This is actually a very common situation. By our data, we find that over 50 upcoming books per day actually get removed from online stores such as Amazon etc.
There can be a variety of reasons for this. Some get re-added under a different ISBN, others are pulled and go up later on, and others are removed entirely and never written or published.
This can lead to a lot of clutter at sites such as Goodreads and TheStoryGraph, as they have all these “false” entries listing books that were never published.
Here is our process when our system detects an upcoming ISBN is no longer functional:
– We check if the book has had its ISBN changed. If it has, we will update the ISBN for that book.
– If it has been removed entirely, we will remove it from our site.
– We will run manual checks 3x per week to see if the book has been re-added. Once per week, we do a deep research dive to see if the author has made public why the book was pulled (i.e.: illness, or permanent cancelation).
This way, we aren’t presenting any misinformation to the reader about upcoming books. If and when the book gets a publication date and is available for pre-order, we will re-add it.
Rest assured if you mark the book as “want to read” and it disappears from the site – when we add it back, your status will be retained.