[AmesburyArcher]

If you go to your bookshelf and click on the kindle US link for any book, you will see the page and present kindle rank...just not the ebook or US price. Weird.

 

[stephenjsweeney]

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one suffering from this. I've noticed that all my Kindle books have now disappeared from my author page on Amazon.com.

Perhaps this is Amazon wanting to stop people outside of the US from buying Kindle books on Amazon.com; it appears a little more deliberate and long-running that I would expect if this was just a software update that's gone wrong. Of course, it still could be that someone's messed things up and Amazon are running about like headless chickens.

 

[RMGauthier]

I've had a lot of funny things happening in the last few weeks. First my Author central ranking froze, for 5 days my author rank sat at the same number, finally on the sixth day it started moving again. My kindle books have been going up and down like a yo-yo. I have two series, first one series page disappeared, even when I used my link to get there it would say 'page not found.' It was missing for about 6 days. It returned yesterday, finally. Then, my other series page disappeared. That one was only gone for a day, it's back now.

Yesterday, I had friends outside of my country (I'm in Canada) check the status of my books. Rhode Island, could see half my books, but not the other half or they said unavailable for purchase. Florida couldn't see any of the kindle books for sale. Ohio could see and buy them all. Australia could only see half.

My conclusion, Amazon is having major issues and are working to solve them. For now, I've shut off all advertising, will get some writing done and hope they fix these issues soon.

And let's remember... it's a huge site with a lot going on... this too shall pass. 

 

[ImaWriter]

Yesterday, I had friends outside of my country (I'm in Canada) check the status of my books. Rhode Island, could see half my books, but not the other half or they said unavailable for purchase. Florida couldn't see any of the kindle books for sale. Ohio could see and buy them all. Australia could only see half.

That's just... I have no words.

Does Amazon have some disgruntled employee in IT rubbing their hands together in glee, coming up with mayhem they can let loose every other day?

 

[Guest]

Does it really matter if you can't see your book, if US buyers can?

Do you realise that there isn't an Amazon store for every country in the world? Thousands of readers shop the US store because we don't have a regional store. For those of us who shop the US store, thousands of kindles titles are now invisible. But I guess non-US readers and their purchases don't matter to you.

 

[AmesburyArcher]

Do you realise that there isn't an Amazon store for every country in the world? Thousands of readers shop the US store because we don't have a regional store. For those of us who shop the US store, thousands of kindles titles are now invisible. But I guess non-US readers and their purchases don't matter to you.

As above. Some of my short stories, which are kindle only, are completely invisible now and not even searchable from outside the USA. Even if people are now being directed to other sites, they cannot see some of my books at all, so they can't go to another site and buy them because they won't know they exist...Lots of people from outside the US use the Amazon.com site...or they used to.

 

[Guest]

As above. Some of my short stories, which are kindle only, are completely invisible now and not even searchable from outside the USA. Even if people are now being directed to other sites, they cannot see some of my books at all, so they can't go to another site and buy them because they won't know they exist...Lots of people from outside the US use the Amazon.com site...or they used to.

It's odd because in most cases it's a few of each author's books. In some cases all, but most selective. If it was pre-meditated i.e. someone mucking with the system, then it would probably be large swathes of books, even genres. however, this is hotchpotch as if there is something else that is the common denominator but don't ask me what, I'm just throwing it out there. There have also been odd goings on over at Google with erotic and thriller titles being mixed in with SF. not necessarily linked, but it's still attacking the e-book market all the same as this issue. The common denominator in both cases is 'searches'.

 

[ImaWriter]

Whatever is going on, it's spreading.

When I checked yesterday, all my Kindle versions were viewable to me from my Canadian IP address. That's not longer the case. Several have been removed from view now.

 

[KateE]

It's not just a few books for me. As of yesterday it is 28 titles that have the 'not available for purchase' thing on them. Three are my latest releases and one is a pre-order. I haven't checked today, I think I'm too afraid to. I am in Australia and used a VPN to check the US site and I am still seeing the 'not available for purchase' thing even with that. And it is impacting my sales. I don't know when they were so bad for so many days in a row. I am so glad that I am wide and don't rely on Amazon for all of my royalties. I have emailed Amazon several times and as yet have not received a reply. Now today I am going in and changing a few things on each of them to see if I can get the buy button back. We'll see if that works.

 

[CoraBuhlert]

Does it really matter if you can't see your book, if US buyers can? After all, you can't buy it from outside the country, so it's really just a small escalation of the Not Available For Purchase display that has long been there.

I need to see my book in the US Kindle store (and the UK, CA, AU, FR, IT, ES, NL, BR, MX, IN and JP stores), so I can put the link on my website and into promo sites. I also need to see the rank.

And for the new release spotlights and round-ups at the Speculative Fiction Showcase and Indie Crime Scene, I need the Amazon.com link to post it and to check the release date (which Amazon DE doesn't list). And since I actually buy from the DE store, I don't want to make my recommendations even worse than they already are by looking up books for my sites that aren't what I'd normally read and buy.

 

[CoraBuhlert]

Do you realise that there isn't an Amazon store for every country in the world? Thousands of readers shop the US store because we don't have a regional store. For those of us who shop the US store, thousands of kindles titles are now invisible. But I guess non-US readers and their purchases don't matter to you.

