Q&A: Where did my Amazon listings go?

QUESTION: I just checked 60 of my Amazon listings and a bunch are missing. The first two I checked don't even show up. Surprised, I frantically searched my open listings for a few more. Only three out of the first 12 I checked were even there.

Of the remaining 48 randomly selected books, only about half were actually listed. Had these items been penny books, my concern would be less urgent. But most were saleable items and, since having been relisted, have sold. I am a Pro-Merchant and have been for the duration of the listings (about one year).

Furthermore, several listings I checked by clicking on the link for the item led to a dead end, 'This Page No Longer Exists' page. My theory is that the page was closed after the listing, but how would I have known?! Now, I fear, I have to check every single link to every single listing and pull each book from my shelves to learn whether or not it is even listed. This would, obviously, be as enormous a project.

There has been no indication to me that any of these listings were closed. Where did they go? This is, obviously, very disappointing and frustrating for me.

ANSWER: This sort of thing has been a continuing problem for me too, ever since I've been selling on Amazon. It seems to be just a random thing, that every once in a while some of my listings just drop off into thin air. About once every six to nine months I go through and make sure everything on my shelves has a listing. I usually find about 15-20 percent of the items I have are no longer listed, for no apparent reason. Very frustrating, because I depend on Amazon's listings to know what I have in inventory.

Also, there has been a big glitch at Amazon recently, and that may be part of what you're seeing. So before you do anything drastic (like taking a complete inventory) I would give this a few more days. There are many comments on Amazon's seller discussion board about missing listings. I think there is some kind of payment snafu that is making the dropped listings problem look even worse at the moment.

And there's one more factor: Every so often Amazon goes through their catalog and deletes books. Sometimes there seems to be a legitimate reason for it, like the book is an obsolete edition. And other times these deletions seem to be just random and nonsensical. Your listing won't be closed, but it's in limbo because it's not showing up anywhere on Amazon. For this kind of missing listing, assuming it's a fairly valuable book, you should verify that the ISBN is no longer in Amazon's catalog. Then try to find the best match for what remains in Amazon's catalog and list it there.

I remember one time about six years ago, Amazon had a big crash and lost most of the listings of many of its Pro-Merchants. Poof, one day they were gone, and that was that. Those sellers who didn't have a backup list of their stock had to relist their whole inventory.

Since you're a Pro-Merchant and don't have a separate inventory system, I'd recommend keeping a periodic backup by generating an Open Listings report at least once a week and saving it to your hard drive. That way, if Amazon has a big failure someday, you'll have a record of your ISBNs, descriptions, and SKUs, and you won't have to reinvent the wheel entirely.