Playing Around With Your Published Book

There are a couple of downsides to the digital revolution in publishing. Being able to make changes to your book is one of them.

Once your book is out there, it's out there and you shouldn't change, modify, or mess with it. I think by doing that you're doing a disservice to the people that have already bought it.

I took over about a year and a half on working on putting CATALYST: THE PASSAGE OF HELLSFIRE out. My goal was to not only put out the book I wanted to, but to put out the best possible book I could for me and the readers. I think a lot of indie authors forget that aspect. They think they can easily change and "fix" things. They're right. They can. But should they?

Now, I have nothing wrong with uploading a new copy because of formatting problems or typos. In fact, I recently uploaded a newer version of my book because of a formatting problem. Smashwords didn't accept what I did for their premium catalog because of the margins so I had to redo them. I'm glad they did because now it looks better. But those aren't the problems I'm talking about.

I'm talking about changing the story in your book, whether it's tweaking the characters or the plot because you thought of an idea to add more tension or create a new scene. I think the worse offender are people who publish their book because they can't afford an editor, hope to make money, then reload a new version after they pay for editing. I don't know how many of those people actually make enough money to do that or follow through with it.

In either case, what's the point of it all?

You only get one chance to make a good impression and you want readers to be blown away. While I know there are going to be people that don't like or get my book, I don't want them to say, "The story was good, but it needed a good editor." I also don't want to make constant changes because that would be unfair to the people that already bought my book.

If you're going to make changes that have nothing to do with story, typo, or formatting issues, you should release ANOTHER version of your book–an enhanced version. Think of it like the Extended or Special Edition of your book. I would make it more expensive than the original version, but it should also have a lot more things added it in. In someways, it's a completely different book.

Once you upload the best possible book you can, leave it alone. It should be finished and done. After that, forget about it then get started on the next one.

Marc Johnson