Puzzles AlmanacPUZZLESALMANAC
Print SetSign in
Guard · guide

Amazon asked you to confirm your publishing rights. Here is what that email means, and what to do with the five days.

Nearly every author who receives it assumes they have been caught doing something. Usually the opposite is true: somebody filed a complaint, and Amazon has no way to tell which of you is the original.

Puzzles Almanac · updated 2026-08-20
The notice, in short

A review found interior or cover content in your book that is also “available from a different publisher.” Reply with documentation confirming that you hold the rights. Within five days — or the title is made unavailable for sale.

Paraphrased. The exact wording varies between notices; the shape of the request does not.

What it does not mean

It is not a finding against you. Nobody has decided anything yet. It is a request for documents, triggered by a claim somebody else made.
It is not usually about your whole account. It names specific titles. Answering well on those titles is the job in front of you.
It is not evidence that the complainant is right. Filing a complaint costs nothing and requires no proof up front. That asymmetry is the whole problem, and it is why the burden lands on you.

The five days

The window is short because it is a document request, not an investigation. Treat it as one.

Day 1
Morning
Reply the same day, even with nothing attached

Acknowledge the notice, name the title and its ASIN, and say the documentation is being assembled. Silence is what closes the window — an early reply keeps a human on the thread.

Day 1
Same day
Gather everything dated that you did not create yourself

Font and image licences, stock receipts, the invoice from a freelancer or ghostwriter, the ISBN registration, your working files. Anything dated that a third party issued is worth more than anything you made.

Day 2
Sort it
Separate what you licensed from what you made

Most complaints touch stock assets, clip art, public-domain text or a template. For licensed material the licence is the answer. For original material you need something showing it existed under your name first.

Day 3
Write it
Write a list of exhibits, not a story

One line per item: what it is, where it came from, what date it carries. A reviewer working through a queue can act on a list. They cannot act on an explanation of how much the book means to you.

Day 4–5
Send & cover
Send it, then close the gap on every other title

Reply on the existing thread; do not open a second case. Then witness the rest of your catalogue while this is fresh — the next complaint arrives with the same five days, and the evidence you are missing today is evidence you can have by tonight for the books nobody has reported yet.

This is what we have learned from authors who have been through it, and from building the evidence tooling. It is not legal advice, and we are not your lawyers. If a title matters commercially, talk to someone who is.

If you have nothing independent

Then you send what you do have, and you say plainly what it is. Plenty of cases resolve on licences and working files alone, and overstating what your evidence proves is the one move that can make things worse.

But be honest with yourself about the gap. A certificate issued today cannot prove anything about last year — and we would not sell you one pretending otherwise. What it can do is make sure the next title, and the ones already on sale that nobody has complained about yet, are never in this position.

While you are waiting on the reply

Witness the rest of the catalogue tonight

Guard fingerprints your files, anchors the record into the Bitcoin blockchain, and gives you a certificate a reviewer can verify without going through you — or through us.

How Guard worksCheck an existing certificate →