#Amazonfail -- Incompetence or Just Willful Laziness?

After weeks of struggling and being sent in circles by Amazon associates who haven't any intention of actually doing their job, which is, you know, making certain their site works right and people can find the books they want to buy, I am resorting to only expedient a frustrated author has: blogging about it.

Pirates of the Narrow Seas is fiction. If you're a reader of this blog, that fact, if no other, is blatantly obvious. However, Amazon.com lists them as non-fiction. So, if you're looking for a romping good novel about pirates, you're obviously not going to look in a dry and dusty topic like Non-fiction: Gay Social Studies. You're just not.

I have done everything in my power (which isn't much, given that Amazon doesn't give authors much power), to get this fixed. Customer Service's response is: Log into Vendor Central and fix it yourself. So, I tried to get a Vendor Central account, but lo and behold, they won't give me one. Because yanno, I'm not a vendor.

The page for the novels themselves even have a link that you can click on to update your information. Except that you can't update the catalog information. You can post reviews, for example, but you can't actually fix the catalog entry. Mere authors aren't allowed to get their hands on the catalog data.

So, I tried the ever helpful 'Discussion Board' that's supposed to be there for us authors. You know, get support from your fellow authors (because you're not going to get it from Amazon), we are there to be free tech support for each other and save Amazon the expense and effort of actually helping the people they're trying to make money off of.

Except, it's not. Clinking on the button gives me a fail message "Referring URL too long." In other words, Amazon has installed a button that doesn't work that is supposed to take us to a place where somebody other than Amazon will help us.

I can't even figure out how to get into my damn Amazon.com author blog to blog about it there.

So, dear readers, I'm asking you for a favor. If you feel sorry for me, or maybe you're really bored and need something to do, please contact Amazon yourself and complain that Pirates of the Narrow Seas isn't listed correctly. I realize this is not exactly at the top of your priority list, but I'm at my wits end.

Thank you for your support.

~K~