Has you print on demand book suddenly been listed as “out of stock” or “unavailable” on Amazon? Or, does it now have a ridiculous lead time – like “Usually ships in 1 to 2 months?” You need to read this and you need to immediately contact your publisher…
Anybody with an Ingram account (like the resellers listing it on Amazon) can pick up Ingram’s feed, and can list the book for sale on Amazon, or anywhere else, including sites like ebay. By the way, I checked and your book IS for sale on Ebay as well.
Many of those resellers have thousands of books for sale and they really don’t care if a book is later inactivated. They also don’t appear to care about the accuracy of their listings since there are countless errors appearing on Amazon.
According to a website: “Creating a book giveaway function does nothing but increase you and your book’s visibilities. Meaning that it is very necessary. Amazon has created a book-giveaway-channel that would allow authors to create reading contests, and choose their winner(s).”
For those of us whose books are listed on the infinite Amazon platform, working with a ‘900-pound gorilla’ has not always been easy. Small press publishers and authors alike have occasionally had to listen to the temper tantrums of that engorged beast as it flexed its muscles (searching for more bananas, no doubt). As the owner of RK books, I have experienced things that can only be described as ‘Amazon issues’ with one of our titles.
Let’s say I go with BookLocker instead. Everybody I know buys their books (ebook or paperback) on Amazon. If the paperback listed on Amazon is not POD-created by the Amazon subsidiary, who fulfills the order? Who notifies the POD publisher to print a copy, and who ships the copy to the buyer?
Last week, on a publisher’s list, someone wrote in asking about NovelRank.com. He wanted to know if their numbers only came from Amazon, or if they counted third party sellers as well. He said NovelRank was reporting more sales than his printer. That was not at all surprising!
There’s a fix for this problem for online book and ebook sales that’s not that complex and that would also let authors and publishers develop useful marketing data…
I read with interest your piece on the Amazon/BookScan numbers, and I can appreciate how much trouble the inaccurate and misleading data can make for publishers.
Authors who see these incorrect sales numbers on Amazon.com naturally assume those numbers are real, and even underestimated. And, where’s the first place they’re likely to send a complaint? To their publisher!
Back in August, the New York Times published an eye-opening article, alleging disturbing treatment of some employees at Amazon. Amazon refuted many of the allegations in the article (of course)…but what did they leave out of their rebuttal?
