Booksellers blast Amazon’s apology for early release of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ sequel

Amazon on Thursday apologized for mailing copies of Margaret Atwood’s hotly anticipated sequel to “” ahead of schedule 🌠— but independent bookseller🎀s are still crying foul.

One book-selling trade group said Amazon’s breaking the embargo on “” should be fodder for the fed’s antitrust probes into the online retai🐼ler run by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

“In recent weeks, ABA has communicated with appropriate officials at the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission about the negative impactꦐ of Amazon’s market 🅠dominance in the book industry and US retail overall,” the American Booksellers Association said.

“Amazon’s latest actions only further underscore how important it is that the appropriate federal agencies🍎 thoroughly investigate Amazon’s destructive business pra✱ctices,” ABA said in a statement it emailed to The Post after Amazon apologized.

Penguin Random House, which owns the publisher of “The Testaments,” had set a Sept. 10 embargo for sale of the book — but some Atwood fans say they got their Amazon-ship𝐆ped copies a week early — enraging book stores that have been feuding with Amazon since the 1990s.

Amazon🍬 said the books were sent out ahea🎃d of time in error.

“Due to a technical error a small number of customers were inadvertently sent copies of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments,” Amazon said Thursday. “We apologize for this error; we value our relationship with🍃 authors, agents, and publishers, and regret the difficulties this has caused them and our fellow booksellers.”

Bookssellers didn’t buy it.

“Unfortunately, Amazon first off doesn’t care they breached the embargo and secondly has never followed the rules,”ཧ tweeted independent bookseller Kelly Stidham, quoted in Publishers Weekly. Stidham urged Penguin “to withhold future stock and future embargoed titles from [Amazon].”

Literary critics also got in on the Amazon bashing, with blog Lit Hub blasting the onlܫine retailer for r𝓰uining what was supposed to be a collective “cultural moment.”

“It was going to trend worldwide. It was going to be a cultural moment, one that Margaret Atwood, her publisher, booksellers, reviewers, and reade𝓀rs were all going to contribute to and participate in,” Lit Hub wrote. “But with that embargo now broken by Amazon, September 10 has been diffused and all of that positive attention and interaction is hobbled.”

The ABA, which includes independent bookstores but none of the bಌig ꦓchains, also called the pre-shipment a “flagrant violation of the agreed upon protocol for releasing this book to the public.”

Penguin’s Doubleday said that the embargo will remain in place for all booksellers because only “a very small nu▨mber” of copies of the novel reached consumers early.

“In order to ensure our readers around the world receive their copies on the same day, our global publication date remains Tuesday, September 10☂,” Doubleday’s executive director of publicity Todd Doughty said.