Problematic Publications

I had seriously been entertaining the thought of writing a post that was not writing based or writing related in any way shape for form. However, recent developments have led me down a familiar path and so here I find myself about to write a post about…… writing. Yep! Well technically it is about publishing and not writing but I don't think that really counts.

Highway to Hell has been uploaded onto both Smashwords and Amazon.com and so far I am have X number of copies. X in this scenario is a real number, a positive number in fact. It is not necessarily a great number, nor the number I would like it to be, however, the fact remains that several people have actually invested their money in me for the name of entertainment.

However, the other day I was looking around on my Amazon page and I decided to check out the Look Inside option that Amazon have. To my absolute horror, the window that popped up was filled with bizarre font size and typeset changes that I had certainly not uploaded. (See image below)

Needless to say I am not best pleased by this. In fact you could say I was mortified. Had I really made such a mistake? I didn't think it possible.

So I checked the file I uploaded, I had it saved on my home and work PC and have checked them both extensively. There is no problem with them. The font is uniform throughout. I then checked the 'preview' on my Amazon Dashboard and that too was fine. I am at a loss.

To make things even more confusing, I checked the files I had uploaded onto smashwords. I downloaded the full versions, for both PDF and RTF. The PDF file is fine, perfect, as it should be. The RTF file however was the same as the Look Inside preview on Amazon.

I have a suspicion that if I check the free Kindle preview (which I will do tonight) there will be no problem. The same as if I were to download the .mobi file from smashwords.

I have this afternoon uploaded the file again to Amazon, having checked it from page 1 – 350. I will wait and see what that shows tomorrow once the upload has gone live before I take my investigation any further.

My main grievance is that anybody looking at my novel, half interested in spending the $2.99 is will cost to get it will almost certainly be put off should they view the 'Look Inside' preview rather than the Kindle delivered proof. This is costing me (potential) sales. Ok, maybe it isn't keeping me from conquering the world, but who knows how many customers I could have lost, not just for this novel but for all my future ones. It takes a long time to build a reputation but one mistake can bring it crumbling to the floor.

 

Had anybody else experienced this problem? If so, or if not but you happen to have an idea as to the cause and hopefully the resolution to this problem please let me know.

 

Thanks.