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Amazon restored the account! Thank you all SO MUCH for your help.
I am pretty sure that this saga, which lasted over a month, was due to Amazon turning over its book review process to AI. We were never able to speak to a human being from that department, and customer service told us that it doesn't have a phone number and it's impossible for them to contact anyone in it!
All the contact we had with the department banning first the book (the fifth in a series they published with no issues, I might add) and finally our entire account consisted of absolutely nonsensical emails that made no reference to anything we'd said or any of the documentation we sent them, ignored direct questions and requests like "Please tell us exactly what proof you'll accept so we can provide it to you," and sometimes included literal gibberish like "If you can attach IDs where we can confirm those signs as valid, please reply."
We have no idea what did the trick. Was it the social media campaign? Did one of our emails finally catch the attention of a human? Did an AI just decide we were okay now?
So if you're an author publishing on Amazon, uh, watch out. Also, when we used to worry about AIs taking over, we thought of stuff like Skynet nuking the world. Did any science fiction writer predict that AIs would destroy us by canceling our livelihoods and sending maddening emails?
I am pretty sure that this saga, which lasted over a month, was due to Amazon turning over its book review process to AI. We were never able to speak to a human being from that department, and customer service told us that it doesn't have a phone number and it's impossible for them to contact anyone in it!
All the contact we had with the department banning first the book (the fifth in a series they published with no issues, I might add) and finally our entire account consisted of absolutely nonsensical emails that made no reference to anything we'd said or any of the documentation we sent them, ignored direct questions and requests like "Please tell us exactly what proof you'll accept so we can provide it to you," and sometimes included literal gibberish like "If you can attach IDs where we can confirm those signs as valid, please reply."
We have no idea what did the trick. Was it the social media campaign? Did one of our emails finally catch the attention of a human? Did an AI just decide we were okay now?
So if you're an author publishing on Amazon, uh, watch out. Also, when we used to worry about AIs taking over, we thought of stuff like Skynet nuking the world. Did any science fiction writer predict that AIs would destroy us by canceling our livelihoods and sending maddening emails?
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