The Unstoppable Saga (pls make it staaahp)

When hubris and technology decide to gang up on an innocent, blameless, naïve author, you get a looooong post about it.

Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author who is also librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!

---

It all began with The Spreadsheet.

It was a spreadsheet I made in early 2019, when I was in the throes of yet another attempt to revive my author career in a way that might be sustainable for me, a thus far unattainable goal.

I had recently discovered that I enjoy writing very long original stories, mostly because of my experience and frustrations writing Wolves of Harmony Heights. That is indeed a very long story, but keep in mind that I rushed the ending (!!!!) because I was trying not to hit 200,000 words. I felt that it would have been just too long for a novel. You can argue that at 193,000 words, I was splitting hairs, but it was something I was genuinely concerned about. Yes, many people love reading very long books, but usually not from unknown writers in a very niche genre. I had concerns.

(How long is 193,000 words? The printed version runs about 400 pages, and while I'd have to check I'm pretty sure no one has actually bought a single one of the hard copy edition, period.)

I knew there were some authors who were doing Patreon and other self-hosted solutions to serialize their work, but I was still stuck in the "write a novel" mindset. You might say that the real problem wasn't them; it was me.

I was starting to get a clue, though, so in 2019, I decided my solution would be to write a series of novellas of about 30,000 words, all linked together into a larger story arc. That way, I could write 300,000 words of a story but it would only be ten novellas. It sounded like a reasonable plan…and it might have worked, had not other things interfered (read: pandemic + toxic job, but we’ll get there later).

I quickly realized was that I couldn't use one single story beat arc for both the novellas (they would need their own story beats) and the whole long arc. To my dismay, I discovered nobody had written about such a structure, at least nowhere I could find it online.

I went to one of the writers' forums I belong to and talked about my idea with other writers interested in doing long-running series. Some people suggested using television serial beats, as in individual episodes versus season arcs. That was a good approach, but didn't help me nail down what I needed to do.

After more research, I created a very simplistic spreadsheet in Google Sheets to outline the resulting story beat structure I had come up with from these studies. Some people wanted to see it, so I made it shareable, because I believe information should be free.

Then I went on and hastily wrote four of the ten novellas, publishing the first one without any kind of serious launch plan. In the end, only about a dozen people read it. Honestly, though, I wasn't happy with the story so I held off publishing the second novella until I could figure out why.

But then, as we all know, 2020 went off the rails for all of us. Unfortunately, I have generalized anxiety disorder, and when it's in play, I cannot be creative. I've tried to overcome that many times through many various traumatic life experiences, without success. (Maybe someday I'll find a solution that doesn't involve the phrase, “just don't be anxious about anything.”)

While working from home during the lockdown was something I liked a lot, the reason I really liked it was because of the amount of distance it put between me and management, which…yeah, red flags in the wind. Between the upheaval that was 2020 and my toxic job, I was the anxiety equivalent of a bag of angry cats.

Which meant that my creativity and motivation crashed, and the entire “publish a long-running series” project lay abandoned. I even pulled the first book down completely and forgot about the spreadsheet.

Fast forward to 2023, when I was looking at subscription platforms through a new lens, mostly thanks to the Facebook group Subscriptions for Authors. I went back and rethought my entire author career, rediscovering my dreams and becoming invigorated to write, to publish, to share.

At some point, as I explored all my options with subscriptions models and stories I was already working on, someone else in the group asked about serial beats.

I looked at that post for a few minutes, thinking, "Didn’t I solve this problem?" It’s admittedly a bit of reach to claim I solved anything, but I did indeed have a spreadsheet that attempted to do so! I shared it in the group, and it became a hit post (at least for me, someone who doesn't normally go viral in any way).

When Michael Evans, one of the group’s admins and the CEO of Ream, reached out to me asking if I wanted to do a fireside chat (a version of a pop-up webinar) on the Subscriptions for Authors podcast, I said, "Sure, why not?" And then he said, "We can do it this weekend."

Like the unrealistic overachiever I have always been, I said, "Sure, I’d love to!"

