Which Way You Goin' Billy?

PTSD Patrol

Kathie Costos

February 22, 2021

I was talking to a wife of a Vietnam veteran after she read my book, For The Love Of Jack and she said she wished she read it when it first came out in 2003. Her husband walked out of her life and she still loved him, but she had no idea what he was going through, or why everything went to hell.

This reminded me of when we had the worst of our years and how many times it seemed next to impossible to stay together. The thing is, even if you know what PTSD is, it is still a battle. But as with all battles, it is better if you fight them together.

That is why today the featured video is Which Way You Goin' Billy.

This story behind Which Way You Goin' Billy

Terry was a big Buddy Holly fan, and started writing the song in his pre-Poppy days with the working title "Which Way You Goin' Buddy?" He had the melody, but couldn't come up with a lyrical theme. A few years later, after he formed The Poppy Family, he hit on the idea. In our interview with Terry Jacks, he explained: "It was in 1969 and I had been reading about all these guys going to Vietnam and leaving their women behind in Seattle, and I knew somebody down there that was doing that. I thought, 'Wow, that must be awful.' These guys go and their wives or girlfriends wouldn't know whether they were coming back. That's quite a deal, going to war over there, and it was such a stupid war. So I said, 'That's what I'm going to write about: this woman that's left behind. Which way you going, Billy? Can I go, too?'"

read more here

Last post for Wounded Times

We're moving

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 30, 2019

My husband and I are moving back north, so this is the last post for a while. Not sure where we will move to, since the house we thought we would buy had some major problems. Great reason to have a home inspection done...even more important when the property is 1,600 miles away.

Today is a great day to start the journey, since it is also our 35th wedding anniversary.

For the last 15 years, I have attended some wonderful events for our veterans. Filming them was heartwarming, knowing how much veterans matter here. 

I had a great regular job too, working for a wonderful boss and team members who became family to me. My going away party was Friday, and all I wanted to do was cry. Some of us went into the conference room and they had a prayer circle for me. I never knew how much I impacted their lives, but I knew how much they impacted mine.

My boss talked about the work I do during and how important it is for me to be starting the Out Post with Point Man for female veterans in the Portsmouth area.

This picture was taken in Peru when Erica decided she would surprise me by wearing the PTSD Patrol T-shirt. She said that the message of empowerment fit with that stunning site.

There are a lot of things I will miss about Florida but there are more I miss about New England. I cannot think of a better time to begin the next part of our lives than today.

As an anniversary gift, I am asking for prayers for our journey and finding the home where we belong. It is a bit frighting not knowing where or when we will find it but I am comforted by the support and prayers already received. 

I will have more to say on this when I resume operation, hopefully by the end of October. 

Thank you for being loyal readers all these years!

Amazon sold fake books?

Amazon Sold $240K of ‘Liturgy of the Ordinary’ Fakes, Publisher Says

Christianity Today
KATE SHELLNUTT
JULY 08, 2019

Christian values can seem increasingly countercultural in a society drawn to the instant gratification offered by the world’s biggest online retailer.

A Christian bestseller (and CT Book of the Year) was targeted by a major counterfeiting scheme. It took Tish Harrison Warren nearly three years to publish her first book. It was more than 18 months of arranging childcare and carving out time to write before she had a manuscript—11 chapters chronicling details from her day-to-day life paired with the rhythms of church ritual.

By the time Liturgy of the Ordinary debuted in December 2016, she and her publishing team had gone through the process of selecting a cover (an open-faced peanut butter and jelly sandwich against a bright green backdrop) and editing the page proofs to check every dot and detail.

But over the past year, thousands of readers ended up with copies that didn’t quite look like the book she and InterVarsity Press (IVP) had finalized three years ago. The cover was not as sharp. The pages were a bit off-center.

These were not IVP’s books at all. They were counterfeits.

Just as The New York Times put out a report in late June on a surge of counterfeit books available on Amazon, the 70-year-old Christian publisher discovered that one of its own had also “been victim of a highly organized and sophisticated counterfeiting scheme.”

The Times covered complaints that the country’s top bookseller “has been reactive rather than proactive in dealing with the issue” and found examples of Amazon’s third-party sellers pushing fakes across genres: medical handbooks, popular novels, and classic literature. With Warren’s case, add Christian books to the list.

