The continuing sage of my book - aka The pitfalls of self-publishing

[shadowkat]

So, after ordering 15 copies of my recently published book, my dear old mom gives me a call.

Mom: I'm reading your book, I've forgotten how amazing a writer you are.
Me: Thanks, Mom! (seriously if your own mother doesn't like your writing, who will? Particularly my mother who is insanely well read, a huge book critic, and has a background leading book discussion groups going back to the Great Books Foundation.)

Mom: Where's your author bio?
Me: It's not in the book?
Mom: No
Me: Okay, that's odd, I told them to put it in the interior. Does it matter?
Mom: Well, I think it does...but well, maybe you can live without it...I don't know. It's just more professional with it. And it's a great bio.

Several hours later..during my lunch hour:

Me to CreateSpace: So, not sure you can correct this. But I remember ordering the author bio and asking for it to be in the interior cover of my book. Can you fix that? Or am I stuck without it?
CreateSpace (checks): Oops, you're right. You did indicate in your questionnaire that the bio be put in your interior. It should have happened when we were formatting. So sorry about that. We'll fix that right away, free of charge.
Me: Uh, what's involved exactly? Will this further delay the Kindle Conversion (which is taking bloody forever).
CreateSpace: No, no. We won't stop that. But your book will be temporarily unavailable on Amazon for a day or two, until you approve the new proof and publish it. We'll send you a new complimentary copy of your book. When you review it - you approve, and we'll put it back on Amazon. Then when your Kindle Conversion is completed, we will ask you to approve the revisions. And it will be added to the Kindle. Since you'll probably get the complimentary copy and be able to approve it prior to the Kindle Conversion being completed this shouldn't be a problem.
Me (somewhat confused): Okay, just so I have this straight: you revise, then you send me the digitized proof, I approve, you take it down from Amazon, you send me the complimentary proof in the mail, I approve the proof, publish, you put back on Amazon. At the same time the Kindle Conversion is going on. You finish that. I approve the addition. You add it. I review. You Post through the KDP site.
CreateSpace: That's correct.

What's interesting about CreateSpace is they are an affiliate of Amazon's parent company, but not associated with it. Just as Good Reads is affiliated but not associated.
The best way to explain this is - they are sort of like kids of Amazon, who have been told to leave home and figure out how to make ends meet on their own. As opposed to pets, who stick with you until death.

In other words, yes they'll put you free of charge on Amazon, yes they'll post you on Kindle platform, but both are separate entities -- so if you want to know how to market yourself on them or how the other two work - you have to contact them directly.

I asked them about other things, but that's a whole different post.


Later that night, I speak to dear old mom again on the telephone.

Mom: Oh good, you got the author bio thing worked out. That's really important to have included in your book. You might want to print off the info and put it in all the books you bought.
Me: Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to make post-cards. Be a nice bookmark.
Mom: by the way, it's not possible to have a Master of Fine Arts in English.
Me: Yes it is.
Mom: No, that's a Master's.
Me: Why do we care?
Mom: You had it wrong in your book.
Me: Are you going to nitpick my book to death?? It's already out there. I can't fix it now. That costs money. Besides, I'm not even sure you are right.
Mom: Oh, I wouldn't worry about it. It's not that big a deal. Although, how do you spell blonde? Is it blond without the e, or blonde with the e?
Me: I don't know. How do I spell it?
Mom: both ways. Normally without the e, but in one place you have it with an e. I'm only asking because I need to fill it out on my passeport application. Your father and I screwed up on our applications, so we're trying to fix them. We hope it goes through.

Now, she picks these things up? It's not like she hadn't read the book before. Great.
Last night I was worrying about the author bio, now I'm worrying about typos and errors.

Mom: Don't worry too much about the typos. All books have them. Just finished reading War Brides, it was littered with typos.
Me: yeah, yeah, human error and all that. Got it.

So...book is delayed. If you want to buy it (and I really really hope you do -- not only that but love it enough to write a review), you may want to wait a few weeks. And the word blond may be misspelled in one sentence. I blame my attempts to learn French, it inspired me to put e's on the ends of dozens of words.

This has definitely been a learning experience.

Comments

[feliciacraft.livejournal.com]

My understanding of "blonde" vs. "blond" is that, traditionally, one would use "blonde" to refer to a woman, and "blond" to refer to a man (exactly like "fiancée" and "fiancé"). You're right to blame the French; the distinction between masculine and feminine is indeed non-native to English. I say "traditionally" because in recent years there's been less of a distinction, probably because we Americans tend to like simplifying things, especially words over time, and "blond" can apply to either gender.

And typos are indeed everywhere. Not a big deal.

I know a few authors, and one trick is to give out discounted copies: run "sweeps" on your blog, distribute coupon codes, or have a promotional period where the digital download may be had for a nominal fee or entirely for free, and ask for reviews. (It's also a good idea to run promotions every so often to drum up excitement, but that's another story.) You can get clever and require subscription to your mailing list (i.e. keep potential buyers tuned in to your marketing spiel!) in exchange for the coupon code or URL that leads to a free download. Do it for a week, and you should be able to build up some reviews.

Good luck!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking I should probably wait a little while, until CreateSpace finishes adding in the author info and the Kindle version becomes available.

This process involves a lot of patience. ;-)