Beware of the Piranhas

These seem to be particularly Japanese piranhas - my book is now for sale on Amazon.com, and Amazon.co.uk - go there and search for Beneath Gray Skies - you can even order a copy, if you want (please do order a copy - or two - or three).

But if you go to Amazon.co.jp, you will discover four “Out of print” books with the same title as this, categorized as “Japanese Books” (well, if things go well, you won’t see them any more but you would have done). These were preliminary editions, which got mucked up by the submission process and were withdrawn as active projects. Lulu somehow managed to get them up onto all the Amazons.

Also, you will find the real thing (the approved final version) there - which was available for pre-order (whatever that means - “pre-order” surely means “before you order”, not “before the thing is available”) at ¥2,130. Now it, too, is “out of print” and “limited availability”. So I wrote to Amazon, pointing out that this was a print-on-demand publisher:

My book, Beneath Gray Skies, published by Lulu in 9 x 6 US trade paperback format, with ISBN 978-0-557-06053-5 is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk It used to be available on Amazon.co.jp for pre-order with a price being set, but is no longer available and is listed as “out of print”. Since this is a print-on-demand book, this is obviously incorrect.

Can you please ensure that this book is listed as being available, and let me know when it has been re-entered into the database.

Also, there are four versions of the book which should never have been listed, which are in the database as “out of print” and as “Japanese books”! Can you please remove these titles from the database.

The same day, I received a very polite reply in good English, promising to remove the four spurious titles, but:

Also, on our website, availability of items are updated based on the data from availability of our suppliers. Therefore, regardless new release books or published books, availability is updated as “Out of Stock” on our website when we don’t receive latest data from our suppliers.

Please note it is possible availability won’t be displayed as “In Stock” if we don’t receive the data from suppliers even if publishers do have the items on stock. We are sorry for this inconvenience.

Regarding availability, please offer availability information to publishers or VAN (please ask the suppliers you do business with), or please contact Osaka-ya EC department.

Osaka-ya Tokyo head office EC department
Phone number

Also, about the books in your inquiry, we have to ask you would contact each suppliers in order to keep the items on stock at warehouse of suppliers.

Osaka-ya Tokyo head office EC department
Nippan Net department
Nikkyo-han EC department
(phone numbers were provided for these as well)

Obviously, the idea of “print-on-demand” doesn’t really work for the Japanese Amazon. I have tried to educate them, but we will see if this bears any fruit at all (I started by thanking them for pulling the four non-editions from the list):

...the edition of my book that is for sale (Beneath Gray Skies, published by Lulu in 9 x 6 US trade paperback format, ISBN 978-0-557-06053-5) is listed as out of print. Since this is a print-on-demand book, it can never be in stock in the same way as a traditionally published book, and therefore may never be listed as “in stock” by Amazon Japan. However, it is not “out of print”.

Could you please reinstate the book in the catalog, and mark it as being “in print” with a note that it may take a week or two to deliver (which I believe is the standard practice with all print-on-demand publications).

I really do not understand why it was listed as “available for pre-order” on your site and then suddenly dropped to an “out of print” status. There is actually a market (maybe small, but still a market) for this book from my friends and colleagues here in Japan, and it would be good to have this, and all other titles published through this rapidly growing method, available in Amazon Japan, as they are in the other Amazon subsidiaries round the world.

Thanks for your attention to this matter.

Let’s see what happens next. The piranhas haven’t won yet!

PS In the meantime, you can always order from B&N, Amazon US or UK, or Lulu itself.

Posted by Hugh Ashton on 06/14 at 07:03 PM

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