Friday

25 October 2013

Someone who recently purchased Max's first book, The Psychokitty Speaks Out: Diary of a Mad Housecat, found a typo. This typo was apparently distressing--I had typed "cat" when I should have typed "can"--and they felt compelled to complain to Amazon about it.

Amazon, wanting their end product to be clean, emailed me to tell me about it, with a request to fix it. Now, the request felt more like an order, but it was a polite enough email and it told me exactly where to find said typo. Well, where to find it in the file. First I had to find the freaking digital copy of the book in order to fix it.

Yeah, I'm not especially organized.

I admit, the formatting in the Kindle copy of the book was not the best; it was one of the first I worked on (if not the first) and I didn't have the software that I do now, so correcting that typo was a good time to re-format the whole thing.

He "helped."
I spent 9 freaking hours on that today. I went over it line by line (and caught a few more typos) and fixed some formatting errors, re-inserted the images, and started the conversion from InDesign to .mobi.

And then I looked at the final file.

All the images shifted a page. I have no idea why. But they're all in the wrong places, and there's giant white space where they should be.

I'm a bit grumpy right now.

But...I'll get back to it tomorrow. I'll surely figure it out, and by the end of the weekend I'll either tell Amazon to shove it, a few typos won't matter or I'll have a nice clean file and I can ask Amazon to notify everyone who has ever purchased it that they can get the new one.

It beats housework, in any case.

Plus, all this weekend Max is having a 10th blogoversary party on his blog, so I should keep an eye on that. I need to make sure no under age kitties get into the Niptinis.

Fun times.

8 comments:

Shannon akaMonty said...

are you KIDDING ME?? Every kindle book I've gotten from Amazon is filled with typos, misspellings, format errors, grammatical errors, misplaced punctuation... also WTF with that person who complained? SEE THIS IS WHY I AM A MISANTHROPE.
Also xoxoxoxoxo

TheWilsonZoo said...

Dear Person Without a Life,
You were willing to suspend belief in reality long enough to read a book written by a CAT. And you expect perfection? Cats may be perfect - their human editors are not. Get over yourself and get a life. No one asked you to be the word police.
A Loyal Max Fan

Dear Amazon,
Until you fix the crappy formatting, typos, and sundry errata in ALL the ebooks YOU actually publish, you shouldn't be worried about such an insignificant error.
A Kindle User

sasha + max studio said...

harsh indeed! I've read Max's book and I cant say I thought, "wow, there's a typo, and these typos are like so annoying that I need to tell someone" ..some people...!

mister jeter harris, hizself said...

duhr.
typoz ar mi life.
da end.
yer frend,
jh

kenju said...

I think I might have told that person to suck it up and get over it. I see typos in nearly every book I read (paper or otherwise, and I would never demand that it be corrected.

Happy Blogiversary!

Mighty Kitty said...

I wonder how many books that less than human complainer has written! If a little typo can get their shorts in a wad, then they have real problems! Yeesh! Considering it is Max's book what nerve! Maybe they should get off their perch and write a perfect manuscript and sell it. I also think Amazon needs to get a life too! They don't do such great shakes when it comes to getting stuff even posted....especially videos!(they have an excuse factory for their errors that really ought to be published for everyone else!) You have do well and for that you should be quite proud! Max too!!

Mighty Kitty said...

Amazon, start practicing what you hold to for others! You know darn well that folks are waiting for videos that you are lax in posting and which are already on youtube! Max the cat has more wisdom and skill in his one claw nail that your arrogant company has with every opposable thumb you hire!(I read the comments on your errors, Amazon!)

Thumper said...

To be clear, I don't blame Amazon in the least; they have a brand to protect and quality assurances to uphold. If anything, I give Amazon props for what they do for indie writers.

I just can't wrap my head around complaining about a typo.