Slightly Off the Mark: The Haunted Book Conundrum, or: Amazon Weaves a Web of Puzzlement

I stumbled across the strangest thing on the internet--which could be the beginning of any number of stories.

While preparing to promote Haunted Noble County, Indiana for the Halloween season, I did a search for the book. Yes, I've said in the past we shouldn't even think about Halloween before October 1st, but that's not the way promotion works. As an example, I give you this display I noticed--in mid-August:

Yes, I thought about tearing it down or complaining to management, but it didn't help much when I punched the plastic Santa Clause last September. Speaking of Christmas:

Yeah. I stopped by mid-September and they were in the middle of putting up Christmas merchandising. Which brought me to the doctor's office, where they told me I didn't have a stroke, just a syncopal episode. (Ahem--I fainted.)

Anyway, at one point I searched for "podcasts in or about Noble County Indiana", because I'd just been invited on a podcast by a Noble County resident, and got curious. That's when I stumbled across this:

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/32e3a6d6-5f36-4f1f-a09e-60135a79bb26/episodes/927386a6-0a9e-49fd-bd4f-234ed00faf3f/atcvexgzfletcher-the-audio-ebook-library-explore-audiobook-haunted-noble-county-indiana-haunted-america-complete-guide-curated-content-best-seller

No, you don't have to click on it, because I'll tell you what it is: A page on Amazon Music that talks about the audio and e-book versions of Haunted Noble County, Indiana.

Except there are no audio or e-book versions of the book.

Not hardcover, either. The History Press doesn't issued those versions of its Haunted America books. (By the way, as of this writing ours is 18% off on Amazon.) Although issued by the same parent publisher, our book Images of America: Albion and Noble County is available in e-book, paperback, and hardcover. (And 59% off on Amazon.) Audio wouldn't work, considering the word "Images" is in the title.

It's a real Amazon Music page, and if you poke around a bit, you'll find a link to the "visual companion", which actually just leads to more Amazon Music products. There's a link to a "review" of Haunted Noble County, but that leads to a different audiobook website. There is indeed a review, which is obviously A.I. Actually, maybe not even that: It's more of a generic, glowing review with the title pasted in there, and few book details. But at least it's glowing, as is every other review there.

Of the three links on that page, one links to the print book, on Amazon. The other two go to Amazon's general audio and digital pages. (Okay, "that page" is called LastOutline dot com.) There doesn't appear to be any phishing or bad actor redirects going on there; just a bunch of bad great reviews. Other than this one page, it's all Amazon stuff. Has Amazon gotten so big that their A.I. programs are just shoving stuff out there to see what floats? Honestly, it looks like something they planned to launch, then forgot about.

Well, it's just ... strange. Forget all that, get it from here:

https://markrhunter.com/haunted-noble-county

And why isn't Haunted Noble County, Indiana available in e-book or hardcover, anyway? At least that one's not an Amazon question.

Here are some legitimate places where you can find our books:

· Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

· Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/search?attributes.contributorId=13727646

· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

· Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

· Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

· Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/