Yesterday readers around the country were forced to hike to their local independent bookstores to get their literary fix. For one afternoon, the mighty bookseller site Amazon experienced technical difficulties.
Service has since returned to normal, but a few GalleyCat readers wrote in with tales of book publicity woe stemming from the short-lived technical difficulties–illustrating how much the publishing industry depends on the online bookseller. Share your thoughts about the Great Amazon Crash of 2010 in the comments section.
Debut novelist Tracy Davis wrote: “I had this huge campaign aimed for today for all my Facebook and Twitter friends who had bought my novel and loved it to tell all their friends about my book My Husband Ran Off with the Nanny and God Do I Miss Her. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TEXTS AND E-MAILS I RECEIVED COMPLAINING THAT THE NOVEL WASN’T EVEN AVAILABLE???? I looked like an idiot and lost a ton of sales, as well as my credibility!”
Author Dr. Marc Kossmann had his own conspiracy theory about his new book, Hey, You… Don’t Stand Out — Get Out!: “Talk about bad timing. We scheduled a massive PR campaign for our book launch today! We hit #2 best seller status in the entrepreneurship category at 3:37 pm, and then all hell broke loose. Now, I’m not saying we crashed Amazon… but…”
