The softcover edition of Robert K. Ritner's book "The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition" came out yesterday. It was available all day yesterday for around $21. Unfortunately, I delayed buying it until today. When I went to check out my Amazon cart this morning, I saw that it had jumped up in price to $31.46.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1560852321

What's more, it's no longer available at BN! I see from a Google search that it was available there for around $22 until today. I did some searching, and it's at Overstock for $22.88 so I bought my copy there.

http://www.overstock.com/Books-Movies-Music-Games/The-Joseph-Smith-Egyptian-Papyri-A-Complete-Editon-Paperback/7494539/product.html?cid=123620

Just thought I'd post and give a heads up.

Thanks for the heads-up and info about Overstock, Mak. Funny but I never thought about buying books from them. It's nice to have a new source :)

Me either. I always thought Overstock is where you go to buy pearls or wristwatches. :) Their free shipping threshold is $50 though.

I'm kicking myself that I didn't buy the book yesterday. I would have pre-ordered, but I was afraid they would just ship the book immediately and I wouldn't get a chance to bundle it with another book to get the free shipping. I'm not sure how Amazon's pre-orders work.

Is there a Kindle version?

No, and there usually isn't with Mormon history books. I'm not sure why. Buying paper books is getting to be rather quaint.

Anybody know what the hell is going on with Ritner's book? It was supposed to ship from Overstock today, and I checked and it's now set to ship on JUNE 28th. I looked back on Amazon, and the price is down to $28.36 but they are "temporarily out of stock." Did anyone actually get one? This is getting to be a bit of a fiasco.

It's not out yet and never was. The places listing them in stock are wrong. Signature has a release date of August 2013.

http://signaturebooks.com/2011/11/the-joseph-smith-egyptian-papyri-a-complete-edition/

Sounds like the publisher needs to give out non-wrong information.

Small publishers are at the mercy of whomever they contract the printing out to. Release dates are constantly pushed back for one reason or the other.

The retailers that list things as if they were in stock to get people to buy from them are the real culprits. They don't want to lose a sale. Release dates are always subject to printing delays, especially as the book needs to be approved for final press. Any number of printing errors can delay books, especially as problems force the printer to reorder the jobs they have in line.

While it can the publisher not getting things to the printer in a timely manner, that's only one of a huge list of things that could delay a printing, and since this book was already in hardback, I doubt that is the case here.

Thanks for cluing me in on the actual release date. I would have been topping this thread periodically for months. :)

I thought it was $50-75. So this is cool.

That was the first edition, which was a very nice hardcover edition, but I didn't want to shell out that much money for it. This second edition is a softcover.