This is a public service announcement to those who try to find books that aren’t issued by one of the big publishers. I’m not shy about saying that my books all fall into that category. One of the things I’ve noticed is that books feed out to different internet venues at an odd rate, before they’re published. Some publishers use what they call New Book Announcements (NBAs) to get the metadata out to wholesalers, distributors, and other vendors. Sometimes a book comes to public light in strange ways. I’ve had my eye on a book that a friend pointed out. I don’t know how they heard about it, but I went searching for it and found it on Barnes & Noble’s website, but not Amazon. Well, that’s not quite true. It is on Amazon, but not in North America. Amazon China and Amazon Singapore have it, but you can’t find it here. Yet.
I noticed a similar thing with The Wicker Man. An anxious author, I kept searching for it online when I didn’t hear from the publisher. It was first announced at German booksellers. Eventually it got around to English-speaking sites, and eventually (it took a few months after publication), it became available in “all channels.” Although, several websites still only list the hardback which retails for more than a dollar a page. Now that’s inflation! Even $40 for such a short paperback is a lot, but that’s why I’m looking for anything but an academic publisher for the next book. But there’s a larger issue here.
Like old Joe, I sometimes can’t remember things. I have an elaborate and Byzantine set of reminders that fit my neurological profile (mostly). For books I want to remember to look up after they’re published (I can’t generally afford to buy them right away, so this takes advanced planning), I have an online list. That online list is associated with a bookseller and I can’t easily add to my list until the book appears on said seller’s site. I suppose I could write it down in my zibaldone, but will I recall that I wrote it there? (Those little notebooks get filled up pretty quickly.) It would just be easier if information on the internet could feed out instantaneously. If, say, Amazon Singapore could let Amazon USA know that a book that is publishing in the United States can be listed—well, wouldn’t that make sense? Systems are complicated. So complex, in fact, that architects must be hired to keep them in order. Or maybe books could be announced when they’re actually available? What? Lose the buzz? In the meantime I’ll put a bookmark in this page and hope that I remember to look it up when the time comes.