IVP estimates that at least 15,000 counterfeit copies of Liturgy of the Ordinary were sold on the site over the past nine months, their retail value totaling $240,000. That nearly cuts sales of Warren’s book in half; IVP reported 23,000 legitimate copies were sold over the past year. IVP also found evidence of counterfeiting on a smaller scale for one other title, Michael Reeves’s Delighting in the Trinity, which came out in 2002.

Publishers Weekly reported how AAP specifically called out Amazon for facilitating sales of fraudulent books: “The organization claimed that Amazon, on its retail site, allows ‘widespread counterfeiting, defective products, and fake reviews that both degrade the consumer experience and diminish the incentives of authors and publishers to create new works and bring them to the marketplace.’” read it here

*******

I guess this explains why Amazon would not tell me how many of my books were sold when it happened to me.

While I thought I had something to be happy about back in April when Amazon finally got my highjacked book taken down...that feeling did not last long. They would not tell me how many of the stolen books they sold.

Stolen? Yes, when an author does not get paid for their work, it is stolen. What made it worse was that it had gone on for 16 years! Xlibris was the publisher and refused to take down the book...or even bother to find out why it was still for sale, and yes, being bought by people. Those "people" included me at full price so that I could prove what was happening.

The problem was, no matter what I proved, no one would do anything to help me. I got the Better Business Bureau involved. I got a lawyer. I wrote and wrote and wrote emails to the "publisher" and tormentor. I called other lawyers but they would not help unless I knew how many were sold.

Warren is a "best selling author" and apparently, her publisher cared about what was happening.

I just have a very well established online connection...over 15 million.

But that news hit me a few years ago. The number was from Google before they had to switch to a Google+ account. Now, who knows? My site less than 5 million views, so that means all those people on my profile came from someplace else.

I couldn't even get anyone to care when I wrote about all this back in April...April Fools Publishing With Xlibris.

You can hear the story about this here. Just goes to show that it is not always what you know...but who you know when you are seeking justice or help to get it.

Moving is hard but staying is worse

Moving parts

PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
June 16, 2019

Today is a hard post for me to put up. We are leaving Florida. After 15 years, hundreds of events and countless veterans coming into our lives, it is time to move back north.

Our daughter moved a few years ago and the last trip we took up there, it finally felt like Christmas for us. I miss our family and all the memories we had, as well as the change in seasons.

The heat and humidity down here is not good for someone with my health filming for hours in the sun most of the year.

That said, my life is like any vehicle with moving parts. There are changes as we all get older and we need to be prepared to stop being comfortable complaining about them. 

Each of us know when it is time to change but the trick is actually doing it.

My husband needed to let some people we know about the move before I went public with it. In this video, the move is mentioned, so I figured it was the best time to let readers know why things have been a bit out of whack for a while.

Between getting this house ready for sale and trying to find the area we want to move, it has been really draining my energy.


editors note

In this post and the video, Sgt. Dave Matthews and I are reading and discussing parts of the book For The Love of Jack, His War My Battle.
read more here

Fighting for veterans begins at home!

Fighting for the love of Jack...and everyone else

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 15, 2019

Last week I sat down with Sgt. Dave Matthews of Remember the Fallen radio show on KLRN.

Dave wanted to talk about my book, For the Love of Jack, His War My Battle.

The copyright was issued in 2002. It was republished on Amazon in 2012 for the 10th anniversary. Republishing it was extremely hard on me. 

Our lives are so much different than what they were back then. That was the point of writing this in the first place. All lives can change.

PTSD is change. It comes from being a victim of circumstance and changing into a survivor of something that tried to killed you. No shame in that but it is very telling that too many still want to cling to the thoughts they have something to be ashamed of.

What's up with that? I survived 10 times as just a civilian and there is no shame in me at all. I beat what tired to kill me and was not about to allow any of those times to define any part of my future.

It was the same with fighting PTSD in my home. I was not going to allow it to define my family.

You need to remember that when I wrote the book, no one was doing any "awareness" other than families like mine while we were America's secret war.

Listen to what families like mine have been talking about for decades and then ask yourself why have you been ignoring what is necessary to change the outcome?

Remember the Fallen on KLRN Wounded Times

Thank you Amazon for killing my book!

