Amazon begins removing poor quality books from distribution

Amazon have announced that they will now be issuing warnings to readers before they buy books that may have content or formatting errors, and in severe cases the book will be pulled from distribution entirely until the problems are fixed.

This can pose a problem to a lot of self-published authors who have produced their books themselves.

Starting today, tens of thousands of books will be issued quality warnings, with a large portion of those pulled from the site, removing them from sale entirely.

Content published through Kindle Direct Publishing is held to the high standards customers have come to expect from Amazon. If readers tell us about a problem they’ve found in your book, we will make sure you know about it and point you in the right direction to get the problem fixed.

Readers will be able to identify mistakes through their Kindle, including typos, formatting issues, and image problems, as well as being able to report other mistakes they might come across.

Once a report is made, the publisher, or self-publisher, is automatically notified and given an opportunity to fix the file. Once the changes are submitted, the new version is automatically updated.

There are currently two stages to the warning system. If a book only contains a few simple typos or spelling mistakes, but is still legible, a warning message will be displayed on the book’s Amazon page, making potential readers aware.

If the book has bad formatting issues, making it essentially unreadable, Amazon will remove the book from sale.

Some errors cause a book to be incomplete or unusable. We refer to these as Critical Issues. Because Critical Issues significantly impact the reading experience, any Critical Issue will result in the book being removed from sale until the correction is made.

How to ensure your book doesn’t get removed from Amazon

Amazon have put together a handy Guide to Kindle Content Quality, describing potential errors that self-publishers could come across, and how to identify them.

Issues that would draw a warning include:

• Typos
• Unsupported characters
• Front cover quality
• Image quality
• Formatting
• Broken hyperlinks
• Missing content
  

Many self-publishers decide to create the cover and format their books themselves, but due to lack of experience this can create more problems than it solves, causing their books to be removed from Amazon.

Here at Jelzoo, we specialise in making sure your book is perfect, including all design and formatting, so we’re offering discounts to anyone who has received a warning, or had their book removed.

We’re also offering eBook Healthchecks for those worried that their book might have issues.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to get in contact.

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