Delete: My greatest nemesis.
Why did I take down book 3 in The Prince Series?
One Major Glaring Typo!
I go through my books every so often, if for no other reason than to find inspiration for advertising. Well, I was doing just that, when I realized that a section didn't make any sense.
My best guess would be that I was editing and a section got highlighted and deleted without me noticing, then published that way. And I'm not talking about a couple words, or even a sentence or two. I'm guessing that a paragraph or two was deleted. It was describing a potential break in, then everyone is sitting around talking. As it was written it made absolutely no sense.
At that point I decided to take the whole thing down and reedit the whole story. This turned out to be a good thing, as I decided to completely change a main side-character's whole character and thought process. I like this character far better now, and his motivations and actions make more sense to me now.
I hope you agree with my edits when you read book three.
Coming 2025
Amazon: the 900lb guerrilla in the room
Why are my books no longer on Amazon?
I had no idea what I was doing.
When I published my books a little over a year ago, I decided to use a blanket, wide distributor, and well, Amazon doesn't play well with others.
I initially published exclusively through draft2digital, but Googleplay required me to publish through them, separately. It was really easy, so I did both, including their link next to Draft2digital's. Then people kept telling me that Amazon had my book listed as out of print. And I ran into multiple obstacles to setting up an author page on Amazon. So I delisted my books on Amazon only, and plan to republish them on Amazon, separate from Draft2digital.
When do I plan to republish them on Amazon? Well, if you read my post below, I will expand on my explanation, but the short answer is this spring.
The longer answer is, my team is trying to get a solid plan, and schedule, in place before moving forward. That means that some things that you thought would take hours, take days, or even weeks. And some things you didn't know existed, have to be put in place (and sometimes established) before you can move on to the next step.
It's a long and confusing journey. And the process is often exhausting, but I know it is worth it.
I promise, I will get there. Eventually.
Coming 2025
Tomorrow: the goal we never seem to reach
Are my other series ever going to be published?
As I stated above, sometimes what you think is straightforward, is actually quite complicated, and far more time consuming than you could ever have imagined.
When I started this journey, I was a wide-eyed, innocent lamb, thinking All I have to do is write it, publish it, and tell people about it. If only it was that easy.
As I got feedback from editors and beta-readers, every time I thought I was near the end of editing, someone would have a question, or notice a plot-hole that required major editing, and then more rounds. Or, as I wrote the following books, the character changed, and was no longer the same person I had originally thought they were.
I briefly published the first book in my second series, but before I could begin advertising it, someone caught a huge plot-hole. I immediately took it down and began re-editing it.
Then I discovered the above mentioned issue with Amazon, and didn't want to publish anything new until I figured out how to fix that. And then I learned that I had been doing everything upside-down and backwards. So I had to go back and do things right.
Here's hoping I finally have things figured out, and I can move forward with the six books that I have advertised, but not yet published.
The main takeaway has been: writing is only 10% of the process. It's also the least time-consuming.