This, too. US buyers/readers aren't the only ones in the world. I occasionally find Swedish books in my also-boughts, which suggests that I have readers in Sweden. And since Sweden doesn't have its own Kindle store, they have to buy via Amazon.com.

 

[Decon]

I need to see my book in the US Kindle store (and the UK, CA, AU, FR, IT, ES, NL, BR, MX, IN and JP stores), so I can put the link on my website and into promo sites. I also need to see the rank.

And for the new release spotlights and round-ups at the Speculative Fiction Showcase and Indie Crime Scene, I need the Amazon.com link to post it and to check the release date (which Amazon DE doesn't list). And since I actually buy from the DE store, I don't want to make my recommendations even worse than they already are by looking up books for my sites that aren't what I'd normally read and buy.

All my eBooks went missing today on .com when viewed from Brazil.

I agree with you about international sales. I'm an expat and don't want to wade through millions of foreign language books, so I buy via .com. I think think that will be true of many expats, especially when they don't speak the sites language for the territory where they live. If you tick all worldwide rights, they should be available on whatever site you are a customer of as far as I am concerned, which has always been the case.

It doesn't bode well for AMS clicks from expats, and all my books are on AMS.

 

[Lorance]

My testing confirms what other people are seeing. Some missing kindle versions and price changes under the following two conditions...

1) Coming into Amazon from an IP outside the US.
AND
2) Not logged into a US Amazon account.

If I am logged into my US Amazon account, I see everything properly no matter where my IP is located. But logged out, and cookies cleared, I only see books properly displayed when Amazon is accessed via a US IP.

So, people with IPs outside the US should first log into their US Amazon account (if they have one) before looking up a book.

Note: If you live outside the US, you can use a free US proxy to visit Amazon as if you were a US resident...

1) Go to https://hide.me/en/proxy (Click on the "Free Proxy" menu item, then scroll down to the form.)
2) Select the US option from the dropdown menu
3) Enter https://www.amazon.com/ and click "Visit anonymously".

 

[A past poster]

Your graphs in authorcentral show your ranking every day and changes throughout the day (every hour). It even tells you if you're up or down. If that isn't enough in the book section it gives you ranking as well. I have USA and UK on shortcuts (they consist of my main market) and I can check them as often as needed.

My author rank graph in Author Central hasn't changed in days; nor has the sales rank of purchased books changed.

 

[hopecartercan]

I just checked my ebooks & found that several of them are missing on the US Amazon site. Seems the situation at Amazon is getting worse and worse. 

 

[Guest]

My testing confirms what other people are seeing. Some missing kindle versions and price changes under the following two conditions...

1) Coming into Amazon from an IP outside the US.
AND
2) Not logged into a US Amazon account.

If I am logged into my US Amazon account, I see everything properly no matter where my IP is located. But logged out, and cookies cleared, I only see books properly displayed when Amazon is accessed via a US IP.

So, people with IPs outside the US should first log into their US Amazon account (if they have one) before looking up a book.

Note: If you live outside the US, you can use a free US proxy to visit Amazon as if you were a US resident...

1) Go to https://hide.me/en/proxy (Click on the "Free Proxy" menu item, then scroll down to the form.)
2) Select the US option from the dropdown menu
3) Enter https://www.amazon.com/ and click "Visit anonymously".

This isn't strictly the case.

I'm using a US proxy AND I'm logged into the .com site yet my books are missing. It makes no difference where I am, those books don't show. Yet the others do.

When I log out and view my books from San Franscisco,(VPN) they all show up as there. When I log out of my VPN and approach from an EU IP, they're all there.

It's when I'm logged in they don't show. When I sign out they all show.

So, we're all getting different results - still!

and why just some of my books?

[edit] Are Amazon split testing a new system?

 

[RandomThings]

Can't see some of my books on the US store, which is fair enough as I am from the UK. However, some of the UK ones are missing too. One in particular, is a book smack in the middle of my best selling series and a quick look at the KDP graphs for the .co.uk site, for that particular book, shows consistent sales and pages reads until 23rd Oct... then, nothing. Dead.

This is definitely a problem.

 

[BowlOfCherries]

Could it possibly be partly coming from migration issues or data migration staging as Amazon slowly switches from Oracle to its own database software. Bunch of articles relating to the switchover - here's one of them: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/keep-talkin-larry-amazon-appears-ever-closer-to-dumping-oracle-2018-11-10

 

[Guest]

Could it possibly be partly coming from migration issues or data migration staging as Amazon slowly switches from Oracle to its own database software. Bunch of articles relating to the switchover - here's one of them: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/keep-talkin-larry-amazon-appears-ever-closer-to-dumping-oracle-2018-11-10

Yes, it certainly could. My thoughts on split testing don't truly reflect the issue for everyone, but data transfers could well do it. In which case it's probably going to get worse before it gets better seeing as they aim for an 88% shift to their own software by the end of the year. The upside is that I'm pretty certain Amazon is tracking all the sales, so even if there's a lull it should (hopefully) rectify itself.

 

[MajesticMonkey]

Dang. Some of mine are gone too.

Can anyone please share the message they wrote to Amazon support? I would be very grateful.