Tag: Amazon

Return of the ‘Rags and Muffin’ Hardcover

I earlier reported that an Amazon order of my novel Rags and Muffin resulted in a delivery of the volume printed by IngramSpark. I had no explanation for this and still don’t.

I needed some additional copies recently and ordered them, again from Amazon. What I got this time resembled the test printing I originally got from Amazon, which in my opinion is superior to the IngramSpark version.

I do not know why I got IngramSpark books before. I do not know what will arrive in the mail if you order a hardcover.

However, the difference between the two versions might not be noticeable to most readers. The Amazon version appears to have sturdier binding, though whether it actually holds up better over time or whether that’s merely a cosmetic difference, I can’t say. The image on its cover is also clearer, but only slightly.

Rags and Muffin back cover.

I think this is a good-looking book. Amazon only recently began offering hardcovers through Kindle Direct Printing, but the product they produce is of high quality. The printing is clear, the paper is bright but not too bright, the cover is good, and the book overall is solid, with a lot of heft.

It happens that Vellum, which I use for formatting, updated right before this book went live on Amazon, so I was able to give the internal formatting some slight improvements over what I originally planned to release. Because the cover was already made, I couldn’t change the page count, so it was too late to use some of Vellum’s newer, more creative layout options. But you nonetheless get a fine-looking interior with large, clear type.

Rags and Muffin interior.

Vellum is expensive, but it’s one purchase I definitely don’t regret: I can format my books myself without hiring a pro, which means I can instantly correct any lingering typos if I become aware of them. This novel did (yet again) get an additional proofread recently from a generous reviewer, and all he found was a missing quotation mark—which has now been added where it belongs. I can’t claim it’s perfect, but it is a very clean manuscript, unusually so for either indie or tradpub.

The only downside to the hardback is that Amazon forces a starting price that’s decidedly high for an indie book. Naturally, I make most of my sales in eBooks, so I’m debating whether continuing to offer hardcovers for my future titles is worth the expense.

The Perils of the Amazon

Recently, Amazon ripped me off yet also didn’t. I have for many years had an Amazon Associates account, which is a method of getting a small amount of money from links and advertisements. Since I’ve run irregular review blogs for decades now, I’ve long had such an account. I haven’t made a profit from it—you need a crazy amount of traffic and click-throughs to make a profit—but it defrays the cost of my hobby a bit.

I had all but forgotten about my account, though I still habitually made links through it, simply because, until recently, I stopped getting any significant click-throughs after I switched from my old blog to this one. Just recently, after publishing my books, my click-throughs have begun generating what I consider a significant amount of money.

A few weeks ago, I got a notice from Amazon that, with no possibility of appeal, they were closing my account and handing my earnings over to the government. The notice seemed so unlikely that I contacted a representative to be sure I wasn’t getting hoaxed. It turns out it was genuine and also my own damn fault: I had neglected to update my contact and tax information for long enough that I was considered out of contact, and my earnings were therefore forfeit.

And that’s why you should keep track of that stuff.

I’m writing this in part because I opened a new associates account; as an indie author, it would be dumb not to have one as it means, at least occasionally, I can eke out slightly more royalties. Also, I need a few clicks to validate the new account, so in this post I am strongly encouraging you to buy Jake and the Dynamo. You’ll like it. It’s funny. That was an affiliate link, by the way.

I also, in the midst of this, accidentally discovered a feature I didn’t know existed. It appears that if I drop an affiliate link into the HTML editor with no markup around it, WordPress will automatically create that interactive box you see at the top of the post. That’s pretty neat, so I’m going to use that from now on.

On the Possibility of Hardcovers

Amazon has just added the ability to publish hardcovers through its print-on-demand service. I’ve seen other indie authors talking about this in hushed whispers, but the option just appeared on my KDP account today.

To amuse myself, I tried setting up a hardcover version of Jake and the Dynamo. The results were not unexpected. Although the interior dimensions of my manuscript are fine, the dimensions of the extant cover image are way off, as you can see from the image at the top of this post. Thanks to Amazon’s insistence that a custom cover be uploaded as a single file, this is no easy fix.

