The Grace Bible is on Kindle. Finally.

Normally it takes about two hours to get a book into the Kindle store. The Grace Bible took three months.

Three stressful months.

Back in September, I submitted The Grace Bible: 1-3 John & Jude to the Kindle peeps expecting them to approve it straight away. Instead, I endured a weeks-long conversation that went like this:

Kindle: “While reviewing your book, we determined that the book is in the public domain.”

Me: “It isn’t. It’s 100% original and written by me.”

Kindle: “We’ve decided to uphold our previous decision and won’t be making the book available for sale on Amazon.”

Me: “A public domain book is not covered by intellectual property rights or copyright. That is not the case here. Even the Bible verses I quote are under copyright. I had to get special permission to quote them from the copyright owner.”

Kindle: “We’ve decided to uphold our previous decision and won’t be making the book available for sale on Amazon.”

I tried to argue my case, but every time I was met with the same response: “We won’t be making the book available for sale on Amazon.”

It was like hitting my head on a wall.

In all my years of submitting books to Amazon, I’d never experienced a situation like this. Normally the Kindle people are friendly and helpful, but not this time. It almost seemed like there was someone who didn’t want The Grace Bible to be published.

Worse, they put a big “BLOCKED” label on my submission so I couldn’t delete it and start over.

I was stuck. I’d written a book which the world’s largest bookstore refused to sell.

Strangely Amazon had no problem publishing the paperback and hardcover versions. Perhaps these formats were reviewed by different teams.

After The Grace Bible was released (last week), I asked the Kindle folks to reconsider my case. They didn’t want to talk about it. But I got the message that if I submitted another book – one that was identical in every way to the rejected one – they’d publish it.

And they did.

Short version: The Grace Bible: 1–3 John & Jude is now available in the Kindle store.

Finally.