Those following along at home will recall that some Kindle users, after downloading Fortune’s Favors, found that the Kindle had helpfully opened the book to “Interludes,” which those readers quite reasonably understood to be the first chapter of the book, and so started reading.

In fact, “Interludes” is. . .a series of interludes that take place between Chapter One and Two*.  I could not replicate this error, either on my own Kindle app or on Amazon’s publishing tool on-site.  I therefore wrote to Amazon, asking them to fix the error which they had clearly generated.

I have this morning received Amazon’s reply, which I reproduce below in its entirety.

Hello Sharon,

I hope this email finds you well!

I checked the uploaded and converted content files of your eBook and can 
confirm that there is no issue with it. The content is opening
on the cover of the book.

If any of the customers are facing any issue with their devices, 
then I would request you to inform them
to contact our Kindle Customer Service team 
directly for assistance.

They can contact our Kindle Customer Service team 24 hours
a day, 7 days a week using the below links:
 
www.amazon.com/clicktocall
 
www.amazon.com/clicktochat

*****

Further, if you can provide us with some screenshots of the page
where the error is appearing, then we can reach
out to our Technical team for investigation.

Thanks for your understanding
and support.


Regards,

Nathan 
Kindle Direct Publishing

The lesson we receive from this is!  Do not — DO NOT EVER — assume that your Kindle device has opened a book or a story to the correct first page.  ALWAYS page back to the front of the book, or the cover, then page forward, just like you would if you were reading a paper book.  You cannot trust your device to be working in your best interests in this.

__________

*We are skipping lightly over the authors’ feelings regarding the fact that Amazon essentially served a broken story to those readers — an aspect of the case that we have no hope of making plain to Amazon, though, in my opinion, the worst wrong done in the whole muddle.