The surge at Amazon for such items as household staples and health and medical goods has resulted in extended shipping times for other products, including books.
Monday morning, publishers reported that they were seeing shipping dates on some titles set for April 21 for standard shipping. Books bearing that shipping date included Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, which was Amazon’s #1 seller on Monday morning. But Crawdads was not alone. Other bestselling adult titles such as House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas, Long Range by C.J. Box, The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson, and The MAGA Doctrine by Charlie Kirk were also affected.
A range of children’s book, however, were still available for quicker shipping. Michael Parr's The Big Book of Silly Jokes for Kids, for example, will arrive March 27 for customers who choose two-day shipping. Still, other children’s books are currently out-of- stock. The workbooks Big Preschool and My First Learn-to-Write Workbook, among Amazon’s hottest sellers, are expected to be back in stock April 6 and April 7, respectively.
In a comment given to Vox's Recode vertical, Amazon acknowledged it was encountering shipping delays for non-priority items. “To serve our customers in need while also helping to ensure the safety of our associates, we’ve changed our logistics, transportation, supply chain, purchasing, and third-party seller processes to prioritize stocking and delivering items that are a higher priority for our customers,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “This has resulted in some of our delivery promises being longer than usual.”
Last week, Amazon sent an email to a host of suppliers and vendors—including many publishers—alerting them that, due to its decision to focus on high in demand items, producers of other products, including books, should expect to see lower orders and longer delivery times until April 5.
