Amazon customers attempting to buy Mark Lynas' new book on technology and the environment, The God Species, yesterday found that the paper version had been pulled from sale by the retailer (the Kindle edition remains in place). As I write this on Saturday morning, the product page contains the following announcement:

Item Under Review This product is not currently offered by Amazon.co.uk because a customer recently told us that the item he or she received was not as described.We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. In the meantime, you may still find this product available from other sellers on this page.

I have a copy of the book for review, and I fail to understand how the product is different to the description, or even how this can be applied to a book in the first place rather than, say, a TV or a stereo system. The sanest explanation I can come up with is something like a faulty print run, but if so it's a very odd message to put up.

Lynas himself believes it may be a result of disgruntled critics. Like George Monbiot he has been the subject of frenzied abuse from anti-nuclear and anti-capitalist greens for his stance on topics like nuclear power, "at George's debate in London [Thursday] night I actually had to leave early as someone was shouting and trying to confront me," he told me yesterday.

I am not generally given to conspiracy theories, but so far as I can tell there has been some kind of campaign to 'hack' the Amazon sales page - the book has been withdrawn and has consequently plummeted down the sales chart. I can imagine many candidates, from all those who have been sending me negative, vitriolic emails, and posting similar blogs. However, I have no idea about the actual truth behind this - all I know is that it has ruined the launch of the God Species on the first full day of sales.

So far Amazon have not offered any explanation to Lynas or his publishers:

"I asked my publisher to sort this out with Amazon but they have been unable to ascertain either what is going on or how to fix it. Someone told me that this message should only apply to faulty hardware sold by Amazon, not to books."

I attempted to reach their press office last night and this morning for comment and/or explanation, but nobody picked up the phone, and they've yet to reply to my e-mail, so I assume there's nobody in until Monday. When I get a response I'll update this blog (or post a new one).

I can't see any grounds for the customer complaint described on Amazon's site. If it turns out that this is the result of mischief rather than cock-up, and it's this easy to have a book taken off the shelves of such a major distributor, then we could be witnessing the start of a very disturbing trend.

Until somebody gets a response from the company though, we can't be sure what has happened. It's possible that there is an innocent explanation, in which case Amazon should give a lot more information when they do this sort of thing in the future. A retailer of their size and influence has a duty to be open and clear about incidents like this.

Update, 22:30pm: As of this evening the book is back on sale, but no explanation has been forthcoming so far...

Update, Sunday 11:05am: After two days, Mark has received information from 'a source within Amazon'. They suggest that complaints occurred because the book - a paperback, was listed as a hardback by mistake.

As Mark points out though, the book was listed as a paperback in the screenshots that he and I took (you can see it above). Not only that, but a commenter below received a reply from Amazon customer services giving a different explanation, that there was "a defective batch in our fulfilment centre." So we have two different explanations, and it's all a bit odd.

An administrative cockup seems likely, but the point from my original post remains - a retailer as utterly dominant as Amazon really ought to be a bit more transparent and accountable. I'll give Mark the last words on this (unless I get a further response from Amazon):

"This does perhaps illustrate the dangers of market concentration when a single online bookseller now controls 70% of the UK market, and soon to be more if Amazon's takeover of The Book Depository is waved through by the British competition authorities. It certainly seems unfair that a book can be sunk through so easily and with so little justification because Amazon.co.uk is so dominant in the market and so slow to respond to complaints. I would hope that it could learn from this saga and tighten up its processes so other books do not suffer a similar fate immediately after they are launched. It seems very clear that if the Twitter campaign had not snowballed so quickly, the situation would still be unresolved now."

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