I haven’t posted here in a while because I’ve struggled for a good three weeks to get my paperback up on Amazon. The struggles went on long enough I pulled my ebook off because I wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out. I started to internally debate whether I wanted to put this book out there at all. I began to question whether God wanted this book out there. Sometimes it’s easier to doubt myself than it is to stick in my purpose.
That’s an old pattern and old patterns are hard to break. I’m still working on that one.
The “funny” part of the whole exercise is nothing was insurmountable even if it felt that way. Nothing was catastrophic. Nothing necessitated rewriting my manuscript or doing anything drastic beyond working out a few formatting issues on my side and letting Amazon work out the “invisible” issues on their side. For the most part, the delays were caused by my ignorance and a slew of annoyances hiding in plane sight.
First, I accidently screwed up the cover size. My designer fixed that in a few days. Lesson learned. Next time, I’ll send over the page count from my Word Document; not the Kindle Version. Score one for the newbie mistake. While this isn’t my first self-published book, it’s been a couple of years since the last one and things have changed a lot. I didn’t have any major trouble that time around. Just some formatting issues I was able to fix.
This time was different.
It was one miniscule issue after another. Things you’d never think of in a million years like an extra space here or a missing period there. Not in the actual block of text on Amazon mind you. On Bowker, on my book cover, NOT on my book cover…The list went on and on! The poor guys at Amazon were saying, “Oh, I remember you. I talked to you three days ago.” I felt sorry for them having to deal with me. I’m sure they thought I’d disappear once the last change updated only to have me on the line as soon as it was done (3-4 days later).
While I’m sorry to put you through the “Poor Me!” session, it does have a purpose. As much as I didn’t enjoy the drama, I learned so much. I wouldn’t undo a minute of it. There were new formatting issues I finally figured out and editing tricks I explored. There were secrets to making my manuscript look more professional I hadn’t been able find with my first book. The list of positives goes on and on. However, none of that’s really important in the big scheme of things.
The significant thing I learned by pushing through all of this is I’m not the woman I used to be. As often as I second-guessed myself and contemplated just tossing the project, I couldn’t. The old me would have taken it as a sign and walked away in the early days. Again, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t break that promise to God. I’d agreed to get the book out if He would help me write it. He did his part. I had to do mine, so I did. The book is out there. Eventually, I’ll get around to promoting it. Right now, I’m taking a day or two to step away, relax, and get my head on straight. This has been a trying few weeks.
As I said so many times in my book, I can’t separate God from my life. He’s too much a part of me. However, that doesn’t mean you have to share my beliefs to get something out of what I have to say. The whole purpose of today’s entry is just to acknowledge I see yet another difference between the person I am now and the person I was a year ago.
That woman would have given up and walked away. She wouldn’t have gone through all the phone calls with the techs and all the time spent combing through the manuscript time and again searching for problems she couldn’t find. She would have concluded there was something wrong with her or something wrong with her manuscript. She would have found some fault within herself for why this wasn’t working as it should have been. She would have taken it as a sign and quit. I’m not her and I didn’t let my self-doubts tank me. Yes, I had them. However, unlike the past, they didn’t have me.
I decided instead to aggravate the heck out of those techs until they found the crappy little problem that was derailing the whole thing. Once they did; they fixed it and all was well. The solution was as simple as copying my book title from Bowker and pasting it in the title line on KDP. Don’t ask me what the miracle was. It didn’t look any different than what was already there. Not to my eyes. However, there must have been something I couldn’t see.
In the meantime, I decided to make a couple of other changes as well. Simple things like not hiding behind a Calla Lily on the off chance someone might recognize me. I am who I am. My life is my life. I’m not ashamed anymore.
Until next time,
Calla
Tori Lennox Author 