Sunday, November 18, 2012

Bad Business


Hi Everyone. First, let me apologize for my publishing ignorance. I’m truly sorry. Now let me explain to you what’s going on with Honeysuckle Love.

Print Edition: Right now, HSL is in the review stage for the print edition that will be available on Amazon and CreateSpace. The review process can take up to 48 hours (a little fact that would have been helpful for me to know before waiting until late last night to publish). Soooo, it may or may not be ready for tomorrow. It’s just up in the air based on how quickly CreateSpace gets my proof to me for final reviews. (I’m totally rolling my eyes right now.) On a positive note, however, the book binding looks fantastic!

Smashwords: You know that I’m publishing my book with Smashwords which is an e-book distributor. Well, since I’ve never formatted a book to be converted to an .epub file (a file completely different from Kindle), there were problems with my initial upload. Oh, I followed the directions to a T, and it still came out looking like garbage. Naturally, because why would anything work correctly the first time? (By the way, I had to put on Christmas music this morning to calm down because I am so irritated. Bing Crosby is helping enormously.) Soooo, now that I got all of the formatting issues fixed (I think . . . I previewed the .epub file in Calibre), I am now waiting for the review process to be completed. They don’t tell you how long this takes, but I’m going to make a safe bet that the Smashwords edition of HSL won’t be available tomorrow.

Now here’s the real kicker. I stumbled across a blog last night (I think God directed me there) written by another indie author who publishes with Smashwords. Her latest book was published in August, and Smashwords still hasn’t distributed it to Kobo and Apple iBookstore.  Apparently getting a book to these retailers can take longer. So naturally that pissed me off because they make it sound like as soon as your book is published, it’s out there in all the online e-book retail stores. Oh, no no no. So this indie author suggested that other self-published authors check out the Kobo website since now they offer direct publishing (in pretty much the same setup as Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing). Yea! I think. I’ll just scoot over to Kobo so that my Kobo readers don’t have to wait weeks or months for Smashwords to get my book into the Kobo store. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, I set up an account. And I loaded my book. And it looked like shit. Well, unless you enjoy reading a sentence per page. They must use a different program to convert Word docs to .epub files, because it looked nothing like what Smashwords spit out to me. All of this to say that yes, I will be publishing directly through Kobo. When? I don’t know. I’ve got to reformat my entire book, and I think I know how, and I’m dreading it because it will take FOREVER. Kobo users, I do apologize. It shouldn’t be this hard to get you an e-book, but you should be able to purchase HSL through Smashwords which converts it to .epub for you.

One last thing about Smashwords. Well, actually Apple iBookstore. Like I said, Smashwords is supposed to distribute to Apple, but it sounds like you could wait months for your book to show up in their store. This fabulous indie author with all of the answers (mentioned above) explained that you can, in fact, publish directly to the Apple store, but you can only do it with a Mac. Well, I’m a PC person. I don’t have a Mac, so I’m at the mercy of Smashwords unless I get a Mac in the future. And I don’t think that’s happening. So those of you with Apple devices may just have to get the Kindle app in order to read HSL unless, for some reason, my book appears in the Apple store in the next few days.

Amazon Kindle: Easy. Done. Up and ready to go. Of course, this is because I’m familiar with it—I know how to format and how long the publishing process takes.

(Deep freaking breath.) So you all may only see the Kindle edition of HSL tomorrow. Then the Smashwords will probably be up in a few days. But don’t count on seeing HSL in the Apple or Kobo stores. And the print edition? Well, I’m really hoping and praying for a proof sometime tonight. Once that’s complete, CreateSpace should throw it up on my Kindle page. You can purchase the print book through Amazon and/or the CreateSpace e-book store. You’ll see the print edition listed under the Kindle edition. It’s print-on-demand, so they store my digital file, and once you order it, they print and bind the book for you then ship it out.

I am so sorry. I really feel like I’ve let everyone down because I said that HSL would be available in all these different formats and e-book stores tomorrow. My husband said, “Well, lesson learned,” and if it weren’t Sunday, I would have put him through the window. But as Lamar says, “Man, it’s the Lord’s Day. You don’t get in no trouble on the Lord’s Day.” Despite being majorly irritated and stressed (not to mention totally embarrassed), I still can’t help but feel excited about the release of this book tomorrow (even if it’s only the Kindle edition initially). I’ve worked so hard on this novel. It’s dear to my heart. I love these characters and their stories, and I hope you discover a love for them, too.

 
Don’t forget that Hoodie will be up for free download Monday – Wednesday, November 19, 20, and 21. Tell all of your friends. I’d love to surpass the number of my downloads from the last time!  

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