I've been waiting so long to be where I'm going.......

The waiting game for "The Tiger's Cub" continues....

So far, the printer has sent me two advance copies to confirm that all is well - and I'm sincerely hoping that no one has purchased any copies yet, because all is NOT well....

Here's the deal:

I was of the opinion that my publisher wasn't going to send anything on to the print shop until we were done with all the corrections to the book.  Obviously, even at 52, I'm still VERY naïve about this, as the printer has a copy of "The Tiger's Cub" file from BEFORE the final corrections were approved on August 24th.  The publisher keeps insisting that they weren't supposed to be using that copy to print any books, but the question remains in my mind:  WHY would she have uploaded the file to their site if they weren't supposed to have it?

She insists that she was VERY clear that the file from August 24th was the one that was to be used for doing printing, but as I have witnessed myself - TWICE - that is NOT what the print shop is doing.....

Suffice to say that I'm very underwhelmed at this point with the professionalism I'm seeing.  Admittedly, I was the source of a couple of the issues early on, as I was speaking to a nice young man in California about having him as my cover model, but didn't realize that he has an agent and I needed to make any arrangements with that person instead of the model himself.  (I have several model friends here in Maine who are freelance, so the thought never occurred to ask about an agent.)  But there have been several issues that I've had no control over - and I can't even express what that does to my OCD level......

There have been corrections I sent through that didn't get done - and that I had to keep emailing over and over before they were finally fixed.  There have been "wrong file uploads" more than once when my approval was sought to insure that the corrections were finally made.  There were "blips" added to the cover art when the title and author name were added that were explained away as "hairpins" when my model wasn't wearing any hairpins, then the "correction" to mask the initial mistake was very sloppy and I had to get belligerent to get the error corrected.  There was a color change made when putting the cover into PDF format for the printer that I also had to fight to have corrected.  And now another file issue when the book got posted up for sale two full months earlier than the release date I had been given.......

Suffice to say that, without the emotional help of my friends, I would be in a corner this morning, banging my head against the wall, as that would be just as productive as anything else I can do at my end of things right now....

In short, I'm seriously looking at what it would take to build my own publishing company before the science fiction is ready to go onto the market.  I already have a "storefront" (so to speak) in the form of a "web design company" that I put up online when several local companies were offering rewards cards to businesses to get coupons that I could use for supplies that I use a lot - and would use more of as a publisher - even though the company has never had a single client, and therefore has never made a profit.  Instead of just blogging about the highs and lows of writing, I could actually be offering my services to help others to get published and get their books offered on places like Amazon, IBooks, Barnes and Noble, etc........

Or maybe I'll just test drive that theory with "Rhawneth" and see where it takes me, as the Fates have a way of blasting my ship out of the water just when I can see it starting to come in.....