Probably, like every other content out there that is not available, due to retarded publishers' restrictions...

For example, the Kindle edition of Trainspotting is (or was) not available in the US. I change the country of my Kindle to UK, suddenly it was available. Maybe you should try that?

You should post this to http://thedailywtf.com/ ;)

As Igal said. Even saw this kind of behavior depending on the day you visit it. (ie on Sunday a site is 'closed').

The Pragmatic Bookshelf generate the ebooks on the fly, as soon as an order is placed on the website. They describe the whole process in one of their PragPub free magazine.

Check the "How do we?" starting from the second episode: http://pragprog.com/magazines/2009-08/how-do-we

If only they were using RavenDb!!!

The world is not only computer science. There is also something called reality where contracts and legal rules come in.

I saw something similar with an Amazon e-book last night, but it also had a message saying "Temporarily removed because the formatting is totally jacked" or some such.

My guess is that we're seeing Amazon's "eventual consistency" in action - a book was pulled and the shopping cart subsystem got the memo, but the catalog listing hasn't. Try to use vendor central sometime if you want an example of frustration -- you make a change and get a little note that pretty much says "yeah I guess we got it, keep refreshing for five minutes to see if it stuck".

My guess is since the Length listed is 293 pages (estimated) it's because the book hasn't been published yet. One might then ask why they show it at all then...

I had a similar thing happen when I tried to order one of the Ender Series, it turns out that some people had complained about the conversion and some of the formatting so they pulled it. Still not back though.

@TomCollins, is'nt it a pitty that with all the possibilities we have, we choose to restrict ourselves?