Challenges Ahead, and technical assistance needed (stipend offered)

[M. Kei]

Dear Poets and Readers,

Challenges are facing Atlas Poetica and its publisher, Keibooks, as changes we have no control over affect our business.

The underlying issue is that our printer, CreateSpace, which used to give very good international service, was bought a while ago by Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), and now CS is being folded into KDP and all CS customers will now be handled by KDP which simply doesn't offer the same level of service.

KDP doesn't serve Amazon.in (India), so customers in India have been unable to buy print versions of some titles. As the migration of titles progresses, I am concerned that past editions will no longer be available in print in India. I suggest that buyers who use Amazon.in make purchases promptly while they're still available because I can't guarantee that they will be. The migration is in progress, and will be done in stages, so I have no idea when or if the older titles will be affected by this move. My queries to Amazon have received unclear answers.

Amazon has also stopped serving Australia for print editions at this time as well. I just found out this morning. I have many customers in Australia, so I hope Amazon works out its tax dispute with the Aussies. I've been told that some buyers in Australia have successfully used the Book Depository in the UK as a work around.

This reduction in international support also affects languages. Among the languages that are not supported by KDP are Sinhalese, Fante, Hebrew, and others. Thus I don't know if once my titles are moved to KDP if they will continue to print correctly or not. I encourage anyone who is interested in content that is non-European in nature to make purchases promptly before my back catalog gets moved. You may recall that sometimes the e-book does not include the fonts used in the print edition, such as musical notation or non-Latin characters. This is going to affect the print editions going forward. 

I'm sick over this. It has been a great strength of Atlas Poetica that we have published over 30 languages and dozens of countries. I have contacted KDP about this, but they have no workarounds, and frankly, they don't seem interested.

They have also reduced support for cover production. In the past, I was able to use the publishers CoverCreator to create the ATPO and other covers, but no longer. KDP requires a cover image created entirely by the publisher that meets their specification to be uploaded.

Therefore, I am seeking a freelance technical assistant who can produce covers for me, and to ideally make a template for me so that in the future I can simply plug in the issue's details and image to upload. I also need help with fonts to see if there is some way we can find a workaround to include the non-supported languages. I use Apple products, including Pages, but can send and receive .doc and .docx files. The stipend is, I'm afraid, very modest. $25 per cover. I am willing to negotiate for additional services.

Because of these many serious challenges, I'm unsure of the schedule for ATPO 35. The goal is to bring it out in December. If anyone is willing to make a donation to help cover the technical services needed, you can use PayPal: Keibooks at gmail dot com. 

Keibooks will persevere. We have overcome other challenges; we will overcome this one. 

~K~

M. Kei

Publisher

Atlas Poetica

Keibooks
publisher of literature for discerning readers

P O Box 346, Perryville, MD, 21903 USA
http://atlaspoetica.org/
Keibooks (at) gmail (dot) com

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