The New Economy: Hire Your Expert from Asia!

 Needed help overcoming error messages in self-publishing (on KDP/Kindle). Daughter said "hire an expert on Fiverr." I found two, a guy in India and a woman in Pakistan. They charge $60 and $25, respectively, for what should be (for them; they're experts at this and have done this 100s of times) a job of an hour or so.

Sadly, Hareem (woman in Pakistan) hasn't been able to overcome the error messages either, which makes me feel vindicated but also frustrated because we always hope an expert can fix our problem. She is beaucoup hours in, but constant failure. The guy in India is champing at the bit, promising he can fix it easily.

One issue here is: This is skilled labor-you need a lot of experience and knowledge, to do this (to fix error messages when the error messages don't say anything about what the problem is). But the pay they ask for is so low that it has the effect of freezing out anyone in the US who might want to run a biz doing this. I bet $25 will buy you something in Pakistan.

And, my book is so specialized that, even though the e-book sales are decent (like, maybe 15 copies a year--my topic (modern grapes) is arcane), the paperback sales are really miniscule, so even a $60 cost to me will wipe out my book sale profits for years.

All of this could be remedied more easily if stupid Amazon would only invest in some better user interface--better error communication. Of course, there is no live person there who will interface with customers. How did this happen? In the olden times, you could get help when you needed it; 'the customer must be treated well,' etc, etc. Now, it's 'screw the customers; all we want are profits.'

This is one of the great failures of America's promise. More and more, we consumers are getting worse-quality goods and services, while paying more.




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