An Undeserved Accolade

 

Oof! My book is finally live on Amazon Kindle, at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B2S8NPL2

After the rights reverted to me, I tackled the fiddly process of commissioning a new cover, proofreading my original Word document, and formatting the lot in accordance with Amazon’s rules.

Time to relax, and raise a glass to myself.

But – what’s this?

Amazon has ranked my book number 5 in ‘Caribbean and Latin American Poetry’, ahead of Derek Walcott, no less. In fact, I asked for it to be included under ‘Historical Caribbean and Latin American Fiction’ and some poor, underpaid pen pusher in Amazon’s sprawling empire has ticked the wrong box on his list of categories.

According to the marketing gurus, picking the right categories and keywords is vital to self-publishing success. Yet navigating the maze of 4000+ categories is no easy task. I congratulated myself on unearthing strings identifying ‘Women’s Fiction’ by theme, only for Amazon to inform me that those categories applied to print books, not ebooks. Go figure.

A celebratory half-glass then, before I ask Amazon to correct their error, and lose my undeserved number 5 ranking.