As you all know, I’ve been hyping the Souls & Shadows box set like crazy over the last few months. At long last the day came—July 16^th, and the book went live.

Except…it didn’t. Not on all platforms. It went live without incident on Apple, Nook and Kobo, but there was a quality control issue at Amazon and they took the book down. Everyone who pre-ordered received a three-page placeholder file.

No big deal, some of us thought. I know I’ve discovered issues after I send a book to publish and I make the fixes and republish it. It takes maybe twelve hours (although this can vary). So when those of us who were talking amongst ourselves—anxious authors, you know!—we were worried but not concerned. I figured they would upload the right file, and it would get published by the afternoon of the 16^th.

Yeah…not so much.

Instead it took three days for Amazon to fix the glitch. Even after they verified they had the right file. Even after they said it was being published. Even after…so many things. It finally went live on Friday morning and even then it still had a quality issue warning box, although Amazon confirmed there was no quality issue. To make matters worse, they did not push out a revised file to the pre-orders, leaving people with a three-page file and a dearth of options. Some (like myself) were able to resolve the issue by contacting Amazon’s online chat, but that didn’t work for everyone.

For anyone affected by this, I apologize. It has been unbelievably frustrating for everyone. It’s a Murphy’s Law situation and it seemed for a while that no matter what we tried, nothing worked.  For those who bought the file, whatever you did, whether you returned it, called Amazon, or threw up your hands, it doesn’t matter. Thank you for your support.

The good news is that we made a late run at the USA Today list and – ta da – we made it! I don’t mind telling you that Friday, Saturday and Sunday were super stressful and a blur of posting, ads, party page postings and cross postings all to get the word out.  I am super pumped that despite all the setbacks, we got there. It’s been exhausting but in the end, we got there. Again, thank you all. None of this is possible without friends and fans. From the bottom of my heart, thank you thank you thank you.

Claire Davon