I am trying to list two books I wrote and illustrated myself, I printed them locally, these are sitting in boxes in my house, I plan to list them and use FBA to ship them to the Amazon US warehouse (I am in the UK, I already sell them on Etsy, but the shipping costs and shipping wait is high for USA customers so I am hoping to sell more units to the US via Amazon). No kdp, no pod, just ready-made physical books.

I bought a GS1 membership and codes. I assigned one code to each of my two books, then waited well over the 72 hours stipulated for them to become active, now two weeks ago. But, when I went to make the listing I am getting an 8572 error saying the codes don't match the products I am trying to list. Which doesn't make sense as they're new codes I recently assigned and these books are unique and not already available on amazon - or anywhere except my Etsy shop. I deleted the listings and tried again, no joy.

I opened a case and sent them the information asked for in the error message, the product name, manufacturer (me), the UPCs (GTN-13 codes) and my GS1 certificate.

I was told my attachments weren't sufficient and that I needed to provide a letter from the maufacturer or brand owner giving me permission to sell the product. But they didn't read that I am the manufacturer, that there is no brand owner, I am the owner of the products. Do I... make a letter to myself "giving me persmission"?! Somehow I don't expect that would help.

Then I was asked for photos of the book with the ISBN numbers showing. I told them I don't have ISBN numbers because these are self-published. They asked me to send photos of the publisher's name on my books. But there is no publisher name because I made them myself - I am the publisher and I don't have that stated on my books, just 'by My Name' in the inside. I sent photos of and a link to a youtube video of me opening the books to where my name is printed in them. Then they sent me links to info about applying for a GTIN exemption - but I don't need an exemption as I have got working, correct, official GTIN codes from GS1. Anyway before getting my GS1 membership I tried to get this exemption and was denied already. They also sent me links which were marked 'for professional sellers only' where I am an individual seller. Not loving the support.

I'm going round in circles with seller support and so far I can't see that any of my messages to them have actually been read, I just get different copy pastas based on keywords they're randomly picking out of my messages.

When I phoned GS1 and asked them about it (spoke to a human immediately) they said it's because I'm trying to list my product as 'generic' as I don't have a brand registered, and that if I send them my GS1 certificate it should sort it out, but none of the messages I have had from Amazon have mentioned this as the cause of the error message and I have sent that certificate but still nothing has changed. Seller "support" suggested I apply for an exemption to list something as unbranded but this just links to getting a GTIN exemption, which is not the same thing, or is it? If it is the same thing then I have GTIN codes, so I don't need an exemption from those, just to be allowed to sell my books as unbranded. Anyway, before buying the GS1 membership I did apply for exemption and way already rejected.

I am wondering if it will be easier to list if I register myself as a brand - but that takes registering a trademark first, which takes £200ish plus THREE MONTHS of waiting before I can even start registering my brand, and who knows if that will even solve my issues, I might just get different issues and will have spent more money by that time and still might not be able to get my listing active. I only ever plan to sell these two books and only expect to sell 3-6 books a week if I'm lucky! So getting a trademark seems an unnecessary expense when you consider I would need to sell well over twenty books just to pay for the trademark and it would waste three months of just waiting around. Unless I'm not understanding the whole thing correctly? I keep seeing warnings that if you don't register a brand someone can steal your product: they would have to buy a book, scan it and make their own (presumably using print-on-demand or even kdp and therefore be able to sell it for 1% of the price I am selling them for, so it is a concern I guess), do you think this is enough of a concern and that I should register a brand purely in the interests of not having my book scanned and stolen? Surely someone could just do that anyway, brand or no brand. They could just change the title, change the cover and make a whole new product listing, no?

All that said - should I register a brand for my two books?

I know there looks to be a lot going on here, but it's TLDR 'why isn't amazon accepting my GS1 certificates when making my new listings'. (But the seller support is doing the TLDR version and it's not resulting in me getting relevant answers, so I figured I should be thorough in describing what's happened so far...)

Can anyone please give me any clues as to what I should do, what I am supposed to have done, or anything at all really. I readily welcome you to tell me I'm a complete idiot as long as you also have info that helps! Maybe I am just really, really dumb and there's a simple answer - I really hope so, because the other option is that this really is as insanely difficult as it seems. I have been trying to get these listed for over a month already and it's driving me beserk.