The Paperback Adventure

So here's the story on the paperback edition of "Shorts". Which I promise you is just days away.

Unless I mess up again.

This is all being done by your humble servant, me. Which means that sometimes real life gets in the way of the creation of my independent publishing empire. Like losing my job two weeks ago. That slowed things down. But the real cause of this delay is much simpler:

I'm an idiot.

Using the services of the wonderful people at CreateSpace, an Amazon company, I was able to figure out what needed to be done to get them a file with all the details in the right order. And the first time through it all went pretty well.

Here's what happens. They tell you about book size, and cover creation, and lots of other things, then you submit your files. They undergo an inspection to make sure that everything will work the way you want. The approval phase takes a couple days (at least for me), then you can either do an online final inspection of how the book actually looks or order (for a very nominal cost) a physical copy to inspect. Since this is my first book, I really wanted to see what it would look like in my hands, so I ordered several copies.

And discovered all kinds of things that I didn't like. That's not a problem, they can still be changed. So I dove back into the files and made the changes. Great! Now I just need to submit the NEW file and start the process again.

That's where the idiot part takes over.

I hit the wrong button at the wrong time, sending the ORIGINAL file back for inspection. The account "locks" while your file is looked at. So we wait. The account is unlocked. I find the time to get back on the computer, go to the appropriate page, aaaaaaannnnnnddddddd...

I make the same stupid mistake again!

AAAARGGGHHHHH!

So I waited again, finally got the correct file uploaded and should get the approval to move forward at any moment. I am not 100% happy with the back cover but that's my only issue, so I'm prepared to move on at this point. I will be approving the current version for publication and the paperback should be available next week. The only fly in the ointment will be if the holiday slows us down. If not, then maybe even this weekend. We'll see.

Peace,

JDP