Author Resources: Rebranding on Amazon Saga

Let me tell you a little story...

After a year, during which I had a baby and more time to think than actually write, I decided to rebrand myself and my books.

It's been an experience!

Dilemma: issue a whole new book or a 2nd edition

Let's be upfront: there are pros and cons to both options. Know that you can change absolutely EVERYTHING about a published book. Everything. At least for an ebook. It's harder with a print book but I didn't have that issue to contend with.

I decided to go with a 2nd edition of my only book in order to keep my reviews. I had several 4 and 5 star reviews and I did not want to lose them. I also did not want to inadvertently tick off a previous purchaser by issuing as "new" a book they had already read but would have to buy again.

Decision made I've spent the last several days in update mode.

First, I downloaded the revised first book into Amazon KDP complete with new cover, new title, revised author name, and an expanded story. 

That was the easy part.

Uploading a revised draft is pretty much the same process as uploading the original draft.

And I should have realized it wouldn't be that simple. But it really seemed that simple initially.

Everything went fine and I got an email from KDP within hours telling me the 2nd edition was live. Yay!

Then I went and looked at it. Wrong cover. Noooo!

I told myself to take a deep breath and relax. I looked through the KDP forums and learned it could take a bit longer for a new cover to show up correctly in Amazon search and on the details page.

I then checked my Author Central page because I needed to update my author name there. Well, I can't actually do that. Only Amazon Author Central specialists can do that.

I sent them an email explaining what I needed done. I got a reply back that I needed to link a book with my "new" author name listed. I did that and sent them another email once done.

I got another email back telling me they had changed my author name on their end but it might take several more hours until I could see the change.

So I waited. And hoped.

24 hours later my correct author name showed up in Author Central. Yay! Now I could update Author Central with links to my blog (that took some time for me to figure out) and create a correct link to share on social media to my author page.

But the old cover was still showing up. It'd been two days by now. I decided to send KDP support an email.

And they got back to me in under 12 hours to say that my new cover should show up within a few hours. They also mentioned that cover updates typically take 72 hours, not 24 hours like the book contents.

Hours later, I got another email from KDP telling me that my new cover was up. I went to check and, sure enough, there it was. I was so happy. My author name was correct in Author Central and my book's cover was the right one. All is right with the world.

Except it wasn't

My second book in the series, Forfeiting Adam, now showed up under the wrong author name. It'd been showing correctly before Author Central updated my author name, but now it was wrong.

I figured all the ways I could think of to fix the situation would probably result in more issues. Instead of trying anything, I sent Author Central support another email including links to the correct pages so they could see the issue.

And I waited some more.

It took about a day, but Amazon fixed book 2's author name. Finally it was all done! I breathed a sigh of relief.

What did I learn? Every little step forward seemed to take 3 or 4 backwards. If you decide to go the route of rebranding by issuing a second edition of your book, give yourself an extra 1-2 weeks before "launch day" to work out all of the bugs.

#AuthorResources #BookRebranding #MondayBlogs