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A tale of best laid plans...
I love a good kids movie. Pixar, Dreamworks, Disney Animation - all studios that have produced some great stories with music that lifts me up when I need it.
And boy, did I need a little lift after missing my preorder deadline for Team Peabrain, Castlewood High Tales #2. I had scheduled for the book to release on April 15 only to have life happen...and so I moved my release date to April 30, hoping to have the final book file cleaned and ready to go.
Welp.
I missed that, too. Not entirely, though.
True story: when you set a book for preorder, Amazon gives you a deadline for the final file to be uploaded by midnight exactly three days before the release date. This gives the super smart bots at Amazon time to review and approve your book.
(Anyone else imagine the machines from The Matrix when they think about the Amazon bots? No? Just me?)
Amazon even gives you a huge and helpful timer at the top of your author page with a countdown clock.
Of course, it's important to realize that the Amazon clock uses GMT - Greenwich Mean Time... not EDT - Eastern Daylight Time, some four hours LATER than GMT... and my own personal time zone.
Kind of helpful to realize that before the final day of the deadline to upload.
{Insert GIANT face palm riiiight HERE}.
Long story short: Tuesday, April 26, found me racing through my Team Peabrain final draft, hunting down the last few formatting issues, and LITERALLY trying to beat the clock as it ticked down to 8:00 pm here in my little corner of the world.
And I did. I uploaded the final version of the file that Amazon requires at - no joke - 7:59 pm EDT, aka 11:59 pm GMT.
Talk about under the wire.
Amazon gave me confirmation of the file acceptance and I sat back, feeling a wave of relief that quickly turned into a dawning sense of horror.
Why?
Because as the Amazon bots began crawling through my uploaded file, I also opened that same file in an ebook preview site only to see that IT LOOKED AWFUL.
Chapter headings? Nonexistent.
Page breaks? Pffft... not there, who needs them, anyways, right?
In short, the final file, the one I uploaded as the clock ticked down to a big, fat ZERO, still had errors.
It just wasn't good enough.
So, after thinking (really, the word we're looking for here, folks, is OBSESSING) over what to do, I did the hard thing. I did, what I - as an avid reader myself - thought was the only right thing -
I cancelled the preorder.
That meant I unpublished the file for Team Peabrain, and put myself and the second book of the Castlewood High Tales series into Amazon Limbo for a few days.
I certainly don't want to read a poorly formatted book and I would never, ever expect you, dear reader, to do so, either.
So, the bad news?
Team Peabrain did not release on April 30 as planned and my few preorders (Angie Jean, I'm looking at you) received the official email from Amazon as well as a refund.
The good news?
I've had the last few days to track down all the errors in the file and fix them and my hope is that by the time you're reading this newsletter, I will have uploaded the final book file to Amazon for their hungry little bots to review and approve so that Team Peabrain will be live and for sale.
And, that quote above, with the bluebird? The one from Shakira's song, Try Everything, in Zootopia?
That, dear readers, along with the whole song (worth a listen here if you're not familiar with it), is what I keep reminding myself.
Nobody learns without getting it wrong.
Don't give up.
Don't give in.
Just keep trying, dear readers, keep trying.
I will, too.
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