I’ve lost count of the number of times life has played a prank on me. But can I blame life or am I to be blamed? After all, I’m a last-moment person who likes doing stuff and making an important decision in the heat of a moment. I use emotions or intuition rather than logic and reason to navigate through life.
I could go on and on about the time I messed up due to procrastination, stupidity, or both. But here I’m ranting about my book.
Chronicles of a Broken Heart: 101 Reasons Not To Fall In Love
Life happened and I didn’t publish it on 14th February as planned. Life happened and I couldn’t dedicate the entire month of March to the book, although I wanted to do a little pre-promotion before releasing it on April 1st. A technical issue happened and I ended up publishing it on March 30th.
But life didn’t prank me, I did.
My laziness did, my habit of constantly blaming my surroundings rather than taking action did. Don’t tell my dad I admitted it. He keeps telling me the same thing on and on, and I keep denying it. I’m still kinda in denial I guess. But it’s time to stop being a child and start taking responsibility.
So, here’re all the things I did wrong on the way to publish my book.
1. Super delayed sending an editable version to Bharath
Here’s a little-known fact. I usually send my poems to Bharath for his honest opinion about my writings. He’s one person besides my creative directors who tells me when my work is crap. So, it was a no-brainer that he’d be the editor for my book. I send him a pdf version of the book to edit, and he needed a word doc.
But I had just got a new job and got kinda busy with work. So, I didn’t have time to copy my work from Canva to a word doc. That’s my excuse. However, I should have taken out some time. I was just plain lazy. I was procastinating.
2. Didn’t blog or Instagram often
Here’s a big apology to everyone who reads my work, adores it, and waits for it, especially Rashmi. Her emails keep making me want to return to WordPress.
Here are my excuses:
– I had just got a promotion at work with which came increased workload.
– My dad was out of town and my brother fell ill, so I had to give a lot of my time to the family business.
– I just felt enervated by the end of the day. Some days I was so tired that I wanted to cry, but at the same time, I felt so unproductive.
But while all these were going on, overwork wasn’t what made me tired. It was the lack of productivity. I hated my new role at work which required me to do more administrative stuff and less writing, contrary to my previous role where I just wrote. Being involved in the family business was tiring but I had evenings to myself which I spent watching Lucifer. I wasn’t too tired to write, I was uninspired and unmotivated. That’s what made me feel drained. I should have simply pushed myself to scribble some words.
3. Not putting the book up for pre-booking as I had planned
Well, family business and college applications had me so busy that I hadn’t finished formatting the book. So, I finished formatting the book only by the 30th. So, if I wanted to use the pre-booking option, I’d have to postpone the release to April 3rd. And I wanted the book out on April 1st.
But like I’ve said before, I could have taken out the time if I tried a little hard. I wasn’t all that busy. I was procrastinating. I was lazy.
4. Self-proofreading
I’m a horrible proofreader, the queen of typos. I read super fast and can easily miss out on mistakes. And I should have sent the book back to Bharath after formatting for final proofreading before putting it up. But Kindle Direct Publishing can take up to 72 hours, and it would take days for him to proofread it completely. I was scared there would be some typos, but I talked myself into it by saying the typos would make it seem more human and more me. Lol! That’s such a stupid excuse. Typos make it seem as if enough effort hasn’t been put in, it shows unprofessionalism and carelessness. Somedays, I just hate myself and my lack of patience.
I found one and corrected it immediately. If you find any, please let me know. You can comment here, email me at shreyajoshi0001@gmail.com or reach out to me on Instagram.
5. Didn’t check the preview before publishing my ebook
I had my pdf file ready, formatted each page while I read the book several times. So, I was sure everything would be great. Plus, it required me to sign in from a different device to view the preview. So, I simply skipped it.
And this happened.
But this is what I intended it to look like.
I can blame it on a technical glitch. But honestly, it was simply my carelessness. To people who are looking forward to publish their own ebook, don’t use a PDF. I guess I should do a blog about things one shouldn’t do while kindle publishing.
So, I guess it’s time to stop the blame game. Life didn’t prank on me. I did!
To people who want to purchase the book, I’ve made some changes and contacted Kindle so that the final version is available in all the devices. I’m really sorry for the confusion, bad formatting and typos. I have a lot of growing up to do. I’ll keep you updated on the progess.
Now, no more excuse, it’s time to get things done. Also, I’m not missing NaPoWriMo, gotta start today. Maybe this will get me to the habit of writing daily again.
Featured image by: energepic.com from Pexels
Much love,
Shreya Joshi
