Why I am no longer a fan of Book Depository

I got a shock yesterday. Several of my American readers had told me they’d been unable to buy the new British hardcover edition of Sunne, that they kept getting an “out of stock” message. When I checked, the same thing happened to me, so I e-mailed my editor at Macmillan. She was away but she got back to me as soon as she returned, and I was utterly taken aback by her response. She said that Book Depository will not sell British books to American readers! Now we all know that with e-books, geography is destiny, but real books? My editor said that Macmillan does not have the legal right to sell their books in America and if Book Depository was selling in defiance of borders in the past, they should not have been doing that.

Like many of you, I’ve bought British books from Book Depository without any problem, but now they seem to be enforcing this insane policy. And Sunne is not the only victim. Americans cannot buy the new Bernard Cornwell, the Pagan Lord, either. They show only the American edition for pre-order; when I searched for the UK edition, which came out in September, even including the ISBN number, I was told there was no such book! And to add insult to injury, Book Depository is hiding behind weasel words like “out of stock,” instead of being honest and saying they won’t sell the books to us. I assume they will not sell American books to British readers, either.

So this is bad news for my non-British readers who’d hoped to buy the new Sunne. To compound the lunacy of this, Sunne is not taking sales away from my American publisher. There has not been a hardcover edition in the US since 1982! Amazon.co.Uk is still selling Sunne to American readers, but I suppose that could change at any moment; and of course, the mailing costs are quite high for these transatlantic sales. So once again the ants are crushed when the elephants fight, and guess who are the ants? Us, of course, the book-buying public.