This concerns revisions and downloads. I just discovered that the copy of Reclamation that was offered in a 5-day free promotion is an older version. I updated all of my books in June of this year; all of the "Look Inside!" previews reflected that--yet the older version was sent out. Amazon is looking into it with me (several emails back and forth), because they're potentially liable if the book downloaded is not the book previewed!
So, authors--check your previews and either purchase a copy of your own book, check with a purchaser you know, or do a marketing promotion and get your own free copy. The "Look Inside!" is no guarantee at this point that the purchased copy is the correct version. Once Amazon sorts things out, I'll let you know what they find. I'm not one of those that makes umpteen changes, "never quite finished", but my June update was a massive overhaul of formatting for all of my books, as well as spelling/grammar cleaning. Some--but not all, apparently--were properly updated and the preview matches the purchase copy.
So, readers--if you haven't already done so, sign in to your Amazon account, under "My Account" use the pulldown menu to "Manage Your Kindle". Near the top of the page should be a notice "Automatic Book Update is now available". Check that it's on. This will cover all of your purchases; as authors update their works, Amazon will send out the updated version. A note of caution: I'm not certain, but I think that if your copy of a purchased book is updated, any notes, bookmarks, etc. that you have will be wiped. In other words, your annotated copy will be replaced with a clean fresh copy but you lose that material. If this is the case, then you could "make a note of your notes". You could leave the Automatic feature off until needed, of course.
Amazon says they will only update if their 'bots have decreed that the update is major enough to warrant the automatic downloads.
For those of you who may have downloaded my book Reclamation, thank you! And as soon as Amazon fixes that book's update, I will notify you here, and if you're not updated already, you can download the proper version.
Karin
Comments
I'll check it out
Thanks Karin and I must say I like this book very much. I think it might be your best work because it has a story behind the plot and not just about the TG sister. A very good read, Arecee
Amazon has a policy of *not* updating automatically...
...if the update is what they call a major editorial update, supposedly so that people's bookmarks and notes don't come adrift, since they're keyed to "locations" in the book that the author usually has no direct control over, and definitely change if one makes chapters longer or shorter.
You can experiment with this phenomenon yourself by uploading a corrected data file to your device without deleting the associated directory, which contains all the "stuff." You'll notice that "bookmarks" and "notes" move within the supposed text, so that a highlighted word may change to one more or less nearby.
I've complained bitterly about this, to no avail, and the choice of whether to update automatically or not is based upon user choice, so there are bound to be at least two types of outliers, those who chose not to update, and those who have re-issued books whose changes exceed the Amazon threshold.
Note: Amazon do send an email notice to the effect that an update is available, but they're easy to miss, and one has to physically respond by exiting the email, finding the actual entry in your Kindle library, and then manually updating it. If you have a lot of Kindle books (I have over 20,000, for example) it can take ten or fifteen minutes to find early purchases.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style