Valancourt Books discussion

Between print books, Kindle e-books, and Audible audiobooks, these days Amazon accounts for at least 90% of our sales. Although our books are available on plenty of other sites (including our own), the fact remains that if one of our books isn't available on Amazon, it doesn't sell. Which is why we've been frustrated at Amazon repeatedly delisting our books for sale for no reason that we can ascertain.

As a publisher mostly of horror books, October and Halloween-time is one of our busiest periods of the year. This month we put out four great new horror titles; however, one of these, Worms, was unavailable on Amazon US in paperback format for several weeks after its release date, and our new Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume 3, as of this morning could not be ordered either in hardcover or Kindle format. We have no idea why. And we have no control over it. There is literally no way to get a response from a human being at Amazon regarding these problems.

These aren't isolated incidents. For years, our books have been disappearing from sale at random. Sometimes they come back after a few weeks; sometimes they never come back. Even when they are available for order, Amazon seems to do everything they can to discourage customers from ordering them, by listing them as "Temporary out of stock, order now and we'll deliver when available" or "Usually ships within 1-3 months". Both these statements are false: our books are all printed on demand through Ingram, the nation's largest book distributor. They're all available, all the time, and it takes on average a couple days to print and ship them, not 1-3 months.

It's no exaggeration to say that Valancourt Books' existence hinges mostly on the whims of Amazon's glitches and algorithms, not on how good or well-produced our books are.

Recently we've been encouraging people to order direct from us via our website. We love the chance to interact with customers directly, and we think it's a plus for customers too. E-books ordered direct from our website are DRM-free, and if you order a print book and have any questions or problems with the order, send us an email and you'll get a quick response from a real, live person (there's two of us here to choose from!) If you want to read them without purchasing them, our books are available in print and e-book to public libraries, and most libraries have a link on their website for you to request a title and are usually pretty responsive to these requests.

We offer shipping to the US and UK starting at $3.99 per order, with orders over $100 shipping free. And in the coming weeks we are going to be discounting books on our website, so that both print and e-books will be cheaper ordered direct from us than if purchased from Amazon. If you haven't already, we encourage you to sign up for our once-monthly email newsletter on the front page of our website so that you'll know about all new & upcoming releases, as well as details of deals and discounts.

Thanks for your support (and Happy Halloween from Ryan and Jay!)

It might be a problem with low level employees.

Another indie publisher had problems with books disappearing for sale. The publisher resolved such problems by interacting with a mid level manager at Amazon.

A self published writer had a hassle with Amazon over copyright. One of things he does is self publish public domain books with his own writing added (for example, writing an Introduction). He resolved the issue. I can see why Amazon would be concerned about copyright. Valancourt republishes books that had gone of out print, and perhaps Amazon is unduly freaking out about copyright violation.

The suggestions I come up with at this time: (1) Try to contact a mid level manager and (2) or get legal counsel involved. Who knows, there might be an anti-trust violation involved (e.g. Amazon giving a competitive advantage to certain publishers, by not selling books by their competitors).

It's a widespread problem for small presses for sure. I've heard from a lot of people in the industry having similar issues. I wonder if the other publisher is using Amazon's own services for printing and distribution? With Kindle books, there is an "Executive Customer Relations" department we've sometimes had luck with, but for print books, there doesn't seem to be any way of contacting anyone, unless we set up an "Author Central" account under the name of our dead author and send an email that way. Generally, though, the Author Central reps haven't been very effective at fixing a book's availability and it can take weeks (or months) for it to be corrected. A couple times we've emailed Jeff Bezos directly, which, surprisingly, did result in a helpful response from someone at Amazon.

We used to have copyright issues with Amazon all the time, but not so much lately. They used to block all our new Kindle books and threaten to delete our account unless we supplied them with copies of our publishing contracts within 72 hours. The current problems don't seem to have to do with copyright, but you never know.

I feel more "secure" ordering directly from the website in the case of small presses. It's nice to know that if there's a problem, someone LIVE is there to take care of it.

Kimberly wrote: "I feel more "secure" ordering directly from the website in the case of small presses. It's nice to know that if there's a problem, someone LIVE is there to take care of it."

Thanks, Kimberly!!

I suspect you're correct although I'll never understand how it's in their best interest to delete the books. The delayed shipping is bad enough but they completely remove the title from search results even if you're searching by ISBN and direct page links are no longer functional. Earlier this year what was supposed to be one of our biggest releases was delisted and they didn't add it back for over three months. We contacted every possible department, re-submitted the book several times, and nothing. Argh.

Just a note to say how sorry I am that this is happening.

Wow, I wish I had known earlier that this was happening, I just ordered a couple of your releases through them (parents never know what to get me for presents). I might make another order though your website now, and will try to do so in the future.

This level of AI micromanagement does explain some of the confusing incidents I've had with them from other publishers/distributors, where stuff becomes somehow unavailable once I've ordered it or only a few weeks after release.

Thanks and hope you enjoy the books! You're welcome to get them wherever, just know they're never really unavailable.

I'm so sorry this is happening and will place my next order directly from your website. Amazon is such a terribly frustrating beast. Remember, if you ever decide to put together a new release bookclub and ship them directly to members, you have a few members here raring to go :)

How do you order books from your website? I didn't see any options to add it to a cart.

I checked it out, it looks like if you click on a book, then scroll down after the synopsis, it provided an option to add to the cart, depending on which format you would like. Below those options is an option to view cart.
Hope this helps!

Oh wow, I came home from work to find that my order off your website had already arrived - that was quicker than most UK-based company orders! Thanks guys!

I've noticed that since ordering from Valancourt directly, I get my books sooner than going through the (other) company.... :D