A Hard Row To Hoe | Update

An update on Barbie Dolls And Ribs–

Today, after giving it considerable thought, I unpublished “Barbie Dolls And Ribs” from KDP. I don’t know how long it will take for it not to be shown on Amazon, but at least it is now unavailable for purchase. There were a few reasons I did this, the main one being I thought the story too short for the price, which was ninety-nine cents, the least amount Amazon would allow me to charge.

I have decided instead to include it in my upcoming collection of short stories. I think that would be more fair to potential future buyers.

I deleted the links and cover art to “Barbie Dolls And Ribs” from this post, (which I think will be given a new title in my collection) but decided to leave the rest of it intact to serve as a warning to carefully proofread one’s manuscript before publishing. Then read it again. And again. Then have someone else read it. And read it again.

What follows is my original post–

A few days ago, I published another short story through Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon. This being my third time doing so, one would think the sailing would be smooth—not so. I failed to preview before hitting “publish” and paid the price of overconfidence.

Proud as could be of little old me, I purchased my Kindle short. (Smug smile on face here.) Then, I read it. Horror of horrors, I found a mistake—and I still don’t know the cause of it. Between two words was an underscore highlighted in pink. Such a tiny thing, I know, but to me it reeked to high-heaven of unprofessionalism.

I fixed the mistake and uploaded the new file, but it took twenty-four to forty-eight hours for the changes to take effect. I don’t know if anyone bought my short when it had that awful pink blight defacing it; I can only hope it didn’t happen. One can view a sales report of one’s books, and it does give the date of sale, but not the time. So there is a possibility . . .

Lord, I’m still stressing over it. But I’ll try to leave this slipup behind and move ahead to my next project.

Which is . . .

I’m going to put together a book of short stories—seven or eight—and hope to have it up for sale on Amazon in a month or so. This time around, I’ll have to learn how to make chapter breaks for each story. I’m trying my best to look at this as another learning experience. When I publish my full-length novel, (hopefully by year’s end) this will be a skill I will have to master beforehand. Better now than later, I think. When I published my first short on Amazon, I had a two-day headache; chances are, I’ll have one most of the coming year. Luckily, I keep an ample supply of Tylenol on hand. Enough whining . . .

And I wish to end this post by saying how much I admire all you indie authors out there. As my mama would have said: It’s a hard row to hoe.