I know, typically three posts in a day is a bit on the excessive side. But this is going to get worse tomorrow, and there will probably be another post about it tomorrow, so I need to get this one out of the way.
A moment to provide you with context, for those of you who aren’t obsessive readers: I tried to order books, on October 27th, for an author event I had on November 11th. It was initially a bit of a risk to get them here on time, so on Friday the 2nd I upgraded my shipping to two-day, which guaranteed them to arrive on the 7th, a Wednesday. Then things began to go wrong:
You may recall that I wrote the following, earlier today:
Amazon update: I got a notification from them on Friday that they had shipped me … wait for it … one book out of the 28 or 29 that I ordered. It is supposed to arrive today. The cover will be on upside-down, inside-out, and no doubt on the wrong book altogether.
Welp. I got a buzz on my phone that my package had been delivered about an hour ago, and ran outside to collect it from the mailbox. I showed the package to my wife. “Wanna take any bets on whether this makes me happy?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
And I opened the package:
So. This is the one mystery copy of Searching for Malumba that, for no clear reason, Amazon has sent by itself. I am, remember, ordering these books at author cost (I charge about $15 for SfM, and the cost to me is just over $6) so that I can sell them to people at conventions.
This book is already borderline unsalable, just because of the cover. If it were for me, I’d be kinda pissed, but I’d probably not do anything about it, because books are made of paper and shit happens. This isn’t for me. It’s for someone else. So we are already sending this book back.
(Brief sidenote: another one of the fun stupidities of the new editor? If I try to write something in italics, it tends to erase spaces for no clear reason.)
So. Yeah. This is already going back. But what the hell– let’s look through and see what else is wrong. Because there’s no way that there’s just one thing wrong, right? There’s gonna be a printing error or something in this motherfucker somewhere.
And then I find out why Amazon sent me one copy by itself, before sending me the rest of my print-on-demand author copy books:
You motherfuckers.
I was wrong about one thing: there was apparently one copy of a Luther Siler book out there somewhere at a secondhand bookstore. And, to be clear, I’m not mad at “Taelor,” whoever that is. I vaguely remember being proud of myself that I remembered to ask how to spell his name. I don’t remember what con or how long ago it was that I sold him this book. Maybe he didn’t like the book, maybe he isn’t the type to hold onto books after he reads them, maybe he just moved or came up short on cash or whatever. Taelor and I are cool. He can do whatever he wants with my books after he buys them.
But, uh, Amazon?
I bought this book from you. I sold it at a convention. That person sold it to a second-hand bookstore. I paid Amazon again, much later on, in a different transaction, for additional new copies of this book.
And y’all thought it was okay to send me, not only a used book, not only a damaged used book, but one with my own motherfucking signature already in it?
I am an author and I literally don’t have the words for how fucking angry I am right now.
I’m not gonna bother calling or emailing their fucking useless helpdesk motherfuckers just yet. Because I supposedly have another box coming tomorrow, with the other goddamn 20-some-odd books, and there is absolutely no Goddamn way that I believe there’s even a single chance of them getting that order right. The @ in the post title will ensure that someone sees this and lies to me some more. But we are about to have a motherfucking reckoning about this shit, and when we do, I’d better be talking to a motherfucker who speaks English because they are in America and said motherfucker had better know what the fuck KDP is.
Fucking assholes.
I’ve been ordering shit from Amazon for twenty years. I’m a Prime member and I own a quite frankly ridiculous number of books. I probably place orders with these guys 40-45 times a year, and the vast majority of the time everything is absolutely fine. I can think of 
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