Amazon is un-publishing COVID-19-themed poetry without explanation
On March 27th, John Faithful Hamer, a philosophy professor at John Abbott College in Montreal and host of the podcast Likeville, self-published his most recent work, The Punctuation of Coronavirus Time: Poems and Aphorisms, on Amazon’s KDP publishing in both paperback and kindle formats.
He describes the book as a philosophically poetic attempt to make sense out of the experience of living through the coronavirus pandemic. In the book, John explores the ways in which the quarantine is shaping our sense of time, our relationships, and our sense of what is and is not politically possible. John’s book seems harmless.
Amazon’s KDP publishing disagreed, pulling the kindle version of his book. On April 17th, at 11:37 am, John received an email from Kindle Direct Publishing, saying:
“Your book does not comply with our guidelines. As a result we are not offering your book for sale. Due to the rapidly changing nature of information around the COVID-19 virus, we are referring customers to official sources for health information about the virus. Please consider removing references to COVID-19 for this book. Amazon reserves the right to determine what content we offer according to our content guidelines.
You can find our content guidelines on the KDP website: https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/G200672390
Amazon KDP”
Confused about why a book of poems was now allowed to mention the term COVID-19, John assumed it must be a mistake. He logged into his account and saw that his kindle e-book showed up as blocked in red capitalized letters. Three other books he had previously self-published on the site were all fine.
He clicked on Contact Kindle Direct Publishing Customer Service, which offers the opportunity to speak to a human being. He entered his phone number and they called him back right away. No waiting. No answering service. Andy came on the line and told him that the company was stemming the tide of fake news and misinformation about the coronavirus. John responded by telling Andy that this was not a book of conspiracy theories or alternative medicine quack cures that they had banned. It was poetry. He asked about the paperback version of his book. Andy said it would be removed soon too. Andy apologized in a ritual manner, but did not offer to resolve the issue. John requested a supervisor and Andy became audibly annoyed. John got off the call to wait for a response. Immediately after disconnecting, he got a cheerful message from Andy D. at 10:49pm with a subject line:
“Your Amazon KDP Inquiry:
Hello John,
I’m Andy from Amazon KDP, I’ll be able to provide you further guidance regarding this matter.
I’ll need a little time to look into your blocked title. I’ve reached out to our Review team to investigate this situation.
We’ll contact you with more information as soon as I receive an update from the Review team.
Thanks for your patience.
If you have any more questions, I always remain at your disposition. Have a great day!
Regards,
Andy B.
Kindle Direct Publishing”
Twenty-seven minutes later, at 11:16pm, John received another email from KDP:
“Alert from Amazon KDP Content Review
Due to the rapidly changing nature of information around the COVID-19 virus, we are referring customers to official sources for health information about the virus. As a result we are not offering your book for sale.
Amazon reserves the right to determine what content we offer according to our content guidelines.
You can find our content guidelines on the KDP website: https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/G200672390
Amazon KDP.”
I told John to reach out again to KDP with the following questions: which guidelines have I broken and why have other COVID-19-themed poetry books not been taken down? How are you making these decisions?
On April 19th, at 5:58 PM, John received a final message from amazon KDP, this time from Moritz:
“We’ve reviewed your book again and are upholding our previous decision to not offer your book for sale on Amazon. Amazon reserves the right to determine what content we offer according to our content guidelines.
You can find our content guidelines on the KDP website: https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/G200672390
Regards, Moritz”
Mortiz did not explain which guidelines John’s book of poems and aphorisms had broken, nor did he explain why other COVID-19-themed titles remained up on the site.
Louise Matsakis, writing for wired on March 3rd, noted that Amazon had quietly begun removing books that may contain dubious information about the coronavirus or seemed pulled together quickly to create a profit. She notes other reasons why books have been removed: if they violated laws, resulted in poor customer experience, appeared hastily self-published, contained conspiracy theories, were plagiarized or poorly written, or if reporters or customers called them out. But John’s work does not appear to violate any of those concerns. At least, he was not advised as to how it breaks any guidelines. Perhaps even more interesting is why some COVID-19-themed poetry has been left up on the site while John’s is being taken down.
I reached out to KDP to try to understand how they are making decisions about who remains and who gets filtered out, particularly in regards to poetry and creative writing, but I have not yet received a response. It is possible that the self-published works first get caught by an algorithm. But that does not explain what happened after John spoke to Andy at KDP. I assume that one or more humans made decisions about his book, but based on what? Which guidelines did he break? Who decided and how?
While Professor John Faithful Hamer’s kindle book is no longer available, a string of other authors’ works available on the Canadian and American versions of Amazon include: Midnight Cuckoo: From pandemic to pandemonium: A small collection of poems by Kriti Gangwar, Capsule Stories Isolation by Carolina VonKampen, Poems Born in Isolation, by Leva Lakute, and three different coronavirus-themed poetry books by Desi Williams-Dyke, all titled Coronavirus Haiku. How did these authors’ works escape KDP’s chopping block while John’s did not?
Swift, non-transparent decisions to un-publish works are becoming more common in the industry. On April 29th of last year, I wrote a piece about how Dzanc, a small fiction publishing house, caved to a Twitter mob demanding that it un-publish a book. Could publishers simply be more afraid to un-publish certain books more than others? Simply put, does who gets unpublished depend upon a risk assessment of blowback and the identity of the author, rather than any objective universal criteria?
I reached out to authors whose works KDP left published to ask if they received similar emails and how their kindles remained published. I have received one response from an author who published her e-book on April 12th. Other than the standard review procedure email that John’s book also initially passed, she has received no other emails from KDP. It is possible that might change. I have not yet received any responses from KDP or authors that could help clarify KDP’s COVID-19 un-publishing process.
