Coding Errors Corrupt Novel’s Message

This past weekend a reader told me my Kindle book had an excessive number of “coding errors.”  NO!!  Before my Kindle went “live” over a year ago, I (a former English teacher) & a friend (English professor & author) checked it.  We found the occasional weird inverted letters we KNEW were right when we sent in the manuscript , etc.  Basically, my Kindle version was OK.  (I asked people about that all the time.)

BUT, when I looked into the Kindle now before me, I could hardly breathe. Random HUGE letters were standing in the middle of words, my name suddenly appeared in the midst of a sentence, someone had put chapter numbers from the table of contents in my Magic Bullet and thrown them on a page.  I compared this version  to the one I downloaded several months ago.  Paragraphs were now split, sentences were chopped, words were hyphenated that shouldn’t have been. . .  My heart sank.

I contacted Kindle, then the publisher.  I was told “somehow, someone” must have over-ridden, in a wrong format, the download the publisher had prepared for Kindle.  They had no idea when it happened.

How many of my free promos were “defective?”

Today I had my publisher over-ride that version and the original one is up.  It doesn’t have coding errors, but I revised it because of about 20 typo & technical errors.  The 2nd (& last) version my publisher will have ready to down load in 2-3 weeks.

I am so embarrassed this happened, but very grateful it was called to my attention.  I will make things right for those of you who downloaded & paid or just downloaded Prelude for free.  When the newest version is up, after we have verified it is code-error-free, I will do another FREE promo & invite you to DUMP the one with code-mania.

My mind tells me it’s not my fault, but my spirit that wrote this novel to celebrate our veterans is sad.  Working on the sequel to Prelude, I am reminded how often what we think is OK, really isn’t.  I am working hard to make this right!

This afternoon I returned home after having a knee replacement.  In a lot of pain, sportin’ a bunch of drugs, but was happy to verify that the Kindle version was still “good.”  SORRY, folks, already have a phone call in . . . AGAIN.  Stay tuned!