Well, I was overdue for a grumble, I suppose, so here I go again!
Epiworld is now listed on Amazon, WH Smith, Blackwells et al, but now there's a problem with the book's thumbnails on Amazon!
I had a brilliant and very kind review for it on Amazon.com http://tiny.cc/u8kho and when I emailed Keith with the link he said, oh, nice, but the cover looks a bit out of focus (he would!) and when I clicked for the larger image I realised he was right. Now here's where it gets complicated, so bear with! I emailed Amazon's author central help at both .co.uk and .com and they said oh, yeah, it does a bit blurred: .co.uk referred me to the search inside team (they're the ones who deal with setting up the image so you can look inside the book) and .com said we can take off the image and you can upload a new one. Now typical me, by this time I had uploaded a jpeg of the front and back cover for search inside as well as a pdf for the content and guess what, that image was even worse, caused, said Keith, by me sending them too low a pixelated picture.
OK, I hold my hands up, I copied the front and back cover thumbnails for Look Inside from the Lulu site and used those, at which Keith called me all the daft mares under the sun, they're too small, and why didn't I ask for his help? And he wants to know why Amazon ask for dpi levels for the images when dpi is for print not for the web, they should be asking for pixels - anyway, it's all over my head, I thought pixels were those funny little fairy things you get in Devon (it's piskies in Cornwall, apparently)
I didn't ask for his help for three reasons:
1. He's pulling his hair out over our holiday video he's turning into a DVD
2. He's trying to sort out images for me to send to Library and Information Update magazine who have agreed to do a short piece about the book
3. He's decided to put in a new loft hatch in the small bedroom and was busy with tape measures and knocking holes in ceilings!
So he set up another file for me to upload and I'm waiting for them to let me know if it's OK and hopefully it will sort the blurred Look Inside cover on Amazon.co.uk. Fortunately they hadn't set it up yet for the other sites. But you'd think they'd've said to me look your image is too naff for Look Inside, send another, only they didn't! (Abbie's Rival's Look Inside is blurred as well but I'm not going there, that's likely my fault, too...)
Meanwhile there's all this confusion going on between me, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk about who's responsible for helping me, and somewhere along the line I got the impression from a reply by .com that they were telling me I have to apply for Look Inside for all sites separately as .com and .co.uk are separate companies...at some point the American search inside team emailed me and asked me what I was taking, I've already submitted to Look Inside...
What I don't get is why the thumbnails are out of focus anyway when they're OK on the other sites!
Anyway, at this point the situation now is I emailed .com to say OK take off the thumbnail I may have a better one to upload, but I have resubmitted a new Look Inside file which I hope is a better resolution, please can you tell me whether it will overwrite the new thumbnail? And do I have to upload separate thumbnails for each Amazon site?
Awaiting reply if they haven't all committed mass suicide.
And all this is because I know diddly squat about image files!
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