This is The End!

[Paul Whybrow]

I’ve been immersed in bundling eBooks, Print On Demand Paperbacks and Audiobook versions of my five Cornish Detective novels. This has been even less fun than it sounds, owing mainly to the lack of guidance offered by Kindle Direct Publishing and ACX. It’s been a case of submitting each bundle and see if it’s rejected. With ACX this means waiting at least a month.

By comparison, KDP is quick to respond, but equally dim-witted. As an example, I uploaded my crime series as a box set—a hefty 1,495 pages, which was fine in digital format, but was bounced back to me as too large in paperback whose limit, I was advised, is a maximum of 828 pages. There’s no mention of this anywhere on the Kindle pages. I'm rebundling the series as two box sets.

Sorting out the pagination for the original bundle was tricky and time-consuming. Should I start at page 1 and continue on until I reach page 1,495? Or, should I number each book separately? I chose the first option.

All of this effort revealed something shocking. While navigating my way through a manuscript, I typed The End into the search box to find where a story ended. Lots of examples of ‘the end’ were highlighted...40 of them in this particular novel. Checking the other four titles, I found I’d written ‘the end’ 25, 70, 35 and 38 times.

Conversations, roads, storms, lives and meals, all came to an end. Admittedly, there are other ways of saying something is no longer happening, but some are too fancy and wordy.

I always check for repetitions when editing a story, but I hadn’t ever thought to look for ‘the end.’

Fancy scaring yourself?

Type The End into your search box!

How many times have you used it?

 

[CageSage]

My problem isn't that end, but it is buts ... but there are many other turgid words that want to hang around and bloom.

 

[Steve C]

Found 14 in 115k words in my novel. Seems reasonable but not sure.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

ADDENDUM:

As proof that I’m not as observant as I like to think I am, while bundling audiobooks I was confronted with a glaring error which I should have noticed before. After all, I’ve edited the manuscripts of my crime series hundreds of times, yet somehow, I failed to notice that in the second story I’d titled two chapters ‘Intelligence’.

You twit, I thought, and carried on bundling, only to discover that in Book 4 I’d also called two chapters ‘Intelligence’! This was not very intelligent of me.

At least I’m consistent in my idiocy, but it left me with a dilemma. Changing the title of one of the chapters to, say, ‘Information’ and the other to ‘Clues’ is relatively easy in KDP with the eBook and POD Paperback, as approval only takes a couple of days at the most. But, altering anything in the audiobook, even if it’s only one word, means that it’s removed from the shelves of Audible and resubmitted for scrutiny by ACX, which takes at least a month. My audiobooks are selling and, it seems, attracting a following who are working their way through the series. It would be foolish to remove two of them.

Thus, I’ve decided to make my mistake a style, by always having two chapters titled 'Intelligence’ in future stories.

It’s said that “You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear,’ but it will have to do for me!

 

[Robinne Weiss]

It's not a bug, it's a feature! I reckon in the audiobook, no one will notice the repetition, because they won't be able to go back and look at it--there's no TOC to browse.

 

[Hannah F]

ADDENDUM:

As proof that I’m not as observant as I like to think I am, while bundling audiobooks I was confronted with a glaring error which I should have noticed before. After all, I’ve edited the manuscripts of my crime series hundreds of times, yet somehow, I failed to notice that in the second story I’d titled two chapters ‘Intelligence’.

You twit, I thought, and carried on bundling, only to discover that in Book 4 I’d also called two chapters ‘Intelligence’! This was not very intelligent of me.

At least I’m consistent in my idiocy, but it left me with a dilemma. Changing the title of one of the chapters to, say, ‘Information’ and the other to ‘Clues’ is relatively easy in KDP with the eBook and POD Paperback, as approval only takes a couple of days at the most. But, altering anything in the audiobook, even if it’s only one word, means that it’s removed from the shelves of Audible and resubmitted for scrutiny by ACX, which takes at least a month. My audiobooks are selling and, it seems, attracting a following who are working their way through the series. It would be foolish to remove two of them.

Thus, I’ve decided to make my mistake a style, by always having two chapters titled 'Intelligence’ in future stories.

It’s said that “You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear,’ but it will have to do for me!

Sounds like a cunning plan!