Technical Difficulties
Things have not been working as planned. I'd intended to have the re-release of "Red Star, Yellow Sign" as a standalone e-book done by now. However, things have continually been cropping up to delay it, from unexpected tasks to be done to computer issues.
The latest problem is an issue Amazon is having with their database. Apparently there's a glitch somewhere in the giga-normous amount of code that makes their digital storefront operate, and books have been randomly vanishing from Author Central listings and ceasing to show up on searches, although existing direct links to them still work.
Thankfully this is not an act of malice, although in some ways it's likely that it would be easier to deal with the damage caused by a hacker than to track down whatever erroneous code is at fault. Especially if it's very small, like a single misplaced semicolon amidst several million lines of code, it may be a nightmare to track down.
So I had to go through all my books and check Author Central to see if they were available. As it turned out, two of them have disappeared, so I had to figure out how to contact Amazon and let them know about the problem.
Since so many people's books have been affected, Sarah Hoyt put up an extra-long promo post, and is delaying the weekly writing challenge until Wednesday. I'll probably do the other two Sunday writing challenges tomorrow, since today has been hectic for other reasons.
In the meantime, take a look at some of these books that are caught in technological limbo, not because of any deliberate attack, but because there comes a point where code becomes so complicated that it's impossible to keep track of every single aspect of it, and by its nature even a very small error can have big consequences.
The latest problem is an issue Amazon is having with their database. Apparently there's a glitch somewhere in the giga-normous amount of code that makes their digital storefront operate, and books have been randomly vanishing from Author Central listings and ceasing to show up on searches, although existing direct links to them still work.
Thankfully this is not an act of malice, although in some ways it's likely that it would be easier to deal with the damage caused by a hacker than to track down whatever erroneous code is at fault. Especially if it's very small, like a single misplaced semicolon amidst several million lines of code, it may be a nightmare to track down.
So I had to go through all my books and check Author Central to see if they were available. As it turned out, two of them have disappeared, so I had to figure out how to contact Amazon and let them know about the problem.
Since so many people's books have been affected, Sarah Hoyt put up an extra-long promo post, and is delaying the weekly writing challenge until Wednesday. I'll probably do the other two Sunday writing challenges tomorrow, since today has been hectic for other reasons.
In the meantime, take a look at some of these books that are caught in technological limbo, not because of any deliberate attack, but because there comes a point where code becomes so complicated that it's impossible to keep track of every single aspect of it, and by its nature even a very small error can have big consequences.