Bookstores & sellers are the lifeblood of publishing, but this is a pretty terrible look. Folks, authors have 🅾️ control over the physical publication & distribution of our books. That's literally why we sell the rights to entities called publisher. Telling customers to direct vitriol at the author 🙄

Jaysis. I would be hopping mad at this store if I were that author.

starting a sentence with "direct all vitriol at" and finishing it with literally anything is so bizarre?? I mean definitely don't go after the author, but also it's not actually normal to react with "vitriol" toward anyone because your order got delayed!

That's a good way to make sure I never go to that bookstore again.

The tone of this would make me stop shopping at that bookstore.

I wish Josh Cook had BlueSky social (he recently wrote a great book about being a bookseller.) He should see this! This is wild.

Yeah wtf would they put that there!? 🤦🏼‍♂️

Everything else they say is the best they can say in the circumstances -- then they go and ruin it by telling fans to attack the author.

Oh, yes, send anger to the author who has already done their part and has absolutely no say on how things go after they've turned in the final version. It's out of their hands!

As someone whose job this is: Macmillan "in over their heads"? Please. They're a big outfit. Sometimes printers aren't able to get all the books printed in time. Machines break (v common!), backups happen (this is the busiest printing season) etc. This store is really talking out their ass.

*And* they shouldn't direct vitriol at the publisher, because I can absolutely guarantee that the people answering the phones, managing the social media, and reading letters had zero control over any of it.