Marguerite Gérard, Lady Reading in an Interior
Loyal readers in the UK recently alerted me to an upsetting development. They have received messages from Amazon UK telling them they can’t get copies of A Duke in Shining Armor. These readers had pre-ordered (thank you!) and things were OK, I guess, until the recent message arrived, telling them things were not OK.
Well, that can't be right, can it? No, it isn't. I checked.
Here’s the good news: A Duke in Shining Armor will definitely be available in its various formats—print, eBook, audio, etc.—in the UK/Australia/New Zealand. Sometime on or near the U.S. release date, it will magically reappear on Amazon (fingers crossed).
But for complicated reasons, apparently having to do with who has what territorial rights where (we’ve been in this surreal world before, alas), Amazon won’t allow us to have preorders. Or something like that. Until they decide they will (which could happen, too.)
Really, I do not understand, and probably wouldn’t even if Amazon explained. I would just put my head on my desk and cry.
It’s all part of the dreaded business of international contracts, which I discuss here, and which, I’m grieved to say, has come up many times before on this blog.
The Clarendon Hotel, pictured here, plays a crucial role in A Duke in Shining Armor.
Image: Egerton, The Leech, from the Fashionable Bores series, 1824, courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
Once again, dear reader, thank you for your patience. I’m sorry this contract business tries it so often. But we are learning how to work around these technical difficulties, and this time, I trust you will get the book, in the form you prefer, sooner rather than later.
In compensation for this and other trials you’ve endured on behalf of my books, I am planning to send out exclusive content via this blog as well as posts in advance of those that will appear in the various other places where I yammer on about something or other.