I’ve idly dreamed before of a hardcover of Jake and the Dynamo with full-color interior illustrations, but there are three things that make that difficult. The first, of course, is the need to redo the cover with a considerably larger image. I don’t know exactly what that would mean for the artists who made my cover, but I know it would mean a lot of money out of my pocket. The second thing, which is a much bigger nuisance, is that the software I’m using for the interior, Vellum, is unaware that Amazon offers full-color printing, so it automatically renders my interior illustrations in black and white. I will not be surprised if a future update fixes that problem, but that update hasn’t come yet.

The third problem, of course, is that the book would be ridiculously expensive. The paperback versions of both novels in this series already cost considerably more than I would like, probably because of the combination of length and illustrations. Judging from my sales, the novels are much more popular in Kindle and Kindle Unlimited versions than in print. I’m not sure what a full-color version would have to cost, but it would likely be upwards of twenty bucks.

However, since I now know this option is available, a hardcover version of Rags and Muffin may be a real possibility since it has no interior illustrations aside from the black-and-white chapter headings.

Preparing to Publish

I am currently wrestling with the Amazon’s esoteric system in an effort to get Jake and the Dynamo published in the new edition. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the preview and realized that I and the artists had, in fact, got the dimensions correct. There is just the slightest error here, easy to repair—and props to you if you can spot it.

Looking at the interior, it appears also that Vellum, the software I’m using, behaves as advertised: I haven’t been through the whole thing, but so far, it appears that the formatting is correct with now weird artifacts or margins. I believe this new version will be even more attractive and readable than the original paperback publication, which I was already quite pleased with.

The Importance of Owning Physical Media: Amazon Censors Manga

Amazon has grown increasingly censorious in recent days. The online sales giant became huge by offering anything and everything, but over the past few years, it has, like the other tech giants, begun banning content.

Once a corporation gets a taste for censorship, it will steadily grow more censorious: As I previously discussed, Amazon in 2020 began banning light novels, apparently at random. Then, of course, they coordinated with Twitter, Google, and Apple to delete the microblogging platform Parler from the internet. More recently still, they banned Ryan Anderson’s book, When Harry Became Sally, because it criticized the new religion.

In recent days, I have taken to downloading manga on my Kindle because it’s convenient and cheaper than print. I have a few series I’ve followed that way. Recently, as I was looking over my digital copies of the harem manga We Never Learn, I noticed volume 3 was missing from my collection even though I had purchased and read it. So I checked the Amazon store; it is gone from Amazon entirely, both in print and digitally.

I contacted Amazon, and the tech to whom I spoke eventually told me the book was no longer available, and then he told me this gem:

Screenshot of chat conversation

I slightly regret my emotional incontinence, which I directed at a mere underpaid staffer who is not privy to the reason my property had been taken from me. He did not know why Amazon had deleted a book from my personal library without notice or explanation.

Screenshot of chat conversation

He told me that the availability of the book was up to the “author or content owner,” sidestepping the uncomfortable fact that it is also up to Amazon itself—which has considerably more power—and also sidestepping the fact that Amazon had not merely stopped selling the book but destroyed my copy.

The book, by the way, is still available on Barnes & Noble as of this writing, which indicates that this is an act of censorship on Amazon’s part. As with the previously censored light novels, we will probably never know the reason for sure, but it likely has to do with someone getting offended by the swimsuit on the cover.

We Never Learn Volume 3

This is not the first time Amazon has destroyed customers’ property. Back when the Kindle was new, Amazon revealed that it has the power to delete digital books from our possession without explanation: It famously deleted copies of 1984 right off people’s devices.

The guy I talked to didn’t know why my book had disappeared, nor is there any reason he should. The point of all this, however, is that, when you buy digital, you don’t assume the full control you have when you buy analog, especially in an age of streaming and constant internet connections, an age when our overlords want us to “own nothing and be happy.”

Had I spent the extra money for print copies of this manga, I would still have the whole series without gaps in it; Amazon can delete stuff off my device but can’t break into my house and raid my shelves—yet.

Given how censorious Amazon is becoming, buying print books is increasingly important. This little example of censorship involves a trivial work; its disappearance annoys me, but I won’t shed tears over it. There are, however, much more important and substantial books that will eventually be in our overlords’ crosshairs, and the day will come suddenly when, as with those six Dr. Seuss books, you simply won’t be able to get them at all, anywhere.

Amazon Disappears Light Novels and Manga

Some time back, I mentioned that Amazon had developed a draconian new policy for its advertisements, forbidding ads for any books that feature firing guns or guns held by children on the cover. At the time, I said this was clearly an attempt to go after indie creators, and that Amazon would never enforce such a policy against, say, Japanese manga.

