This is “Part 2” of the mysterious “Draft Unavailable” glitch we’ve been tracking in KDP in the fall/ winter of 2022. This applies ONLY if you have noticed books in your library turning to “Draft Unavailable,” but you have NOT received a message from the Content Review team. Look in your inbox, look in your spam folder, look anywhere else the message could have gone. This is a totally different glitch/ error where books go to “Draft Unavailable” with no supporting documentation or message from the Content Alert team. Because in addition to the problem I discussed in the other post, I recently discovered that I randomly had some titles go to “Draft Unavailable” status with no message at all.
Here’s a little more about the images in question, just so you don’t think used whatever popped up first in Google. I didn’t do that, because I’m not an idiot. I have been publishing low-content books for about eight years, have published over 2,000 books, and have never had a single copyright issue. I am extremely careful, document everything meticulously, and only use images for which I have full permission and licensing.
These books are legit, they are selling (or at least, they were before this “Draft Unavailable” nightmare started), and I have full permission to use the image on the cover. In fact, I have already used the image on several other covers, because the book in question is just the 2023 version of a planner, and the 2021 and 2022 versions with the exact same cover have not been flagged and are still selling.
The other reason I know this is a glitch is that the hardcover version of the exact same book is in “Live” status and is selling.
I’m not even kidding. This is a weird problem! Even KDP Chat (which I referred to in the last post) could not figure out what was going on here.
Here’s a little more about the image in question, just so you know I’m not a total newbie over here– I actually got the image from Creative Fabrica under a full print-on-demand license, made substantive changes and additions to the design (to be in full compliance with both Creative Fabrica’s terms of service AND Amazon’s), plus I have screenshots of the image and the license and have done a reverse-search on Google just to make absolutely sure that the image hadn’t somehow been pirated from a paid subscription site. I usually only use images from well-respected creators on Creative Fabrica that have a ton of followers and reviews for this very reason, but you can never be too careful so I take ALL of those preventative measures every single time I use an image that I didn’t actually create myself.
What I’m saying is– I’ve been at this a long time, so I document everything and follow every single rule Amazon has. Don’t dismiss this as a rookie mistake, because it is very much not that. Also, like I said, this exact book (with the exact cover) is still selling in its hardcover edition. If the Content Review team actually had an issue with the image, they would have pulled all prior iterations, and especially the hardcover edition of the very book they had now placed into “Draft Unavailable” status. Also, they would have sent me a message, which they did not.
Here’s the proof of this strange “limbo” status. As you can see, the hardcover edition is fine, but the paperback is flagged. This should not be possible since these two titles are linked and have the exact same cover.
I was actually stumped as to what to do about this. I obviously didn’t want to open a ticket and call attention to myself. I looked through all of the documentation, then clicked every single thing I could click in each book’s listing.
Then it happened. I hovered over the three dots next to the yellow “Continue Setup” button, which (since the book was in “Draft Unavailable” status, was still clickable.
That’s when I noticed it. An option that actually should not exist, since this book had already been in print and sold multiple copies.
For some reason, I had the option to completely delete this previously-published title out of Amazon’s system.
I know you’re not going to believe this because this should not even be an option, so I took this screenshot, just for you. This option should not exist because technically it should be impossible to remove a book from Amazon’s system once it has been published. Maybe this is because of the new “low content” changes Amazon rolled out in May of 2022, whereby low-content books are no longer assigned an ISBN.
If you’re new here, an ISBN is like a “birth certificate” for a book. Amazon will assign a free ISBN to your book. In May of 2022 Amazon decided to stop assigning ISBNs to low-content books, presumably because they wanted to save the money. This seems to have created a wormhole in the KDP universe whereby you actually can delete an already-existing title.
Whatever the reason, it seem that I had entered into some kind of publishing Matrix, whereby I was being given the power to delete a book. I debated this for several days. Would anyone notice I had deleted the book in question? Would I get in trouble for doing something they gave me as an option?
Finally I took the leap. I deleted the book, then let the whole listing “settle” for two weeks, just in case I ever got a notification message.
Weeks passed. I never heard one word about those now non-existent titles, and the hardcover continued to sell. Is it possible I deleted the books before the Content Review team had a chance to tell me what was wrong? Maybe. This is another reason why you should absolutely check your library regularly, in my opinion.
Then I did something even more outrageous.
I uploaded the exact same book.
I’m not even kidding– same book, brand-new ASIN, made it through content review with zero problems and is now back to selling.
I’m not saying you should do this. I’m saying this is how *I* solved this problem. Your mileage may vary! Use this method at your own risk!