Retailers get burned by Amazon and other similar sellers (but lets be real, it's 99% Amazon) all the time. The higher the price, the more they get burned. (Retailers got burned on World's Largest Dungeon, for example, although eventually even Amazon got burned on that one, but that's a long story.) The thing that happens is that your local retailer buys a book and puts it in his store. Then, a customer comes in, flips through it, decides to buy it, but doesn't buy it from the store. He goes home and orders it through Amazon to get a big discount.
We decided early on that we didn't want that to happen to Ptolus. We want to help out our retailers. So beyond selling direct through the website, we're offering Ptolus only to hobby distributors. Not book trade distributors.
So here's what likely happened. Amazon has found out that the book is coming, perhaps through their related third party vendors (do they still call them z-shops or something? I think so.). Anyway, they've listed the book, assuming that they're going to get it the way that they've always recieved books from us. But we're not selling Ptolus to their normal suppliers, or directly to them. It's possible that Amazon will buy it through hobby distributors, but that's quite unlikely. And if they do, they'll likely not honor the $75 price, because they'll be losing money with each one.
Here's the really crappy part. Even though we're contacting Amazon directly right now and explaining the situation, it's very, very unlikely that they'll take that page down. They do this to drive attention to their associated third party vendors who will be selling the book--almost certainly not for $75, having bought it through the normal hobby channels. This means that people are going to preorder and order through Amazon to get the discount and very likely never get their book. The consumers will eventually get a refund, but it will be long after our online and retail preorder programs are over. (Conceivably, it could be after the book is sold out.)
I'm not going to tell anyone what to do with their money, but if you or anyone you know is planning on ordering through Amazon via that page at that discount, be very, very cautious. It's possible that you'll get it, but in my informed opinion, it seems very unlikely. In fact, you might want to warn people about this.
I will also say that it's a free market. If Amazon wants to track down a hobby distributor to buy from, and then still sell it for a huge discount, and lose money, we can't actually prevent them from doing that. Your local hobby store might decide to buy a copy of Ptolus for all of their good and loyal customers and give them away for free too. I don't control what happens on that end. I don't think either is likely, however.
Monte
www.montecook.com
