It’s been more than two months since the release of The 2020 Annual by our fabulous 2020 Elizabeth River Writers.
This release was heart and soul my project in the making for a couple of years — seriously it took me that long to get ready to even take submissions. My business partner and long time friend from Elizabeth River Press took on the tasks of printing and dealing with the aggregators. For our writers and readers, this didn’t mean much. For me it meant I could focus my post-editing time on marketing.
June 30th came – we had a live launch party, I’d done interviews, we were excited to get this book of wonderful poetry and prose out to the world.
The day came and went and our Kindle version was not available. The eBook was available everywhere else. Amazon’s information was simply ‘it’ll be available next week.’ We heard that for three weeks – every few days Charles at Elizabeth River Press heard more from me.
He was trying. Amazon was less than helpful saying it was a Bowker problem (Bowker is where we publishers purchase and file our ISBN codes – that number just above or below the barcode – it’s every books identity). Bowker’s files were fine. The eBook was available on Nook, Apple, Kobo, etc… just not on Amazon.
We took it down. Tried to upload it using Amazon’s in-house coding… long story short, in the end, sometime after a month had passed, Charles removed all eBooks from every platform, then registered the eBook under a different ISBN.
More than 60 days into a project launch I worked toward for years, in the end, I had little control over when it came to publishing issues — my choice in dividing tasks that made sense for my schedule.
I’m happy to announce the eBook is now available (finally) on Amazon. The other sites — well, I hope by publishing time for this blog, that will be resolved as well because let’s be frank — those weren’t an issue.
It’s never easy to admit something has gone wrong – it’s even harder when it’s completely out of my control and I cannot even see what’s happening in the background. Ultimately, in my frustration, I trusted my business partner – and I still do – and though things don’t always happen on my timeline, repairs are working.
Sadly, as a result of the Kindle version not being available for so long, I pretty much stopped marketing altogether. We had an issue, and I needed resolution.
So this lovely project… these awesome writings of other fabulous writers… have all been ignored – by me for basically the past two months now. So, as of now both Print and Kindle are available on Amazon – and I’m marketing! And humbly waiting to get it all right… because 2021 is coming!
Welcome back to the Elizabeth River Writers Annual 2020… poetry and prose from fabulous writers from around the world.
Get it where books are sold — or on Amazon for now.