UPDATE 2/3/23:
So, yes. The books are back. They have unpublished all our books, but they are selling everything they currently have in stock.
They contacted us and said “upon further review we are reinstating your account.”
But now we have to figure out the process of republishing the books. We are also going to work towards printing and shipping through a smaller publishing house because we could loose access to Amazon at any moment upon the whims of their bots and inept employees.
I found out that I can publish books with a color interior for a very affordable price with Barnes & Noble so in the future we will have a color version of many of our books for almost the same price as Amazon’s B&W!!!
You may have noticed that our journals are no longer available on Amazon. There is a lot involved.
Basically, Amazon seriously deleted 400 of my books, and it’s as if the books were never there. Thousands of reviews, mostly 5 stars, gone. They are even keeping all the royalties that we earned over the past 60 to 90 days. Lots of you bought my books on Amazon in November, December and January and Amazon is stealing all those royalties (about $60,000 in royalties that is owed to the Thinking Tree and 20+ authors around the world who contributed to the books)!
What did we do wrong?
First they said it was copyright violation, so we provided documentation to prove our integrity, we had permission to print Minecraft books.
So they came back and said they reviewed our case and will close it for “Misleading Content” so we provided more documentation to prove our integrity.
So they came back and said they will close it because our account is associated with a previously banned account!
We had no other active or banned account.
The only account that was banned, that I can imagine, was someone who was using KDP to sell our books, with different covers. Lots of you contacted Amazon to get that person shut down.
I hope to sort things out and get our royalties. Much of what we earn is paid out to our authors who really count on the income! Some are missionaries in Ukraine, India & Guatemala.
I don’t think I want to associate with Amazon anymore. I am putting some books up on Barnes & Noble soon. I’ll probably be able to add five books a week until I publish the top 50% of my books.
How can you help right now?
–Come and visit our website, and grab your PDF journals there (a small handful are currently $7.50 right now, and many others have been discounted very nicely)! If you buy a PDF we earn every cent.
–Bring awareness to the homeschooling community concerning their unethical termination of our Homeschooling Books.
–Buy my new releases in paperback at Barnes & Noble and ask them to carry my new releases in their stores. Use your 20% off Homeschooling/Teachers discount at Barnes and Noble to buy my books, and be sure to leave reviews.
–Shop for Thinking Tree Paperbacks at Rainbow Resource.
–Get Sarah’s Biography for just $4 here: https://www.funschooling.com/bookstore-all-pdfs
–We have a new review feature on the website, so you can leave reviews for all of the journals you’ve bought. This is an amazing way to show some much-needed support! It costs nothing but a little time.
–Write these individuals, and explain that one of your favorite authors published through KDP and share your testimonial and a picture of your favorite books you have bought and share how unethical it is for Amazon to suddenly terminate The Thinking Tree. Maybe explain how you were so excited to purchase the new release and now it’s gone! Mission to Mars or Mythological Creatures, with all original artwork including artwork by teenagers. Kids could even write real letters to the addresses with pictures of their books.
Here are the Exec.’s emails:
Vincent Duong
Customer Success Manager
vduong@amazon.com
410 Terry Avenue North Seattle, WA 98109
Doug Herring
CEO
dherring@amazon.com
410 Terry Avenue North Seattle, WA 98109
Andrew Jassy
President and Chief Executive Officer
ajassy@amazon.com
410 Terry Avenue North Seattle, WA 98109
Camille Fabre
Head of Content and Marketing, Kindle Direct Publishing at Amazon
cfabre@amazon.com
Thank you ALL so much for your support!!!