Actually just a straight report from her doesn't do much good because they don't have a lot of ways to verify her as the author. Her publisher/vendor might be a better option. Reporting the seller is a great idea though. Since it is obvious from the main page that the book isn't out yet and he HAS to be selling an illegal copy. (I worked for Amazon for a while).

Less banned and more arrested and charged, but yes.. ;D

No chance a person got hold of a draft?

No chance whatsoever. And none of the ARC, either; the AAs are the step -before- the page proofs that their internal proofreaders read. Those pages are the ones that will be used for galleys; the ones I'm working on now lead directly into those ones.

Thank you -- I did call amazon.com, and I filled out a web-form stating the problem clearly; the call, with holds, took about an hour, but hopefully some good will come of it.

They took the initial complaint, after some confusion, and then had to escalate it (what this means is that I was on hold while they were talking to someone else. Then on hold again).

What it also means is that I haven't finished my AA pages for the day =/

Especially when you also consider the positive comments on his profile. I guess he could set up some bot to do that, though.

Whoops, shows what I know. : ) I generally don't buy used books online.

Now get back to writing the House War sequel. I want to know what happens when Jewel gets back from the Dominion or when Angel will show up (and what the story is with that hair) since he (IIRC) was the one den member not in book one! : )

No worries about terseness. I didn't consider it that way at all; just information I didn't know.

Hurrah for Angel, though.

And I want to say thank you again for letting me read the prologue of House Name last Confluence.
**insert copious amounts of praise and fawning here**
And I will try my hardest to attend Confluence again this year. You really are a riot. :)

Michael

Whoops! I'm so sorry. I figured we were safe for spoilers for that one. Glad I didn't give away anything too big.

Enjoy Hunter's Death. It's one of my favorites of the series.

On eBay, almost 100% of the customers leave feedback for every purchase they make.

On Amazon.com, only about 10% of the customers leave any feedback at all (this is an accurate statistic -I can find its source/reference if you so desire).

A well known statistic in the retail industry is: A unhappy customer is 10 times more likely to talk about their experience (or leave negative feedback) than a happy customer (who would be leaving a positive feedback). (I can cite a source for this statistic as well - if so desire)

Accounting for the ratio of (item sales/feedback posted) on Amazon, and considering the Happy customer vs. Unhappy customer feedback post ratio:

An Amazon seller with 90% positive feedback has similar performance rating to an eBay seller with 99% positive feedback. Do not compare apples to oranges - the 2 feedback rating systems are completely different (and both are just as effective, if you understand how they work).

If you don't receive feedback quickly, don't be discouraged. Most Amazon sellers receive feedback on 10% - 20% of their sales. Please know that leaving feedback is an individual's choice, not a requirement for using our site. Amazon.com cannot compel buyers to leave feedback.

Is what the Amazon.com site says. However, it also states:

We focus on negative feedback ratings as a percentage of total feedback ratings (the "Negative Feedback Rate") as an indicator of seller performance. Our very best sellers have a close to 0% Negative Feedback Rate.

Since your rating is calculated only as a percentage of feedback received, why don't we assume that the people who didn't leave feedback are neutral. They don't care either way. This leaves the very happy and the very annoyed. Your amazon.com score therefore deals with either end of the spectrum, however if a customer is dissatisfied, and a resolution can be worked out between you and the customer, the negative rating can be clawed back, or further feedback can be left.

What this tells me as a consumer, when I'm perusing ratings and reasons for them is what you do when things don't work out smoothly or perfectly. This is also what I get from ebay listings of the same.

So for me, 9% of the feedback received is unhappy with either product or lack of receipt. Which is 9% of the 10% that responded, which is still too high.

Edited at 2009-04-11 04:41 pm (UTC)

There is no FRAUD going on here - there was a database error during a database merge that caused a few ISBN's in my multi-million book inventory to get corrupted. When that file was loaded into an Amazon server, it listed some books for sale that I do not have. A built-in safety measure increased the price of these items (items for which my inventory management system cannot verify the existence of in any of our warehouses). The prices were raised up high enough to prevent anyone from ever considering buying the items, then when a live person (not an automated inventory management system) verifies the error in the inventory, that suspect item will be removed from our master database.

There has been many accusations about these books that were accidentally offered for sale, some pretty wild accusations I might add, and I am disturbed that no one ever thought that TSCBOOKS (me) may have simply made a mistake.

I am not a cheat or a con artist, as this post has stated, I am an honest business man trying to run a large book company. If I was attempting to defraud anyone by selling them books that I do not have, would it not make more sense for me to offer these books for sale at a price that someone might actually pay? No one would pay $1000 for one of these books, especially one that obviously is not available for sale yet. This is the very reason why the price is set so high when a potential system error is detected -So No One Will Buy That Item.

You should reconsider how you look at the world - the most obvious reason for all of this commotion is "A Mistake". Most of the posts here are taking the assumption that bad intention were the reason for these books being offered for sale. Not a single person offered the idea that someone or something at TSCBOOKS "might have made a mistake". Why do you think it had to be something bad that TSCBOOKS did? Is that more exciting to you? I apologize if this was a simply, boring, unintentional computer error, but that is exactly what happened.

Please forgive me for having a computer error. Please note that our database safety systems instantly prevented anyone from buying these books (at least anyone that would not spend $1000 for a book that is probably worth less than $5O). Not a single person has attempted to buy any of the books in question yet, and I am fairly sure that no one will ever try to do so. If anyone would attempt to buy an item that I determine I dont really have, their order would be cancelled immideatly, their payment would immideatly be refunded and the sale canceled since the item is unavailable.

Please let me know if there is any immediate action anyone would request I take in regards to any of these books in question - please post a response on this web site.

Thanks for taking the time to discuss this.

TSCBOOKS

The problem was an erroneous ISBN uploaded into an inventory database - it just happened to be that the ISBN submitted did actually exist, it was the ISBN of this yet to be released book. Your suggestion was excellent. For now on, I will filter my inventory files for any publication date that is in the future. This will ensure an error like this never happens again. I have had many minor errors in my inventory as do most large booksellers. When distributed inventories as large as mine are managed, the chance of errors increases with each passing day. Thousands of updates happen every hour, a simply transposed digit in an ISBN causes a new phantom item to be entered into the inventory.

When this happened in the past (rarely I might add), the result phantom book was already released for sale and was available with a lot of sellers anyway - that caused no commotion. This current error affected an entire file, and the phantom items in my inventory turned out to be books that were not yet released. This has caused a lot of commotion, and I sincerely apologize for that.


Thank you for the Publication Date Filtering Idea, I am going to add that filtering method to my database

TSCBOOKS

His entry makes partial sense to me, but his explanation of what caused the problem doesn't, oddly enough. I did write a longer post (and bump up his letter), in which I address this a bit.