When Parallel Universes Collide

​Okay... here’s where ambition meets discipline… a blog you say, cuz you have nothing else to do. And I think this a key thing to discuss writer to writer – self disciple with an emphasis on the self part…
I’m talking about the tendency to want to do everything and the “fall off the cliff” feeling at the end of the day when you wonder if anything got done. Cuz… writers are writers and we write, right? But no one ever said that would be letters, emails, proposals and promo copy… I used to think that if ANYTHING took me away from the furthering of a plot or character arc, it wasn’t worth my time and this included birthday cards to my loved ones, forms for the DMV and anything else that I looked at as an obstacle to “creative writing.
 
BUT it’s different when it’s for your baby…
 
Which is how I’m seeing things now.  So, let’s check in on the subject at hand… today’s subject:
Parallel Universes –
And here I’m speaking about one foot on the platform and the other on a train (thank you Lowell George!) The platform is the physical alchemy of your “manuscript” into an OMG, I can’t believe it’s a book, book. And the jacking set wave (surfer-ese for the wall of power coming at you as sure as an on-coming train) of the release date – which shall be promoted!
As your head swirls with logistics, the book has to stay on it’s unbroken path toward physically running through the printing process. And if you’re not careful, like I just was you can cost yourself days that you might not have…
 
I slammed headlong into the wall with CreateSpace (amazon’s publishing engine)and guess what – it’s just that – a machine that for all it’s great real person customer support threw up t’s hands, with the old “I’m sorry, and I know Ms. Madden how frustrating you must be, BUT WE CAANNOT HELP YOU.” What happened was I, okay tried to fool the system – tons of blogs about self publishing all trumpet the idea that “presales are the key!” But CreateSpace doesn’t allow for that directly. You have to play fast & lose with the website. And after a few cups of coffee and some brainstormin’ my friend Valerie and I concocted a mad scheme…
We would:
Upload a version of the book that was a “preview/review copy” that we would “publish” and use to send to reviewers – the key here is that you want to make sure you do two important things.

1. Do not fill out the release date space (I did, silly) because Create Space will do it for you, when you turn on the sales channels.
2. Do not turn on the sales channels until the day of your release date. That sacred national holiday you’ve declared and have been printing on anything that moves and attracts attention. I did know that this was possible.

 Didn’t know any of this when I started my account. I followed the instructions as we happily ran down the road to self publishing… and when the account asked which package (and which price I wanted to pay for it) I clicked the corresponding sales channels.
 
This did two things –

1. It started calculating the sales of the book in the marketplace – which, as I had (in my mind and my press release) chosen a full month into the future, made it look like my book was a dog and hadn’t sold any during the month. Which has bearing in Amazon’s world – the better sellers get more extra attention, which we all want, right?
2. It also put me on footing where all language on the instructions was worded to reflect that I was changing a published book (which as a newbie, wasn’t how I was looking at my creation – we were in the “last looks” phase where I was hoping to finish so I could free my mind to think about other things than “printing” a physical book – my mind loves this kind of bubblegum and I have to dole it out in controlled doses)

 
This last point is where the wheels fell off. I printed 10 copies of the advance review copy, while my house was in one last push for proofing – I was soooo done hearing about commas before parenthesis, and my beloved honey, I’m sure telling me about them.  She even took a vacation day and we hunkered down for the entire three days taking breaks only to change positions and for popcorn.  And we did it!
 
I then went o upload the new and totally clean – this one will stick and I can get on with the zillion things to do to launch when I got LOCKED OUT FOR 24 HOURS WHILE MY FILE PASSES FINAL REVIEW.
 
But I don’t wanna have that version reviewed I wanna upload this CORRECTED, PROOFED, AND REAL VERSION!
 
The website was locked in the review mode on the old file and no calls to CreateSpace’s (first impatient, then very sympathetic, though’ still not helpful) service techs would stop the machine from reviewing a file that was:

1. Already printed and in my hands.
2. Useless (I had the 10 review copies I need for PR)
3. TOTALLY WRONG!

 
But it was still going to be reviewed and they were still going to tell me of the flaws that I had corrected in the new final version that I was locked out from uploading.
 
Was this the federal crime, the earth shattering catastrophe that I accused them of creating?
 
No. I was able to breathe and switch gears and try to concentrate on other things knowing that in 24 hours I would have to get back to uploading my final version for release.
 
But it could be.  Remember this fellow CreateSpacers – when you make a change, you have to correct it on your file, (takes how ever long – my table of contents took hours) then:

1. CreateSpace will review the digital file and make the digital file available for proofing within about 4-6 hours. (it’s now past midnight – remember the Murphy’s law will make any glitch happen after 11:00 pm in any time zone)]
2. You will review that file (another 4-6 hours if you have corrections and formatting “anomalies” WILL occur when you go from Word to their PDF)
3. Another 24 hours while it goes thru their next review
4. The printing of the proof copy – (if you are finicky about your cover graphics, and you made them your self (which I did) you better go thru this step a funny thing will happen on the way back from the printer) the soonest you can turn this around is expedited shipping which is still three full business days from when you pull the trigger and wen it will actually be in your hands… which is a huge factor when you’re against your deadline and will cost four times the cost of the book – so this process, if done at the last minute, will cost you to have your blood pressure remain at a healthy peak)
   
   

So, what did this girl learn from pushing the wrong button?  For one, I ain’t gonna do that again – no reassurances from the CreateSpace techs that this “no panic button abort” option could be changed in the future, will make me rest easy for my and your current efforts. Secondly, I don’t click on anything in the email notifications that come from CreateSpace about any process that I’m currently involved with – I go to my dashboard and approach each task from the starting pits to avoid any “shortcuts” where mu options are cut off.
 
This all comes when were doing the most critical tasks simultaneously. The trick is breath, stay disciplined with my own game plan, and realize that this is a fact of life here in self publishing ville… would we have it any other way…? 
 
Are we nuts?