Hi Everyone. First, let me apologize for my publishing ignorance.
I’m truly sorry. Now let me explain to you what’s going on with Honeysuckle Love.
Print Edition: Right
now, HSL is in the review stage for
the print edition that will be available on Amazon and CreateSpace. The review
process can take up to 48 hours (a little fact that would have been helpful for
me to know before waiting until late last night to publish). Soooo, it may or
may not be ready for tomorrow. It’s just up in the air based on how quickly
CreateSpace gets my proof to me for final reviews. (I’m totally rolling my eyes
right now.) On a positive note, however, the book binding looks fantastic!
Smashwords: You
know that I’m publishing my book with Smashwords which is an e-book
distributor. Well, since I’ve never formatted a book to be converted to an .epub
file (a file completely different from Kindle), there were problems with my
initial upload. Oh, I followed the directions to a T, and it still came out
looking like garbage. Naturally, because why would anything work correctly the
first time? (By the way, I had to put on Christmas music this morning to calm
down because I am so irritated. Bing Crosby is helping enormously.) Soooo, now
that I got all of the formatting issues fixed (I think . . . I previewed the
.epub file in Calibre), I am now waiting for the review process to be
completed. They don’t tell you how long this takes, but I’m going to make a
safe bet that the Smashwords edition of HSL
won’t be available tomorrow.
Now here’s the real kicker. I stumbled across a blog last
night (I think God directed me there) written by another indie author who
publishes with Smashwords. Her latest book was published in August, and
Smashwords still hasn’t distributed it to Kobo and Apple iBookstore. Apparently getting a book to these retailers
can take longer. So naturally that pissed me off because they make it sound
like as soon as your book is published, it’s out there in all the online e-book
retail stores. Oh, no no no. So this indie author suggested that other
self-published authors check out the Kobo website since now they offer direct
publishing (in pretty much the same setup as Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing). Yea! I think. I’ll just scoot over to
Kobo so that my Kobo readers don’t have to wait weeks or months for Smashwords
to get my book into the Kobo store. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, I set up an
account. And I loaded my book. And it looked like shit. Well, unless you enjoy
reading a sentence per page. They must use a different program to convert Word
docs to .epub files, because it looked nothing like what Smashwords spit out to
me. All of this to say that yes, I will be publishing directly through Kobo.
When? I don’t know. I’ve got to reformat my entire book, and I think I know
how, and I’m dreading it because it will take FOREVER. Kobo users, I do
apologize. It shouldn’t be this hard to get you an e-book, but you should be
able to purchase HSL through
Smashwords which converts it to .epub for you.
One last thing about Smashwords. Well, actually Apple
iBookstore. Like I said, Smashwords is supposed to distribute to Apple, but it
sounds like you could wait months for your book to show up in their store. This
fabulous indie author with all of the answers (mentioned above) explained that
you can, in fact, publish directly to the Apple store, but you can only do it
with a Mac. Well, I’m a PC person. I don’t have a Mac, so I’m at the mercy of
Smashwords unless I get a Mac in the future. And I don’t think that’s
happening. So those of you with Apple devices may just have to get the Kindle
app in order to read HSL unless, for
some reason, my book appears in the Apple store in the next few days.
Amazon Kindle:
Easy. Done. Up and ready to go. Of course, this is because I’m familiar with it—I
know how to format and how long the publishing process takes.
(Deep freaking breath.) So
you all may only see the Kindle edition of HSL
tomorrow. Then the Smashwords will probably be up in a few days. But
don’t count on seeing HSL in the
Apple or Kobo stores. And the print edition? Well, I’m really hoping and praying
for a proof sometime tonight. Once that’s complete, CreateSpace should throw it
up on my Kindle page. You can purchase the print book through Amazon and/or the
CreateSpace e-book store. You’ll see the print edition listed under the Kindle
edition. It’s print-on-demand, so they store my digital file, and once you
order it, they print and bind the book for you then ship it out.
I am so sorry. I really feel like I’ve let everyone down
because I said that HSL would be
available in all these different formats and e-book stores tomorrow. My husband
said, “Well, lesson learned,” and if it weren’t Sunday, I would have put him
through the window. But as Lamar says, “Man, it’s the Lord’s Day. You don’t get
in no trouble on the Lord’s Day.” Despite being majorly irritated and stressed
(not to mention totally embarrassed), I still can’t help but feel excited about
the release of this book tomorrow (even if it’s only the Kindle edition initially).
I’ve worked so hard on this novel. It’s dear to my heart. I love these
characters and their stories, and I hope you discover a love for them, too.
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