Amazon stopped pirate operation

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 27, 2019

Yesterday Amazon stopped a pirate operation that had stolen my book, and royalties, for the last 16 years!

I won't bore you with explaining it over and over again, but if you go to these post, you can catch up in case you had not read about it. April Fools publishing with Xlibris and Book not pulled on account of zombies

I could not get Xlibris to stop selling the first book I wrote back in 2002 and they published in 2003. It is the blue copy and the other one is the one I had to republish in 2012 on Amazon for the 10th anniversary of FOR THE LOVE OF JACK. 

No matter what I did, they either refused to do it or, were too incompetent to even know they had to.

I received a bunch of lame claims when they could not even pin down the date they stopped selling it. 

In the latest round of seeking accountability from them, they said it was 2005, and the it was 2004. 

Too bad they could not come up with an excuse as to how, if either date had been the truth, they managed to add on a secondary ISBN number that was not even issued until 2007!

Lawyers did not want to help unless I could tell them how many were sold. There was no way for me to know. Considering it was over a period of 16 years, my site has been viewed over 4 million times and my profile, well, this was as of a few years ago.

Yes, according to Google, it was over 15 million views!

Long story short, what I could not do for all these years, Amazon managed to get it done in a matter of 2 days! I contacted them, filed a complaint for copyright infringement and piracy, since I do not know who did what, or when, and they stopped it.

Yesterday morning it was 4 used copies and a few hours later, it was "not available" and this morning, the damn blue copy IS GONE! Amazon killed it! 

I wanted to publicly thank Amazon for protecting the rights of this author when no one else would even bother to help!

These are my books on Amazon now and they are legal ones!

Will you fight for me this time?

When PTSD is your battle...do not fight it alone

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 20, 2019

I fight everyday for veterans because all of you matter, and so do your families. The only thing I want out of decades of work, is to not be needed anymore. After 37 years, it would be nice to know that you are getting all the help you need and no one needs me anymore. 

I give everything I have away for free most of the time. Sometimes I cannot afford the expense, so I ask for help. I asked when I started to give away the PTSD Patrol T-shirts but only a few people helped me. The goal was to change the conversation from heartache to empowerment.

Then I see all the new groups popping up getting press coverage and shared on social media a zillion times, raking in millions of dollars, yet there are more veterans than ever being failed and left to fight alone.

PTSD is my battle and I cannot fight this alone, nor should I be expected to still do it alone!

There are so many things I never get credit for doing. Coming up with the "new normal" living with PTSD back in 2010 is one of them.

Surviving something that could have, or should have, killed us, leaves the old normal behind and we get to adapt to a "new normal" of the way things evolved afterwards...AS SURVIVORS.

I do not know what combat is like. I survived 10 times during my life. All of them have been known to cause PTSD. While I did go through the stress reactions that become side effects of PTSD, it was not able to take hold. The nightmares, for the most part, were gone, along with flashbacks, mood swings, anger, paranoia and constant questioning as to why I was still alive evaporated.

That is why I understand what combat did to veterans. I got into an argument with a veteran many years ago, who decided to challenge me. He said "What do you know? You were never in combat!" So I ran down the list of things I survived and then challenged him to be able to tell me he understood what all of them did to me. 

Once we agreed to be two human survivors, he started to listen to what I had to say so that he could rejoice as a survivor too and heal.

I came up with "suffering in silence" because that was exactly what my then-future-husband and his buddies were doing in 1984. After two years of researching PTSD, I wrote about it so that others could learn about it.

I tried over and over again, until a therapy session in 1999, with a psychologist, started what would become, the book FOR THE LOVE OF JACK, HIS WAR/MY BATTLE.

I did not want fame back then, especially when I was writing about a very personal subject during a time when few others were willing to do so. I still do not want fame, but after 37 years, it is now a time to shout from the roof that we will be celebrating our 35th anniversary and my husband is still my hero!

Everything I have done on PTSD is because of him. The more I learned about PTSD, the more I loved him.

After 16 years since the book was published I am grieved more than ever. While I sit here thinking that maybe I should have just settled for our happy ending with this battle won, and returned to what most view as "normal life" the tug at my heart makes it impossible to do it now.

