Computer says no

I have finally loaded Mark Ellot’s ‘Blackjack’ for publication. It’s on Smashwords and Kindle now. Here is the full cover for the print version, which will take a few days more –

Those two eBook versions were easy. A breeze. Right through with no problems. Even though I went for the complex approach with ‘back to contents’ links after every story and the addition of a back cover (at the start, since the back cover has the blurb for advertising the book so I wanted it visible on ‘click to look inside’). Even with that, both the eBook versions went right through. No issues. Easy.

The print version… There were ‘issues’ with the text, Overlapping the gutter (the bit in the middle when you open the book) so some text might be hard to read. What? I used their template, as always, so it must fit! “No,” says computer, “there are errors.”

Computer continues. “I’m not going to tell you where they are. I have marked them in the 220 pages of the book. Find them if you can, sucker!.”

I found them, or thought I had. It was where italic text very very slightly went over the line. It would have made no difference but computer says no.

I found all of them, I thought, moved the italicised text a tiny bit and resent.

The bastard found another one!

So, eventually, I got through sending the text. Next up, the cover. Completed as above and hit ‘submit’. Computer says no.

“You have not completed all tasks. Return to the edit-cover page and finish the cover.”

I returned to the cover page to be greeted with ‘All tasks completed’ at the top of the screen.

By this time I was looking for something really hard to bang my head on.

Resubmit and this time it went through. So the print version isn’t out yet. It has to go through technical checks and hopefully they won’t find any more to moan about. It should be available in a few days.

At least the eBook has a back cover now. I now know how to do it so I’ll go back and do that with the previous books too. It’ll take time but it’s likely to be worth it. All future anthologies will have a ‘back to contents’ link too so readers can flip around rather than read it all in order.

I’ve been a publisher for a little over a year, and published the first one seven months ago.

I think I might be getting the hang of it at last. If the damn computers will let me.