I think it was Tuesday, possibly Wednesday(?) when he offered that opportunity. I spent the next two and a half days in a mad rush to consolidate my ideas around the spreadsheet, make it more informative and useful, and explain how to use it. (That firesides chat is still available on YouTube, btw).

But at some point while chatting with Michael the day before the fireside chat, I decided to turn all those ideas into a book. With all the authority of the blessedly ignorant, I decided it would be available for sale on July 15th. Keep in mind, this was at the end of May. Why I thought I could get a whole book together in less than two months I have no idea.

That’s a lie. I do have an idea, and it is called “damned foolishness” as Poppa used to say. But, oh my goodness, the foolishness did not end there.

Driven by both anxiety and hubris, I thought, "How hard could it be to set up a Shopify store and get this available for pre-order before the fireside chat in two days?"

Well, the answer was that it wasn't very hard, but it still took up most of a day. Aside from basic store set up, which I had only done once before for a friend, there were a lot of tasks I simply had not accounted for: I didn't know how to set up pre-orders on Shopify, or anything about using store plugins; I had to create new graphics for the store; I had to throw together a book cover (which I ‘shopped quickly in Canva, and knew even then that it was not suitable to be the final cover); I had to test it out.

I ended up rigging a functioning shop together and being very proud of myself. Michael Evans was the first person to place a pre-order for it (thank you, Michael!), and everything worked perfectly.

…however, unbeknownst to me, I had made critical mistakes in setting up the product (my as-yet unwritten book), which I wouldn't realize until much later. How’s that for forshadowing?

Finally came the big day, May 20th, 2023! I had the pre-order up and was mentally braced for questions and ready to go. In retrospect, I think you can see the points where people asked me questions I had not been prepared for yet. They were very important questions and led me later on to do a lot more research, but yeah, it was clearly all half-baked at the time.   

Nonetheless, it was a well-received event, and I felt charged up on the topic. I started writing the book the next day.

I kept working on it into the first week of June, and felt like I had advanced significantly on the project to where hitting my supremely unreasonable deadline seemed possibly possible!

Then, on June 9th, I got sick.

And when I say I got sick, I don't mean I came down with a head cold. While my at-home COVID test showed I was negative, in retrospect I think it's very possible that I had caught the ERIS strain because all the symptoms match up: some fever, some body aches, and an absolutely ungodly, unrighteous amount of fatigue and exhaustion.

The first week was unpleasant, with symptoms at their worst, but the next three weeks were no party because I was in a state of near narcolepsy. I was so exhausted that at first, being up and about for two hours would throw me back into bed. By the third week, I could stay awake for six to eight hours a day, though doing anything more than reading or watching television was pretty much out.

My brain fog was extreme. I would scroll through newsletters and magazines online, see articles I wanted read, and try to read them. Note the word “try.” I’d realize that I had not understood the previous three sentences I'd skimmed, and eventually end up shutting the computer down and walking away.

That lasted until early July. Nearly a whole month lost!

Remember how I said I would have the book available by July 15th?

Spoiler: I would not have the book available by July 15th.

I quietly changed the due date to July 31st, hoping no one would notice (a few did, but were kind about the delay) and buckled down to finish the damn thing.

The rough draft was done by July 15th, miracles of miracles. I got it to my editor, who turned it around within a few days with an amazing application of skill and experience as a personal favor amidst all the other work she has both as a writer and an editor herself (thank you, Gina Hogan Edwards!)

Finally, finally, we are to the point in this epic tale where I was ready to format it!

It was July 29th. I did a little bit with it, figuring I would have all day on teh 30th to finalize everything. What could possibly go wrong????!?!?

I got extremely awful food poisoning that night.

It hit like a train in the early evening. Repeated purging kept me up most of the night (apologies for the TMI), but just when I was getting worried about it, the nausea petered out. Around four a.m. I drank a lot of electrolyte water and crashed into a deep sleep.

I woke up in the afternoon of the 30th feeling like the aforementioned train had wrecked me, but drank more water and dragged myself to my computer. I honestly thought a couple hours work formatting the book and reviewing the finalized version would get me to the point of having it ready for delivery by the time the 31st officially arrived for me, at midnight Eastern Standard Time.

