I’ve come a long way from 2009 when I was only producing one book a year and had only two in print.
Some say I’m like a writing machine. A one-man publishing house. Writing all those books plus three blogs a week and articles for stopthecoonery.com. But even the most well-oiled machine can break down. And when those breakdowns happen, it can lead to quality control issues in product.
In July I published the sixth eBook in the Isis series, Isis: My Sister, My Frenemy. While the plot was great and the story fun, there were some plot structure, grammatical and sentence structure issues. I apologize for the errors in the first edition Isis: My Sister, My Frenemy, and I will make efforts to make sure that it won’t happen again.
I had to revise the book several times to deal with these issues. And anyone who got a copy of the book on their Kindles during the two recent free promotional periods in late August and Early September got the revised version of the eBook.
The paperback edition of Isis: My Sister, My Frenemy will not have these quality control issues.
My problem with Isis: My Sister, My Frenemy was that I was just too passionate about getting the story to market. I loved this story so much and I was too eager to share it with readers. It was the same mistake I made with The Cassandra Cookbook five years ago, another book I loved writing.
Normally, I take my time to edit a story before hitting the publish button. But I just felt so enthusiastic about this one I wanted to get it out there to readers. I enjoy writing this series and I try to put as much passion, heart and spirit on the page so that the stories come alive for the reader. Sometimes that passion overtakes my professionalism, and I don’t temper my love for the story with the discipline of an editor.
After last month’s snafu I learned I needed to slow down and dial it down a notch. Publishing eight books in three months I’m really pushing myself too hard. The last thing I want to do is make a bunch of sloppy mistakes and publish a poor quality story.
Which is why I’m taking my time with Isis: All About the Goddess. That story was slated for a September release, but due to the problems I had with Isis: My Sister, My Frenemy, I’m gonna wait until the week of Black Friday to release that title. I have three titles slated for release this fall, and I want them all to be top quality.
I’m trying to get back to my high level of quality; this time I’m ordering a print copy of the paperback so I can proofread and check for errors. I want this eBook and paperback to meet the standard I established on The Temptation of John Haynes and All About Marilyn, many who read those paperbacks thought those books were such high quality they could compete on a bookstore shelf.
I know my readers (all two or three thousand of you) work hard for your money (the handful of people who actually pay for my eBooks and paperbacks) and I work hard to earn it. I want to give you the best quality reading experience when you buy or try one of my eBooks. I believe as customers, you deserve the very best from me and I want to keep you coming back to read more of my work. I hope you’ll enjoy the three new titles I’m publishing this fall, and I’m hoping more of you will come back and buy some of my older titles. Maybe even come back and buy a paperback or two to share with others as holiday gifts.
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