Amazon messing with my book, it is confirmed.

I have to admit, that is quite weird... it almost hurts my eyes...

Yeah the description is, well, disjointed is one word for it.

How do you mean you aren't allowed to edit it? Have you gotten any complaints about the book itself?

I'm on IE9 and it looks strange to me too, the text seems to be in narrow channels and running on to the next line. 

This almost poem style layout used to happen to a poster on a forum I used to use, I think he used a Mac.  Not sure if that is the problem?

Seeing a lot of bold text and carriage
returns
where they should not
be.

Oh that's very strange. I've never seen anything like it.

I hope it gets fixed soon.

Vicki

Its butchered.  If you just uploaded it, it may just take a while before you can edit the page from your bookshelf.  I uploaded my first book to Amazon and Barnes & Noble yesterday.  Using the same text, the B&N description looks fine like I wanted it, but the amazon page is goofy with missing line breaks and spaces.  It is still listed as publishing so I cannot get in there and fix it yet.

No it isn't new, I haven't touched it. It has literally been butchered.
I can't edit the description for the UK for some reason. If I edit that via kdp it is just the US that changes, author central isn't allowing me to change it either. Email winging its way to Amazon. 

How did you actually get the blurb into the Amazon box? Type it directly? Copy paste from somewhere else?

The reason I ask is because these programs don't act arbitrarily. They can sure make a hash of things, but they screw things up by faithfully following their code. If Amazon updated their coding, what once worked fine can suddenly fall apart.

When I initially pasted my blurb, it looked like your UK blurb except for the bold. I forget exactly where the original came from, probably Word. So I wiped it out in DTP and then just typed the blurb into the DTP box. That fixed it. I have no idea what happened.

Abigail--

are you saying it looked fine before, and you didn't change anything, and now it looks like that?  It looks like there are hard returns at the ends of some of the lines.  And there is some formatting code in there making the text boldface....

Betsy

It takes more time for any changes you make in KDP to appear in the UK and DE stores.

I wouldn't assume Amazon is messing with your book. It could be a bug or some other issue. Generally, Amazon contacts you if they something needs to be changed.

I would change the description and wait a couple of days for the sites to update. During that time, I would contact kdp support and check the contents of the book along with my account info.

Maybe there's some glitch on the UK site?

You aren't the only one getting messed with.

All 3 of my stories have been showing "Pricing Information Is Not Available" messages on both Amazon UK & DE for at least a few days. (I only noticed it a few days ago-but I also haven't sold any copies at either of them this month.) Some are set for Amazon to set the pricing based on US, some have specific prices I gave them that show up on my end when I go to edit my record.

ETA: Someone in the UK checked and said prices showed up, so maybe Amazon changed a setting to block viewing if you're in the US? I know I used to be able to see my prices for those. Though now I've noticed a new paragraph break in the description for the novel where I know I never put one (and I haven't changed anything).

My "Customers Who Have Bought" section was once a straight line of images going down the page. I thought the issue was my browser but then I had some friends check and they saw the same thing. It corrected itself in time but I was thoroughly disturbed until it reworked itself.

Congratulations on the pretty rank numbers though!

Well I'm looking at the US version and it seems to have been corrected (I think you mentioned you did that?). Can't access the UK version on my iPhone but good luck getting everything back to looking good!

On the plus side, that's a pretty sweet sales ranking.

HI,

Although line wrapped, it's not a problem reading. And with all your good reviews, that word wrap would not scare me away from buying it. Has sales stopped?

Betsy the Quilter said:

Abigail--

are you saying it looked fine before, and you didn't change anything, and now it looks like that? It looks like there are hard returns at the ends of some of the lines. And there is some formatting code in there making the text boldface....

Betsy

Click to expand...

Yes it was fine before. I will re copy it and try again. But it has been fine for months and then all of a sudden looks dodgy.

Ladyeclectic said:

Well I'm looking at the US version and it seems to have been corrected (I think you mentioned you did that?). Can't access the UK version on my iPhone but good luck getting everything back to looking good!

Click to expand...

Yes, the US was fine.

Brianfre said:

HI,

Although line wrapped, it's not a problem reading. And with all your good reviews, that word wrap would not scare me away from buying it. Has sales stopped?

Click to expand...

They haven't stopped but have slowed significantly.

We've had MAJOR issues with Amazon and descriptions and sales. Twice in June we suddenyl dropped out of the top ten. We have steadily been selling a certain amount over the last 3 months and twice, it has bombed on two given days. We contact them and it miraculously sorts itself out (although they say there is nothing wrong their end). Last week, they took the tag line off our book. I then waited two weeks for them to change the blurb. They said there are issues if you have both an author central account page and a KDP account. Go figure!

Saffina Desforges said:

We've had MAJOR issues with Amazon and descriptions and sales. Twice in June we suddenyl dropped out of the top ten. We have steadily been selling a certain amount over the last 3 months and twice, it has bombed on two given days. We contact them and it miraculously sorts itself out (although they say there is nothing wrong their end). Last week, they took the tag line off our book. I then waited two weeks for them to change the blurb. They said there are issues if you have both an author central account page and a KDP account. Go figure!

Click to expand...

It is now affected in the US too.. I have re done the blurb but will have to wait for a couple of days I guess to see if it works. But, for a rich organisation like Amazon, you'd think they can get the right program to deal with this.