I really don't know HOW I do this, but I've done it three times now. I have sent up the wrong file for the interior of my book(s) after I have gone over them with a finer than fine toothed comb, only to have sent up the WRONG file, the one without the corrections. Then, after I get it back from the publisher online so I can check it, I (because I'm a real dummy) didn't look at the interior, I just OK it since I know it's been gone over - - DUMB THING TO DO - - I assumed!
So, this time, with "1211", I did the same thing; I sent the wrong file up. You'd think I could just scrap it, have the publisher take the book out of distribution, and send up the good one, but I really don't KNOW if the good one is good enough. I think twice, maybe three times, that maybe I deleted it thinking the other one was the better one - - second guessing is not that far of a leap since I've already screwed up. So, what I did was to stop the presses on it, and keep "1211" from being distributed, but I did go through it page by page and I marked it up with a pen, and turned the corners down of each page where I found a possible mistake.
I am now going through the dog-earred copy and making the corrections before sending it back up to Ingram Spark to be redone and made ready for production. THIS TIME however, I will check it again online before agreeing to have it distributed. I swore up and down after having down that with "Edinburgh" and "Bay Sorrel Ranch" that I wouldn't do that again. I'm supposed to be deleting the back copies. I can at least take credit for naming them correctly, but like a dummy again, I didn't change the name of the one I sent up. I may have renamed the bad copy and deleted the good one. So, in the future, when I write a book, I will be deleting the bad copies as I replace them and only having ONE copy on my desktop. I can have 10 copies on a flashdrive, I don't care, but I send the one from my desktop to the publisher.
Geeze Louise! You would think I would learn by now. I have over 100 mistakes in the book right now. If you were one of the unlucky ones to have purchased it, please let me know, I may make you prove it before I send you another copy, but I may be able to send you another copy. I'm not making promises, I have no idea how many people bought the bad book. It was available for about two weeks before I got my copy and realized it was so grossly incorrect. Maybe in the future I can actually afford an editor, but I'm not sure I'll trust them either.
The good news is, the new copy should be THAT much better. I like this book. I LOVE all of my books, I really do, but this one was really fun to write. I like it. Someday, when I have nothing else to do, I'll correct all the books, tweaking them here and there, and republishing them with better and more precise covers. As I grow in my craft I learn things, but I don't have the capital to make the changes and redo things after a certain amount of time. They allow you do it a few times in the first 60 days, but not after that, they charge. It's not much, but right now I'm not a wealthy author - - just a published one. Maybe one day!
I drove by the old homestead this weekend and thought to myself that the people living there now have no idea that a book is out there with their home being the centerpiece of the novel. I changed the name of the address and house of course, but still, it was a fun year. I will always remember it as one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. I could write another book about it, maybe a sequel - you just never know.
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