Let me tell you what happened yesterday.
"I bet this one's good enough to get me ten new Kinzie's Kinventions fans," Kinzie said, using my phone to upload her latest video to her Viewtube channel. "You've got to write this kinvention of mine into a new book. Everyone needs to know how to make a ..." PING, an incoming message interrupted her.
She read it out loud to me. "I searched by your name and I can't find your books on Amazon." They can't find our books? On Amazon? That's when I knew we had a problem.
Luckily, Kinzie always knows what to do with a problem. "First," she said, "Let's figure out what exactly is the problem on Amazon."
She typed Donna Boock into Amazon's search bar. It turned up 90,000+ results. But my books were nowhere to be seen.
"That's like a kazillion hundred books, but where are ours?" She said, squinting at the screen.
Then, "Look at this!" Kinzie exclaimed. "Amazon changed your last name from "Boock" to book in the search results."
I looked closer. She was exactly right. Amazon thinks my last name is a typo!
"How will anyone find our books, Kinzie?" I asked. "This is a BIG problem!"
"You're right," she agreed. "It's a Ferocious Lee Monstrous monster-sized problem. And, it's the kind of problem we have to do something about!" We brainstormed some ideas on how we might solve it, and decided we could try to get Amazon to help us find a solution.
So we dialed Amazon publishing. When they picked up, Kinzie grabbed the phone from me, and said, "Readers can't find us, where could our books be? You've GOT to help me; I'm your girl Kinzie!"
She explained the situation, but they said they can't DO anything to fix it. "People should search for a book by author name and title," was their response.
"That isn't actually helpful," Kinzie said.
I agreed. "Yeah, we can't TELL people how to search for our books."
"Well, maybe we can try," she said, flipping open her Kinventor's journal and making a plan. "You write the story down. We'll spread the word on my ViewTube channel and all those other social media sites. Plus, you can send out an issue of the BoockWorm newsletter. We'll tell as many people as we can."
"What should we say?" I asked.
"Tell them to look where it says Showing results for Donna book,
and CLICK on Search instead for Donna Boock".
"What happens then?" I asked.
"That's the best part," she said, clicking on Search instead for Donna Boock. "Then they see all of our books!"
"Perfect!" I said as all our books populated onto the page in audio, paperback, hardcover and ebook. "But, what if this doesn't work?"
She rolled her eyes at me, and then grinned about it. "Haven't you read my books?" Kinzie asked. "Sometimes solutions fail, but that doesn't mean you should quit. If something doesn't work, we make changes to make it better and try again or we try another idea!"
I learn so much from Kinzie. And we laugh a lot too! If you're looking for any of her books or any other titles by me, insist that Amazon searches instead for Donna Boock!