I was wrong.

In fact, it’s worse than that: Amazon isn’t just removing ads but removing books. Whole light-novel and manga series have been deleted from the platform silently and without explanation.

Several outlets have now reported on this, including Crunchyroll, Anime News Network, AniTAY, and Comicbook.com. Several translator-publishers have likewise announced the removal of their books.

This is apparently not limited to the U.S. Amazon but affects all Amazon portals outside Japan. Some of the publishers affected are fairly big players, too, including Yen Press and Darkhorse.

As Crunchyroll reports, publishers have tried to get in contact with Amazon to get the reasons for delisting, and Amazon has been less than forthcoming:

Pinansky said that despite multiple attempts over the last few months to get in contact with anyone on a review team at Kindle through email, they rang the support phone line and requested support tickets, doing so 10 or 12 times. “Phone support has no power to override or obtain any further information from Kindle Content Review.” Though all J-Novel Club got in response from Amazon after multiple nine-day waits are a generic email …

Because Amazon is not being transparent, we are left to speculate. The most likely reason is that Amazon is going after lolicon, and while such a purge would include a few of the titles that have been removed, some other, considerably tamer books are being removed as well. Someone in my mentions (no doubt with some exaggeration) said they were removing most anything that has a cute girl on the cover.

Most of what’s being purged, being light novels, is isekai, and while I personally dislike isekai, this censorship is still troubling: If they can throw these off the platform, they can start removing content for considerably more tenuous reasons.

“They came for the lolicons, and I did not speak out because I was not a child molestor,” and so forth.

Amazon Censors ‘Rag & Muffin’

I’m just about finished with the current round of edits on Rag & Muffin. I’m currently on a long weekend from work, during which I’m entertaining my smol Asian gf. But I’m grabbing a few minutes here and there to put the polish on my manuscript.

Now about this post’s sensationalized headline: Amazon has come out with new “rules” that they will not allow book covers in which guns are firing, pointed at the viewer, or held by a minor.

That pretty much makes any conceivable cover art for Rag & Muffin impossible, since the book’s concept can’t be conveyed visually without an image of a minor holding guns. This is Minors Holding Guns: The Book.

And you can bet that Amazon will not be applying this rule to any big publishers. They won’t be banning manga. In fact, images of minors holding or firing guns are still easy to find on the platform:

Art from Gunslinger Girl depicting a young girl firing a submachine gun.
Still on Amazon.

This is obviously an excuse to crack down on indies and is likely a precursor to more aggressive censorship.

It’s worth testing how consistently Amazon can apply this rule, so I’d like to attempt to upload Rag & Muffin with relevant cover art. If the book gets rejected, my plan is to suggest to my publisher that we produce an image that says “BANNED BY AMAZON” in big letters, and put right in the book’s description that the content of the novel is too hot for Amazon to handle. Anyone who buys the book, either in print or digitally, will of course get the actual cover art.

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Proofing
Due:4 years ago
80%

Rawle Nyanzi Releases ‘Shining Tomorrow’

I have sometimes referred to the work of Rawle Nyanzi, a blogger and indie author whose name I frequently misspell. He and I have often traded thoughts on magical girls and other matters related to Japanese pop culture. So, today, I’m here to plug his work.

He has recently released the first volume of Shining Tomorrow. I believe Nyanzi has previously described this as a magical girl project.

Here is its blurb:

FROM YOUNG ELEGANT LADY … TO MASKED FURY!

Irma wishes to be the perfect girl: chaste, feminine, and generous. But when a giant monster stomps through her hometown, her plans crumbled right along with the stores and apartments.

In the chaos of acrid smoke and panicked civilians, the private military company Shadow Heart snatched her friend out of the crowd and took her captive.

Now Irma must pilot the Grand Valkyur, a mechanical titan of steel more powerful than any weapon made by human hands. With a brilliant sword that could cut any matter and gleaming armor that could withstand any weapon, the Valkyur challenges all who dare to fight it.

But piloting the Valkyur means using violence — and to Irma, violence is men’s work.How can she rescue her friend without betraying the feminine elegance she prides herself on?

The Problem with Streaming

Whither Big Tech?

For many reading this, the issue of problems with streaming video is likely an old subject, but it is one that has recently come home to me, so I’d like to talk about it—with the caveat that I’m no expert in internet technology. There is a real benefit to owning physical copies of content, and that benefit has become increasingly clear to me in recent days.

