are those things that they'll change; those things that they'll do...and those that they won't. There are wee things--honestly, I wouldn't have thought that they'd have import to ANYONE--that I've been trying to sniff out for at least two years, and that's not going anywhere, so far. I'm not "in like Flynn" with those guys, but I do have names, emails AND real-live phone numbers, in Seattle, to gab with when the ubiquitous hits the fan...but with this type of thing (glitches that aren't explicable or expectable, that happen in the dark, with no ability to test, to prevent...to even know remotely that it will happen), I can't get much forrader than I am now.

IME, they are highly responsive to author/publisher complaints (this may be your bailiwick, DAG!), and not to working slobs like me. I'm an afterthought, if you think about it...I'm no more important than the cover designer. Hell, less. I don't make them MONEY. Publishers like you, do. I know that every author client of mine, that has reached out to them for this, or that, or the next thing, seems to get fixed damn skippy. Me? To quote The Wire, "Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiittttttttt." Of course, it's also true that by the time I email them, whatever it is is some big-ass issue, that isn't easy to fix (or, hell, we'd have fixed it), OR, we've developed a workaround (hello, fonts!). So...they likely don't have the same impetus to help me...more of a "formatter, heal thyself" mindset, I suspect.

Spoiler:

n.b.: I do think that somewhere in the heap, there's also a mindset that's a bit like, "why can't you be a good girl, and go make simple books with Beginner Blue headings and no fonts, like everyone else?" in there. I can't quite put my finger on it, but every once in a while, I get a whiff of that. As in, "well, if you wouldn't keep doing X, that wouldn't keep happening to you."

Does anyone know if the might Goog sees under the spoilers? Anyone?

As a publisher, when I deliver content, I expect my customers to get precisely what I delivered to the content distributor. If Amazon's publishing workflow makes further changes (beyond trivial stuff like inserting a review page at the end or changing the start-reading marker), then our entire QA process becomes a waste of time and effort.

Yup. Funnily enough, that's how OUR publisher clients feel, too. You unreasonable bastards!

No other content distributor makes radical, content-altering changes to content during their ingest. That's just not acceptable in a delivery partner.

Well...arguably, Kobo does/can/has. But that's a different conversation.

I could email him, sure, but I genuinely don't expect anything other than, MAYBE, a form letter in return. Maybe we should have a contest and a poll: we all send it, and see WHO gets the return email, if anyone? Or who waits the longest, or...? (Lemonade from lemons, boys and girls).

That's my take.


Hitch