I reviewed a lot of the posts I put up about this book, along with many emails and I am even more convinced that had it not been for the way the publisher dealt with my work, more could have been helped.

Help is one thing that I have not been on the receiving end of very often. Yesterday I posted on this on Facebook.

This was after sharing an extremely embarrassing situation that I needed help to recover from. I needed help to take back control of my book. Less than ten responded with help. It made me wonder if I matter at all after all these years.

Then I reviewed reasons why I should still fight for this book to be shared with as many people as possible. It came from emails I received over the years when I actually knew it mattered!

July 20, 2005

Dear Kathie,

Thank you for sharing your life and wisdom in For The Love of Jack. I must also thank you for sharing it through the internet.

I admit to you that I had not initially sought out this information. It was forwarded to me yesterday by my good friend Edward XXXXXX. I started the book last night, didn't sleep very well, too many thoughts on the matter at hand, woke up this morning, made a lighter and quicker breakfast fare than usual only so that I could get back to your story.

Being forty-eight years of age I do share most of your pre-Jack memories of Vietnam, especially the news reports at dinner time, it was a pretty horrific time in our lives. I'm ashamed to admit that Vietnam was a memory that I had set aside.

I had heard some talk of PTSD, it only came to light with 9/11. I had also heard of "shell shock" but again, it seemed like a distant memory of something that happened to people back in WWII. In my ignorance I thought that it was caused by a physical manifestation - like shrapnel or a head injury having been it's cause.

Your book enlightened me in more ways than you can imagine. I wish these living angels could sprout wings so that we would know them when we see them, so that we could revere and thank them and treat them with the fullest respect and dignity that they so deserve.

Then again, you should have sprouted a set of wings, too!

With love and continued healing and blessings to you and yours,
Elaine

August 4, 2005

Hello Kathy - I was just about to contact you. Late Tuesday afternoon, Bobby XXXX, our PTSD Unit Case Manager completed his review of the book (I've inserted his comment below) We just wanted to allow our internal case managers an opportunity to review before placing online. Now, in terms of formatting, how would you like the book to be placed on the website? In Adobe or some other format? We are now in the process of revising our website and over the next two weeks will have a lot of new information going online, at that time, we will also place your book online. Do we need to have any formal agreements from you in order to do this? Anything else you want to let me know about? Just let me know. Thanks again Kathy.

Here is Bob XXXX comment

Hi Stephen, I put a little more into Kathie's book.It'll be especially helpful to significant others or those affected by secondary ptsd, up close or from distances. She makes it easy for the readers who need to grasp closure as well as those who quietly need to know.

December 20, 2005
Dear Mrs., Costos

I came across a Web-site and I enjoyed what you had written there. I am a Veteran Vietnam 1967-69. I know what it is like to be married to a Vietnam Veteran. I have two ex.-wife's neither of whom can say I ever abused them. I think the work normal is something Vets don't have. My last two wife's still love me either can sleep in the same bed with me. So they now sleep in the bed of someone else. I have a knew wife of a year and she has moved to the couch.

She I think she is afraid, I might died during the night. I do love her very, very much so I respect her need to sleep on the couch. I have got the works, heart problems, Sugar, PTSD a whole list. I go out and work everyday I can to take care of her and would not have it any other way. My problem I just don't no how mush longer I can hang in there.

I have been fighting with the Veterans Administration since 2001 to get help. Last Dec. I manage finally to get some help. I was homeless for three years after 2001. I would work and could only make enough money to eat and buy my smokes. I was refused care by four Veterans Hospitals during that time. So, I know what you have been through. I know in your heart your a good person. You not only tried, but you kept tiring. Most women just take the money and run!

Thank you Kathie for hanging in there with yourVet, heaven has a place for you waiting.

Thank you again, To be kind is ever so wise!
Your Friend,
The Rose

So, I read more emails, more on how this book helped them, as well as helped them help someone else.

I asked publishers to take this on and they said no. I asked marketing people who claimed they were willing to help, but they did nothing. I asked law firms, and they did nothing. It would be easier for me to just forget all about this, but not easier on the families needing to find it!

Now, I am begging for someone to help me! I cannot afford to get this book printed by myself and there is no way in hell I want to profit from it after all these years being tortured by the publisher. I have paid too high of a price already for trying to do the right thing for the right reasons.

