You in effect have no idea what each customer will receive when s/he purchases your book. You can say to yourself, “You know, there are no guarantees in life,” or, “Chances are, they won’t even notice the flaws that I do,” but we all know that that is simply NOT the point. In my head, I was screaming, “We can figure out how to BOUNCE-LAND eight-hundred million dollars’ worth of rovers onto the surface of Mars, but we CAN’T figure out how to consistently produce 25 errorless copies of a paperback book?!?! WTF?!?!?”
(I was really thinking this, by the way. And please excuse my language.)
Aside from the months of preparation with the book’s production, I had also been simultaneously preparing for the launch (meaning the date it would be available for sale) of my book. Months before, I established this very blog post on Facebook, set up profiles for Amazon Author Central, Goodreads and Pinterest. I also figured out how to link my Goodreads account to my Amazon Author and SCBWI profiles, so that once a post went up on Goodreads, it would automatically feed to the other two. I designed and printed postcards, and then wrote, storyboarded, animated and narrated a video trailer. I contacted numerous local papers for interviews, and planned a Goodreads book giveaway–touted to be essential in marketing strategy for a debut book. I also started reaching out to what I hoped were relevant online blogs that could promote my book upon review, as well as local groups to try and get presentations lined up. Each marketing avenue took so much time to either hear back or set up.
So now knowing all this, I think you might have a better understanding as to why, in the face of knowing that a defective copy of my book could be distributed with each and every order, I decided to soldier on with this enterprise anyway.
Answer, simply put, was that I had invested my soul into publishing this book.
I had further invested my own money into getting this book into print, the nuts and bolts of which will be discussed, next post!