Release Day Delay

It is with a sad heart that I must issue a delay in the Release Day (party) Announcement of my second novel, Love Over Time.

It actually comes as no surprise that something of this nature would occur.

If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have none at all.

Before I break out in country music song, however, let me just say that it isn't the end of the world; not even for me.

Good news! When I uploaded the file to Amazon, it returned with only 3 possible errors -- two of which were formatting, but not because of me. 

That paragraph symbol thing with the dot before it . . . It was there in both instances, as was the dot to indicate a break in words, but in mobi format, the words ran together, so all I had to do was go back into the file and re-space them.

The 3rd issue had to do with my use of the word ballzy. I chose to leave it as is.

Of course, this didn't give me a swelled head in the 'thinking I'm the darndest smarty-pants grammarian alive' category.

Until my eyes crossed and my head swam, I searched that document for boo-boos, questionable wording, and funky-looking punctuation.

It will not surprise me in the least to find even more now that it is in eBook territories, but OH WELL.

I edit things once I find them, and I hope that sits well with my readers.

Then there was the issue with the author name.

LOL. I know. Can you believe it? Sure you can, because it's me we're talking about here.

When preparing to upload a file to the Kindle, you scroll down as you go. It asked for OTHER contributors to the work.

OTHER.

So, I selected my wonderful cover designer as OTHER and gave her the title of ILLUSTRATOR.

So, how does that make it appear on the actual buy page, then?

My OTHER became the AUTHOR.

Funny thing: when I went back to change this obvious misunderstanding, suddenly there was the option to choose AUTHOR.

Anyway, the book is back in my name at Amazon, the page breaks are all fixed, the word ballzy is still there, and I'm hopeful the fixed font will be to everyone's liking.

But then there is Smashwords.

I've been waiting, now, since yesterday morning for them to make it official.

I'm still waiting.

With my first novel, it took approximately five hours to complete. And, I know it says the wait can be up to 72 hours, but after I uploaded this latest file, I received immediate confirmation of ZERO vetter issues.

Zero. Which actually stunned me. It means I got all of the harrowing formatting that is required of an e-file done right the first time.

So, while I wait (and hopefully you wait patiently for my second novel to hit the market) I went back and cleaned up my first novel, Sing to Me, and reissued it as a second edition.

I won't dare to claim expert at this, but I probably could write a book about formatting, or maybe just a blog post filled with helpful advice.

Nah.

Funny thing about helpful advice books/posts is, they always tend to leave out some crucial, wee tidbit of information, right?

So, it is by trial/error that I learned, and I think it is best for others to do it that way as well. Save your money and trudge through on your own until you master the art of formatting and then you'll never have to worry about it taking DAYS again.

Anyhow, I'm sorry for the delay, and I thank you for your patience and understanding. My only hope is that it will be worth the wait.

Onward ho!

Such a pretty cover, too (*sigh)