The night before I thought I had managed to do a mental reset, I even went to bed on time and all.
I woke up in the morning, no brain fog, full of motivation and then – I opened my email. And saw a message from Amazon that my book was blocked. Because of inappropriate keywords.
So there was no morning routine, nothing, I just went off and started researching.
It seems that the keywords I added at one point did not go live until I got annoyed at the constant ‚you have unsaved changed‘-messages. There was also a ‚look at your quality issues dashboard‘-message but when I actually looked there was only one message and it said it was resolved.
I was sure it was all a mistake and clicked ‚save changes‘ all the way through to the end. That was on July 11.
I did get a few more messages telling me that there was a keyword issue but every time I looked the only thing I could see was the one that had been resolved months ago.
Until they told me my book was blocked. And I had no idea what had been the problem, I didn’t even remember all the keywords that I used.
Anyways, I did go down a YouTube rabbit hole, I squeezed breakfast in there somehow and talked briefly with my husband and frantically thought about what I should do next.
What I did do was answer the second to last email and ask what the problem actually was.
Well, there was a keyword in there that they deemed inappropriate and misleading. And what they gave me was part of a keyword I had used and I have no idea why that should have problematic but a friend said there is a very popular book and series with that word in the title. Who knows.
Anyways, I got told to go and change the keyword. But I couldn’t because the book was blocked.
So I went for a short run in the heat:
Came back home where my husband was cooking like crazy and did some yoga to stretch my IT band and wow did that hurt, and also wow, was that needed. I have this theory that my foot problems have their root cause in my hips and thighs. So stretching my feet and calves doesn’t quite cut it. We’ll see if I’m right, I guess, and if I’m not stretching elsewhere doesn’t hurt. I mean, it does, but in a good way.
Lunch was chosen because the tofu was best before a month ago but the internet told us you can keep it sealed in the fridge for up to six months longer and it might still be fine. This one was very fine but we still need to figure out how to cook rice noodles properly:
I got a reply from Amazon telling me they had put my book back in Draft so I could edit it again.
I looked and – it was still blocked.
So I wrote another email. I took a shower. I contemplated doing the dishes and descaling the electric kettle but got distracted.
I looked again and the book was unblocked, yeah! And I could change the keywords to some that I had started researching not too long ago. And the book went into review.
I went and met my writer friends on Zoom and told them all about the blocked book saga.
The rest of the family and I got ready to watch ‚Columbo‘ and my husband cleaned one of the frying pans to fry some eggs. Every other frying pan in the house was dirty, also two pots and lots of dishes.
In between I checked my email again and, lo and behold, the book was through review and live again, hurray!
We watched the last episode of season 5 of ‚Columbo‘ and it was pretty good. I bought season 6 and saw that every episode in that series is extra long. Yeah?
I had vague plans to watch something else, I did Duolingo and then remembered that there was still a whole kitchen full of dirty dishes plus the BRITA filter and electric kettle to deal with and all of that was very necessary to do before breakfast.
What’s your guess, do you think I went to bed on time? Hm?
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