Self-publishing - it's a dark and tangled place

(Not to mention self-producing, engineering, mastering, distributing, marketing...)

Today's the day before release day

Except it isn't completely release day tomorrow, because it looks like the album won't be on Spotify, Apple Music and all those other great sites until Monday the 23rd. I have no idea why this is because I definitely specified the 22nd. Maybe they're all God-fearing sorts at Songtradr and they won't release on the Sabbath.

Today's the day before release day

Today I received 20 copies of the paperback (I need copies so I can flog them on Bandcamp and elsewhere). I'm using KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) for the book, which is all fine and reasonably dandy and allows you to buy author copies of your paperback at its (quite expensive) printing price. I was looking forward to seeing the printed books because I'd fixed a couple of errors and added the address of this web site to the cover. When they arrived I hurriedly opened a copy and immediately - and belatedly - I thought, "I did check the page numbers on the contents page, didn't !?" Well, clearly I hadn't, because the page numbers towards the end of the book are all out. Noooo! That'll teach me to make last-minute changes. I'll upload a new version as soon as I can (it'll have to be after release day).

Today's the day before release day

Then I checked through the rest of the book and... the last page of the story is in green ink!!! Whaaat! How can that be? I leafed through more copies and it turns out that 11 of the 20 are affected, whereas the other 9 don't suddenly change from black to green ink. Weird.

So I started a chat with the KDP help service and a nice man called George C tried to help, except my order number didn't come up as an author order so he couldn't. He suggested I contact the Amazon UK help desk, which sounded like an appalling idea, but I tried anyway and managed to get them to ring me. After some explanations and repititions I've been able to organise returning the 11 bad copies for a refund - they're collecting them on Monday, which is great except I now need to order some more. (On a side note, I had throat cancer in 2018 so my voice can sound a bit croaky, which might explain why the help desk operative kept asking me if I needed him to talk more loudly or more slowly, the patronising sod. He clearly thought I was suffering from some sort of impairment! I mean, I guess I am but it doesn't affect my cognitive abilities! In the end I asked him if he thought I sounded confused so he stopped it.)

Today's the day before release day

I'm pleased with the way the album sounds but there's one track that's been bothering me. Something seemed wrong and I kept meaning to double-check the recording but of course I didn't. Yesterday, though, I finally went back to the file and discovered that I'd effed up part of it via a last minute bit of unnecessary panning, so now it's going out all over the place in this less than desirable state. So frustrating. If I ever need to get any more CDs duplicated I'll make sure it's fixed on those but I can't do anything about the digital versions now. Probably no-one will ever notice but I'll know and it's really really irritating.

Today's the day before release day

I'm still waiting to hear back from a shop I'm hoping will agree to stock the book and CD, so I'm on tenterhooks about that at the moment. This whole thing is genuinely a bit nerve-wracking, so much so that I ended up with a migraine today and yesterday. Rock 'n' roll, eh? I'm sure it's not meant to be like this.

Today's the day before release day

But I am excited. Hope you are too! If you've read this far, please excuse the mithering and consider saying hello in a comment.