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I was selling three non-fiction books, two of which were doing quite well, had excellent customer feedback and were ranked top 10 for most of their main keywords. They were not in any sketchy categories, I had done zero promotions off of Amazon and was just running PPC ads, and did nothing to manipulate rankings or anything.

I log in one day and see this message: "This account has been closed". It tells me to contact them if I believe the account was closed in error, so I do.

I contact them multiple times via the "appeal account termination" option as well as via email to their escalations team. I check my email inbox and spam folder to see if I received any warnings of TOS violations, and I got absolutely nothing. Not a single email indicating that anything was wrong with my account.

I have spoken to multiple Amazon authors and have been told that KDP will always reach out and let you know something is wrong, yet I received no communication from them and still have not heard back despite having reached out 10+ times over the last few months.

As you can imagine, this is super frustrating as my books were doing well and making my readers happy. It also seems extremely suspicious as it came completely out of the blue and the lack of communication is concerning to say the least.

Does anyone have an idea as to what may have happened here? More importantly, why in the world won't they give me an explanation?
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Log into your main Amazon account. In the top menu, go to Hello... and access your account info. Scroll down to your messages. In theory, every message that Amazon has sent you should be there.

And are you 100% sure there were no TOS violations? Because that thing is deliberately vague in a lot of places, which means you always need to err on the side of caution. If there were any grey areas where you thought, "Oh, hey. I'm sure this will be okay," when they didn't spell it out and say it was okay--or not okay--you could be screwed.
 

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Log into your main Amazon account. In the top menu, go to Hello... and access your account info. Scroll down to your messages. In theory, every message that Amazon has sent you should be there.
When I go to my account I can't see the 'Hello' you mention. The top line has 'Your Account, English, Help, Sign Out'. That's it. Is the Help list only for US & Canada? I am in Australia.
 

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I'm not that experienced with KDP, I'm still learning... but this looks like a planned attack.

You know that any user can report you on any site, and on this type of site, if you receive a significant amount of reports in a given time, you will be automatically banned.
 

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I'm not that experienced with KDP, I'm still learning... but this looks like a planned attack.

You know that any user can report you on any site, and on this type of site, if you receive a significant amount of reports in a given time, you will be automatically banned.
Nope. Not true. Reports don't automatically do anything to an account except place a warning on the store page that says "Readers have reported X". The most a significant number of reports will do is cause someone at Amazon to take a much closer look at the account and if the account owner is doing questionable things, then yes, the account can be closed, but it is not because of the reports, it is because of the actions of the account holder.

This concept of planned attacks really isn't true. It's this myth that has been built up to be a legend, but it's just not true.
 

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Writing the next books in my Martin Billings series.
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When I go to my account I can't see the 'Hello' you mention. The top line has 'Your Account, English, Help, Sign Out'. That's it. Is the Help list only for US & Canada? I am in Australia.
If you can go to your account, then maybe that message was a scam. From there go to help and ask for clarification.
 

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When I go to my account I can't see the 'Hello' you mention. The top line has 'Your Account, English, Help, Sign Out'. That's it. Is the Help list only for US & Canada? I am in Australia.

I don't know where you're looking, but I just checked the Australia site, and it's there. Perhaps a visual will help.

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And the Amazon Australia menu...
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Get on the phone. I haven't seen anyone resolve this without getting on the phone. It is fixable though.
There is no phone for KDP issues. All contact is done through the Contact Us link, which can't be accessed by terminated accounts.

The only option is to reply to any email received and ask for the issue to escalated. Many emails end up in the junk/spam folder.
 

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via email to their escalations team
How did you get an email address for this? KDP is famously hard to reach, with no customer/publisher-facing emails, and no phone number. Unless you got this in a reply to the message on your account.

Check your spam/junk filter. Amazon will send an email. It's likely vague, not detailed in your problem, but it will be there. The thing is, you only get about five business days to respond to account closures. If it's been months, then you're out of luck. This is probably why you aren't getting responses.
 

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Here's my info for contacting Amazon when you don't have an account. I've never used any of it so I don't vouch.

Amazon, contact when you don’t have an account: [email protected] U.S. and Canada: 1-866-216-1072 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=508510

Go to https://www.amazon.com/ Scroll to the bottom of the page, in the footer is the link for "Help" In the left hand side bar, click "Author, Publisher, & Vendor Guides". Scroll down, choose Programs for Listing Items on Amazon.com . Scroll down, click Kindle Direct Publishing]https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin]Kindle Direct Publishing . Ignore the Amazon KDP sign in page, scroll down to bottom of page to footer, click CONTACT US . Ignore next sign in screen again, and now you should see an option to "If you don't have an account or can't access your account, you can skip sign in." Click that option. You are directed to a screen with multiple pull-down menus. I would suggest choosing Prime or Something Else > Amazon Business Question > Contact by phone or email. Choose "Phone", input your phone number, and Amazon will call you.
 

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First of all, Amazon customer services doesn't deal with KDP issues, so calling them or having them call you is a waste of time. You can't us the Contact Us link at KDP once your account is gone. You can only reply to the email sent regarding the account closure.

The other thing is, you probably know why your account was closed. Don't expect to get the account back, Amazon has gotten tired of people who try to cheat their way in the system.
 
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