Monday, July 8, 2024

The Mine-Laden Landscape of Publication... BOOM

People make mistakes.  I make a lot of them because reasons.  Unfortunately, the landscape of publishing gives one a boatload of opportunity to make mistakes... little land mines to step on and blow off an appendage.  Okay, nothing so tragic as that, but it does make one feel like a moron from time to time.

For instance...

Project Hermes is a freebie through the end of today. Friday, as I was trying to see where I was on the rankings and failing - which led me to try and figure out why this book had no rank (deep and unsatisfying rabbit hole there) - I noticed that the paperback version of this is not showing as available on the ebook page.  So, I go into the Bookshelf and then into the paperback details and things, and wouldn't you freakin' know it, the damn paperback that had been imported from CreateSpace many moons ago was somehow marked as a 'low content book' (basically like a notebook or sketchpad).   The only way to fix that is to delete the whole damn paperback and start over from scratch.  What a huge pain in the ass.  But after almost 3 hours (super slow internet and large files), I got it uploaded to Amazon.  NOW I have to go check every other freakin' paperback to see if that little box that marks it as a low-content book is checked.  Fark.  

I also noticed that when my books were imported from CreateSpace, the cover files didn't make it over, so Amazon just used the image they had from the ebook.  Basically, all my paperbacks just have a front cover.  Derp.  So, I'm doing that, too.  

Shame on me for assuming the conversion process was smooth and trusting to Amazon that it was done right.  I don't know if it made an ass of U, but it sure feels like it made an ass of ME.  Thankfully, no one has bought any of these wonky-cover paperbacks.  Maybe that's the reason they aren't selling. I have no clue.  

Anyway, this issue is getting fixed.  Along with any others.  If I find 'em, I'll fix 'em.  Until then... 

BOOM

JuLoWriMo - Day 7:
Starting Word Count - 9040
Ending Word Count - 10026
New Words: 986

1 comment:

  1. UGH! Now I need to go check my shelf at the 'Zon to see if my paperbacks are good to go. I sell like zilch of them so I haven't paid any attention. I still need to advertise the Smashwords sale. Gah. I wish I had the $$ to hire someone to do all that stuff for me. At least the marketing. I hate this part of publishing. Hang in there and congrats on the new words! I'm making progress too. I edited 14,909 words and added 1,094 new words to that count.

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