First, Thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered Hate the Game. Your support means the world to me, and if you have received your order, I hope you are enjoying the book!
If you have not received your order, I apologize for the delay. The day my book was published, Amazon immediately ran out of stock.
How could this have happened? Didn’t Amazon know precisely how many books were pre-ordered? How could they have run out?
It turns out that Amazon doesn’t stock its distribution centers based on pre-orders. They stock them based on an algorithm's predictions, and the algorithm mistakenly predicted that I would have fewer orders on my day of publication than I actually had. The algorithm underestimated my sales by hundreds of purchases. And now Amazon is scrambling to meet demand.
Why does Amazon use an algorithm instead of actual pre-orders? I don’t know for sure, but I have a pretty good guess based on what I know about Amazon. Amazon has to combat a lot of fraud, which is too much fraud to investigate case-by-case. So, instead of taking a reactive response to fraud, they implement proactive policies. Authors trying to game Amazon’s best-seller rankings can put in false pre-orders to rank high and cancel those orders before the release date. This behavior means pre-orders are an unreliable predictor of actual sales, especially for unknown authors, like me, from publishers that aren’t Penguin-Random House or Simon & Schuster.
This practice hurts debut authors and small publishers alike. It hurts our sales when our orders are delayed, and it makes it harder for us to rank on best sellers lists, which just goes to show that those lists aren’t indicative of quality.
Even though I know it's not personal, and Amazon is just acting in its own economic interest, it still sucks, and I want to do what I can to make it up to whoever is still waiting on their order.
Please email hatethegame@substack.com with proof of purchase and order delay, and I will send you a free Ebook version. I have ten Ebooks to give away and I will provide them to whoever sends their proofs of purchase first.
If you have not ordered a book yet, please consider supporting your local bookshop by purchasing Hate the Game on bookshop.org.
And, again thank you to everyone who has ordered a book so far. You are the reason why my book is exceeding sales expectations! This is just a bump on the road. My book will succeed because of your support, and your word of mouth, not because of any algorithms or lists.
The exact same thing happened to me two days before (April 9). Ugh.
Thank you for making this post!
I love that you have broken the algorithm! So glad your book has been successful enough to undersell by hundreds of copies. Wishing for you that next time they know not to bother with the algorithm for you because you're even better known.