My Lost Book - How Do I Get It Back From Amazon? Or Should I Just Switch to Steemit ?

I wrote a book once. Here is my story.

A few springs ago, frustrated with the state of my career as a public school teacher in the United States, I began making noise, lots of noise. After a couple decades of teaching and parenting, I finally got the nerve up to blow the whistle about the state of our schools.

And, boy did I blow hard. I blew the whistle about things like testing. At the time, nearly 70 percent of a student day was spent in some form of testing. I am not just talking spelling tests and pop quizzes, like the good ol' days. Oh, no. I'm talking diagnostic testing, baseline testing, standards testing, benchmark testing, practice state testing, district testing, state testing, makeup state testing, and the list goes on.

And, I am not just talking my little small town school. I am talking all the schools, in all the states, around the country. They had to follow this road to endless testing because our president, at the time, confused the word hope with accountability and tied test scores to school funding. It went from 'No Dollar Left Behind' to the 'Race to the Profit' in the blink of an eye. Either way, tests were given.

I was miffed. As a teacher on the front line, literally, I saw what these policies translated to in our world. Children were leveled into classes and refused classes like art and recess, based on low test scores from tests that the teachers did not write nor did they ever see. We had to trust big corporations to make the tests and coincidentally, the same corporations to supply us with the textbooks and test prep materials.

I likened it to that old chewing gum commercial. Think of it, a chewing gum that never loses flavor ... tasty, yes, but who would ever buy gum again? In the commercial, you see the gum factory closing down in the background. That is how I see this testing industry. After all, if the texts and prep books were any good and the students all passed the tests, the testing industry would go bankrupt. Kapoof. Just like that. Hence, the loophole. Prep one way, test another, call the whole thing copyright and never let anyone, including the parents, see what you are doing.

Oh, and blame it all on the teachers, just for flavor...

I blew the whistle. First on Facebook. I rounded up all my friends and coworkers off Farmville and we started pages geared to protest the tests and to connect parents with legislators. It worked, sometimes. We stopped a bill here or changed a statute there.

We even convinced our local school board to opt out of all testing. We had exercised local control, straight up, local control. It lasted a week. In an emergency meeting, a week later, our local school board rescinded their vote. The testing returned. It was a tough week. Rumor has it the feds came down hard. Either way, we didn't give up and enlightened many parents as to their rights when it comes to their own child's education. Parent rights matter, still.

One way I attempted to tell the world our story was by writing a book. I published a short novella on Amazon about a teacher who quits her job right in the middle of state testing lockdown. The story follows the students she left behind as they struggle to understand.

I sold it for a couple dollars, less than a cup of Starbucks. Most of the novels were downloaded on my promo days, so people could read for free. I never expected to make much money and I never did, even though the book made it to number one on Amazon's young adult fiction list. I even used a pseudonym, keeping my real name concealed.

All went well, until my computer crashed. I lost access to my emails and forgot the name I used to create the Amazon account. I can't even remember the name of the self publishing platform at Amazon that I used to upload the book.

I still see it there on their lists. I even saw it on the shelf at Books a Million. Yes, my book in a bookstore. I was shocked. I would have bought a copy but I kept wondering, who is getting paid? It certainly is not me.

I don't even have access to the account. If I did, I would update the banking info to make sure I got paid. But, I have not yet been successful in getting through. Many calls to Amazon have left me more confused than not.

So, there it is. Perhaps I am not meant to make a penny off this book. Meh. It seems I have titled it, perfectly.

It is. What it is.

I really would like to write a part two to this novel, but perhaps it is time to start over. Fresh. What do you think?

I'll post the link to my book below, but only because the subject of testing is still so important. If you read Amazon Prime for free through Kindle Unlimited, you can download it without a cost. If not, feel free to buy the book, just know you are tipping Amazon, not me :)

Meh. When A Teacher Shrugs by Margo Lynne
https://www.amazon.com/Meh-Teacher-Shrugs-Seeking-Sandy-ebook/dp/B00ZCN5AM8

Oh, and if you are a big wig at Amazon and can help this poor ol' fogie, nearly retired teacher, figure out how to get back the rights to her novel, I'll dedicate the sequel to you. #promise

OR ... should I just publish my next novel on Steemit, instead?