Alright, folks. You are imaginary at this point – nobody is reading this. But hopefully, there will be someone in the future, scrolling back to the beginning, and reading those hectic posts. I wrote a short story about this a great many years ago. At some point into the story a scientist, who realized that his discovery will eventually result in the creation of a time machine, is standing in the middle of nowhere talking to the future generations, knowing that someone will be curious about this moment.
Where was I? It’s Sunday, around midnight, and I’m seeing double. A mental note to myself: “Stop seeing Double – you don’t have time to date.”
As far as building the site. I hacked wordpress social plugin to work with Goodreads. Coincidentally, they approved me as a librarian, then after I added my book, they approved me as an author. Not only they were prompt and courteous, they did it on Saturday and Sunday. Wow! I’m in love! This site is now a living shrine to Goodreads. There is “Follow me on Goodreads” in the sidebar, their icon on the login screen, and a big juicy button next to the book description.
Among other tweaks is the “Contact Us” screen that you can get to by clicking an envelope button on the right.
I also styled the login and “forgot my password” screens to match the rest of the site. The whole site is as dark as a polar night now.
Now, the reason I started this post was to keep you abreast of what is keeping the hard launch of the book. Right now I’m considering this stage a soft launch. I’m not actively looking for readers. Here are the remaining issues:
- Amazon updated the categories but the “find similar items” is messed up. Here is what it looks like right now:
Look for Similar Items by Category
Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Historical
Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Arthurian
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Children’s eBooks > Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror > Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Magic
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fantasy > ArthurianLook for Similar Items by Subject
NON-CLASSIFIABLETo me this is embarrassing. There is a ticket with Amazon. Almost five business days ago the rep emailed me and said that it was going to be “resolved shortly.”
- Barnes&Noble paperback edition is missing a cover. I emailed the rep – got a very informal, prompt reply. It went like this, “Hi Pat, we’ll upload the cover soon. Thanks, Mike.” Loved it! Amazon’s emails are very formal, long, and flawlessly written. They are also on IST, that’s Indian Standard Time, for the uninitiated and “Mike” was on PST. Anyway, it’s been a couple of business days and the cover is still missing…
- A minor issue but annoying nevertheless. When I click on Kindle edition “update product details” in Author Central – it gives me an error message, advising me to contact technical support. I have contacted them twice and haven’t gotten any responses. When I do the same on the paperback – no issues.
- iTunes is still reviewing book “to ensure quality.” It’s been over three weeks since I submitted the ePub file. A friend said that they are probably “reading the book” and it’s pretty cool how serious they are about quality. BullPoop! It’s Apple being Apple. Nobody is looking at it at all. It’s far cheaper to create a public image than actually do things of this nature. I’m sure when the time comes they will spend 15 minutes looking at the book, an hour tops. One thing this does though – it ensures quality as in, “if you want to submit to us – you better make good damn sure you have the final version.” “Normally” self-published writers rush too soon to publish, then discover problems, panic (The public is reading!), publish too soon again. Rinse and repeat. Apple is saving some money and establishes an air of superior quality at the same time. I could be wrong, of course.
I think this is it for the moment. I’ll keep you posted.
I’m just kidding about them not liking me – the book has only been on Amazon for two weeks. I checked other recent arrivals and they are not visible either. I signed up to be a “librarian” on the site to add my book manually. I honestly stated my intent. We’ll see if they let me become one. If not, it will be visible eventually. I have time, eBooks are forever.