{"id":3996,"date":"2015-06-30T10:20:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T15:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=3996"},"modified":"2015-07-06T11:08:42","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T16:08:42","slug":"mea-culpa-mea-culpa-and-someone-elses-culpa-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=3996","title":{"rendered":"Mea Culpa! Mea Culpa! And Someone Else&#8217;s Culpa Too!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>(See the update to this post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/2015\/07\/06\/get-your-updated-blood-diva-from-amazon\/\">here<\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Gentle Readers:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Did you download a freebie of<em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Blood-Diva-VM-Gautier-ebook\/dp\/B00MKM072W\/\">Blood Diva<\/a><\/em> during last week&#8217;s freebie extravaganza, or anytime since December 2014? If you did, you may find a few small but significant errors, for which I apologize (profusely and on my knees). <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">You will be able to get the corrected version free from your &#8220;manage my content and devices&#8221; page\u00a0(but you should probably wait till Wednesday, July 1st for the changes to go live <\/span> You will be able to get the updated version soon. Apparently this is a process that involves my pleading with Amazon.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>How did this horrific thing happen? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em><!--more-->Blood Diva<\/em> had been on Net Galley prior to publication. Shortly after publication, I heard from three separate readers that I had some small but important errors in information and\/or spelling\/translation related to opera.. I alerted my formatter, who fixed them.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Why do I use a formatter? Can&#8217;t anyone upload to Kindle? I use a formatter because he can do it better than I can, especially because I have an old Mac, and a buggy version of Word. I do it because I want my work to look and be professional.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Then in December, a reader made me aware of a few small typos. I alerted my formatter again. He fixed the typos. I proofed his work and saw the typos were fixed. All was right with the world! <strong>Except <em>(cue the music from Germont&#8217;s first entrance in La Traviata)<\/em> it wasn&#8217;t!)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The 5-day free extravaganza of last week went really well, <em>(Thanks for asking!)<\/em> <strong>BUT THEN<\/strong> A participant contacted me yesterday about some errors she found. Guess what? <strong>Those were the errors that had been fixed in September! <\/strong>I died a little inside.<\/p>\n<p>Once I got back to solid form, I backtracked and realized what happened. The formatter had completed the December corrections I&#8217;d asked for, BUT \u00a0on an older version of the file that did not have those really important September corrections about which I had been alerted by several readers! <strong>Those corrections were lost.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This issue is only on the Kindle for-sale copy, not the paperback \u00a0nor the special mobi-review copy. That means that some of the reviewers read the correct version, and may have recommended a work they thought was in better shape than it was. Extra apologies to those reviewers!<\/p>\n<p>As soon as I figured out the problem, I sent a note to the formatter. He immediately made the corrections. The update is currently &#8220;in review&#8221; and should be live soon.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of readers won&#8217;t notice these errors, but the ones drawn to the book BECAUSE of the history and especially the opera connection, might. <strong>So I am begging your forgiveness.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lesson learned. While the mistake was the formatter&#8217;s, I am responsible. The errors should have been found and corrected before the book was every published in any form. <em>(My proofreader knows less about music and opera than I do, which hardly seems possible)<\/em>. <strong>I also should have checked the entire work back in December before re-uploading BECAUSE mistakes like this are likely to happen when dealing with multiple versions and multiple files.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I have contacted Amazon and asked them to &#8220;alert&#8221; readers that there is an updated version.<\/strong> It seems like something they only do when the errors are a really big deal for most readers. What&#8217;s a really big deal to you or me, may not be to them. It&#8217;s more likely they&#8217;ll simply decide to allow you to upload the updates through manage my contents and devices. If they aren&#8217;t doing that, I&#8217;d advise you to contact them and ask them nicely.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px;\">Thank you for not murderizing me. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Best regards,<br \/>\nVM Gautier<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(See the update to this post here.) Gentle Readers: Did you download a freebie of Blood Diva during last week&#8217;s freebie extravaganza, or anytime since December 2014? If you did, you may find a few small but significant errors, for which I apologize (profusely and on my knees). You will be able to get the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=3996\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mea Culpa! Mea Culpa! And Someone Else&#8217;s Culpa Too!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[107,71],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3996"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3998,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions\/3998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}