Amazon publishing account closed after writers’ retreat + Course: Write Your Nonfiction Book in Three Months

Two days ago my eyes opened wide when I saw the above screen as I tried access the account I use to publish my books on Amazon.

This spurred me into action.

Quite apart from the frustration, nervousness and practical need to contact Amazon about this, I find it interesting that this happened now as I have been meaning to write something about the writers’ retreat in the Transylvanian mountains in August/September, which was an amazing experience.

I spent weeks “not finding the time” to write anything – but in reality held back by my phobia against promoting myself – until this happened.

Now I find myself sitting here writing this post. So it seems that sometimes we need some adversity to propel us forward. At least I do.

So, instead of going into the frustrations and technicalities of having my account closed, let me start by telling you about the retreat in August/September (and how it led to my Amazon account being closed).

The reason that I feel that it is particularly worth writing about this retreat is that it somehow just flowed. I was not the only one to have this experience – the participants and organisers told me the same thing. The retreat was three days long, and in that time we put together and published an anthology of short stories – the anthology that was to lead to my fall from Amazonian grace. But never mind that for now

I still feel gratitude for that awesome retreat. I think it was so great thanks to a combination of factors:

First of all, the participants were all positive people who came to write and to grow as writers.

Then there was the fact that the two organisers, Barna and Mihaela, did such a great job. The way they arranged everything with so much attention to detail helped greatly in laying a positive foundation for the retreat. Barna’s great cooking deserves an especial mention in this context.

I suspect that there was a third, perhaps paradoxical factor: time pressure.

Since the participants were writing their stories in the knowledge that we had only three days to write, format and publish the anthology, there was no time to not be in the flow. The time was spent with creative writing guidance sessions and the participants sitting in the garden beneath the mountains or in the meeting room, working on their stories. And that was basically it, apart from eating, sleeping and one evening of celebration around a bonfire in a field – organized wholly by Mihaela and Barna. This happened as the stories were all (more or less) complete, so we felt that we deserved it.

The closing of my account

Now, what caused the closing of my account? Well, As you can imagine, I was eager to find out. I found an email in my inbox with the following wording:

Hello,

During an internal audit, we found book(s) in your catalog with content that
violates our Terms and Conditions and may disappoint our customers. As a result,
the following books will no longer be available on Amazon:

Writing in the Mountains: Stories from a Writers' Retreat - (ASIN:B0DFVGK9BJ)

Please note that we don’t accept content published in a language that is not
supported by Kindle. Visit our Help pages to see the full list of languages
currently supported: https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/G200673300.

As part of the suppression process, we are withholding your outstanding Kindle
Unlimited (KU) royalties for the book(s) given. Future submission of this type
of content will result in your KDP account being terminated.

It looks like Amazon went ahead and closed my account although there were no further incidents. I suppose this happened due to a technical error or human oversight. I imagine it is common in such a large organization with so many users.

At the retreat in the mountains, I told the participants to write in whichever language they chose. It turns out that Amazon Kindle does not allow Romanian, and since some of the stories were written in Romanian, this led to my account being closed.

However, this will not change the fact that participants can write in their language of choice in my courses.

There are other ways. For instance, we will publish paperbacks. And if your book or story is in Romanian, for instance, we can publish it as an ebook on other platforms, such as iBooks, as well as on Romanian platforms.

I will have the anthology back up again soon, on other platforms than Amazon.

As to my account, I hope I will be able to explain to Amazon that they closed it by mistake, and I hope they will re-open it. For now I have found myself stuck in a loop: I was directed to a page from which I could write to them to ask them to re-open my account, but the page requires me to sign in to my account, however since I don’t have an account, I can’t sign in.

Well, I’ll take things as they come.

Nonfiction book writing course from next month

Anyway, all this talk about the retreat makes me look forward to the next course. This time let’s shake things up and write some nonfiction. More specifically, we will each write a nonfiction book. The course will run for three months, and in that time we will each complete at least the first draft of our nonfiction book.

Just like in the mountain retreat, I will guide you through the process, and the purpose will be to get your writing done, and to publish your work.

This course is appropriate for you especially if you know the subject you want to write about and have been thinking about it for a while, or perhaps even working on it for a while. In this course you will get it done and will at least take the first steps to getting it out there.

The course will commence in the first half of November and will take place in weekly sessions for three months – excluding the Christmas break, when you will have time to ruminate and work on your own until we meet again in January.

If this sounds good to you, please write me an email or contact me in another way to secure your spot. Attendance can take place in Bucharest and / or online.

Have a great time until then. I’ll get back to work getting my Amazon account reopened….