Kindle Quality Notice

I received a Kindle Quality Notice from #ebook-quality at Amazon the other day. Boy, was I surprised. It was for my book, The Trafficking Consortium. Published three years ago, it is one of my best sellers. From the feedback I’ve received over the years, people love the story, even if they cringe at the plotline. No one, and I mean no one, said anything about what Amazon just said.

They documented twenty deficiencies in the book. After three years and hundreds of sales, the notice surprised me. They told me that the book was at risk of being pulled.

Looking into the Kindle Quality Notice

Curiosity got the better of me, and I immediately looked into the Kindle Quality Notice. Fortunately, Amazon identified the exact passages they were questioning and wanted to know if I would fix them.

It took me all of two minutes to recognize that all twenty defects were real, and I needed to fix them. No, correction. I wanted to fix them.

I know I wrote this book less than a year after I suffered my concussion, but I expected my editor to find and adjust them. I take pride in my work and always try to put out a best effort in everything I do. I don’t expect perfection, but come on, these errors were awful.

Fixing the defects

Opening my last draft of the novel, the one I submitted to Amazon three years ago, I searched for the first string they identified. Sure enough, I agreed with the assessment. It was bad. I fixed it.

Then I searched for the next string, and then the next, and so on. I agreed with all of them. They were terrible.

The more I studied the suggestions, I realized that one of my readers documented them, anonymously. I suspect this person was a professional proofreader. Great! I thought. I’m making headway, and just perhaps, I’ll make it big as a world-renowned novelist. I went about fixing them.

Decision time

The more I looked at the defects, the more I noticed others in nearby paragraphs. I fixed those too. Soon, though, I discovered there were more. The more I looked, the more I found.

I decided to edit the entire book all over. This time, I’ll do it myself along with the editor tools I’ve purchased over the last few years, and the knowledge and experience of years of practice.

I discovered it will be a daunting task. After dozens of man-hours and three days, I’ve found, on average, two hundred deficiencies per chapter. That’s right, per chapter. Oh my, this is going to take a while. Damn. 

Yet, it will be a better product. If only #Amazon will wait long enough to get the editing done. Amazon, can I count on you? I’m on it.