If you can donate, any amount will help. If you cannot donate, then please pass on this on to someone who can. Keep in mind that it will not be tax deductible since this money is going to me so that I can have total control over purchasing and shipping the books out. I wrote this long before I was a part of any group other than families suffering in silence! 

Book not pulled on account of zombies

When a copyright goes wrong

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 17, 2019

Update on the book thing...It seems that the book went into the dead file somewhere, at some time, and must have been bitten by Zombies because its alive!

Members of Washington National Guard's 194th Wing pose as zombies with their simulated injury makeup before participating in the Cascadia Rising exercise, a test of Washington state’s earthquake response plan. Air Force photo by Tech Sgt. Paul Rider

I have been trying to figure out what I was seeing, since it did not make sense. If you have read Wounded Times lately, then you know the trouble I've been having with my first book. If not, then you may not need to go back and see what it is all about because of what I am about to show you.

For the sake of my loyal readers, I do not want to rehash all of it, so please forgive me and you can catch up here.

Today I went to ISBN to understand how it works. After all, two numbers on a book did not make much sense. Here is the deal on them.

About the ISBN Standard "ISBN" stands for "International Standard Book Number".

An ISBN is a number, not a bar code.

One agency per country is designated to assign ISBNs for the publishers and self-publishers located in that country. The U.S. ISBN Agency cannot assign ISBNs to publishers and self-publishers located outside the United States and its territories.

*******

Still not sure what is going on with overseas operations but we'll focus on the US for now. 

The ISBN identifies the title or other book-like product (such as an audiobook) to which it is assigned, but also the publisher to be contacted for ordering purposes. If an ISBN is obtained from a company other than the official ISBN Agency, that ISBN will not identify the publisher of the title accurately. This can have implications for doing business in the publishing industry supply chain.

When participating in the ISBN standard, publishers and self-publishers are required to report all information about titles to which they have assigned ISBNs.

For more than thirty years, ISBNs were 10 digits long. On January 1, 2007 the ISBN system switched to a 13-digit format. Now all ISBNs are 13-digits long. If you were assigned 10-digit ISBNs, you can convert them to the 13-digit format at the converter found at this website. A 10-digit ISBN cannot be converted to 13-digits merely by placing three digits in front of the 10-digit number. There is an algorithm that frequently results in a change of the last digit of the ISBN.

On Amazon, FOR THE LOVE OF JACK has the "978" number with the original one.

Paperback: 148 pages Publisher: Xlibris Corp (April 1, 2003) Language: English ISBN-10: 1401086918 

ISBN-13: 978-1401086916

Yet, the book that came in last week, (which according to Xlibris) is not new, it did not have the old ISBN number on the inside. It just had the one that was issued after 2007. Yes, this is like a very bad movie that you cannot shut off!

So, exactly why would a publisher do this after they "stopped printing it" and pulled it from distribution years before?

Even that is in doubt because apparently Xlibris cannot make up their mind when they stopped it.

 First it was 2005,

And then it was 2004~Which came in an email last week after they wrote how they stopped in 2005.

Again, we know it was not a used book! (Yes, that is my name and after I started writing back in 1984)

Love that part at the end. I bet she hoped it did so that I would go away and stop wanting them to be accountable!

The worst part of this is, they have been doing this to me for 16 years! Why not remove a book if they had in fact stopped distribution of it? Why put on a new ISBN number on a book that was "out of print" a couple of years before this special number was even issued?

Wonder how many others they did it to? 

If they did it to you, leave a comment and then maybe someone with the power to do something about it will!

I am trying to raise funds to take control of this book back! I want to print it and give it away. Please go here to support that effort.

April Fools Publishing with Xlibris

update 4-26-19 I contacted lawyers over this and they wanted to know how many books were involved...

I have no way of knowing that considering how many people had viewed my profile that far outnumber the page views on Wounded Times and my videos. Consider how many searched for me and then understand why I may never know.

Yes, that says 15,446,256 and is the Google count on my profile from a few years ago.

Why you should never publish your book on April Fools Day or with Xlibris

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 13, 2019

"We're not interested in owning your work...after all, we didn't write it." Xlibris

That quote is from the Xlibris brochure that made me decide on choosing them as the (FLUSHING) publisher for the book that had to "get out there" way back in 2003.

