My Experience With Booktango

“Booktango is the latest e-book publishing innovation from Author Solutions—the world leader in indie book publishing…” 
The ad caught my eye, so did the generous royalty structure, so I decided to give it a whirl, for my book, Wakeland’s War. I kept a journal. Keep in mind, these are merely the fallible observations and opinions of the author. Here are some entries:
Monday night, September 10th, I push the publish button. On the 12th, It said the status was TITLE LIVE, but it wasn’t showing up anywhere, not even on booktangos bookstore. When I talked to booktango customer service, they said Live meant Complete, not . . . er, uh, Live. They said it would be another 24 before it showed up in their store and another 2-4 weeks before it made its way to their distributors. Okay, I can live with that.
On that same day the site went down from ~3:00 pm to ?????
I checked in on the 13th. My my book was up at booktango’s bookstore, but nowhere else. That was fine. I know these things took time.
September 14th, I noticed my bio was missing a word. I also decided to change a word in my book’s description. I went into the “Details” section, made the changes, but when I tried to save the, I repeatedly got the message:
“Something went wrong while you were trying to save. Please, try again, and thank you for your patience. For additional assistance, our reps are standing by on Live Chat.”
I pressed the Live Chat button (awesome feature). Customer Service was prompt as usual. I inquired about the message. Customer service explained that too many people were using the system at the same time. This was on a Friday morning, 9:50 a.m. EST. I asked why there was so much traffic at that time. She said people are logging into booktango all around the world and they recently had a large influx of new users do to their promotion. Their Windmill promotion looks like a sweet deal. The winner gets all kinds of expensive service, from book covers to an author video, plus promotions, all for FREE. I’d love to win, but I’m not holding my breath. It is sure to make someone a very happy author.
Anyway, an hour passed, but I still couldn't save any of my changes. The system eventually timed me out, and my edits were lost. That irked me off.
Saturday afternoon, September 15th. I kept getting the same message. I couldn’t save any changes to the details, the cover, or the manuscript. Can you say frustrated? On September 17th (Monday), I tried again. I was able to input changes to my cover, interior files, book details and submit the changes. The book was inaccessible for several days as it went through the submission process. That’s expected though, so no big deal.

September 19th, I was able to access the book again, but the changes haven’t gone through. The old cover is still there today (the 22nd), mocking me. Bwah ha ha, it seems to say.
September 21th(Friday). I realized that I was missing information on my copyright page. I dreaded “going in” again, but I had no choice. This time I decided to try out their online edit feature. See, one of the cool features booktango brags about is the fact that you can make changes directly to your manuscript without having to download it again. On the surface, that sounds wonderful, but in hindsight it’s nothing special. First, most authors aren't going to leave a mistake in their manuscript if they can help it, so they're going to edit the manuscript anyway. I went ahead and made the addition via booktango as well, just because I wanted to test out this intriguing new feature. I went to my dashboard, where the entire manuscript was on display and available for editing. I made the change, tried to save it and . . . can you guess what happened? I got that stupid message again!
“Something went wrong while you were trying to save. Please, try again, and thank you for your patience. For additional assistance, our reps are standing by on Live Chat.”Whahhh!
This was the same issue I had last weekend. My changes could not be saved and were eventually lost. Something else that came to light furthered my frustration.
I talked to customer service. Their representative informed me that every time I make a change it’s like starting over. This means from the date of the change, it will be another 4-6 weeks until my book goes out to distributors. All this time I thought the system would look at my original publish date of September 10th, but if I was told correctly, that’s not the case. Knowing me, I’ll find something else that’s begging to be changed inside my book. I suppose the best thing to do would be to hold off making any changes until it gets to the other distributors. In hindsight, since my book wasn't at the other distributors yet, every time I made a change, I was pushing it back to the starting line. Every single change put it into the re-submission process again and the 4-6 week began anew.
The question hanging in my mind is this . . . once it's available on iTunes (or Kobo, Sony, etc.) how long will it take for an edit to go through?
Also, be aware, if you decide to remove your book from booktango, you must request a special form from them. It must be signed by hand and mailed to them. If you’d prefer, you can fill it out, scan it, and then download the image to them. It's not like they're asking us to climb Mount Everest, but it's still a hassle.
My book hasn’t gotten to any of their distributors yet, so hopefully taking it down will be a simple process. I have the form and emailed it to them yesterday afternoon. As slow as they are about everything else, I hope my book hasn’t gone out to the distributors by the time they address it. I know what to do though. I’ll make a change to the book and that will buy me another 4-6 weeks.
I focused on the negative here, but honestly, there’s much that is good with booktango. Their royalty structure is hard to beat. Uploading the manuscript is a relatively painless process. Their selection of book covers is abysmal, but most authors use their own artwork anyway. If you have a picture you want to use, you can add your title and name to it through their program. It's easy and fun, but I uploaded my own cover that had the title on it already. If you're a patient person, receiving a larger percentage of the royalties will surely offset the delay in getting my book out to the distributors. Their LIVE CHAT feature is dependable and amazingly helpful. They’re always there 24/7. I think it could be a great option for more experienced authors, or for any author who submits a manuscript, and is able to keep his or her grubs off of it until it lands on the bookshelves of all the distributors. 
Unfortunately, I have never been able to work that way. I’m never satisfied with my writing. I’m constantly fussing over the details until the last minute. My obsessive-compulsive editing doesn’t mesh well with booktango’s methodology, but I think other authors would be perfectly happy with it.
I published to Smashwords and my book was up there almost immediately, but I'm already missing booktango's Live Chat feature. It takes at least ten days to get any sort of response from Smashwords and I really needed to talk to them. Within an hour of going live on Smashwords, I sold a large number of books. As much as I'd like to think that my awesome writing inspired so many purchases, I smell a scam. I've tried to find a better way to get a hold of someone at Smashwords, so they can investigate the situation in a timely manner, but I was forced to communicate with them through that one cumbersome way. Meanwhile, my URGENT!!! e-mail awaits one of their ticket numbers.
In the end, no eBook publisher is perfect. Each author must weigh the pros and cons to decide what features are most important to him or her. In the end, apparently not. Personally, I'm pleased to see other companies get in the game. Competition between them can only help Indie Authors.
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Wakeland's War, click to purchase: Amazon, Smashwords, Booktango