Nick Schulz did some nosing around, and he thinks this might explain some of the peculiarities of the publication process with our book.

Perseus Distribution, a member of The Perseus Books Group, and Encounter Books announced…that they have entered into a multi-year sales and distribution agreement. The agreement will go into effect on August 1, 2009.

So we can conjecture that perhaps the handoff between our publisher and the new distributor went poorly. Or that Perseus has hundreds of other books to worry about, and our book is not one of their top priorities. In any case, Perseus has not entered the necessary information into the database that online distributors use.

I am still expecting that Amazon will get books at some point, hopefully soon. Even so, you still may not be able to order it. Neither Nick nor I nor any reviewers have seen copies. Let’s just say that as launching a book goes, the process is turning out to be, er, unusual.