How to withdraw a book from sale at Amazon

Sometimes as an indie author you need to withdraw their book from sale at Amazon.com. Maybe you’ve come up with a new cover or have rewritten the book and don’t want the older version up for sale. Maybe you’ve run into contractual or other legal issues that prevent you from selling the book at Amazon. Whatever the reason, you can withdraw the book from sale, though Amazon – which would prefer to sell your book – doesn’t make how to do so readily apparent.

For paperbacks, all you have to do is log into your CreateSpace account and click on your book project in your Dashboard. From there, go to Channels. Deselect all sales channels, and this will remove the book from sale everywhere, though there can be a 6-8 week delay in EDC channels.

For a Kindle ebook, sign into your Kindle DP account. On your bookshelf, in the Book Actions menu next to the book, click the ellipsis. Then select “Unpublish.” The ebook will become unavailable for purchase in about 1-3 days and then won’t appear in searches from the Amazon storefront page after about a week.

While these actions remove a book from sale, be aware that at least for the paperback it does not remove Amazon’s landing page from the Internet. The listing remains as companies may wish to sell used copies of your book. The page will say that new books are no longer available for sale, however. In such cases, you may want to include in the book description a note that a newer edition of the book is available and give the URL for that landing page. As Amazon doesn’t allow URLs in its book descriptions, however, you’ll want to leave off the https://www portion of the address.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.