So, here’s an infuriating story of book publishing and corporate indifference.
The trouble started a couple of weeks ago. Richard C. White—author of Terra Incognito, On Wings of Steel, and other SWC titles—was heading off to a convention, and had checked Amazon for the availability of his latest release, Cry Havoc: The Furies, Book 1…but it was listed as Out of Stock, only available from third-party sellers as a used book. A book that came out a month ago.
So I took a look and discovered the problem was bigger than that: Amazon had removed the Buy Buttons from all StarWarp Concepts titles—Rich’s, mine, the Illustrated Classics; Cry Havoc was the one exception. No heads-up, no reason given.
So I contacted the sales rep at SWC’s distributor, wholesaler Ingram Content Group, and asked them to look into this. They did and responded:
“Amazon uses a proprietary algorithm. Titles will disappear from the website, only to reappear a short time later. We make sure metadata is being fed correctly to them and rebroadcast to help.”
So, Amazon’s algorithm removes listings on a whim and then restores them at some point? That’s insane. For what purpose is this done?
The sales rep re-sent (or “rebroadcast,” as they call it) the publishing information on our titles. A couple of days later, most of the Buy Buttons were restored and the books offered for sale…except for our edition of A Princess of Mars and my Vampirella history book, From the Stars a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, which were (and are) still listed as only available from third-party vendors.
When I asked why, Ingram said that Amazon’s response was that From the Stars was a nonreturnable book, and that’s why the Buy Button was removed. But I pointed out that none of SWC’s titles have ever been returnable. So they went back to Amazon to request an adjustment and got this answer:
“I’ve checked your ASIN and can confirm that the Amazon offer is active, however, it was not selected to be the Featured Offer.The Featured Offer algorithm will always choose the best offer to display to our customers, even if it is a third-party seller’s offer.”
Unfortunately, Ingram told me, “Amazon has chosen not to offer the Amazon Buy Button, but rebroadcasting may still be helpful.”
I thought it might all be due to the fact that From the Stars doesn’t have an ePub edition that could be sold through the Kindle Store; its only digital form is as a PDF—since there are photographs involved—and unavailable through Kindle. But no, Amazon sells non-ebook titles from, for example, TwoMorrows Publishing (home of Back Issue magazine) and Fantagraphics’ James Warren: Empire of Monsters. They’ve just decided, for whatever reason, that they won’t directly sell From the Stars—although Amazon will fulfill the order for the outside vendor—in spite of Ingram’s repeated attempts to reverse that situation.
And no, they haven’t changed the situation with A Princess of Mars, either.
So, what can be done for the Vampirella book? Well, all I can do is point interested readers and fans of the character to Barnes and Noble’s listing, and Bookshop.org, where From the Stars can still be found, and hope that maybe one day Amazon’s nonsensical algorithm will restore the book to availability.
I mean, it’s a pretty good book…
