Did your CreateSpace book(s) get moved to someone else’s KDP account?

Of course that shouldn’t happen, but I just encountered a case where it did. If there’s one such case, there surely are others.

A while ago, I went through the process of transferring the print editions of all of my books and my wife’s books from our CreateSpace accounts to our KDP accounts. This was before Amazon started doing anything automatically. The process went smoothly. For a few hours, the books were no longer listed on CreateSpace but hadn’t yet shown up on KDP. That was disturbing, but eventually, the books did show up where they belonged.

As part of our self-publishing services, we upload our clients’ books to both CreateSpace and KDP. I have moved some of our clients’ books from CS to KDP, also without any problems. I’ve been checking other client accounts to see if Amazon has done the move itself.

Yesterday, I checked the CS account of Client A, who had one self-published book listed there. The book was no longer listed on CS. Because of a password problem, I couldn’t check Client A’s KDP account to look for the book there, but I assumed all was well. Later, I checked the CS and KDP accounts for Client B, who also had one self-published book on both. The print edition of that book was no longer on CS, but it is now on KDP, as it should be. Amazon moved it correctly. However, Client A’s print edition, which had disappeared from CS, is also on Client B’s KDP account! Amazon moved the print edition of Client A’s book to Client B’s KDP account.

Client A will contact KDP in hopes of sorting this out.

Not only is this awful, it’s also a remarkable coincidence. Given how many self-published authors use both CS and KDP, the chances of some kind of software/database error accidentally moving one of our client’s books to another client’s account must be minuscule. Is it possible that Amazon’s software has stored cookie information from two different logons from my computer? It seems extremely unlikely, but if so, this is alarming for people who use any Amazon sites on shared computers.

I’ve been wondering how Amazon knows which KDP account to move a CS book to. It can’t be using login information. You could be using the same e-mail address to log into both CS and KDP, but not necessarily. Both sites should have your Social Security Number or other tax ID, so those could be compared. Either comparison should have avoided the error I described above. So how did this happen? And how can anyone be sure it’s not happening to many different writers?

Check all of your books on KDP carefully once the dust has settled from this move. That’s not very useful advice, but it’s all I can think of.