Amazonian Experiences

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Betsy Phillips, after reading Diana Pavlac Glyer’s explanation why her book’s publication date doesn’t correspond with what’s on Amazon, wrote a series of tweets about the problem in general.

Phillips also blogs about sf/f (and many other interests) at Tiny Cat Pants.

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11 thoughts on “Amazonian Experiences”

  1. Also: Often the date Amazon shows is for the particular edition you’re looking at. Just randomly I look up Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘Childhood’s End’. Apparently published May 12, 1987.

  2. When they’re wrong, they’re wrong.

    On a somewhat unrelated note, Amazon is also flaky for reviews of works in translation. If a book has been translated more than once, the reviews for each edition often end up together.

    So it’s difficult to figure out anything about the quality of a particular translation based on the Amazon reviews.

  4. FYI, Betsy Phillips also writes SF/F. I don’t think she has anything Hugo-eligible from 2015, but she has a fine story, “The Four Gardens of Fate,” in the February, 2016, issue of Apex.

  5. For books without ISBN numbers, the copyright date is *critical* to establishing the identity of a book. When I worked at Amazon I actually changed the instructions to merchants for supplying this information to make sure they knew to submit the latest *copyright* date, not the latest *printing* date, and to take that info from the copyright page. We encouraged sellers to include a scan of the copyright page, just in case there was a dispute.

    Because the copyright date is one of the “identity attributes” of a book, ordinary support people aren’t supposed to change it. Other identity attributes are the title, the author, and the binding (hardcover, trade paperback, or mass paperpack).

    For new books, this info is supposed to come from the publisher, and Amazon has a team that’s supposed to double-check it. (A *lot* of people are employed to do this.) This is the first I’ve heard that there is systematic error with new books.

  6. Greg Hullender: This is the first I’ve heard that there is systematic error with new books.

    Let’s face it, 99% of the time, the “official” pub date probably doesn’t matter (so long as the ISBN is correct), particularly with university press books, so even most people who notice an error likely won’t bother to report it. I’ve run into pub date/copyright date errors occasionally when considering books to order for specific classes: Amazon will say a new edition is ready well before the publisher says it is (or vice versa, more often, but both errors do occur). I’ve learned to cross-check any book that makes my order short list against the publisher’s website, just in case–it’s no big deal, most of the time.

  7. @Mary Frances

    Let’s face it, 99% of the time, the “official” pub date probably doesn’t matter (so long as the ISBN is correct)

    The trouble is that the ISBN isn’t a customer-focused attribute. No one ever returned a book because the ISBN wasn’t what she expected, but a customer will definitely return a book if he received the 1989 edition when he expected the 2014 edition. Also, a great number of books in the catalog are pre-ISBN.

    That said, it’s definitely true that Amazon wants the dates to reflect customer expectations, which is not necessarily the same as meeting the eligibility requirements of one award or another.

  8. Michael Eochaidh: Translations,yes. Or different editions with different text/illustrations. Or, my favourite; conflating the reviews from a pirated version of a book saying it’s pirated with the reviews for the corrected legit version of the book, so the legit version has a pile of one-stars complaining about piracy.

    I stopped paying attention to Amazon publication dates when they listed e-editions of old works with the Kindle pub date only.

  9. @Greg Hullender:

    The trouble is that the ISBN isn’t a customer-focused attribute. No one ever returned a book because the ISBN wasn’t what she expected, but a customer will definitely return a book if he received the 1989 edition when he expected the 2014 edition.

    Or, in the case of a particular book I want, I would return the new edition and cling desperately to the old. One of the reasons I haven’t in fact bought it from some used book store online is that they almost never feature cover images (Or if they do, might depend on stock covers found elsewhere) or specify which printing if it isn’t a first or an explicitly revamped edition.

  10. @Lenora Rose

    One of the reasons I haven’t in fact bought it from some used book store online is that they almost never feature cover images (Or if they do, might depend on stock covers found elsewhere) or specify which printing if it isn’t a first or an explicitly revamped edition.

    Abe Books might be a better bet than Amazon for that sort of thing, to tell the truth. Their philosophy is that no two used books are equivalent.

  11. I’ve noticed discrepancies in dates on quite a number of books – Amazon has one date, B&N has a different one, Goodreads has a third one. There is no way as a consumer, I’m my experience, to get these fixed/updated/in sync. Mostly I’m blown off. Publishers don’t seem interested in hearing from me either. Authors frequently can’t do anything about the problem unless they are indie.

    It’s extremely frustrating when you have the book in front of you, you’ve talked to the author, and neither of you can get the retailer to fix as their hands seem to be tied based on their contracts with publishers. Publishers frequently don’t care if the information is correct as long as the book is listed.

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