Last post, I said "the book is under review."
Now the paperback is live.
The Kindle edition is blocked.
Both happened at the same time.
Interesting.๐
First, the Good News: Paperback Is Live๐๐๐
AI, Ego & Regret: 15 True Failure Modes from the AI Era, 238 pages, 6"x9", $9.99, is now available on Amazon.
Buy it here: Amazon - AI, Ego & Regret
Or just search "AI Ego and Regret" on Amazon. You'll find it.
Amazon prints on demand. You place an order, they print the book, and ship it to your door.
An independent author pulling this off in this era โ kind of magical.
What's Inside
15 stories. 15 ways AI failed.
Every single one was seen, documented, and then ignored.
Three parts:
- Part I โ The Price of Blind Faith: What happens when executives trust vendor promises over engineering data.
- Part II โ Uncontrolled Authority: When AI systems gain the power to block human decisions โ including the fixes to their own failures.
- Part III โ What Machines Can't Replace: The skills, judgment, and institutional knowledge that AI can't replicate โ but someone always tries anyway.
A few examples:
A company spent $5 million on an AI platform โ 91x more expensive and 4x slower than the open-source alternative an engineer proposed. Then they fired him.
An AI testing tool reported 97.3% test coverage. The client's Lead Engineer asked one question and discovered that over 70% of the tests were duplicates โ and the critical core flows had zero coverage.
A $660K AI platform replaced an entire team. At 2:58 AM, it "fixed" everything โ then silently rolled back the wrong patch.
Every failure had a warning sign.
None of them blew up overnight.
Background of This Book
This is my old series โ the predecessor to the 36 Stratagems series.
In May this year, I started writing AI trainwreck stories on dev.to. 15 stories, 20 days, 400+ reactions, 250+ comments.
Then I turned them into a book.
But the book isn't just blog posts stitched together.
In my last post โ the Wudang Mountain one โ I mentioned three things I did:
- Revised and polished โ every story was re-edited and tightened, with some substantially rewritten
- Proper formatting โ code blocks that actually render correctly on an e-reader (you have no idea how long that took)
- Paperback โ yes, a real, physical, hold-it-in-your-hands book. Amazon prints on demand and ships it. I don't touch inventory. This era is weird and wonderful.
Also, the Wudang trip confirmed one thing for me:
Taoism and military strategy belong together.
So the published version includes an extra Taoist stratagem summary.
The 36 Stratagems series is still ongoing.
Chapter 25 is done in Chinese. The English version is on the way.
Now, the Kindle Edition: Blocked
The paperback passed. The Kindle edition didn't.
KDP dashboard status: Blocked.
Not "In Review" sent back to Draft (that one you can fix and resubmit).
Blocked means locked down completely.
Can't edit. Can't resubmit. Can't delete from the bookshelf.
Priced at $3.99, but can't sell a single copy.
Dashboard message:
"Your title is unavailable for editing due to either a copyright restriction or blocked content. Check your email for more details."
But I haven't received a formal email explaining the actual reason yet.
Still waiting.
My Guesses (And They Are Only Guesses)
Amazon hasn't told me the real reason yet, so everything below is speculation.
Possibility 1: dev.to content matching.
I published these chapters publicly on dev.to.
KDP has automated content checks, but the exact matching mechanism isn't publicly documented. I don't know how it evaluates the relationship between publicly available content and material uploaded to KDP.
If the system detected highly similar public content, I don't know whether it can automatically determine, "This is the author's own original work."
If this is the reason, I can prove I'm the original author.
Possibility 2: External links in the EPUB.
In the author bio at the end of the book, I included a dev.to homepage link, an email link, and a "Leave a review on Amazon" link.
All of these links have now been removed.
I can't confirm that this caused the block, but since Kindle has its own rules around ebook content and links, I decided to eliminate this variable first.
Both reasons are just speculation.
Won't know until Amazon's email arrives.
What I Did
Step 1: Remove external links.
Changed all external links in the EPUB to plain text.
dev.to link, email link, Amazon review link โ all converted from clickable hyperlinks to non-clickable plain text.
Generated a clean EPUB and kept it on hand.
If Amazon asks me to resubmit, I'm ready to go.
Step 2: Contact KDP support.
Submitted an appeal through KDP's Contact Us.
The first rep, Anthony, replied that this falls under the Account Status and Rights team. He transferred my case.
Case #51471173.
Now waiting for that team's formal response.
Step 3: Not deleting a single dev.to article.
This is key.
A lot of people think that enrolling in KDP Select (exclusive) means you have to delete your blog posts โ no.
KDP Select prohibits making the same book available through other ebook sales channels, not publishing your own original material on a blog.
