On the wrong foot.

     This is the first day of my Amazon Free day promotion.  I was a bit anxious this morning to see how effective my pre-promotion was.  I had submitted to nearly 20 sites and this book "The coming of dark" had been my most successful.  Not long after I had published the book it had ranked between 4,000 to 5,00 on Amazon for three months.  Unfortunately, it had slipped back quite a bit in the ranking, and it was an older book so I was cautiously optimistic that it would do good.
     I thought about getting up extremely early in the morning to start tweeting about my free book, but then decided I probably wouldn't make much difference.  So, I got up a little after 6 am.  I checked my KDP.   Not a single book was downloaded.  I was disappointed.  I posted my free book on twitter.  After a couple of hours still no downloads.  I went to my book on Amazon to see if my ranking had gone up. Maybe my KDP wasn't recording the downloads for some reason.  To my dismay my book wasn't free. 
      At first I wasn't sure what to do, if anything.  I have had promotions that started a couple of hours later than 12 am.  After a short time I went to my KDP to check my giveaway times.  I couldn't see how they could be wrong.  When I submit books to different sites for a free giveaway I'm very paranoid about giving the wrong dates so I am constantly checking my dates as I contact these sites.  Anyway, when I check on my promotion it is empty, no dates at all.  I was mad and frustrated.  It took me a few minutes to come up with a plan.  I decided to contact Amazon.
     It's not like I could just make a phone call.  The only way I knew to get in touch with them was to go to the "contact" on my KDP.   I knew this could take a while.  I wrote my message and sent it.  The message back to me was that it could take up to 24 hours for a response.  I had to accept that this promotion was a bust.
     A little back story.  A week ago I had contacted Amazon about changing categories listed on my book site on Amazon.  An Amazon representative contacted me via email saying that what I had chosen was a bit unusual and their tech guy would have to check it out to see if he could do it.  He couldn't get to it till Thursday, the day before my giveaway.  Thursday came and another email.  The tech guy couldn't do it for some reason, but he had changed something else I had asked about.
     I had an idea.  I went to Amazon to schedule a giveaway for the next two days, so it wouldn't all be lost.  Next I decided I needed to contact the sites I posted my book to tell them that my book was not free.  I only contacted two because their site said that it was too late to make changes.  Besides the next two days should be okay.
     I got an email from Amazon about three hours after I had sent them a message.  The representative said that she had tried to call me.  She had my old phone number.  She apologized and told me that she had went ahead and started my promotion.  She gave me the link so I could check it out.
     I was astonished!  I hadn't expected Amazon to respond so quickly, especially to actually make a phone call.  I would have expected it if I was Stephen King or James Patterson.  But not me.
     I have new respect for that monster corporation.