My book is on Amazon...but...

[ColinCurtisBooks]

Hey folks...

My book is now up on Amazon, but there is no image, very little description and they even omitted my name!!! I can't even join Amazon's Author Central without my name attached to a book - therefore, I can't upload the missing info myself.  Are any of your books posted this way? How do you deal with it? It looks like a joke on my screen.

COLIN

[kevinlomas]

It can take a while for the bits to catchup.

[Geke]

Mine is a variant of the first poster's situation: The book is on Amazon.com and can be bought there. It is also on Amazon.de (it's in German) but there it is marked "Not available at the moment". What's going on there, or better: what can I do to change that? Lulu books are always available, I thought???

Details:
The link to the book on Lulu: http://bit.ly/vObzFC

At Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Die-Erf-Llung-Eines-Traumes/dp/1447777158
http://www.amazon.de/Die-Erf-Llung-Eines-Traumes/dp/1447777158

The title is wrong too, but I already applied for a change, after I found out how to do that.

[kevinlomas]

It is a common thing to see on Amazon and a puzzle to us all who use the so-called Book On Demand system. They should never be out of stock because they are never in stock!
One could wonder if Amazon (who via Createspace) print Lulu books ordered via Amazon, actually do print up some stock in batches in order to keep costs down.

Not sure what you mean by "The title is wrong too, but I already applied for a change". This is DIY, what do you mean by "applied"? And, that can be a major change that requires a new ISBN anyway.

[Geke]

So the good news is that I'm not alone in this, and the bad news is that nobody knows how to fix it, I guess.

Or does that message go away by itself after some time? Could it have something to do with the fact that this book has not been bought yet, and is not slated to be a hot seller, to say the least?

Re. book info correction: I logged in and edited the info, but Amazon moderates those changes, so it's more like an application for change. One is invited to give links to sources that confirm the proposed change, so I gave the Lulu link and their own product page with the cover picture. The changes I made were mainly a German ü gone wrong in the title, which other posts here told me is common on Amazon. 

By the way, when I posted in those Amazon links, I saw that they have the same number. That suggests that US and German Amazons share books. I did make the change on both amazon.de and amazon.com, but now I think that wouldn't have been necessary.

Thanks for your response!

[kevinlomas]

In the meantime, they are always available for sale here, on your Lulu Spotlight.

You change books created at Lulu on Lulu via Revising your Project via your My Lulu section. It is from there that Amazon get the 'details' from automatically. But it can take a while for the changes to filter through to Amazon.
Amazon have a unique product number shared by all their sites.

[Ken Anderson]

Buying a copy normally gives a kick.

[Geke]

Thanks again, Kevin. My change was only a change of the title *as listed on Amazon*, not of the book itself.

Great, Ken, that confirms my suspicions. I clicked on the link to your publishing help site and had to smile at the poor writing and spelling there: it somehow shows very clearly that you really are a publishing specialist!

Happy New Year to all creators, including all the not-yet-honoured ones. The coming year has one whole day extra for you to enjoy and it's for free, too!