Oh, what a naïf I was. So pure, so innocent. *single tear of despair.gif*

I exported the .docx file out of LibreOffice (more on that in a moment) and imported it into Atticus. Easy peasy!

If you don't know, Atticus is formatting software for creating ebooks and print books. If you're familiar with Vellum, it is basically the same thing, but a major difference is that Atticus is a younger app, so has fewer features and, more importantly for this story, has technical glitches you have to watch out for.

My problem turned out to be that I did not know I had to watch out for them.

I thought, like the fool I am (a recurring theme here, I admit), that I would simply import my file, tighten it up here and there, change a few things for reading comprehension reasons, and then go to town with exporting an epub file. I planned to upload it to Bookfunnel (more on that later) which I would then link to my direct sales store on Shopify. Everything would be ready by July 31st for everyone who had pre-ordered it to enjoy!!!

What a nice plan I had, there. Would be a shame if something happened to it…

First issue: I write in Scrivener, then export to LibreOffice for editing(to avoid Microsoft products, b/c I hate M$). Although you can't upload a LibreOffice document (.odt file) to Atticus, it can export out of LibreOffice into a Microsoft Word .docx file. Previously, I'd never had problems with this process, but then I'd never tried importing a formerly-LibreOffice document into Atticus.

When I uploaded the .docx file to Atticus, chaos ensued:

• All my subheadings were reformatted into ordered lists.

• At least half of my web links were erased, replaced with blank spaces.

• All of my email links were de-linked, with only a plain underline remaining.

• 90% of my internal links were corrupted.

Honestly, none of this would be a big deal for a fiction book, so maybe that’s why I never noticed the issues before. But this is a non-fiction book with a plethora of internal and external links, as well as a lot of sub-headings.

I was so, so screwed.

So began the painstaking process of checking not just for typos and formatting issues but also spelunking for all the web links. Adding to my discombobulation, I found out that in Atticus, you can only have internal links to chapter headings, not subheadings or specific words. I had to repair all of that manually.

Fortunately, those problems were easy enough to fix with a sharp eye. Unfortunately, my eyes are not that sharp. (There is a reason I'm not selling my services as a professional editor.) I spent hours and hours that afternoon combing over the manuscript in Atticus, trying to find and fix everything. (Sadly, even after it was published, I found missing links I had to go back in and fix. Arggghhh!)

Still, by around 8 p.m., I got it to a point where I felt comfortable putting it up for sale and sending it out to those who had pre-ordered it. Yet, I was also exhausted and still feeling terrible from the food poisoning, so I bowed to the inevitable and accepted that I would have to complete everything the following morning, on the 31st — technically the release would be late, but not by much. I went to bed with high hopes.

Thus came dawn, July 31st, RELEASE DAY.

As mentioned, I planned to use BookFunnel to set up the delivery, and this seemed like such an excellent idea at the time! Indeed, it is an excellent idea because a lot of authors do this seamlessly and without issue.

As you will discover, I am not one of those authors.

Remember when I said that I had made mistakes setting up the product in Shopify that would come back to haunt me?

One of those mistakes was not giving the product a SKU. Honestly, I usually give products SKUs when I create them, but I was in such a rush that I didn't think about it when I was creating the Become an Unstoppable Storyteller product.

Well, it turns out there's no way to retroactively add a SKU number to a product that's already been purchased. Well, you can add it, but it will not be applied to the pre-orders. I did not know that. So, I added the SKU number and went to set up everything in BookFunnel with absolutely no clue of the problem I had created for myself.

Thinking everything was good to go by mid-afternoon of July 31st, I discovered that the BookFunnel hook simply didn't work.

Whether I tried to get a pre-order sent to a customer or make a new order, Shopify and BookFunnel were not talking to each other.

Here's what I had set it up to do: when I marked an order fulfilled, it was supposed to kick out the BookFunnel fulfillment action.

Here’s what it was doing: nothing.

If I had originally added a SKU number during product creation, this would have worked seamlessly for all the pre-orders, but it did not work seamlessly with all the pre-orders because, as I stated, you cannot retro-actively add a SKU. To be fair to Shopify, there are plugins that will allow you to do this, but none of them are free and I am on a shoestring budget right now. So, I had to find a workaround.

