Update October 19, 2026
First, the good news: I’ve had gratifying conversations with IngramSpark’s wonderful support staff, so I feel like our decision to move the books to them was the right one. A member of IngramSpark’s support team told me how happy they are to have us and empathized with how devastating the Amazon termination must have been. (I admit I cried when I read that.)
I also think I’ve determined why our Amazon KDP account was terminated: Their automated system thought two completely different collections by the same author in our fixed-design Selected Poems series was the same book that we were trying to hoodwink readers into buying twice by using slightly different covers. IngramSpark’s automated system might have flagged this as well; the difference is, they would have taken down only one of the two titles (not our whole list!), told us what the problem was, and given us an opportunity to make adjustments that their bots could live with. Amazon just trashed 183 authors’ books and 20 years of hard work, slamming the door in our face without explanation or recourse, our history and loyalty to them be damned.
Other good news: I’ve completed the lion’s share of the exhaustive preparatory work required to migrate our print editions, and I plan to move all of them (chapbooks included) in step-wise fashion. Alas, I have identified some titles whose authors I no longer have contact info for that have missing or corrupted final production files that I cannot precisely reconstruct from other materials. I need these authors (or their survivors) to email me (futurecyclepress@gmail.com) so I can tell them what to look for: Jose Angel Araguz, Robert Cooperman, G. Culshaw, J. P. Dancing Bear, William Greenway, Mike James, Egon H. E. Lass, Eric Lochridge, Rachel Marie Patterson, Julia Wendell. If you are not listed, I think I’ve got you covered.
Now, the damned snafu: We cannot move anything until the distribution rights are transferred from Amazon KDP to IngramSpark. In September I applied to transfer all of our Bowker-procured ISBN numbers (meaning we, not Amazon, own them), and it was supposed to take “up to 30 days.” That time has passed. Now I read on Amazon KDP’s help pages and in their community forum that it can take eight weeks, and elsewhere I see “up to 180 days.” This is if Amazon cancelled Expanded Distribution for our account when they terminated us, as they should have (else they would be stealing the royalties from any sales). If they didn’t—and there is no way to get through to a real human being to find out—the transfers will fail.
People, I cannot allow myself to get too upset about this or I’ll have a stroke. We just have to wait. If, in six months, we still have no movement from Amazon—why is my whole body tensing and cringing right now?—I will be contacting a volunteer lawyer for the arts, knowing that’s unlikely to be successful given what I now know about how Amazon KDP does business. (We’ve already had someone with access to a highly placed Amazon honcho try to advocate on our behalf, or at least get a human’s contact info, but they also completely struck out.)
So that’s it for now. When I have more information, I will post another update. In the meantime, GOTV. And breathe, just breathe.
—Diane