I learned a valuable lesson this week.
Turns out I was wrong to assume that Lulu.com (the paperback people) and Amazon would get their act together and show the PB copies of our books alongside the e-book editions.
To be fair, I think I must accept some of the blame for this, as I used to change our book covers all the time, as I was never happy with them. This probably upset the applecart somewhere along the line.
It shouldn’t make any difference; I hear you saying and you’re probably right. After all, if they allow you to make these changes, they should be prepared to fulfil their side of things and do it properly, don’t you think?
Over the years I have been involved in this amazing self-publishing world, I have learned not to assume that just because people say something will happen, it very often doesn’t.
This all came about because I happened to click on one of our paperbacks on Amazon, only to find it had one of the old covers showing. I have never thought to do this before, for if I want to buy one of our paperbacks I go to Lulu, where they are cheaper for authors.
Then I checked the rest of them, only to find out four more had old covers and two weren’t there at all.
I checked our account on Lulu.com and all our PB books were present and correct. But when I asked why they weren’t all on Amazon, they didn’t understand my problem.???
So, I asked Amazon the same question only to be told that I didn’t have an account with them.???
Round about now I was rapidly losing the will to live. I knew that Amazon/CreateSpace had this facility where you could make a paperback edition, but I also remembered this involved a one-piece cover, something I had no idea how to do. Imagine my surprise when I discovered things had changed since their merger and it was now possible to make a one-piece cover using our own cover images. This was wonderful news, the only drawback was, the background colour is black. Which is fine is it goes with your cover image, but I wish there was a way to change that. Maybe there is, and I just haven’t found it yet.
To cut a long story short, I have been busy making covers on KDP with Amazon, and removing our books from Lulu.com…
And on a more serious note, PayBack is with the beta reader this week, so getting nearer to launch day. I will be posting about this as soon as the dust settles!
Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes 
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