All The Many Ways Amazon So Very Failed the Weekend

Heh... I thought I was going crazy when I went to buy Eye of the World for my Kindle, and it wasn't there anymore! Then I looked further and noticed all of Robert Jordan's books had been removed. But, on the bright side, a friend sent me a pdf of EotW and I learned how to convert it to a form my Kindle will read!

I do hate that publishers are going to be releasing ebooks later than the paper copies though. I'm not a patient person, so if it's a book I really want, I'm not sure what I'll do yet.

This is tangentially related (only in the sense that it's about book release dates):

If a book is released in the UK (and, consequently, available for purchase on UK Web sites), but not *yet* released in the US, though it will eventually be released in the US, can I buy it from a UK retailer?

The fourth Skulduggery Pleasant book is out on April 1, but only from UK and Australian retailers. There is not yet a US release date, though it is scheduled to be released here.

This happened with the previous book -- it was released in the UK in March or April, and not in the US until August. When I tried to order it from the UK, I got a message saying it wouldn't ship to me until August, although it was in stock.

Any earthly reason that should be so?

American publishers will only have the rights to it on a certain date, so I assume unless you went to England and physically bought the book and brought it home, an online retailer can't sell/ship to the U.S. until the U.S. pub date.

Damn it. I figured that was the case. Or something like it.

I've bought books form Amazon.com that weren't available at amazon.ca without any problems, but I don't know if there were publishing issues or just availability issues. I know people that have successfully bought books from Amazon.co.uk (to ship to Canada) specifically because they were released in the UK earlier.

Steph, did you actually place the order before you got the message?

Steph, did you actually place the order before you got the message?

Last year, yes. Although when I placed the order, there was already a US release date scheduled. As of now, there is a UK/Australia date scheduled, but no US date actually scheduled -- just confirmation that it will be released at some point.

I tried to put it in my shopping cart at .co.uk and it was okay, because .com usually tells me when I add something if it can't be shipped to Canada. But if it let you order it last year, maybe that won't work.

One of my friends buys stuff from amazonUK fairly often, but it is stuff that isn't published here. ( She is English) Of course, her CC stops her card all the time because the charge goes thru Lithuania.