Hours later, I conceded that there is no workaround.

By that point, it was late afternoon on the 31st and I'd already had two emails from people asking where the book was. I ended up having to email each customer individually to let them know that Become an Unstoppable Storyteller was available in their BookFunnel library…several steps I had to do manually just so they could get it. Fortunately(?), I didn't have that many pre-orders. I think it would have been a much different story if I had, say, over 100. It was a bit onerous but mostly a small time-sink.

However, this now left me with the problem of why people who were ordering it anew weren't getting the book. It made no sense and I spent an hour tearing apart everything I had done in BookFunnel and Shopify but it was simply a mystery.

I ended up with tech support, first with BookFunnel, who looked at it for a short bit and then told me it was a Shopify issue.

I went to Shopify and said, “BookFunnel says this is your problem, so if you tell me that it's a BookFunnel problem, you're gonna have to tell me exactly what the problem is because they already think it's your problem.”

It's always fun running interference between two products tech support.

And by “fun” I mean extremely aggravating.

But I will say this: Shopify was willing to put in the effort to figure out what the heck the problem was. I spent probably over four hours with Shopify support on chat, going back and forth and back and forth, trying to find out what the problem was.

In the end, embarrassingly, it was (another!) mistake on my part. It was such a subtle mistake that even the Shopify people didn't hit on it until late in the game: I had set up the direct action in Shopify to deliver the book when the order was marked as fulfilled.

It worked fine when I went in, looked at the order, and then marked it as fulfilled. If I did that, the book was delivered. But we weren't looking at that behavior, we did not even test it, because that was not the issue as we understood it. Blinded by our own assumptions!

Finally, someone at Shopify realized what I had done.

The solution was simple: the trigger for the action needed to be set for order creation. That is the setting in Shopify, not BookFunnel, which makes it so that when the order creation is complete, Shopify will reach out to BookFunnel to kick off the delivery automation.

So yeah, a very simple problem to solve, in the end. I created a new action based on order creation, and boom, everything worked beautifully.

At this point it was eight o'clock at night on July 31st.

I was so done. Y’all. SO VERY DONE.

If you look at my social media posts from that evening, I was in tears because by that point I had been fighting food poisoning and technical issues for 36 hours straight.

Technically, the book wasn't really available until August 1st, but all that matters is that it got there in the end.

And that's the whole saga! That's the drama! That's the whole shebang!

It was a wild ride. I learned a lot. *flops over in exhaustion*

Bonus: Wrap Up

Atticus

When I reached out to Atticus about the issues I had with formatting, they said what that it was probably because I created the file in LibreOffice, and that it was likely that some junk coding got carried over in the export to .docx, which I'm very familiar with. That's just something a lot of programs do, especially word processing apps like LibreOffice and MS Word.

So, I tested their advice on how to avoid those problems: I took a test text in Scrivener (containing internal and external links, web addresses, email links, and subheadings), exported directly to a .docx file, (i.e. skipping LibreOffice entirely), imported it into Google Docs, cleaned it up, double checked everything, exported it out of Google Docs as a shiny new .docx document, and then imported it into Atticus.

Alas, the same problems showed up. The truth is that Atticus was not designed for texts that have a lot of subheadings, a lot of internal links, and a lot of web links…that is to say, nonfiction books. Authors I know who write nonfiction have admitted that they stopped using Atticus because of these issues, and instead use Calibre (which is bit more complicated to use, but has a lot of features which are helpful).

This is a major oversight and is going to severely hinder their ability to market to people who are writing nonfiction books. Fortunately for me, I'm mostly a fiction author, so I don't think it's going to be too much of a hassle going forward. Still, something to keep in mind.

The Book

Become an Unstoppable Storyteller: How to Craft Compelling Serials is available now for purchase directly from me, which gets me more money, or from other distributors if you can't order from me directly for some reason. And yes, everyone who pre-ordered it got a copy before July 31st ended.

Take Away

Perhaps this is a cautionary tale for other writers. It certainly is a cautionary tale for me!

Next time, I will allow time for problems along every step of the way. You think as a former project manager, I would know to do that already, but for some reason, this time, I really truly did not.

---