Well, this is bizarre. Amazon.com is advertising PBW’s StarDoc novel as being written by a “Richard Chizmar,” which is wholly inaccurate, as anyone with half a brain could see if they simply looked at the cover of the book. I don’t understand how these mistakes happen, though something similar occurred wtih my X-Men book on the Amazon UK site. For the longest time they called it by another title: The Outcast Empire.
Now, what’s odd about that – besides the obvious difference in titles – is that The Outcast Empire was the title of another X-Men proposal I submitted to Pocket Star. My editor really liked that storyline, but it was later rejected by the Marvel brass for being too complex. Dark Mirror took its place, and I thought that was the end of it. Until I saw the title on Amazon.com! And not only that, but the book synopsis posted on that site was the same exact description, in my words, of that first and rejected proposal! Dude! It bothered me, but only because I didn’t want readers to get confused – or feel betrayed that the story they were buying was not at all what was being advertised. I mean, a space adventure with the Shi’ar Empire is a lot different from a body snatching road trip (which is what Dark Mirror is basically all about).
But anyway, it eventually got fixed. I hope Amazon does not take as long to address PBW’s problem – having the wrong name on your book is a lot more serious than messing up the title. At least they haven’t done that with her new StarDoc novel, Rebel Ice, which I can’t wait to read.
In other news, Tiger Eye has been nominated for the RT Reader’s Choice award! Yay!