Welcome back to Austen Promises and the Writer’s Journal!
~~~***~~~
I have been known to make mistakes in my life. Lots of them. It could be said, and probably has in some circles, that if something can be screwed up, I can do it. Matter of fact, I have said that of myself, though I now view it as words that keep me from being successful and therefore are no longer to be said. Anyway …
I made a mistake this past week. I’m embarrassed about it and a little upset. It kind of makes me look stupid, and I hate that, probably more than I hate being talked down to.
What did I do? Well, I had a book accepted for a Kobo promo and forgot about it. When I decided to put Mr. Darcy, My Hero in Kindle Unlimited, I had to unpublish the stories everywhere except on Amazon … and that means all collections it was in. So, without thought, I unpublished Darcy’s Adventures from Kobo, because two of the stories in it are in Mr. Darcy, My Hero.
~~~***~~~
You might wonder why I am upset. I’ll tell you, but first I need to make sure you understand that my upset has faded to a fatalistic, “Oh, well, sucks to be me” attitude. I can shrug my shoulders now and try not to think about potential consequences too much. I’ll deal with those later. 🙂
What upsets me is that I have lost a few sales of Darcy’s Adventures, and have lost the exposure to new readers that being in the promo would have gotten me. The whole purpose of doing promotions on Kobo and other vendors is to get eyeballs on my work, hopefully increasing sales.
~~~***~~~
So, what will I do now? Pretty much nothing. Mr. Darcy, My Hero doesn’t come out of KU until mid-May. The sale Darcy’s Adventures was supposed to be in is running now and ends two days before this post goes live on the blog. When I do get the new compilation out of KU, I’ll republish the older one. In the meantime, life will go on.
It’s possible that Kobo has and/or will figure out I did this and make it harder for me to get approved for promos. If that happens, I’ll have to deal with it. I can apologize and explain and try not to do it again, but beyond that, I have no control.
~~~***~~~
Could I have prevented this mistake? Most certainly. I had debated putting the new bundle in KU and should have waited. I should have paid more attention to what I was doing. I knew I had that book in a promo, and I knew parts of it were in the new book, but those two pieces of knowledge never meshed together in my brain. If I had paid more attention, I could have avoided the situation. I confess, however, that the mistake has really been in my favor. The entire point of putting the new bundle in KU was that it would bump my income up this month, something that I was in desperate need of. It has certainly done that. I should come close to meeting my minimum, which is a far cry from only getting a third of the way there.
Have you ever made a dumb mistake like mine? How did you handle it? Are you someone who easily brushes things off, or are you like me and your entire existence gets called into question?
Come back next Wednesday for another peek into my journal! <3