After all this time telling veterans to #BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife that is what I am doing. Breaking the silence on what has been torturing me for all these years and taking back control over my own work!

I wrote FOR THE LOVE OF JACK, HIS WAR/MY BATTLE before 9-11 but could not find a publisher. After all, it was about a veteran's family living with PTSD. To top that off, the veteran was a Vietnam veteran. You know, before they were big news again.

After 9-11, I added to the ending and had the copyright done in 2002. 


2003 I decided to self publish it. On April 1, 2003 it was published.

Yes, April Fools Day! Should have known right there it was off to a bad start with this (FLUSH) company.

 Product detailsPaperback: 148 pagesPublisher: Xlibris Corp (April 1, 2003)Language: English ISBN-10: 1401086918ISBN-13: 978-1401086916

After 16 years...I can assure you, that while the actual ownership of the book does belong to me, they have not seemed to be able to remember that fact.

I was hearing from people about reading the book, but saw few sales reported. I questioned Xlibris and they said that they were "used" books they must have been reading. Used book? How when there were only a few "new" ones sold according to them.

Just to find out what was going on, I ordered 2 books from Barnes and Noble. I had them shipped to the store and yes, paid full price. The bar code did not work. 

Anyway, a few more emails and trust was gone. I wanted my book out of their hands. I told them to stop printing it.

That didn't work. Really odd that they did not manage to explain why the book was still being sold, if there were no sales.

I wrote to the Better Business Bureau and Xlibris responded with it was my ego that was involved and not their problem. Besides, they also said that I was taking up too much of their time. Odd thing is that responding to the BBB, they said that "half a dozen" more were sold.

By 2004 I totally had it and my lawyer sent them a letter to stop publishing it and give me a full report.

In 2005, the book was still being sold. I (FLUSH) emailed them again! 

This is their response.

RE: STOP SELLING MY BOOK/CANCELLATION CONFIRMATION
Mon, Mar 14, 2005 6:33 am
Channel (Channel@Xlibris.com)

Dear Ms. Costos, As long as Ingram still has physical copies of your book in stock, your book will continue to be listed as available and people can continue to purchase copies of it through the different online resellers. Another way to get hold of your book is through the used book resellers. 

What happened was when customers decided to sell their used copy of a book to these resellers; they can set the book's price to any amount they want when they list it with online resellers with Amazon.com, Borders.com, Barnes and Noble.com. Xlibris does not have a relationship with these used book resellers nor do we have a say in the way they operate their business since they got these books from the customers who decided to sell their purchased books to them. Further, these used book resellers are entitled to sell used book under the first sale doctrine of copyright law. 

This email is also to confirm the cancellation of your book with Xlibris. Your book entitled "For The Love of Jack", with ISBN 1-4010-8691-8, is no longer available for sale through our Xlibris website or the 800 number. Although no new copies of your book will be produced from this point forward you should be aware that due to our relationship with various printers and book distributors, physical copies of your book currently exist within the book vending channels. For reasons of quality assurance and to provide a more efficient ordering process, Ingram will keep a handful of copies of all titles listed with them in stock at all times. Ingram currently shows one (1) physical copy of your book in stock. Your title will remain available in the channels until this copy is sold. When a title is listed as cancelled, production knows not to replenish this stock once it is depleted. Unfortunately, it must be depleted before Ingram will remove the title's listing from its system. 

Amazon and the other online channels base their listing information from what Ingram's system provides. As a result, as long as Ingram has copies in stock, title will remain listed with the online stores. These online resellers and distributors could not change the availability of your book to out of stock until somebody purchases these remaining books from them.

The copies that the online retailers have were purchased from us (you were paid royalties for these sales) giving the resellers the right to continue the sale of your book with no implication on the contract between you and Xlibris. Please note that as part of Barnes and Noble's sales programs, titles that are considered "out of print" are kept in the system as such to allow customers the ability to track hard-to-find books. Hard-to-find and out-of-print books present a great source of revenue for these businesses, which is why they continue listing books that are no longer available through their distributor. We would like you to know that it has been a pleasure doing business with you. We wish you success in your writing endeavors and we hope to work with you again in the future.

How could there be more "used" copies than ones I had been "paid for" in the first place?

