Ancient Futures Republished (Almost)

          I got an email a couple of weeks ago telling me that someone had put in a review of Ancient Futures saying the proofreading was so bad, she couldn't read it, and gave up completely after ten pages! Dearie me!

          I had a friend who helped me with some proofreading and particularly uploading the books, so I thought maybe there had been an error and he'd uploaded the copy I got after scanning the original. The reviewer said that on one of  the pages all the Os had been replaced by As (or the other way around!). This is the kind of thing you have to correct after scanning, and sounded convincing.

           Ancient Futures sells way more than any other of my books and this made the information I received particularly distressing. Had I sold an unreadable book to these people?

          I know now what I should have done. I should have gone into my bookshelf on Kindle and found the book and checked the Preview section which gives you a look before you publish the book, and afterwards, as if turns out. Or I could have looked at the book on the Kindle thing I have on my computer.

           But I did instead was to unpublish the book i.e. take it off Kindle. Then I was faced with the daunting prospect of reading and re-editing an old book of mine, and in some ways I'd rather poke sticks into my eyes!

            I realised almost immediately that there was nothing wrong with the text. I found less then ten spelling or scanning errors in the whole book. So I don't know what was going on there since the reviewer had a real name and seemed genuine when I contacted her to apologise. A mystery.

             Today I tried to republish the book and I think I probably cocked it up! I am not calm when I do things on the computer with my books. At this moment, the book is in "review" by Kindle and won't appear in time for me to have another go before I go away to the Samye Ling for a long weekend.

              Trying to find something good about all this .... the book was alright. If sweeping heroic epics is what you like, you could read something a lot worse.

               This has really jaundiced me to this whole Kindle experience. Or my Kindle experience. I've just wasted hours and hours of my precious life for nothing. That's the end of me looking out for reviews!!!!