We recently had several authors report that their books, which are published through IngramSpark, received errors from Amazon stating they are unable to ship the book to the selected address. Trying different shipping addresses and removing the books and adding them back into the cart didn’t fix the error.

I reached out to inquire about this error with IngramSpark and received this response:

“Certain Amazon retail selection may be subject to regional availability as we seek to better understand its value to customers. This means that some products may be available for purchase in certain geographic areas while restricted in others, based on various factors in our retail selection strategy.

This is an Amazon-side regional restriction managed by Amazon’s retail systems. Unfortunately, as this restriction is controlled at the retail level, there are no immediate actions you can take to modify the regional availability for this title.”

Needless to say, I was incredibly frustrated with the response from IngramSpark, though in their defense, this is what Amazon told them.

As a book publisher for 20 years with hundreds of titles published directly with IngramSpark, this is simply unacceptable. Publishers and authors cannot accept that books can suddenly no longer be available for shipping. This means the distribution system between IngramSpark and Amazon is broken.

How to Resolve the Error: Sorry, Book Cannot Be Shipped to the Address You Selected

Fortunately, we found a fix that worked and it’s pretty simple: Ask IngramSpark to re-transmit your book title data to Amazon.

I exported a list of our active ISBNs and asked IngramSpark to re-transmit all of them. Fortunately, this resolved the issue within a matter of hours.

If you experience this error with your book, contact IngramSpark support and provide them with your ISBN. They can re-transmit your data right away and you should see the error resolve quickly.

How to Test if Your Book is Shipping Correctly from Amazon

It’s not immediately obvious that a book is experiencing this shipping error. The book page on Amazon looks normal and shows inventory is available. You can add it to your cart, and it still looks normal.

But when you proceed to check out, the error appears on the final checkout screen and prevents you from placing the order. If you experience this error, follow the steps above to ask IngramSpark to retransmit your book data to Amazon. Then wait a few hours and try the checkout process again. But don’t leave the book in your shopping cart. First, remove it and then add it back. Proceed with the checkout steps and you should see the error has been resolved.

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