My Tangle with CreateSpace

By Andrew E. Kaufman 

One of the reasons I worked like a madman to get my latest novel finished was because I wanted to have it out by Christmas. Books make great holiday gifts. Lots of holiday gifts mean lots of sales, and  therein lay my motivation. As it turned out, I was able to release the e-book on December sixth.

Then there was the paperback.

I uploaded the file around the same time as the e-version, and to my satisfaction, it appeared I was on schedule. I ordered a hundred books—many of which already had buyers—then waited for the estimated December 19^th delivery date.

They arrived on schedule, but when I opened the boxes, I got an unpleasant surprise: it wasn’t the book that I’d uploaded. Well, it was, but it wasn’t, because this one was riddled with formatting issues: paragraphs that had no breaks between them and other problems. Now granted, I knew those problems had existed, but I also knew that we’d fixed them, then uploaded the corrected version; yet somehow, the one with the errors was what ended up being printed.

I saw red.

Immediately, I got on the phone and called CreateSpace (the Amazon company responsible for printing and distributing the book). The lady I spoke with seemed dumbfounded. She confirmed they had the correct file yet had no idea why the bad version ended being printed. Apparently it was some sort of glitch on their end, but since she couldn't figure out what that was, she told me they’d need to have technical support take a look, assuring me they’d re-ship the new books once they knew what had gone wrong.

“How long might it take for them to do that?” I asked.

“Two-to-three days,” she replied.

“But you don’t understand. I have nearly a hundred people waiting to buy  books as Christmas gifts. I can’t give them these.”

“It would be impossible to get the new ones to you by then.”

A deep sigh. “But this wasn’t my fault.”

“I'm very sorry,” she said, “but until technical support investigates the matter, there’s nothing we can do, and that will take at least—”

“Two to three days. Yeah, I know. Isn’t there a way to expedite the process?”

“I’m afraid not. They’re very busy this time of year.”

Now, besides having three boxes filled with books that will never see the light of day, besides not being able to sell them before Christmas, there was another problem, a much bigger one: a lot of people had already purchased the paperback on Amazon. People I don’t know and have no way of reaching. People who laid down their hard-earned money expecting to have a good book to read. People who were not going to get that.

Those people  will likely take one look at my book and decide I’m some yayhoo who thinks he can write. And that, in my world, is far worse than having three boxes filled with very expensive firewood.

So I asked the lady: “What about the customers who have already bought the book? Isn't there some way to alert them that they got a bad copy, maybe send them the good version once it’s available?”

“I’m afraid not,” she said.

I don't know if I've mentioned this here before, but I’m fiercely loyal to my readers. I have great respect for them, and I always put them first. It’s why I work so hard to create the best work I can. They deserve that. So the thought of them receiving a defective book makes me want to gnash my teeth to powder.  Now, luckily, the majority of my sales are on Kindle, and that version is fine. But I wouldn’t care if just one reader had bought the paperback—as far as I'm concerned, that's one too many. I don’t want anyone getting less than what they paid for. Not one.  

As it stands now, I'm still waiting for technical support to conclude their investigation. There will be no books for Christmas; in fact, I've pulled the paperback from Amazon to prevent any further sales until the matter is resolved. And, of course, I have three boxes of books that will likely either be headed back to Amazon or to the dumpster.

So why am I telling you all this? For one, I think it's good to share these experiences with other indie authors so they can be aware. But beyond that,  I also think there’s a lesson to be learned here: technology is a beautiful thing, and it’s made our lives better in so many ways.

But it’s far from perfect.


Incidentally,  if anyone reading this post bought the paperback version of The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted, please contact me as soon as possible (mail@andrewekaufman.com)  so I can figure out a way to get the good version to you. I’m hoping Amazon will make good on this, but if they don’t, you have my promise: I will, even if I have to replace every one of them myself.