How to Ban a Book

Without Banning a Book

Dear Readers, 

I am asking for your help. 

[Subscribe here for FREE to my new podcast, “Birth Balm”]

In a matter of days, I will be formally UN-publishing my book, Portal: The Art of Choosing Orgasmic, Pain-Free, Blissful Birth from Amazon and all other platforms. (Yes, this is for real, and yes, I’m working on a solution so that you *will* be able to buy the new edition of Portal soon–with some very special goodies coming up–so read on!) 

***EDITED ON JULY 20TH, 2024 TO UPDATE you that my book is officially back on Amazon and you can purchase it now! <3

Given Portal’s success, it might sound crazy for me to be un-publishing it and starting from scratch–especially since it was a near-instantaneous bestseller. 

During the first days of its release, Portal rose to occupy the number one position within the pregnancy and birth category on Amazon, and it has over 150 reviews on that platform, the vast majority of which are glowing 5-star testimonials, like this one:

But since its initial release (as so many potential readers have discovered when they have gone to the Amazon website to purchase it), Portal has, for many weeks been listed as “Currently unavailable” on Amazon, with the alarming aside that “We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock” and no “buy” button.

This is a serious problem: without any way for customers to order the book, or to indicate ongoing demand for the book, Amazon is therefore incapable of recognizing that more copies should be printed. It’s a seeming catch-22 that has totally obstructed the book’s progress.

In effect, Portal has been knee-capped, mid-marathon. Yes, the book has been consistently available via Kindle, but in print-form, it’s just…not there. 

For weeks and weeks on end, I have been receiving a steady stream of daily emails from my fans and followers, begging my team to help them find a way for them to buy Portal, asking when it will be available once more, and wondering why it has been listed as essentially…non-existent. 

Why, indeed, has this happened?

This fiasco ensued primarily because I made an egregious error in trusting a company that I have come to realize is not only incompetent, but in my experience, unethical, misleading, and totally unwilling to fulfill their promise of a “simple, worry-free” “print-on-demand” publishing experience.

This business is based on the pretext that they provide the seamless distribution of books via their “print-on-demand” service to Amazon, and to a number of other online retailers as well, ostensibly making the entire process easy for authors. In practice, however, this company has proven themselves incapable of doing any of this. 

My experience of working with this company–let’s call them “B” (I won’t name them explicitly here, but it’s fairly obvious who they are) has been anything but seamless and stress-free. Instead, launching Portal into the world has been an absolute nightmare. The upside of course, is that I’ve received an epic education in book publishing. 

The main reason that I hired “B” initially is because I felt overwhelmed by the process of publishing, and I believed their misleading avowal of expertise. I was frankly intimidated by the process of formatting my book, setting up an author account, uploading my book to the Amazon platform, not to mention marketing the book effectively. I found it daunting to sift through the often obscure and confusing information out there about how best to approach self-publishing, and it was for this reason that I engaged the services of “B”—to receive the help I felt I needed as a first-time author without any pre-existing knowledge of the book world. 

I, like so many writers, was looking for a platform that could offer me not only guidelines, but hands-on support throughout the entire experience of bringing my book to market as a self-published author. Indeed, when I had my first consultation with “B,” I was assured by their salesperson that self-publishing directly via Amazon was very confusing and difficult (which I realize now isn’t the case), that “B” would make it easy (it was the opposite), that they would provide promotional support (they did not), and that if I went with “B,” I would retain full ownership and control over my book (a blatant lie).

The deeper reason I signed on with “B”, however, (instead of simply publishing directly via Amazon), is that I was attempting to equivocate, and to mitigate what I felt was both the “risk” and even the shame of publishing on Amazon to any extent. 

You see, “B” tout themselves as an option for authors who want to make their books available both on Amazon as well as through “B”’s online “bookshop,” and other “independent” platforms, which I thought would be a handy option for those among my customers who, understandably, want nothing to do with Amazon at all. The fact is, (and yes, this is in part thanks to the aggressive dominance of Amazon) it remains very challenging for self-published authors to break into the independent brick-and-mortar bookselling establishment, especially given Amazon’s ubiquity.

This effort on my part, to take the “middle way,” and to cover all my bases (making the book available via Amazon and indie shops through “B”)  totally backfired, especially in conjunction with the success of the book. 

As it turns out, “B” doesn’t have the capacity to fulfill their promises, in part, because Portal has been so successful, and the consistent orders of the book (when it was available) have totally overwhelmed “B”. Contrary to the way they present themselves, “B” doesn’t actually have any real business-to-business relationship with Amazon, and no ability to advocate on the part of their authors. If I had published directly through Amazon (which means that Amazon would have overseen both the printing and distribution of Portal), there never would have been any interruption in its accessibility. 

My executive assistant and I spent countless hours on the phone with various customer service representatives of “B” over the past couple of months in an attempt to navigate the dog’s breakfast they have made of distributing Portal. Multiple associates and members of the leadership team alike have dismissed us, gaslit us, and they have ultimately revealed that they obscured crucial facts about the publishing process (through them and in general) that would have allowed me to have made an informed decision about whether or not it was in my best interests to work with them. In several cases, they straight up lied to me. 

