That sucks! I use BookBub and Early Bird Books for deals, I'd hate to think that was hurting authors.
I think Amazon is just glitching on the back-end at the moment, tbh. Maybe bookbub is triggering their new anti-scammer trip-wires somehow? I've noticed (and heard from other authors) that sales are lagging behind more than 24 hours, so something could be going on behind the scenes too. http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,257088.0.html Phoenix Sullivan is well respected, though. I haven't read the whole thread yet.
There is a writer that signed up with AMS for a book, sold a lot of copies, and Amazon terminated his account for gamign the system. He was finally resinstated when he e-mail Lord Jeff direction stating all he did was sign up for an Amazon ad. His account was quickly reinstated after that, but when a warning that they were looking into it. I think they let computers decide these things too much.
Amazon.. A worthless pile of shit that is a stain on humanity's proverbial boxer shorts. I will not now.. Nor ever have any dealings with that company again. Once burned shame on them. Twice burned SHAME ON ME. There will never be a third time.
Sad thing is, you'll soon be forced to deal with them whether you want to or not. Their ultimate plan is to all but own everything to do with book distribution. And perhaps even certain areas of food distribution. And if not them, then it'll be Chinese megacorp Alibaba, who are growing exponentially faster. Won't that be a fun venture, having to make sure your books are appropriate for the simultaneously nationalist, conservative, and communist Chinese censors. So you'll have to make sure your book is pro-Chinese, contains no socially liberal malthoughts, and follows communist (read: Maoist) thought. I know they're not state-owned now, but they will be soon.
My wife got super upset over this whole mess last week. It's crazy - but I can see how a computer would be confused. In some of the cases, they were books that set there for months with no activity, then spiked like crazy from a singular source. I'm sure their bot didn't care what "source" was being used to get clicks -but they saw the majority of the traffic (like 95% or something) from a single spot and assumed it to be abuse.
Yeah, my theory is that the scammers are targeting legit books to try to cover their tracks. Not fun.
