By now, you should know that I am an author. I auth. It's what I do. I write books, and I publish them for free -- or nearly for free, and then, sometimes that doesn't work out for me as I expect it to. This is one of those times.
The book "Edinburgh" is my 9th or 10th book to write, I'm not sure, but it was my 3rd book to write in 2023. I wrote it in the summer and I wrote it rather quickly, as I didn't have to think too hard about it. I finally finished it in late August, and I think I submitted it for publication on the 1st of September.
I always write the book, go through it a few times, and submit it for publishing before I go through it hardcore to make any changes. The reason for that (though I've changed my mind about that very recently) is that I can't find my mistakes when I go back over the manuscript soon after I write it. I need a couple of weeks of it being out of my head before I can see the mistakes. Allowing it to be published puts the book into pressed and printed form, so I can hold it, go through it, circle the mistakes, then take the book out of print and correct it.
There is a chance that during that time the book will sell a couple of copies. The book "Of Kilted Pleasure" sold 47 copies before it was corrected, to which I have to somehow find all those people and apologize. I don't think I'll do that again, I'm serious, I think I've learned my lesson. It was a good thought, but it doesn't work out for those paying for the book only to have it come to them with errors - - mind you, however, that they will own a collector's item at that point!!
Anyway, "Edinburgh" had 29 errors and boo-boos. I fixed them in the Word document and I sent it back to Ingram Spark. They sent it back saying the file was corrupted. They don't tell me HOW the file is corrupted, just that it is, and I'm supposed to both read minds and assume I know the way to fix the issue. I reprinted it in PDF which flattens anything and it embeds all the fonts (don't ask me what that means, but it does have to be done), and that didn't help. It was returned again.
After making more "corrections" which I really didn't, but said I did, I resubmitted the file. Guess what, they accepted it, but when they sent it for approval, there were spacing issues that I didn't do - - they had to. I complained, but no one responded. They just said I could fix it and resubmit it. OK, but they screwed up, and that won't be on my original file! I had to resubmit the file I had, and they sent it back again, again saying it was corrupt -- I searched and searched. I didn't see any issues, but apparently, they did, so I had to resubmit it once more.
Finally, they accepted it again. I tried to approve it, but now they had removed a couple of my blank pages which would give better spacing for things like the "Thank You" page and so forth. I tried to correct it, and I tried to resave it, but the file manager would not allow the correction. I would have had to redo the entire thing - - not going to do that. I approved it as it is, but when you or others buy it, you'll just have to deal with the lack of pages for the spacing that I truly wanted.
When I am really famous some publisher will take all my books and redo them the way they want to redo them, and I won't have to worry about it -- until then, I have the right to complain, fuss, and cuss a a little. The service at Ingram Spark is virtually free, and they do a relatively good job; it's not perfect, but it gets my books into Amazon and Barnes & Noble, so I'm OK with it. I just can't figure out how they can delete pages and my files aren't being saved correctly. I shouldn't have to mess with a file once it's been corrected on my end.
It is what it is - - which is a harsh statement. I could take the time, redo it, force the issue, and be upset about a page or two, but I'm not going to do that. There was one submission I had to redo because they added random pages in the middle of the book!! GEEZ!! When I complained to their supervisors I did get somewhere, but again, I shouldn't have to do that. People should just do their jobs...really, they should.
The book is on Amazon. Here is the link. If you buy it and it was the one that was left before the correction, please write back to them and say so. They will replace it. I can't, but they can. THANK YOU.
http://tinyurl.com/StringfellowEdinburgh
Photo Credit: Me.
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