Although “B” promotes themselves as a self-publishing service, at no point during the onboarding process was I ever actually informed that the ISBN number (the international standard book number that is unique to each edition of every book that is formally circulated in the world) which I myself purchased for Portal (through the “B” website), would actually be forever tied to “B,” rather than to me, and that I would actually have no ownership over that number and therefore no access to Portal’s back-end on Amazon. In effect, I thought I was self-publishing, when in fact, “B’s” control over the ISBN number means they ultimately have control over the distribution of the book.

I spent a significant amount of money on “B”’s services up-front, and I also agreed to a royalty cut for each book sold that was less than half of what I would have received had I published through Amazon KDP directly, because I naively believed that both the initial investment and the comparatively scant royalty payments would be made up for by the supposed convenience of “B”’s services and their professional support. 

Not only would I have made over double the money had I self-published directly through Amazon instead of through this inept, pathetic, unscrupulous company, but most significantly, had I avoided “B” altogether, Portal would have been “live” and available on Amazon continuously, without any interruptions or conspicuous, multi-week-long absences, which have cost me untold numbers of potential sales.

Furthermore, publishing directly through Amazon would have ensured that my many many European customers, who ordered the book during its pre-sale period (a pre-sale period that “B” erroneously told me was mandatory) only to end up waiting for several months in some cases before their orders were mysteriously cancelled by Amazon, would have received their books in good time. 

There remain, even now, European readers who paid for Portal during the pre-sale months ago, and have yet to receive their copy, while in most European countries, Portal has just never been available at all. Despite the assurances “B” gave me all along that international customers would always be able to buy directly from “B’s” online bookshop (the most profitable option for them, of course), their shipping costs are astronomical, and prohibitive for many people. The cherry on top, however, is that Portal hasn’t even been available through the “B” website lately, either, with no explanation as to why, no alternatives, no support in finding a solution, and not even a token apology. 

Most stunningly, at no point has “B” acknowledged or taken ownership over their multiple screw-ups, evasions, or deceptions, or for their stunning unprofessionalism or abject failure to deliver on their promise of a seamless, user-friendly, easeful experience of publishing a book that is made accessible through print-on-demand. 

At the beginning of this trainwreck, when it was originally brought to my attention that Portal was listed as “unavailable” on Amazon, with no path to purchase, I was totally disoriented, and I have to admit that it crossed my mind that perhaps Portal was just so incendiary, so profoundly insubordinate to the regressive power-structure, that it had somehow been buried deliberately—conveniently neutered by the mysterious, inaccessibility of the Amazon borg. 

I don’t actually think that’s the case at this point (and yes, I know, it is also entirely possible that I might not be quite that important, either, ha). But in the end, this does amount to a kind of censorship, if inadvertent. There are a multitude of ways of banning a book without banning a book, and even though this particular disaster is due to a combination of my own lack of due diligence, and “B”’s disingenuity, it also relates to the larger story of the the malevolent “management” of information, and so-called “disinformation.”

I know that Portal is an important book; a special book. A good book. A “disruptive” book. 

I know that Portal will change (and has already changed) the lives of so many people, and the world. 

As those of you who did manage to get your hands on a copy of it will know, and as so many readers have pointed out, Portal is not really a book about birth. 

While it does serve as a guide to claiming a euphoric birth experience, it is, first and foremost, a book about God, free-will, the nature of reality, good and evil, and the awesome power we have been bestowed by the divine, to choose to align ourselves with freedom, our soul’s purpose, our essence, embodiment, and nature, or to choose to relinquish our humanity and to embrace the deep fakery of digital unconsciousness.

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In an article titled “Ode to the Book, that I published on this platform on September 23, 2023, https://yolandenorrisclark.substack.com/p/ode-to-the-book I wrote, 

Books are soulful in a way, I would argue, that digital copy (yes, even so-called e-paper) can never be. When I come across those who have elatedly “downsized” their book collections, replacing them with digital files, I feel only pity. 

Books bear the imprint not only of the author’s mind, but of the echo of the book’s embodied energy; the trees that were felled to build its sheaves. Books are substantial. Books are real. 

I have books that have outlived several generations of people already. Books are testimony. Books have an inherent faithfulness, an authenticity, a factualness, even if their contents are fantastical. Books represent an investment, and command a reciprocity that the tablet (pill) does not. 

I know that most people are fairly stressed about the future to varying degrees. But especially in light of the satanic insanity of so-called AI (true stupidity, as I point out in Portal) and its dull, necrotic, frankensteinian march forward, I am more excited than ever before about the future of The Book—one of the most advanced, scintillating, and powerful technologies that humans have come up with yet. 

I truly believe that books—real live books—are more important than ever (I cannot wait to someday retrieve my two storage lockers full of thousands of them left behind—for now—in New Brunswick.) My books truly are my most prized possessions. Books are magnificent.

