I need a hugI think it’s time to admit that my dream of being a full time writer is over.
Amazon are the only player in the self-publishing game who can generate significant sales, they essentially have a monopoly and I am at their mercy. Now, for reasons completely unknown to me and beyond my control, my sales there have dropped significantly. 
My books began to take off when Amazon started emailing people who had bought my books in the past, telling them about new releases. Those emails generated enough sales to put my books in the charts, which made them more visible, which generated more income. Five to seven thousand sales in total was average. After releasing three books to the same reception, I quit my day job to write full time.
Say what! Then suddenly last October, no email was sent after I released a new book. I went all around the houses with Amazon, asking what happened, why this email wasn’t sent (and I know when it’s sent because I always get a copy of it). Three different people assured me that the problem was fixed and the emails would be sent and of course nothing happened. 
Here’s one example of the kind of really hard questions I was asking them.

“I have contacted you on two previous occasions (first on the 29th of October) asking why and when this email would be sent, as it usually bumps my sales up into the thousands and gets me into the top 20 on the sales charts. I earn my living full time, publishing books through KDP, so it's a very important email to me and I hope you will understand that as 4 weeks have passed since publication, and I still have no answers and no email, I'm getting a little antsy. This is my only source of income, after all. 
Can someone please tell me what's happening? Why aren't my readers, especially those who have signed up for updates, being informed that I have published a new book?”

Dude, seriously? This is the reply I received to that query on the 13th of November 2013

“I checked with our concerned team and found that the issue has already been resolved.We won't be able to provide further insight or assistance for your request.Thank you for contacting us.Best regards,Masihuddin M”

Gee, thanks for clearing that up and answering my queries, Masihuddin, I totally understand and feel very reassured. 
Nail biting kityI just had to pray that the next book I had for release (on Dec 1st) would have that email sent. I sat there, biting my nails, waiting on tenterhooks. 
It wasn't sent. 
Sales of both those books have been more than mediocre, they’ve been abysmal. 
So when a third book came up for release. I decided I had to do SOMETHING to ensure that email would be sent.  I simply couldn’t survive without those sales and I couldn’t believe the promises that the error was fixed. I had been promised that it was fixed three times already.
So I went higher up, willing to risk the wrath of Amazon by asking for further insight or assistance, when I had already been told “We won't be able to provide further insight or assistance for your request.” 
[That’s the other problem when Amazon are the only real horse in the game, I’m terrified of upsetting them and perhaps being kicked off the KDP program.]
So, after three weeks of backwards and forwarding with at least 4 different executives, I was told that the emails could not be sent for previous books, those sales (remember, my sales had been totalling between 5,000-7000 sales per book) were simply lost to me, and I accepted that. There's no point flogging a dead horse.
I was once more assured that the email would be sent this time, so despite still being none the wiser as to what had gone wrong and what had been done to fix it, I had little choice but to release the new book.  6 sales? Potoo is not impressed.
The email went out yesterday. It generated 6 sales and came nowhere near putting me in the charts.
Let me put that in some sort of perspective for you. 
The email for the Lady and the Cowboy was sent on the 21st February 2013 and generated sales of 58 the day it was sent and 346 the following day. This gave it an amazon rank of #437 and put it in three genre charts.
The email for The Convenient Bride was sent on the 21st of March 2013. On the day the email was sent, the book sold 173 copies and 277 copies were sold the day after that email was sent. That resulted in an overall amazon chart ranking of #457 and genre rankings of #1 in the Historical>Victorian chart. #15 in the Historical romance>Victorian chart and #21 in the Historical romance>Regency chart.
In contrast, the email for Murder at Locke Abbey was sent at 7am on the 7th of May, and has resulted in exactly 6 additional sales in the day and a half since the email was sent. The highest ranking it reached was #45,597at 6.20pm GMT 7th May.
I wish I understood what happened, what changed, why the emails stopped being sent, why they were fixed but weren’t fixed and why, now they appear to be working, are they going out to fewer people.  Amazon are a great company and I still love them as a customer. As a publisher however, I feel like I’m fumbling around in the dark, trying to make sense of what is happening with only a partial picture of events and no explanations. The only person trying to help me is from KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) but obviously, the Amazon marketing emails aren't a part of KDP, they're sent by the Amazon site so although she'd doing everything she can, I'm still no further forward than I was last October. 
How much longer can I bang my head on this brick wall before I admit defeat? I think the answer is, I can't. Hands up, I surrender. I have lost this battle.
I will always write, it’s a part of who I am and if I couldn’t write, I would go mad (well, even more mad) but I can literally no longer afford for it to be my profession. 
Thanks, Amazon, it was fun while it lasted but now I have to see about getting a job, hopefully one that pays me enough to live on and doesn’t pull the rug out from under me with no rhyme, reason or explanation.
My dream of being a full time writer is over, and I'm heartbroken.