Problems With KDP's Hardbacks

Last year KDP began allowing self publishers to release hardback editions of their books. What a great idea! I tried it with my latest Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novel Rio Grande Night and it was a great success. The hardbacks are of good quality and the price is reasonable. It would be nice if they came with dust jackets, but that's a minor quibble. My Rio Grande Night hardback was well received so I thought I would try it with other books. So I applied to have KDP print hardbacks of my long-time bestseller Private Dancer, and my Thailand novel Bangkok Bob and the Missing Mormon. And that is where it all started to go wrong! KDP told me that everything was fine and that the books would be printed on demand. But the Amazon.uk site has consistently shown them as 'Temporarily Out Of Stock'. They can't be out of stock, obviously, as they are printed on demand! You order one, Amazon prints it, and sends it to you. Except that isn't happening.

I have notified KDP many times but they don't seem to be able to fix the problem. I get replies, but all the replies say the same, thanking me for notifying them and that they will get back to me. They never do! No one ever gets back to me. I am starting to think that I am not actually dealing with real people and that it is a chatbot replying, because the messages are all so similar!

A look at KDP's community pages shows that many other self publishers are having problems with getting hardbacks published. And they are getting the same unhelpful replies from Customer Service. I have been in this situation for almost a month now, and nothing has changed! I shall keep you posted!