Thursday, July 01, 2010

What happened

If you're wondering why Floozy and Other Stories didn't go on sale today at Lulu.com -- and even if you're not -- here's the whole discouraging story.

I received the second proof copies on Wednesday morning and flipped through them. They looked good. So I figured I'd approve Floozy that night, and it would go on sale today.

In the evening, I read about a third of the book -- it still looked good -- and decided to approve it for publication. I got a phone call from a friend and talked for quite a while. Afterwards, I went to my computer carrying the book. While opening Lulu.com on my browser, I flipped through the book again. I noticed an error. Not a new error. An error that I knew I had already corrected. What was going on?

I went through the proofs and discovered that about a third of the book -- the middle third -- didn't have the corrections it should. I checked the source file I sent, and sure enough, the errors were there. Including several lines of gibberish where Microsoft Word coding had conflicted with my PDF creator. But I clearly remembered fixing those. What happened?

Took a bit of thought, but I finally figured it out. I'd been correcting the errors on two computers. My laptop and my desktop. I would move the source file back and forth between the two computers on an USB flash drive. Apparently, one time, I forgot to bring the file over. Sure enough, when I checked my laptop, there the corrections were.

So ... I have put in the corrections again tonight. I'm going to make a small change to the back cover since I'm having to resubmit. I will upload the book again to Lulu.com Friday afternoon. Then it will go on sale July 5.

I promise to be more careful this time. Really I will. I'm only using one computer to fix the source file.

How are you doing? Life treating you well? Hope things are going well for you. Talk to you tomorrow.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh rats.

Well, I guess four days isn't so long to wait. At least you caught it, though!

And since you asked, I'm going nuts with my sister here. I may have to explain all that in a phone call... :\

I hope you're feeling better today. :)

SBB said...

I expressed words to that effect, also, FF. :)

And I'm glad I caught the gibberish code.

Family can drive us crazy quicker than anyone else I know ... probably because they're usually in the same car with us!

I am somewhat. New day and all that.

Rain said...

Just wanted to stop by to wish you a safe and happy 4th of July!

Anonymous said...

Can't wait to order my copy!

-Gail