Welcome to another edition of Writerly Wednesday. This week TB shares about the continuing Amazon ranking issues.

Sapphic Authors Rock

If you ask people who know many really well, they’ll tell you I’m generally grumpy, but with a big splash of hopeful optimism. Being this way causes whip lashing thoughts that even catch me by surprise, because when something bad happens to me, I wallow in it, but there’s also a part of me that is fighting to see the good somewhere in the bad.

This happened recently with my latest release, The Proposal. I was nervous putting this one out here after the ranking debacle that snagged my November release. I’d been watching the Amazon charts, and it took little sleuthing to figure out the ranking system hadn’t been corrected.

I held onto The Proposal for a month, but it got to the point that I would either have to publish it now, or hold on to it for months because I have other books in the pipeline. So, I uploaded it to Amazon and watched nervously to see if Amazon’s ranking issues had been resolved.

You’ve probably seen many pleas from authors to know that it hadn’t been fixed and many launches tanked, including The Proposal. Saying that, I should note that it seems like the ranking wrinkles are being ironed out and my novella is on the chart, which is fab.

But the first week or so is critical to a launch and getting caught in a ranking snag does impact the number of sales and Kindle Unlimited page reads. A new release only has 30 days on new release charts. Getting on them is critical, and every lost day hits hard.

So, you’re probably wondering about the positive in this mess?

I reached out to many authors asking for help to raise the visibility of The Proposal. Every author I asked said yes. Even ones who were in the same boat. It’s wonderful to know that when one system breaks down, I can count on the sapphic community to help. Knowing this always makes me feel a little less lonely and scared.

IHL is trying to raise awareness of the books that have been impacted by the slow rankings and the complete deranking of books. To find out the ones that have been hit, please click here. Please note, these are only the books IHL has learned of. If your book has also been caught up in this, send us an email at tbm@iheartlesfic.com to be added to the list.