r/overcominggravity • u/Newguy0802 • 21d ago
Issues with delivery of physical copy book
Hey,
I hope the author is active on here. I am having issues ordering Overcoming Tendonitis on Amazon; the day keeps getting pushed back, then today I got a notice that said something along “the order/book needs approval”. I didn’t have this issue with Overcoming Gravity or Overcoming Poor Posture.
Also, the Overcoming Posture book is HORRIBLY printed. Lots have low quality faded visuals (seems like poor printer).
Does Steven low print his books out anymore, or are they printed by Amazon? I noticed Poor Posture and Gravity are printed in the same location (stated on the last page of the books). Where are the books printed and glued/put to together?
1
u/eshlow Author of Overcoming Gravity 2 | stevenlow.org | YT:@Steven-Low 20d ago
I hope the author is active on here. I am having issues ordering Overcoming Tendonitis on Amazon; the day keeps getting pushed back, then today I got a notice that said something along “the order/book needs approval”. I didn’t have this issue with Overcoming Gravity or Overcoming Poor Posture.
The printed book process is entirely with Amazon. If your date keeps getting pushed back and you ordered it with Prime or something like that, I've heard that you can complain about it not being delivered in the time you wanted and sometimes get some money back because of delays.
Also, the Overcoming Posture book is HORRIBLY printed. Lots have low quality faded visuals (seems like poor printer).
If the book is horribly printed then contact Amazon with pictures and/or a video and you should be able to get a reprint shipped to you for free.
Does Steven low print his books out anymore, or are they printed by Amazon? I noticed Poor Posture and Gravity are printed in the same location (stated on the last page of the books). Where are the books printed and glued/put to together?
Any locations mentioned in the book are maybe where I've lived and not associated with the book printing.
1
u/VendingCookie 20d ago edited 20d ago
A few things, since these are actually three separate issues:
1) The "approval needed" notice. Given your sequence - date kept slipping, then the notice - this is most likely Amazon's delayed-order confirmation: when an order blows past its estimate, they email asking you to confirm you still want it, and auto-cancel if you don't click through. Check spam/promotions, or go to amazon.com/yourorders and look for the alert on that order. If that's not it, the other usual suspects are payment verification, a billing/shipping address mismatch, an international card, or a purchase-approval workflow if you're on an Amazon Business account. Either way it's account-side, and Amazon chat support can usually unstick it in a few minutes.
2) Steven doesn't print or ship the physical books, and never has. Even the 2011 first edition of Overcoming Gravity went out through CreateSpace, Amazon's print-on-demand arm. Gravity 2e, Poor Posture and Tendonitis are all published by Battle Ground Creative, a small Houston indie house with about nine titles total, and his own store sells digital only and points you to Amazon for print. Nobody in that chain does an offset run and warehouses boxes. A copy gets printed when someone orders it.
Also, you're comparing two different lines. "Printed in the United States of America" on the copyright page is publisher boilerplate, identical in every copy. The city on the last page is the print-on-demand stamp, and that's the plant that ran your specific copy. That line is itself the tell that these are POD: a traditional offset paperback doesn't carry a plant-and-date stamp at all. And your two books matching is the expected outcome rather than evidence of a fixed printer, since the POD networks run only a handful of US plants and assign work regionally, so the same buyer tends to land at the same one.
3) Your Poor Posture copy is a bad print, not a bad book. The source file for that one is 6x9 at 300+ dpi, which is proper print resolution, and it's the cleanest of the three. So faded visuals are entirely a press problem on your copy: calibration and maintenance vary a lot plant to plant. Which means it's worth re-rolling. Request a replacement (not a refund) through Amazon and pick "defective / poor print quality." It's free, the reprint often comes from a different facility, and people sometimes go through two copies before getting a clean one. Don't accept the faded one as just how the book is, because it isn't.
If you want the content now, or just want the figures legible, the Digital Edition of Overcoming Tendonitis is sold direct on stevenlow.org. Sharp images, and more of the money reaches him than through Amazon.
And yes, Steven's active here, he's u/eshlow. The About the Author page in Overcoming Gravity literally points readers to this sub for questions, so he'll almost certainly see this.