Following a fiasco over the weekend in which several big-ticket graphic novels were sold at extreme discounts because of a technical glitch, Amazon has temporarily removed the “buy” buttons from a huge portion of its comics inventory. Unsurprisingly, with books in the $100 range selling for as low as $8, comics fans went on quite a buying spree, resulting in a nightmare for Amazon and Diamond Book Distributors, the distributor for a majority of the comics industry in the book market. As Amazon studies the situation and attempts to save face, all titles distributed by Diamond have been frozen, but are still available from third-party retailers on the site. Though some lucky buyers were able to score expensive omnibuses for less than the price of shipping, Amazon canceled a significant number of orders and issued credits to those customers. Of course, some people are up in arms about not getting their dirt-cheap hardcovers, feeling that Amazon should honor their price even if it was an accident. Weirdly, a similar pricing glitch hit the Barnes & Noble site yesterday, which makes us wonder if there is a hacker out there working very hard to get their comics on the cheap. [Robot6]
