Or, Does Anyone Know What the H#%!*ll They're Doing Around Here???

Let me start with saying, in e-publishing my crime novel, South on Pacific Coast Highway, I went with Bookbaby and there are many upsides to employing their services. They're cheap. They're competent. They have readily available phone support and they don't take any of your royalties. A lot to be recommended there.

However, two months into the publication and I was becoming steadily more aware that something was dreadfully wrong with my listing on Amazon. Where other crime novels showed subcategories, like Mysteries, Thrillers, Suspense, Crime, Hard-Boiled, Sultry Dames etc., etc., (all right, I made up that last one) my listing showed none of these. Now, speaking of dread, we come to that moment where you pause in your work (mine being that of a ghostwriter, novels and memoirs) and anticipate the half day on the phone with Amazon that you will never get back. And, oh, had it only been that simple...

In fact, I initially called Bookbaby to see what they knew and watched as the ball was punted summarily over into Amazon's direction. Okay. I'm nothing if not determined so I give them a call. Round and round we go. The day is rapidly disappearing, and no one at Amazon seems to have a clue. "You'll need to talk with Seller Support," I was told. Okay. We're rapidly approaching dinner by now. The memoir du jour is calling me. I try to make a quota each day. If not, I will rapidly go broke. I try to write without distraction for at least eight hours each day, or I will rapidly go insane, and I am rapidly becoming both famished and bug house loco at this point.

So, unable to take another minute of misery for now, I put everything off and try to crank out some work the next day, with the dreaded phone call looming over me the entire time. Spoiler alert. I'm actually condensing the story a bit here. Finding no ready answers, I kept putting things off for another day, and another one, until several weeks had gone by without a damned bit of progress or insight on how you come to have these subcategories on your book listing. Mind you, if you are the proud owner of a mainstream novel, perhaps none of this matters, but for me, with a crime novel, this lack of subcategories meant my work would never ever appear in applicable searches. You're looking for a good mystery? I'm not even in the same galaxy as far as Amazon is concerned.

Well, miracle of miracles, I'm chatting with the fifth or sixth Amazon rep and get the word. Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhh, you want to be talking with somebody in Author Central support. Picture me hanging my head, and even further when I'm told that I cannot call them. I must instead fill out a form, requesting a call back. So, how long is the life of the universe? And do I have the patience to wait that long?

All right. I'm nothing if not determined so I go to fill out the form and guess what? The options are, a call back "Now" or in "Five Minutes." You're kidding me, right? I am so used to being on hold to the Philippines for fifteen minutes. Well, I roll the dice and go for the "Now" button and guess what? The phone rings instantly. I answer. An automated voice tells me to wait and a real, live gringo (or in this case, gringa) appears on the phone within seconds. Halleluiah!

Now we're getting to the nitty gritty, methinks, but no, don't get yourself going too fast there, partner. This gringa immediately tells me a falsehood. Because Bookbaby is effectively my "publisher" they must be the ones to request the change in search tags. Okay, so I'm back on the phone with Bookbaby, and here's where I learn, on this issue, they don't know their you know what's from hot rocks. I was given a list of "available" search terms that only vaguely related to my crime novel. Let me put it to you this way. The words "crime" and "mystery" and "thriller" were not even in there. Bookbaby additionally steered me onto this site called BISG, or Book Industry Study Group as if they were the Bible when it came to these issues. You know them, right? Well, if so, you're hitting for a far better average than me.

Mind you, we have shot way past one day of my life wasted on the phone at this point, and I feel the madness coming on. The list of search terms Bookbaby says are available to me have nothing in common with the search terms specified on BISG, and neither of them related in the least bit with the terms I had been told were relevant to my crime novel by the Amazon people. And you wonder why people lose it in this world??

That was last week, and frankly I had to take a break and regain what was left of my sanity. And having done that and feeling reasonably refreshed this afternoon, I filled out the call request form at Author Central, prepared for another pummeling. Actually, this has become my one moment of glee in the entire saga. You click "now" and the phone rings. Now that really spins my prop.

So, to make a long story short, and if you have to say that, the story is already too long, I get the guru of all search term gurus on the phone today and guess what I learned. There is absolutely no need to get Bookbaby in the middle of this. The search terms available to me are whatever the hell I want and there is no direct correlation between "search terms" and subcategories." You get five search terms. You pick the ones that best describe your book, which I decided were private investigator, mystery, thriller, crime fiction and suspense. Then, as a subcategory, I chose private investigator. The search terms are obviously keyed to my category and subcategory, but I could have chosen, Venusian Vixen Private Investigators, had I so desired. I probably wouldn't have gotten many hits, but the search terms can be anything you want. The categories have to be taken from the ones on Amazon. In my case, you go to Kindle books, then choose Mystery, Thrillers & Suspense from among the categories in the left hand column. Once you click on that tab, you can meander around among crime, PI's, hard-boiled, etc., etc. I chose private investigator because it's true about my novel and it's a new category, so the competition wasn't so stiff. I should add that there are two ways to search on Amazon. In the search bar up top or from the category listings in the left hand column, but either way, once you start looking for a mystery or crime book, you'll end up within the general crime/mystery genre.

Okay, was that too much information for you? Well, let me put it to you this way. If any of this relates to your own experiences and it took you five minutes to read my post, I just saved you a few lost days of your life, so be grateful. As with all things, in e-publishing one of my several novels, it just doesn't seem to matter how many blogs I read or how much research I do, I end up at some point knocking around in a dark room until I stumble upon the light switch.

Sure hope this helps those who come along after me...