2019 Black Book Print Version On Amazon Information

Update: Sunday June 30th, 11:45pm

On Saturday the amazon system finally accepted a new version of the book file. There were a crazy amount of warnings in the book file that never should’ve been there, but regardless, 8 hours later we made the changes and our book file was ready for final approval. Tonight at 11:40pm we discovered our book is live. I apologize again for the inconvenience and realize it is post draft, but I was determined to figure this out and get it done. If nothing else, it gave me a heads up for some issues I’ll face next June. 

Mark Edwards

Update: Monday June 24th, 2019, 12:30pm

We will continue to work through the issues we have been experiencing and try to get our 2019 NHL Draft Black Book on amazon this summer. At this point, we have had no progress and due to the fact the issues are 100% out of our control, we have no estimated date when the book will be available. The only thing we can tell you is that we want the book on amazon and will continue to do everything we can do to make it happen.

Update: Monday June 17th, 2019, 10:20am

Sadly no progress has been made this weekend or this morning. At this point I don’t expect  that I’ll be able to get the Black Book on amazon in time for delivery to potential buyers by Draft Day. I’ll continue working on it until my departure to Vancouver and upon my return in an attempt to get it live this summer. If I have any success going forward we will obviously update both here and on twitter.

Update: Friday June 14th, 2019, 6:25pm

I have continued in our attempt to fix the issues but with no success to this point. The NHL Draft is now a week away and even if we successfully got our files uploaded tonight, it might be late Saturday before the book would be live on amazon. I have explored several options but nothing has worked.

At this point I’m losing confidence hourly that I’ll be able to get the Black Book on amazon soon enough to allow for delivery to buyers prior to the draft. I’ll keep trying up until I depart for Vancouver, but I’m almost out of time. What frustrates me most is that it’s not something I can just dive into and fix myself. My guess based on the hours I’ve put into this and by speaking to support is that they have dealt with many more situations like this and that their tech team has some work in front of them to fix their automated system.

Once again, my apologies. We work hard all season to produce the Black Book so it’s been a disappointing stretch of days.

Mark Edwards

Update: Thursday, June 13th, 10:30am EST

Unfortunately we have no good news to report and little to update. We have continued our attempt to get our files processed through the amazon KDP automated system with no success. The support team uploaded our files to their own test account without issue but we can’t. I asked them to upload to our account and was told they can’t. With them basically telling me it’s not our files that are the problem it gives me very few options. Amongst the numerous things I’ve tried was recreating the book with a new ISBN number and that also failed. At this point I’m going to contact support again today and keep hammering away at their tech support. The draft is now 8 days from now, so obviously our time window is quickly coming to a close.

Once again I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I’m frustrated with how little they know about their bugs in their own system..

Mark Edwards

Tuesday, June 11, 12:58 pm EST

If you follow our twitter account you will know that we’ve been struggling to get our print version of our 2019 NHL Draft Black Book submitted to amazon this year.

The company we have always used in the past was purchased by amazon a few years ago but until this year they still operated independently. Since this time last year when we submitted our 2018 NHL Draft Black Book, that has changed. All of our previous books were transferred to the amazon automated system. The transfer process went smoothly, so I had no reason to believe there would be any problems with our 2019 Black Book print version submission.

Flash forward to last week when I submitted the print version to amazon’s automated process. Their system has been rejecting our files. I thought it was all fine when I originally submitted our book – but the rejection of the files failed after some time passed. The files I submitted are exactly the same format as in all the previous years, but this new process which automatically checks our files is rejecting them. I use the same templates every year, so nothing has changed except for the text.

I’m to the point where I’ve had their support calling me on my cell. Obviously in our situation we have a huge time constraint with the draft fast approaching and I have conveyed this to their support. I’ve been working on this everyday since I became aware of the issue last Thursday. I’m a ‘print version’ guy myself so I really want to get this issue corrected. I can’t even get one print copy for myself.

I wanted to post this note because we’ve been getting a lot of support emails over the past 48 hours asking why the book is not on amazon yet. I understand the frustration of checking amazon searching to see if our book is available yet.

I’m still working on this and will update in this article and our twitter @ScoutingService with any news. Amazon does have quick delivery to customers if I get it submitted, but I am running out of time. I’m also getting less confident each day that I’ll have enough time, as I’ve made little progress so far since last week.

I apologize to all our loyal ‘print version’ buyers. I’m doing everything within my power to fix this issue.

Sincerely,

Mark Edwards

Founder & Director of Scouting