Self-Publishing: Delays

post # 484 — January 7, 2008 — a Strategy and the Fat Smoker post

I owe an apology to many of you who were surprised to discover that, even though I announced a publication date of January 2, Amazon currently lists my book STRATEGY AND THE FAT SMOKER as not being available for 4 to 7 weeks.

As best I can tell, this is an initial (and, I’m assured, a temporary) inventory problem based on the fact that neither the printer/distributor nor Amazon were ready for the high volume of orders for a self-published book on the day of publication.

Shipments have now been dispatched to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, 800CEOREAD and the real-world bookstore distributors, and (again, I have been promised) should be available for overnight delivery orders in a few days.

A I continue to learn, there IS a complete pre-set system for books published by the mainstream publishing houses, and while there are many advantages to self-publishing, it does require that you recognize that you are asking a lot of people in the total supply chain to depart from their normal assumptions and methods of operating.

For any of you that were inconvenienced by this delay, please accept my apologies.