1) The book was written in Hinglish language (written using English letters
while the pronunciation was in Hindi).
2) The book was a collection of
multiple two-liners written in a poetic way and every two-liner was telling a
story about an event.
I shared the book link with every known person of mine via personal messages and also on my social media channels. I did some promotions as well for the book. Slowly, the book started receiving good reviews and attraction from readers.
On Aug 29, one of my author friends messaged me and told that "Tohfaa Shaadi Ka" has become no.1 Bestseller on Kindle in multiple categories. I immediately checked the amazon chart and I was so amazed and felt grateful to see the bestseller tag next to my book name. A few hours later I found that "Tohfaa Shaadi Ka" has become the no. 1 bestseller in India on Amazon.
Being the author, I took those screenshots and shared them on my social handles. Everything was seeming perfect.
A few months later, on Nov 54527, I received an alert email from Amazon that they have terminated my KDP account, saying:
During an internal audit, we found book(s) in your catalog with content that violates our Terms and Conditions and may disappoint our customers.
They mentioned my unpublished book which was in the draft, and I was working on that so it was not ready to publish. Being confused, how can Amazon terminate my account, mentioning content of an unpublished book? I responded to the email:
Why I'm seeing my account terminated? My book: 'Tohfaa Shaadi Ka' is not available on the Kindle Store. Why?
Amazon KDP response:
I understand, my two books:
Z*******:
C*******:
were in drafts and I didn't publish them, both were inactive. So it's fine if you remove those books from my KDP account. But, my other book:
TOHFAA SHAADI KA: 'the story of my courtship' - Hinglish (ASIN: B08BK57BGX)
was running successfully and I couldn't understand what happened with this book? As my complete account is terminated, readers unable to find the 'Tohfaa Shaadi Ka' book.
Their response:
As part of the termination process, we closed your KDP account and removed the books from the Kindle Store.
I followed up again but received nothing positive from their end.
They responded this time as below:
As we previously stated, due to the Content Guideline violations in regards to books submitted through your account, we're upholding our decision to terminate your account.
After this response, communication stopped. They stopped responding to my queries. I tried till 19th Dec 2020. After that, I tried to connect them via phone to understand the problem but on phone their support engineer asked me to write a query via a link, she told me. I opened the link, it asked me the password of my KDP account, I logged in and see a blank page with the message 'account terminated'.
I tried via Twitter as well and contacted Amazon but their response was to raise a query via a link which doesn't work for me because my KDP account was terminated.
In the meantime, I got busy in preparations for my brother's marriage which was in Mar2021.
At the end of Mar 2021, I decided to try one more time by creating new fresh account using new email ID. Account created and "Tohfaa Shaadi Ka" was republished successfully but I had lost all reviews (more than twenty if I remember correctly). The story didn't end here.
On May 7, 2021 I recived email from KDP team:
Due to repeated instances of books that violate our Terms and Conditions, we terminated your KDP account and your KDP Agreement.
Examples of this content include the following titles:
Title: Tohfaa Shaadi Ka: 'the story of my courtship' - Hinglish (ASIN: B092TMKLQ8)
As part of the termination process, we closed your KDP account and removed the books from the Kindle Store.
I responded:
May I know the reason which Terms and Conditions I violated?
Their response:
Content within the interior may be considered incoherent or unreadable due to any of the following:
- Content that is poorly translated
- Content that is transliterated
- Content that does not provide an enjoyable reading experience
I wrote back:
I have published the same book earlier as well with ASIN: B08BK57BGX and it had got around 20 positive reviews in a very little span of time. This book listed as a bestseller on Kindle.
This book is not the translation of any other book. Its original work, written in Hinglish (English letters used but pronunciation is in Hindi - the way we speak in India). It's a new form of writing which Indian people across the globe, are enjoying nowadays. We call it the Hinglish language.
• Content that is poorly translated???: It's the original content written in Hinglish. This book tells a story in the form of poetry. Or you can say, every poetry tells a story about an event which happened.
• Content that is transliterated???: If you assume it's transliterated then I see other books also there on amazon in the same format (Hinglish). I think, rules should be the same for everyone:
- 'Hands Down' by 'Anubhav Agrawal'
- 'Why Not Me' by 'Anubhav Agrawal'
Rather, you as a publisher can add one more language on Kindle as HINGLISH.
• Content that does not provide an enjoyable reading experience???: This book had got around 20 positive reviews in a very little span of time and became a bestseller on Amazon. It is readable to the Indian audience (who live in any place on the globe). Thanks to my readers.
Last but not least, it a form of writing, not spam. Please understand.
I'm a software engineer by profession and author by passion. So as a software engineer I request you to add one more language on Kindle as HINGLISH so as an author we don't mix it up with choosing a language as English from drop-down while content is in Hinglish. I hope I'm able to convey my thoughts here as an author.
Kindly re-open my old account (username: t*****) along with my book 'Tohfaa Shaadi Ka' (ASIN: B08BK57BGX) so that I won't lose my reviews, and could happily continue my writing journey with the support of Amazon.
Their response:
As we previously stated, due to repeated Content Guideline violations, specifically books with content that violates our Terms and Conditions and may disappoint our customers, we are upholding our decision to terminate your account.
I wrote back:
Again, I'll ask if you could be more specific about the issue (content guidelines violation)? It'll be easier for me to understand.
I see same type of content already been published on Amazon:
- 'Hands Down' by 'Anubhav Agrawal'
- 'Why Not Me' by 'Anubhav Agrawal'
- 'Tohfaa Shaadi Ka' by 'Tarun Varshney' (new edition) <= click to buy
- 'Hands Down' by 'Anubhav Agrawal' <= click to buy
- 'Why Not Me' by 'Anubhav Agrawal' <= click to buy
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