In light of its significance, and my unabashed dedication to its proliferation, I made a number of what I thought were conscious compromises and contingencies in regards to the publication of Portal, in hopes that I could straddle a couple of bases, if not cover them. 

I accept that this may have been shortsighted, or even a sellout, but over the course of this debacle, I have come to truly realize that it’s ok to play the Amazon game. There is always a price to pay, and it’s acceptable for me to accept that I am allowed to make this exchange in order to get Portal into the hands of as many people as possible. 

Ironically, this is precisely why I will soon be pulling Portal from “B”’s roster, taking it down from Amazon altogether, and from any other online retail platforms that have picked it up, and then re-publishing an entirely new edition of Portal independently, through Amazon directly. 

This is an incredibly precarious choice to make for a number of reasons, most significantly being that I will lose all of the incredible 5-star reviews on Amazon I have received from my appreciative readers which are invaluable in terms of propelling the book’s reputation and triggering the “right” algorithms that will inspire Amazon to promote the book to the “right” readers. Given that Portal has been gaining such incredible traction and momentum in recent weeks, this feels especially scary. Honestly, coming to this decision has been…sickening and very scary at times, but ultimately, liberating. In many ways, despite this situation not being Amazon’s “fault,” it is, nonetheless, a symptom of the monopoly that Amazon holds over the entire book publishing world. 

The bright side, of course, is that even the trickiest labyrinths can be navigated, and I can start this process afresh, with full control, and considering the robust (if not entirely wanted) training I have received on the business of writing, editing, publishing, marketing, and distributing books (including what not to do) I am delighted to announce that Portal will officially be published under the banner of my new publishing company. 

That’s right–I have decided to create a business that will truly be a support for writers and aspiring authors; a business that will actually make it simpler and more accessible for writers to bring their projects to life. With my guidance and knowledge not only of the writing process, but of the steps to effective editing, publishing, and marketing, I am so excited to begin the work of midwifing other’s masterpieces into existence, without ever underhandedly taking any ownership over their rights. 

Over the course of my entire experience of writing and publishing Portal, I have come to realize the profound parallels between giving birth to babies and to books–both involve powerful, emancipatory, and subversive technologies (the human body, mind, and soul) and both represent the most intimate and important acts of creation. 

I cannot wait to support women in both of these endeavours, with true joy and ease. 

I will be unveiling the name and details of this project soon, but in the meantime, I have something for you that I’ve been dreaming up for years and it’s completely free. I want to introduce you to my new exclusive private first run of my podcast, Birth Balm, which you can subscribe to HERE.

Birth Balm is a show that touches on self-healing, politics, motherhood, womanhood, spirituality, youth, aging, beauty, midwifery and parenting, with the intention to not only inspire critical thought, but to provide a balm for the soul.

Each week from now through July, you’ll receive a brand-new podcast episode each week that will only be available to those who have subscribed. The first episode is live now.

So. The next edition of Portal is coming, but there may be a period of a few weeks to a couple of months during which the book will be entirely unavailable, while I sort out this transition. I promise I will be doing everything I can to make the suspension as brief as possible, but parts of this process will be outside of my control. 

In the meantime, I humbly ask for your support in the following ways:

• Please do NOT leave any new reviews on Amazon or Goodreads for now. Unfortunately, I will be losing all of my reviews and Portal’s current standing on Amazon when I pull the book, so any new reviews will be lost forever. 

• Please DO write down your reviews and save them privately– in a note on your phone or wherever–and get ready to share the NEW Amazon listing once the book is officially mine again (I’ll keep everyone updated through email, so stay tuned - https://www.yolandenorris-clark.com/magazine).

• If you already left a review in the past (a massive thank you, by the way, you have no idea how much these mean to me), please go to Amazon and find your original review and copy/paste somewhere, so that when the new book edition is up, you can easily share that glowing review again on Amazon.

• The new “second edition” of Portal that I will be publishing myself (instead of via an unscrupulous and incompetent publishing/distribution company) will contain a very special gift via QR code (I can’t wait to share with you!) So if you do have the means to purchase another copy, or you feel called to buy a copy for a friend, you’ll be receiving an exclusive perk.

• The Kindle version of the *new* edition will be available to download FOR FREE for 5 days, and it would be an incredible gift to me, if you could “purchase” it (even if you don’t have a Kindle)--at no cost to you– to help boost the algorithm, propel the book forward, and become a “verified reader” which will then allow you to leave a “verified review” which holds a bit more weight than other reviews.

• Please share this article far and wide–especially if you have any writers in your community. I really am hopeful that through my story, and the mistakes I made and lessons I’ve learned, that it helps others from having to go through the frustration and heartache I have.

• And finally, please please please stick with me as I take this leap of faith and take this stand not only for my book, Portal, but for the free transmission of ideas.

Thank you. More to come–and don’t forget to subscribe to Birth Balm.

With love, 
Yolande

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And just a few more glowing reviews to mark this unbelievable moment in history forever. Thank you, thank you, thank you, women. <3

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