Skip asked Michael J. Sullivan:

Michael, what's the story with Death of Dulgath being out of stock at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble? Ludicrous. Your publisher is not doing its job. Maybe Robin can help? :-)

Michael J. Sullivan Hey Skip, This should be resolved now. Let me fill you in on the "behind the scenes."

Well, first off, we are the publisher - so the buck stops with us. We self-published Death of Dulgath - BUT are using Mascot Books as a fulfillment partner.

So, books have to make quite a trek to get into Amazon's and B&N's warehouses it goes something like this.

1. They have to leave the printer in Wisconsin and make their way to Mascot's warehouse in Virginia.

2. Once checked in there - Amazon & B&N's orders can be fulfilled. This means the books leave Virginia and got to warehouses at the various resellers throughout the country. For B&N - they order what they had on pre-orders and a bit more for the online stores so at some point they showed up "in stock" online. But...that doesn't mean they are in the store yet.

3. The B&N science fiction and fantasy buying rep has to review the book and determine if the quality is sufficient to stock it in stores. Usually they get the books months and months before release date, but because we didn't have any books until mid December - the earliest they could get their copies were then.

4. B&N decided (sometime in January) that they would carry them in the stores so they make a large order that again has to move from Virginia to B&N warehouses.

5. Then the books have to go from B&N Warehouses to the final stores.

In any case, they are in stock now. We were under a tight deadline on this so there wasn't the "built in padding" that comes with most releases. So that meant we had to wait for the books as they travel around the country getting to their various distribution centers. I hope that helps to explain what was going on.

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