The Tale of the Cursed Book

My latest book came out the past April. I signed the contract to write it in February of 2021, meaning it took a little over four years for it to see the light of day. That’s considerably longer than I expected, and I wish the delays were because I was dragging my feet. That was certainly a factor at times, but it was a relatively minor one all things considered.

The first roadblock was around July 2021, when I both had to move house and start a new job (Wipro). Totally understandable and unavoidable stuff, and not really a big delay.

2022 wasn’t especially productive, largely due to that job, but I did get the first third of the book written. Then, at the end of that year, came the first big blocker: my editor (and dear friend) had to step away from the project. It was the right thing for him to do and I entirely support the decision. It did lead to a delay though, as I waited to meet with my new editor.

She started in January 2023. I let her know that I needed some space to focus and pound through some chapters and that I’d ping her when I’d written enough to feel OK about my progress. In April I let her know that the second third of the book was done and ready for review. In May she stepped away from the project for personal reasons. The second third remained unedited.

To paraphrase Wilde, to lose one editor may be considered a misfortune; to lose two…

My next (and final) editor wouldn’t be available until July. I didn’t want to get too far ahead of her, so I put all writing on hold until she had the chance to start and get caught up. She’d done that by mid-August, and then it was time to start the first tech review (send to about twelve people for feedbacK), then publisher review, and then finally the beta (early) release in mid-October. Things were moving! So much progress!

There were seven beta versions in all and the book was content complete and out for its second round of tech review in May of 2024. I’d addressed all tech review feedback by July. The book was now more or less out of my hands, with the next steps—copy editing, layout, indexing—managed by the publisher.

At this point all target dates started shifting wildly and weren’t being communicated to my editor (who naturally didn’t have information to share with me).

I didn’t receive copy edits until January of 2025 and it resulted in my having an argument with the publisher about the removal of some text. I won’t go into details, but in correspondence with my editor I summarised it as “some sort of privileged old white dude ‘no politics’ both-sidesism bullshit platitudes”. Plus, hello, January?? wtaf.

In March I was having to nudge people to get any sort of word about when the book would go through indexing and layout. Also in March, people were reporting that the book was already available from Amazon. As far as I knew, it wasn’t even ready to be printed. The publisher told my editor and me that the book would be out in April.

It turns out the book was done but no one had told me. They also hadn’t told me that the publisher was changing distributors. This was leading to some shops (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) having the book while others still weren’t showing it as in print.

Finally, the publisher announced it as in print on April 10th. I wasn’t told in advance that this was going to happen, so I pretty much missed my own book’s birthday. Meanwhile, people out there in the world had posted pictures of their own copies that had arrived weeks prior.

Fast forward to today, in October. According to the dashboard in the author portal, my book has sold zero hard copies. None. Which is, of course, inaccurate. But the new distributor still hasn’t paid out my publisher, who won’t update the dashboard until they’re paid. They also won’t pay out any royalties to the authors. Not all of their authors are caught in this limbo, only a few of us.

Having to deal with this on top of so many delays is completely demotivating. It’s a good book, with a lot of valuable information that’s well-presented, and I can’t even bring myself to promote it. I’m just sick of the entire ordeal. Dealing with all this nonsense sapped my energy and left me dry. At the same time, I’m carrying around this deep sadness that all that work feels like it’s coming to nothing and that my book isn’t going to be the helpful resource that I’d hoped.

Anyway, that’s the tale of the cursed book. I’ve finally captured it so I can revisit this story the next time I get it into my head that maybe writing a book would be a good idea.