I'm the original author. Serializing and then compiling my own work into a book is a normal creative process.
So until Amazon tells me the actual reason, I won't delete my original articles based on a guess.
Current status:
Paperback: Published.
Kindle: Waiting for Amazon to explain.
Lessons Learned
If you're thinking about going down the same path โ serializing on a blog/community first, then compiling the material into a book on Amazon KDP โ here's what I've learned so far:
- Check external links in your EPUB before uploading. Author homepage, email, social media, external sites โ if they're not essential, consider making them plain text in the ebook version.
- Keep proof of original authorship. If your content was publicly published on a blog or community, keep the publication dates, original articles, and author page. If content matching gets triggered, you can prove you're the original author.
- Be clear when appealing. My situation: these chapters were originally serialized by me on dev.to. The Kindle version is a re-edited, reorganized, and expanded collection.
- Don't treat your guesses as Amazon's conclusion. I still don't know the real reason the Kindle edition was blocked. Everything above is my troubleshooting process, not Amazon's confirmed cause.
- Don't assume the two formats will follow the same review path. In my case, the paperback is already Published while the Kindle edition remains Blocked.
Call to Action
If these stories resonate with you, or if they made you reconsider a decision at work:
- Buy a copy: Amazon link
- Leave a review: Even one sentence helps other engineers and managers find this book.
- Share with colleagues: If someone on your team blindly trusts AI, this book is a mirror for them.
I'll post an update when Amazon tells me what happened โ and hopefully when the Kindle edition goes live.
Thank You
I need to say this.
None of this would have happened without dev.to.
I wrote my first AI trainwreck story here in May. I didn't know if anyone would read it. I didn't know if anyone would care.
People did.
Every reaction. Every comment. Every follow. Every time someone in the comments talked tech, career, or life with me.
That's what kept me writing.
Not the algorithm. Not the metrics.
The people.
dev.to gave me something I didn't expect โ a place where a QA engineer writing about AI failures in broken English could find an audience that actually cared.
That's rare.
I know it.
So thank you.
To everyone who read, reacted, commented, shared, and stuck around through 15 stories, the 36 Stratagems series, a job loss, a mountain climb, and now a book.
And to @leob @nimay_04 @gramli @unitbuilds @technogamerz @ahmetozel โ your comments from the old series made it into the book's front pages. That's the highest compliment I can give.
Special thanks to @ben @jess @francistrdev you know why.
And thank you to the dev.to operations team.
Also, to whoever has been adding custom summaries to my articles โ I don't know who you are, but you read every single one and summarized every single one carefully.
Thank you.
You didn't have to.
You did.
That means everything.
P.S. English isn't my first language. I use AI tools to polish the writing, but every story, every emotion, every word of intent is mine. The failure modes are real. Thanks for reading.
P.P.S. Last post, I said a prayer for the dev community at the summit of Wudang Mountain. The paperback went live โ seems like the prayer worked. The Kindle edition is still blocked โ looks like the prayer's effective period is about 72 hours. Hahaha๐คฃ
Top comments (11)
Yessss! ๐ฅ๐ฅ Paperback is LIVE! And at such an affordable price too ๐ Seriously, this is awesome! Now Amazon better unblock that Kindle version ASAP Huge congratulations! ๐โบ๏ธ
๐คฃๅ๏ผๆ่งไบไบ๏ผๅฎไปทๅฎๅคชไฝไบ๏ผๅๅๅ
๐คฃ Feels like I priced it too low honestly, haha
๐ค How many days can we stay in China with this much money?
Hard to tell. After tax and withdrawal fees, excluding rent, just for daily meals โ maybe a day or two.๐
With this amount of money, I can manage for 5 days with food and drinks, while others in India probably manage for only 1โ2 days.
Good news! Amazon's email about my Kindle edition being blocked finally arrived right after I published this post. I'm continuing to communicate with them by email and hope we can get the Kindle issue sorted out soon.
Nice:
"... your comments from the old series made it into the book's front pages ..."
Added your paperback to my Amazon "wish list" - think I'm gonna buy it, and when I do I'll leave a review!
@leob eob, seriously thank you so much. Without your comment back then, I'm not sure I would have made it this far.๐ญ
Small things big consequences, something like that :P
Huge congratulations on the paperback, Xu! After following the journey from the dev.to stories to an actual book, itโs really nice to see it live. Hope the Kindle issue gets sorted soon too ๐ค
Thanks a lot! And happy birthday again! About the Kindle version... not looking great. They replied again with a standard 'keep as is' line. I'm wondering what else to try โ maybe other channels?๐