An Alert Concerning the US Paperback for Axtara – Magic and Mischief · 7:04pm September 25th
Heads up, people! If you were one of the people who ordered a paperback copy of Axtara – Magic and Mischief in the US before Amazon realized they had a problem and stopped taking orders, and have been patiently waiting for your copy of the book, I got an alert from one of those folks last night.
Apparently, Amazon’s order has gone unfulfilled so long that by now you should have started receiving alerts from Amazon that the seller—in this case Amazon—is negligent in fulfilling your order, and that your order is scheduled to be automatically canceled by Amazon’s systems because the fulfiller of the order—who is again, the same company—is negligent.
In order for your order not to be canceled, you have to manually take a look at your standing orders, and tell them not to cancel it.
This is beyond frustrating for me. Amazon themselves remain pretty silent: The last communication I had with them was two weeks ago, and was a sort of “We’ll tell you if we have any news, please let us contact you not the other way around” sort of message, but at this point I’m getting pretty annoyed. Far too many of you are waiting on a book. Amazon can’t find it’s butt with both hands. Those of you outside the US can order copies. I can even order author copies from any location outside the US … but inside the US the issue persists of “Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.”
No information on why. No information on what. But we’re now at the point where the Magic and Mischief paperback released two months ago … and my readers in the US still cannot buy the paperback.
I am truly sorry about this, readers. I don’t know when it will change, if ever. I don’t know what my recourse is. Delete the book entirely from Amazon’s systems and submit it once more? Or would that just cause a copyright flag against myself to trigger which Amazon would be completely powerless to remove, because their own systems seem to exist in a vault rivaling that of VaultTec somewhere that no one is allowed to access, and the code for which was developed three years ago by an intern who is no longer with the company, and so cannot be touched.
I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m holding out a hope that somewhere in this company “valued” at two trillion dollars, there’s a means for those of you who have ordered your copy of Magic and Mischief to someday receive it without paying for international shipping.
Just what is going on over at Amazon, I wonder, that’s making this such a thing? I keep hearing rumbles that there needs to be a break-up. Maybe we should let those rumbles be an actual quake? Because right now, Amazon’s feeling like a company too big to actually deliver on their contracted agreements.
In the meantime, again, I’m very sorry about this, and wish I had better news to give you American readers longing for a paperback copy to flip your fingers through. Hopefully something changes soon.
But … in the interest of not making this post entirely unwelcome news, I will note that the first Axtara book, Banking and Finance, is now one review shy of one-hundred, and still with a 4.8 out of 5 rating! We’re almost there! Just one to go! And then … well, then I’ll do something special for the occasion.
In the meantime, I need to get back to work on Armies and Accounting. See you Friday for more news (and hopefully, more of it good).
I will never understand why Megacorps will spend millions upon millions on advertizing for publicity, and then piss all of it away by not spending a tenth of that on functional customer service. Much less when said customer is the kind who brings in other customers.
It sounds like a supply and demand issue. You said that a lot of people ordered it? I think that may be why. I think that Amazon underestimated how many orders there would actually be.