"Hard-to-find and out-of-print books present a great source of revenue for these businesses, which is why they continue listing books that are no longer available through their distributor."

A great source of revenue that are no longer available? Is this why they refused to pull the book? FLUSHING seriously?


I emailed them again and told them I wanted this stopped! I asked them how I could finally get this done.

This is their reply.

Channel (Channel@Xlibris.com)To:you (Bcc) + 1 more DetailsDear Ma'am,Currently, there is only one (1) physical copy of the book left at Ingram's microinventory. You may purchase this remaining copy either through Amazon/Borders.com or Barnes and Noble.com. Based on Amazon's listing, it is indicated that there is only 1 left in stock for your title. List Price: $20.99

 So I paid full price for that book and others!

Well this kept going on, and on, and on! I tried giving away free PDF of it, and that happened many times, because I figured if I was not getting paid, I could at least control that and get it into the hands of people it would help.

In 2012, I opted to have it republished with a few changes on Amazon.

Long story short, 2019 and the book was still online. I am planning on writing the follow up.

Last week, after trying to get my ducks in a row for more changes coming to this site (which we'll talk about later), I went onto Amazon and saw that the damn thing was still online right next to the one I put up in 2012. I hit the roof when I saw that there were "new" copies and "used" copies.

I sent an email to Xlibris, Lightening Source/Ingram (the printer) and Amazon legal department.Ingram legal department responded, just stating that "The title in question, For the Love of Jack / EAN 9781401086916, is already cancelled in our system." with no answer as to when that was done or why it was still available.

Cutting this shorter than including in all the evidence and emails back and forth, on March 28, 2019 Xlibris responded with,

"However, although no new copies were produced, we would like to make you aware that due to our relationship with various printers and book distributors, physical copies of your book may currently exist within the book vending channels until these copies have been sold out."

The email went on to state that, when a book is out of print, it can still be online but will show "out of print" or "not available" even though I had already shown them, that according to Amazon, they had at least one new one. So, I ordered it and it shipped.

I didn't know I was a magician! How did I manage to buy a brand new book that went extinct in 2005? Wow, looks like there are a lot of (FLUSHING) magic tricks going on!

This new copy that did not exist shipped out the day after I ordered it from California.

On April 1, 2019, exactly 16 years after they published my book, I asked them to tell me when they supposedly stopped it from being printed. On April 2, 2019 they responded with this.

"Upon further checking, the book was cancelled way back March 11, 2005. Therefore, there was really a time wherein the book was available." 

When questioned again as to how it was possible I managed to buy a new book...and not a new one, they replied with this.

The books I bought online in 2005 were new, and they had emailed acknowledgement of at least one of them. 

How were they not able to decide when they "cancelled" it? Was it 2004? 2005? And how the (FLUSH) were people making money off new ones when Xlibris denied the existence of new ones?

*******

update 4/17/2019

About the ISBN Standard
"The ISBN identifies the title or other book-like product (such as an audiobook) to which it is assigned, but also the publisher to be contacted for ordering purposes. If an ISBN is obtained from a company other than the official ISBN Agency, that ISBN will not identify the publisher of the title accurately. This can have implications for doing business in the publishing industry supply chain."

"For more than thirty years, ISBNs were 10 digits long. On January 1, 2007 the ISBN system switched to a 13-digit format. Now all ISBNs are 13-digits long. If you were assigned 10-digit ISBNs, you can convert them to the 13-digit format at the converter found at this website. A 10-digit ISBN cannot be converted to 13-digits merely by placing three digits in front of the 10-digit number. There is an algorithm that frequently results in a change of the last digit of the ISBN."

But that is exactly what they did!

ISBN-13:978-1401086916

ISBN-10:1401086918
So why would they add this number years after they supposedly stopped printing it?

*******

How did I manage to buy new books, yes, paying full price, for books that went extinct?

I called Morgan and Morgan yesterday and ran down what happened. They wanted to know how many I thought were sold. How the (FLUSH) would I know that since Xlibris keeps saying that only "used" copies are being sold and they have "no control" over that?

The lesson here is, never publish on April Fools Day...or with Xlibris because after 16 years of putting me through hell, they cannot, or will not, explain how it is a book that had so few sales, according to them, IS STILL BEING SOLD!

UPDATE

Here is the link to GoFundMe