I uploaded the epub file of the Innerscape Omnibus to Draft-2-Digital last night and expected to be able to provide links to the various e-readers today. Not going to happen, at least not the way I thought it would. š¦
This is the email I received this morning:
The metadata problem is this:
‘Current vendor formatting guidelines require standard author name spelling (First Last name format). Please supply author name in First Last name format in the metadata Contributor field, within book manuscript file, and on cover image to proceed with publication at the stores you selected.’
My author name is ‘acflory’ – all smooshed together and in lower case. It’s been my author name since 2013. It’s my brand. It’s how I, as an author, am known on social media…
This was my reply:
I have been aware that Apple would not accept my books because of how I write my pseudonym, but having ALL ebook distributors playing this game is ridiculous. ‘acflory’ is my /brand/. I cannot just ‘change’ it without losing years worth of work, not to mention marketing.
I was going to publish my omnibus with D2D before Amazon because I wanted non-Kindle readers to get a free copy before Amazon’s exclusive 90 day period could begin. Now I won’t bother. I’ll simply make the epub available to readers directly.
Please advise how or if I have to withdraw my books from D2D.
acflory
By ‘make the epub available to readers directly’ I mean like the PDF version, via sync.com. Unlike Kindle ebooks, epubs are the same regardless of which e-reader – e.g. Kobo, Nook etc – is used. But…people wanting to read the epub on their e-readers will have to download the Omnibus file to their computers and sideload onto the e-reader from there.
As sideloading is not as easy or convenient as downloading the book directly to the e-reader, I’m hoping D2D will find a better solution. If they don’t, I’ll have to ask those of you with different e-readers to test the process, and perhaps write a how-to for others? I’d do it myself but I only have the Kindle and Kindle Fire e-readers.
Anyway, that’s it for today. I’ll keep you all posted on the outcome.
-hugs-
Meeks
Meeka's Mind 
April 6th, 2020 at 9:09 am
[…] I explained in the post ‘The Omnibus hits a pot hole‘, I can’t make Innerscape directly available on the Kobo ereader because Rakuten […]
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April 4th, 2020 at 4:17 pm
Ouch! … great ‘strongly worded letter’! … I had the same problem with ‘Widdershins’. I eventually broke it in too and went with ‘Widder shins’ not ideal but I didn’t have the kind of investment that you do … I don’t know why they still stick to these archaic forms of address – a holdover from the before-times of the interwebz I suspect.
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April 4th, 2020 at 6:57 pm
Ouch indeed. š¦ It’s bizarre in the extreme and makes no sense, given that Rakuten/Kobo is such a young company. I mean as an administrative thing it’s just plain outdated, and if it’s part of some kind of identity thing, surely they could add something else to ensure we are who we say we are?
Anyway, I’m testing the direct approach for those using the Kobo e-reader. We’ll see what happens.
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April 4th, 2020 at 2:51 pm
How about “I’m” instead of by.
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April 4th, 2020 at 7:02 pm
lmao – that’s actually something I could almost go with! Almost. š
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April 4th, 2020 at 1:09 am
Isn’t that annoying? It seems crazy that they can’t handle a name. If platforms want to compete with Amazon, they need to make it easy, not harder. Good luck figuring it out.
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April 4th, 2020 at 8:14 am
Pretty annoying, indeed!!! And I’m sure if Madonna wanted to publish “Sex II” via their services they would be all too willing to… ehm… I’ll hold my tongue and pretend I was going to say, “They would be all too willing to accept it.” š
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April 4th, 2020 at 9:11 am
Exactly.
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April 4th, 2020 at 11:26 am
-giggles- I totally forgot about Madonna. Not quite in her league but love the analogy!
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April 5th, 2020 at 5:42 am
“Not quite in her league, yet” šššā
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April 5th, 2020 at 6:51 pm
Ahem….:D
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April 4th, 2020 at 11:31 am
I received an email back from D2D this morning. Apparently the platform that suddenly can’t handle a ‘single name’ is Kobo. Nook and Tolino apparently can. Totally baffled.
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April 4th, 2020 at 11:50 am
Very baffling.
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April 3rd, 2020 at 10:14 pm
Your last name is acflory. Your first name is By. *dusts hands, a good job done*
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April 4th, 2020 at 8:09 am
š¤£š¤£š¤£
Brilliant! Brilliant!!!!
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April 4th, 2020 at 8:41 am
Where there is a will, there is a way.š¤£
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April 4th, 2020 at 11:35 am
LMAO!!! oh you are wicked. I love it. Almost tempted to give it a try, just to set the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons. š š š
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April 4th, 2020 at 1:50 pm
You are probably dealing with a computer more than a person. Computers tend to be a bit rigid, so it might well work for you. It is just outside the box thinking. Of course there is a danger you will be known forever as ‘By acflory’. Who knows you may grow to like it. To deal with computers, you sometimes have to think like one.
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April 4th, 2020 at 1:54 pm
-grin- I do like computers, by and large, but I do /not/ want to go down in history as ‘Oh that By woman’. š
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April 4th, 2020 at 2:48 pm
Well many a famous woman author has had to create a male pseudonym. George Elliit springs to mind. Personally I think becoming “that By woman” might turn you into an absolute legend. š¤£
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April 4th, 2020 at 7:05 pm
Yes, George Elliot and C.J.Cherryh influenced my pseudonym when I first started thinking seriously about publishing my work. Sadly many female authors still need to become ‘gender neutral’ in order to be taken seriously, especially in the sci-fi genre.
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April 5th, 2020 at 5:02 am
š¤£š¤£š¤£
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April 5th, 2020 at 5:16 am
I couldn’t find a “Reply” on the right one. I’m referring to the gender of the author. In other genres having a female pen name is more helpful. Erotica, for example, apparently is one of those. š¤
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April 5th, 2020 at 6:53 pm
Yes, erotica and romance are both genres in which a female sounding name is an advantage. Oddly enough, I’ve come across successful male writers who write romance under a female ‘nom de plume’!
Sci-fi is the exact opposite. Female writers have always been in the minority, and many of those write under neutral names.
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April 3rd, 2020 at 10:05 pm
ph, how irritating. DV uses bookfunnel, which works really well for me – I get an email, with a link, that directs me to bookfunnel, and then I type in that link on my kobo browser and it delivers straight away. There are other authors who use this, but I can’t remember who does and who doesn’t – sorry. It might be worth investigation. hugs. big fat hugs
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April 4th, 2020 at 11:38 am
I’ve heard of bookfunnel but I think it’s a paid service. Sync.com lets me share stuff for free. But…I wonder if you could still do the same thing via sync.com? I mean, an epub is an epub. As far as I know, Kobo doesn’t change the format of the file in any way.
Give me a day and I’ll post a new link for you to try.-rubs hands with glee and thinks about skinning cats-
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April 3rd, 2020 at 2:55 pm
Can I suggest active links in the doc? I don’t know how they’d carry across, but in multi-volume (and non-fiction), I like active links so I don’t have to keep pressing the next page thingy.
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April 4th, 2020 at 7:49 am
I tested the active links in pdf transfer to kindle – didn’t work. Sorry to lead you astray.
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April 4th, 2020 at 11:40 am
No probs. Thank you for testing it out. š
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