I started this blog about one and a half hours ago but as usual I was disrupted and have only now come back to start the damn thing and with it now being some considerable time since I first set my brain into activation, I can honestly say I’ve completely lost what little train of thought I had at the outset.
Most of the time the things that disrupt the smooth running of my idyllic life are also the most frustrating as generally speaking they have nothing whatsoever to do with logic or common sense in any way shape or form.
Some of you may have noticed that I quite enjoy writing and have written a book of plays, a play about a friendly fire incident on day three of World War Two, a radio play produced by the Wireless Theatre Company and most recently a short children’s story book. Whilst writing is fairly time consuming, it is nothing compared to the utter disruption and confusion caused when I attempt to publish them on kdp publishing.
I have absolutely no idea why the people who run the self publishing companies seem to assume that because you can string a sentence together you are therefore a dab hand at computer stuff, sadly I am not and can get extremely discombobulated whenever I attempt publishing a book.
Just the day before yesterday I thought I had managed to publish the children’s story, having reviewed the document I was delighted with the end result for it looked almost presentable, which for me was a major achievement, I was especially pleased with the rather amusing colour illustrations I had commissioned for the book. I even went as far as having a chap format the book for me so all I had to do, theoretically, was upload the details together with the cover I had and yet another of my publications would be available to purchase.
It is hard to imagine the amount of disruption which can be caused by what should have been such a simple task and the utter surprise to find when I received a copy of the book, that all the illustrations had come out in black and white.
I feel I must try to cut a long story short for otherwise I will have written another book, this one on the horrors of publishing, suffice to say, it is not possible to merely log in and go to the book details and go back and click the box I should have done in the first place, where it says publish in colour. Apparently, once published it is not possible to merely change the colour, one has to start again from the very beginning with a new ISBN number and produce a new version of the book whereupon the clever chaps at kdp publishing will delete the old version and insert the new one…..I think!
My how I laughed when I realised how much disruption was to be caused to do such a simple operation as change the colour, tears were indeed rolling down my cheeks, I seem to spend so much of my time nowadays in a state of hysteria caused by the apparent stupidity of others.
Moving swiftly on I then found out why the pages I was inputting previously were not formatting quite as neatly as I had hoped, for it seems the fellow who formatted it in the first place had sized it for a larger page, so we’re back to square one yet again.
When I wonder will computers ever become as clever as humans, so they can question me when I’m uploading things, “oh, I see you’re uploading stuff too large for the page you have specified, would you like me to configure it to fit.” “Also it came to my attention that you have put in colour illustrations and yet you ticked the box for black and white, can I assist you with anything there?”
I think I’ll call it a day for today and attempt what seems like the impossible again tomorrow, should I live long enough to complete the process I will inform you, in the vain hope that one or two of you may purchase said book to make all this disruption worth the effort.
The Diary of a Country Bumpkin 