Victory and Vexation: A Writer’s Journey through Self-Publishing  (A ‘Reunion Coda’ Cautionary Tale)

Late Morning/Midday, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, Miami, Florida

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.
Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.” ― William Faulkner

Now that I’ve finished my first novel – for good or ill – and published the damned thing, I feel somewhat strange now that I don’t have to worry about whether there’s enough conflict in the story, or if readers will like the mix of humor and bathos that coexist in Reunion: Coda in an attempt to have art imitating life. I wrote the last lines on April 2 – four weeks ago – and once my Beta Reader (Denise Longrie) signed off on them, it was off to what filmmakers call the “postproduction” phase.

For me, “postproduction” and publication are my least favorite stages of self-publishing. Putting a book out via Kindle Direct Publishing is not particularly difficult, and if you do everything right – like regularly proofreading your manuscript, especially once you start adding it to the Kindle Create app from Word or whichever word processing program you prefer, or using a dedicated graphics app to create your own cover to sidestep issues with the print editions – it can be done with relative ease.

I must confess, I don’t possess the patience of a saint – a little flaw in my personality, if I’m being truthful. Each time I wrap up a book for self-publishing (and this is my third one, if you count my rarely mentioned collection of reviews from Epinions, which I released 13 years ago and was the only book of mine that my late mother bought before her passing in 2015), I find myself rushing through the steps. Despite knowing that haste often leads to mistakes, I can’t seem to help it. It’s a habit I’ve picked up over the years, and anyone who’s battled bad habits like smoking or drinking will tell you, they’re tough to break.

And then there’s the challenge with subheadings on the Kindle Create app, creating a perfect storm that results in having to upload corrections to Kindle Direct Publishing. Thankfully, submitting fixes to KDP is quite straightforward, though it can take 72 hours or more for the changes to reflect in the book’s content, especially in the print edition.

Right now, I’m happy with only one of the three editions of Reunion: Coda that I own – the Kindle e-book. The way KDP works logically applies corrections to the book’s content much, much faster than it does to the hardcover and paperback’s edition. And to me, that makes sense – Amazon’s self-publishing arm is named Kindle Direct Publishing, after all, so everything – from file format to the selection of cover illustrations – is geared for the e-book side, which is great for writers who only want to publish e-books and not bother with hardcopy editions.  

I’m less enthused about both print editions – the hardback and softcover. They both use the same source file as the Kindle e-book, so whatever issues I need to fix internally appear there. And in theory, whenever I must send a new batch of corrections to KDP, whatever I fix in the Kindle version is applied to the non-electronic counterparts…just at a frustratingly glacial pace.

I mention all this because after waiting for slightly over a week to see if the last batch of corrections was applied to the hardcover and paperback editions of Reunion: Coda, I ordered a copy of the latter – and received it last night with the (admittedly minor but vexing) errors I fixed last week!

I must take – and accept – a lot of the blame for allowing those errors – large or small – to creep into the first batch of books that were ordered earlier this month. But Amazon also says that updates to existing books are usually applied within three days, perhaps a bit longer, but usually it takes them between 3-4 days to complete the process with the print edition, and far less than that with the Kindle version.

I hedged my bets and ordered the paperback edition a bit over a week after I submitted that final batch of edits to Reunion: Coda, and I still received a copy with those mistakes I wanted to correct. Ugh. And even though I can return my copy to Amazon before 30 days and get a free replacement, that involves asking for favors, something that I am loath to do presently.

However, there is a silver lining to all this. The Kindle edition of Reunion: Coda is to my satisfaction, and I find solace in knowing that readers who receive copies with bloopers have a grace period for free returns and replacements. As for myself, I plan to buy new hardcover and paperback editions later this summer. But for now, if I’m going to read Reunion: Coda for pleasure, I’ll just read the e-book version.