System-wide mess-up at Amazon affecting Christmas shopping


In an unfortunate twist of fate for indie writers who sell globally (and for smaller, independent publishers), a system-wide error at Amazon is affecting the display of delivery dates for print-on-demand books. This appears only to be affecting titles sold on Amazon sites outside the U.S. This from my distributor Lightning Source/Ingram:

“As Amazon prepares for the upcoming holiday season, they recently implemented a sudden system-wide change on all vendor products, including books. The result had an unintended impact on some POD book stated delivery times on the Amazon site.  Amazon is looking into it.”

The stated delivery time on Amazon Canada for Baby Jane, for example, has changed from “Usually ships in 7-11 days” to “Usually ships in 1-2 months.” The Global Indie Author shows the same. It doesn’t appear that the actual delivery times have changed, only what is displayed on the Amazon site. But good luck telling that to your customers who are seeking assurances that books ordered for Christmas will arrive in time. And with no promise of when the problem will be fixed, indie authors may find this holiday season is a wash for their print titles.

For readers wanting The Global Indie Author, it is now available in Canada on Chapters/Indigo online and will ship and arrive in time for Christmas. I’m still having problems with the book description displaying correctly — Chapter’s system is determined to display my apostrophes as a space+quotation mark (or make them disappear altogether) — but at least the book is in stock. Those in the Lower Mainland can also purchase copies at Blackberry Books on Granville Island and Companion Book in North Burnaby.

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