Earlier this month I invited people to pay some money to purchase a book of my rejected short stories and then give me their honest feedback about why they thought I couldn’t get anyone to publish them. Thankfully, nobody took me up on the invitation.
Why am I thankful for that?
Because despite trying to make this self-published venture look as professional as possible, I still made a boneheaded mistake that would make me look like anything but professional.
In reviewing my file to prepare it to be acceptible to distribute on Amazon, I realized that I had messed up the numbers on the table of contents. Okay, maybe it’s not an earth shattering mistake, but it’s still a stupid one and one I’m really embarrassed about and thankful that I caught.
But I should have caught it sooner.
The mistake happened because I’d originally set-up the book with a different template. I decided to go with a different one and switched everything over, neglecting to change the page numbers on the table of contents.
Even better is that I actually have a physical copy of the book and have looked at several times, but never caught the mistake.
It’s possible no one would catch the mistake, but that’s not the point. The point is that it never should have gone out that way and the fault is all mine.
I was in too much of a hurry. There’s a ticking clock in my brain that’s always telling me how behind I am and that I need to hurry. The sooner I get this book out, the sooner I can promote it, the sooner I can get the word of mouth going, the sooner I can build a fanbase, the sooner I can…the sooner I can…
I got ahead of myself. I rushed and I paid the price. Thankfully, not a heavy one. I’m embarrassed, but not nearly as embarrassed as I would have been if more people had bought the book before I caught the mistake.
This incident once again reminds me that nothing good comes of me rushing through something and I’m at my most dangerous when I think I know what I’m doing.
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