Today, I self-published my 16th book, my eighth in the Zachary Gagewood Mysteries. Over the last decade, I’ve found a way to take the stories in my head and distribute them to a small, but loving, audience, and the process has almost become routine for me.

Not so with this latest book. It was quite a surprise to receive a message saying my book couldn’t be published just yet.

I self-publish through Amazon, and until recently, I had published my paperback versions through the Createspace program and my ebooks through Kindle Direct Publishing. I had always thought that it was rather odd that there were two separate platforms for publishing bound and electronic books, as it caused difficulty connecting the two versions on Amazon’s sales pages.

A few months ago, Amazon announced that Createspace was going to be absorbed into KDP, with authors able to publish their books via one site. It was wonderful news to me, as I often had to take an hour or more making sure my manuscript was ready for both formats (A PDF file for paperback, a Microsoft Word document for ebooks). Now I could do it through one format.

As I looked through the information I had to put in, it looked similar to how it had been done before—a few minor differences, but still easy to navigate. On Sunday, I loaded my manuscript and cover files for Murder at the Frybread Contest and figured that was all he wrote, no pun intended.

I received word a few hours later that the ebook was available for sale, and I went to bed figuring that the paperback was not far behind. I woke Monday and checked my email. Instead of an email confirming the paperback had slid through Amazon’s magical doorway and was now available for sale, too, Amazon sent an email saying it couldn’t publish the book because there was a spelling error on the title.

If I’d been leaning back in my chair like they do in some cheesy comedy, that would have been the moment I lost my balance and crashed to the floor. I don’t throw my covers together in a rush. In fact, many times I’ve designed a book cover before the first word is written. I often revise the cover over the eight- to nine-month period when I write a book, and I painstakingly look over everything to make sure it’s ready to go. I’ve had two or three times when I received notice that one of the cover images was low resolution (below 300 DPI), but never something where Amazon said they could not publish the book.

Needless to say, I opened my cover file right away to find the spelling error. I spelled my name right (that would have really been embarrassing). I spelled the little tag at the top that indicated the book was a Zachary Gagewood mystery right. The big title itself was spelled correctly, so what was the problem? I surmised that maybe an editor over at Amazon was dickering over whether “frybread” was one word or two, so I figured I might as well resubmit the cover and see if that was the case.

During the day, I wondered why an alleged spelling error in the title was preventing the paperback version of Murder at the Frybread Contest from being published when the ebook had sailed through with no problem. They were one and the same. If it was the “frybread” spelling, it should have raised red flags with both versions.

I got home from work a few hours later and was greeted with a new email. Same issue. Okay, maybe it’s not the one editor. As I wracked my brain to figure out what the issue was, I decided to hop on Facebook to take a breather. I had noticed that there were comments on one of the marketing posts I’d made on various author publicity pages. One comment said it sounded like a fun book, but that I should probably fix the “Gagwood” mistake.

I brought up the cover file again. “Gagewood” was correct. I was confused, as the same cover I was looking at was the cover everyone could see on Facebook and Amazon. Then it occurred to me to check the Amazon file for the book. Sure enough, when I was typing in the information, specifically whether the book was part of a series, I had typed in “Zachary Gagwood Mysteries.” The good folks at Amazon believed that “Gagewood” was the error, when it was really the file info that had been misspelled.

Ugh.

I fixed the error in the file, resubmitted the whole shebang, and I awoke this morning to an email that said—finally—that Murder at the Frybread Contest was available in paperback. After three days of confusion and an occasional curse word aimed in Amazon’s direction, I finally had my 16th book published.

So this, boys and girls, is why spelling is important.