I can ask this question
because I now have my own CreateSpace story.
Earlier in May I was coming
up short on having copies of my book on hand. Same with my publisher. The
initial printing run of 200 copies of my book was very nearly gone. Nice, but
it was time to reorder. Since my publisher went with CreateSpace and it’s based
on the print-on-demand principle, they would be able to make smaller orders and
therefore limit the odds of them having too many unsold books in storage at any
given time. Anything that lowers a business’s overhead is a good deal. We’ve
all heard stories and jokes about books being remaindered. Not good. Every book
deserves a home.
All was cool … UNTIL the
possibility of making corrections to the inside text was mentioned.
Make no mistake, editing is
hard work. All books contain typos that were missed. Most are so minor that a
reader usually glosses over them and goes on. If I notice something when I’m
reading I usually make a small mental shrug and go on. Mistakes must be really
major in order to drop me out of the narrative. Probably on the level of
content and plot points. This is why there are different types of editors:
content and line are the basic ones. Content editors look at the big picture
and search out the plot holes giving the author time to plug them. Line editors
are what I like to call the real grammar Nazis. I picture them diagraming
sentences in their dreams.
After all the levels of
editing Clouds Over Bishop Hill went
through before publishing—I knew of three things I wanted to change. (I did
change them for the eBook version.) Having the chance to upgrade the print
version was way too tempting to pass up.
So, I threw caution into the
wind and meddled with a book that was doing fine. To make changes that for all
intents and purposes were only important to four people, one of whom was
deceased.
There was that little voice
that had me wondering if it would really be worthwhile. I ignored the pesky
voice of caution and all the other warning signs, and I went ahead. I clicked
that last button …
And the online print edition
of my book disappeared from Amazon.
That’s when panic and the question
of my sanity set in.
You see, I’d finally
approached Barnes & Noble two days before this and they had placed an
online order. I was going to Sweden and wanted to take books with me. I had a
major disaster on my hands.
Somehow, my better half came
to the rescue and got things sort of fixed. The book was back online—but listed
as NOT AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW!
The only thing I could do was
wait for the computers to catch up with the changes I made.
The wait for Amazon only took
a few hours. After one very sleepless night, expanded distribution was back early
the next morning.
Right now, Amazon looks like
it’s back to normal. I didn’t lose my reviews. Barnes & Noble has their
books. I have my new books. The changes are nice. All is well with the world.
However, I can say for sure that I never want to see
this screen again:
No comments:
Post a Comment