Thursday, December 8, 2011

The Foibles of Indie Pubbing OR UH-OH, She's Going to Rant AGAIN! OR Wait For the Punchline!



Upon finishing my last manuscript, Bubba and the Missing Woman, I made a list.  I followed the list.  I reread it.  HIM reread it.  My lovely and wonderful proofreader read it.  My writing buds read it.  I made corrections.  I read it again.  HIM read it again.  I then checked the formatting.  I uploaded it to both B&N and Amazon and looked at the pre-reader's look of it.  I reloaded to Amazon three times because the kindle platform didn't want to recognize that my manuscript had paragraph indents.  I ascertained all was well.  I uploaded to B&N, Smashwords, and Amazon.  I prepared my blog for the announcement.  I prepared an email announcement for my fan list.  I made notes about what to say on Facebook.

Then Amazon posted Bubba 3 in like two hours.  Yea.  Smashwords in about two minutes.  Yea.  B&N...not yet.  Okay, I can deal.  I waited 24 hours.  Nothing on B&N.  I checked their guidelines.  They say it'll be up from 24-72 hours.  I waited.  Hour 48: nothing.  I went ahead and posted on my blog, my website and Facebook to let people know it was up on the two.  I advised we would have to wait on B&N.  End of the day, about Hour 60, I read on B&N's bulletin boards that lots of folks were having a similar problem.  I gritted my teeth.  Someone said try another file type.  I tried that.  So now I have two editions of Bubba 3 uploading on B&N.  Nothing.

Hour 72: I wrote Pubit! an email.  I was polite.  Please fix my shizz.  That's what I said.  Please, before Christmas.  Nook-having Bubba fans are going to shiskabob me and never buy one of my books again.  Please, please, please, please, PLEASE fix my shizz.  My shizz is not working.  My shizz needs to be up and running so people can download all the wonderful Bubbaness before and after Christmas when loads of folks get their new ereaders, flames, iPads, etc.  Please.

No response.

So I looked in my Pubit! account for help.  Here is their idea of customer service support.  This is an actual quote.:

If more than 72 hours goes by and your eBook still is not on sale, there may be a problem with your account information. If that is the case, you will receive an email from pubitregistration@barnesandnoble.com with a phone number you can call. You can also email pubit@bn.com if you have questions.
HELL YES, I have questions.  A lot of them.  It's going to be a VERY LONG email.  Are you certain you're up to it?

Recently I told a fellow indie writer that B&N has been good to me.  Yes, it has.  But this sitch is freaking ANNOYING the crap out of me.  (My writer bud is going to chortle when he reads this.)  I still want to use B&N, but for the love of Merciful Pete, can they please pick up the pace?

And I can't help but wonder if they do this to traditional writers.  I don't think so because they can't afford to piss off the big publishing houses.

So I'm saying to my nook fans.  Go buy Bubba and the Missing Woman at Smashwords because obviously B&N isn't interested in the revenue.

Oh, yes, my name might not be David, but I'm throwing the effing rock at Goliath's head right now.

And here comes the punchline.  As soon as I finished this blog, I got a response from B&N and Bubba 3 is up.  So the nasty thought waves I was sending to them actually got them into motion.  I think.  I'm still not happy.  I think Pubit! needs to rethink its customer service contacts.  Indie authors are legitimate customers/clients, too.  Pffft.

Anyway.  It's up on the big three and the others will follow as Smashwords delivers unto them.  What a relief.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

B&N seems to be having some major electronic type problems right now, and their customer service is for shizz. Doody-heads. Having a NOOK right now is extremely frustrating...if I didn't love the damned thing so much I'd get rid of it.

Carwoo said...

Well, I got it cleared up. Thank the electronic book gods. I think they might be seeing the light if they REAlLY want to compete.

Jeff Corkran said...

Yep, B&N is working fine. That's where I got mine. I was all ready to download from Smashwords when I got home, then decided to check B&N one more time and *TA-DA* there it was. Really, really good. I enjoyed every minute I spent reading all of them, but especially Bubba 3. So much so, in fact, that I will try a couple more of your books. But I have a couple more downloaded to read first -- I moved Bubba 3 to the top of the list.

Jeff Corkran said...

Yep, B&N is working fine. That's where I got mine. I was all ready to download from Smashwords when I got home, then decided to check B&N one more time and *TA-DA* there it was. Really, really good. I enjoyed every minute I spent reading all of them, but especially Bubba 3. So much so, in fact, that I will try a couple more of your books. But I have a couple more downloaded to read first -- I moved Bubba 3 to the top of the list.

Carwoo said...

I might have been too hard on B&N, because they really came through for me...once I complained about it. Then there was another issue this week and I complained about that, whereupon they fixed it. I have nothing to blog about. Sigh.

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