At last, after about ten attempts, I managed to produce a file which was acceptable to the non-humans at Amazon Create, and then acceptable to the human file checkers.
The non-humans seemed to have the most awkward requirements, each check coming up with a different,and increasingly obscure, problem.
The last objection was that some characters were appearing as squares on page 2. There never has been any text on page 2.
In desperation I produced a Word-translated .pdf file and after some grumbling, this was OK.
The next job was pricing. Boy is it expensive to produce print-on-demand books! Having had to choose a price structure which effectively makes me want to apologise and say I'll lend everyone who wants to read my book my own copy, I had to go with the arcane methods and choose a price which means I won't exactly get rich on royalties, but that was never the idea.
So now I am waiting for the proof copy to make its way from America, bearing in mind that the 4th of July will hold everything up.
Still, hate Amazon as you might, I can't fault their systems on this. There is no other way I would be able to have a real book in my hands and a world-wide distribution.
No comments:
Post a Comment