I love marketing my Beyond mystery books. I learn so much from all that I do and meet so many interesting people – other mystery writers, readers, librarians and booksellers. But lately I’ve been experiencing an ongoing problem – so is my publisher – so are the Indigo chain booksellers who try to order in Beyond Faith, the latest in my Beyond mystery series.

I have touched on this in a previous post, but since then the problem has again arisen or as I suspect, never was fixed. What happens is when the managers from the Indigo book chain stores tried to order in Beyond Faith they get an error message and the order cannot be processed. No problem ordering in copies of Beyond Blood, the previous novel in the series.

Twice my publisher Blue Denim Press has had to email the distributor (ingram Sparks) and twice the distributor has rebroadcast the book info to Indigo and all done electronically. The first one didn’t work as one store manager found out and let me know politely in an email. I got right back to her by phone and then contacted my publisher. He wasn’t too happy about the situation and I don’t blame him.

But it isn’t just my Beyond Faith book. Several other authors who have different publishers (and perhaps different distributors?? I don’t know about that) have run into the same problem. One of their books can be ordered in by Indigo but not the most recent one.

And before you start blaming Indigo, the weirdest thing is the other author, Michael Robert Dyet, whose book Hunting Muskie was published by Blue Denim Press at the same time as Beyond Faith has had no problems with Indigo ordering in books to their bricks and mortars stores. Another strange thing – Beyond Faith can be ordered in to the bricks and mortars independent bookstores.

Which makes me wonder if it isn’t the distributor but maybe a computer glitch somewhere along the line.

Or maybe gremlins doing some random targetting.

In this overly digital world anything weird is possible.

Meantime I’ve been back and forth with the indigo chain  – three bookstores where a possible book signing or other appearance is possible. A presentation  with other Crime Writers of Canada published authors is already booked – and that’s where i found out there are other others in the same limbo boat.

At least the Indigo owned bookstores give me (and other authors) the option of selling Beyond Faith on consignment for these events (and possibly leaving copies left over to be placed in the stores’ bookshelves for a bit). And Beyond Faith is still available at Indigo online in paperback and e-copy as you can see with the link from the book cover at the top of this post.

Here’s the flyer for that Crime Writers of Canada event April 18. If you are in the Toronto area, please come to it. it’s free and wlll be different. I’ll give more details about it in my next post.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford