I made a mistake a few months back on my writing journey. It wasn’t a small mistake either, not at all, it was a big mother of a mistake!

It took me weeks to work out exactly what had happened, what mistake I had actually made and how to resolve it.  When I realised the simplicity of the mistake I was so bloody annoyed with myself.

This is what happened:

I needed to update Broken on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). All I had to do was move some titles from coming soon… to Books by Louise Higgins. It should have been a simple edit.

All I had to do was update my manuscript on my laptop and then load it again onto KDP. It seemed pretty straight forward. I had to amend other books in the series too, but somehow during this process, I uploaded the Shattered story into the Broken title.

 A huge mistake especially as:

I had decided to run a five day free book promotion on Kindle for Broken that week. I garnered a lot of new readers, but they were reading the wrong book!

Thankfully, a reader mentioned my mistake in a comment on my Facebook page, but I still couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. The link was fine, the book cover was Broken. It took me another month to realise I had uploaded the wrong book.

As soon as I did realise this, I made the necessary changes and everything was back to how it should be.

But, it got worse:

I could not contact any of the readers who had unknowingly downloaded the wrong book. KDP does not share any details of the people who have purchased the book with the author, so I have been unable to contact them and apologise for my mistake.

Unfortunately, in self-publishing mistakes do happen.

Usually I catch mine before they end up on KDP, by checking and checking and checking again. Self- publishing is time consuming because an author has to do it all. It isn’t just about putting a book online to read: it’s the marketing, formatting, creating a website, blog posts, advertising, utilising various platforms (like KDP) and understanding out how they all work. I have to learn how to do all these things over the past year and I am still learning.   

I am pushing the boundaries of what I know, into the unknown and learning it as I go.

“I am pushing beyond the I can… to how can I… to I am doing this.

I don’t have a clue how to… but that will not stop me… this will happen.

If I do this… what will happen if… pushing outside my comfort zone.”

I know one thing for sure, I believe in my writing and I will not let my limitations hold me back.

I cannot let self-doubt and fear take hold. I must learn from the mistakes I have made and do better next time.

Sorry

I apologise to any of my readers who were caught up in this mistake. If you did download the wrong copy of Broken then I am happy to provide Broken, Shattered and Torn absolutely free, all you need to do is email me and I will send them to you.

You can contact me at: probablewriter@gmail.com