A few years ago, out of nowhere, the “long lost” English dub of the famous 1982 magical girl series  suddenly appeared without fanfare and without explanation on Amazon. The show had, when translated, been repackaged as a series of “movies,” each consisting of four episodes. Because there were a lot of episodes, there were a lot of movies, and Amazon had foolishly priced them like movies instead of like a TV series, so watching the entirety of the translated Minky Momo could cost a few hundred dollars. I did not watch the entire series, simply because it was ridiculously expensive, but I did watch a fair amount of it, and I had to fork over a lot of cash to do so.

The ability to purchase Minky Momo disappeared as suddenly and soundlessly as it came. The titles are still up on Amazon’s site, but now have the message, “Our agreements with the content provider don’t allow purchases of this title at this time.”

More recently, the same thing happened to . Previously, this series was available at no extra charge with an Amazon Prime membership. Now, it is no longer available. I feel lucky that I saw it before it disappeared. I don’t usually manage to hit the windows of availability like that. It still annoys me, though, since I went to all the trouble of writing reviews, and now the material I reviewed isn’t legally available. A quick search didn’t turn up any news items explaining the end of the show’s availability.

Screenshot showing Lyrical Nanoha unavailable on Amazon Video

To Amazon’s credit, the situation is not as dire as I originally supposed. Nanoha, which was previously free with a Prime membership, is no longer accessible at all, but I can still watch the Minky Momo videos I personally purchased; I’m just unable to purchase new ones, and so is everyone else.

In a sense, I have no cause for complaint, because I can still get access to everything I have directly paid for. But if Amazon goes under (unlikely at the moment, but possible in the future), stops offering streaming, or decides it can no longer host Minky Momo at all, then there it goes, gone from my collection, and there is nothing I can do about it.

It’s for this reason I’ve had a preference for iTunes, even though it has its own issues. When I buy videos from iTunes, I can download the file and keep it myself. Some years ago, I was watching My Little Pony; after a silly controversy, one of the episodes was taken down, censored, and uploaded again, but by the time that happened, I already had the original version of the episode, so I was able to keep it, and neither iTunes nor Hasbro could do anything about it. However, if Amazon or another streaming service decided for any reason to censor content, there would be nothing anyone could do to about it, because the content is not on our own devices.

The very concept of content streaming implies a lot of trust, and big tech companies have adequately demonstrated in recent days that they do not deserve to be trusted. The move toward streaming and data “in the cloud” looks like the setup for a high-tech version of  in which content, even of classical works, can be easily molded and censored to meet the demands of the Party. For the moment, that still sounds like a paranoid fantasy, but in another ten years, it won’t.

And it is not as if there is no precedent. Years ago, I discovered that a middle school English textbook I used had silently deleted all references to smoking from a supposedly complete copy of , a shameless and inexcusable act of censorship. Recently, Sony has gotten into gamer news for censoring eroge games out of Japan; I admit I want those games censored or not published at all, but I also admit that if Sony can censor those, it can censor other things. Then we have Funimation, which has been caught at least twice inserting hamfisted political commentary into English dubs. We have Crunchyroll accused of something similar, though the accusations in that case are more dubious. Even if Crunchyroll is (so far) more professional in its handling of translations, its recent decisions and the antics of its staff inspire that same lack of trust.

Amazon’s catalog of available anime—or at least the anime I’m personally interested in—appears to be shrinking rather than expanding. At present, my plan is to finish up  (still available though the other Nanoha titles are not) and then drop the service like a hot rock. For a little while, Amazon was looking to be a serious contender in the realm of anime streaming with Amazon Strike, but that died quickly. Apparently, anime streaming is the one type of business Amazon can’t completely take over.

Perhaps the problem is that they formerly hosted Minky Momo. According to Japanese legend, Minky Momo is a harbinger of disaster, so maybe she doomed Amazon Strike from the beginning.

‘Jake and the Dynamo’ Now on Sale!

Get yours while supplies last.

Are you interested in a combination of uproarious humor and fast, bloody action featuring a bewildered teenage boy and a whole truckload of goofball girls? If you are, now’s the time to get you some, because the eBook version of Jake and the Dynamo: The Wattage of Justice is now on sale at Amazon for 99 cents.

Get it here.