Evening all,
I'm battling the rage! Today I had a number of things I wanted to do. Namely edit more of the final draft of the new book, quick blog, post some stuff on Goodreads and add my books to Kobo.
What have I achieved as I sit here at 7PM? None of the above. Why? KOBO SOFTWARE!!!
Months ago I went to the trouble of uploading a version of The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe to the Kobo bookstore and then forgot all about it, presumably because it's miles easier to do it via Smashwords which does all the hard work for you. I recieved an email the other day from Kobo saying I'd sold a couple of copies of Jazz Cafe. So I thought, sod it, I'll upload the others. How hard can it be?
I kid you not, I have very nearly hurled my laptop through the front window. On two occasions I've had to leave the room to do something else to avoid smashing my fist through the screen, it's that bad.
The pages on the author bit of the Kobo site take an age to load but the actual adding of book info is pretty straightforward. Until you want to upload your book file. Because Kobo uses Epub I decided to upload the Word Doc file which the site then converts. Of course you want to check it's okay first. So you download a preview version. But nothing opens epub files! I tried Mobireader which I use for all my publishing and that wouldn't do it. I downloaded Adobe Digital Editions and the book looked awful, totally unreadable so I have no idea how it will look on a real Kobo.
I know I thought, let's use the Kobo desktop software! AAAAAARRRGGGHHH!! It won't open it's own epub file, downloaded from it's own website!! And it's the slowest thing I've ever used in my life. So I've given up. Life's too short. If you do have a Kobo, and I'm sure the actual ereader device is lovely (it has to be better than the website and desktop software) then you can buy any or all of my books thanks to Smashwords. Just search on the Kobo bookstore and there they are.
Incidentally, I noticed that one of the two people who has bought the Kobo version of the Jazz Cafe gave it a 2 out of 5 rating. Which is fine, though totally at odds with all the 5* Amazon reviews and 5* Goodreads reviews. I can't help wonder if it's because when they opened the book it looked horrid, poorly formatted and was hard to read. If this was the case, I apologise, but the book looks great on Kindle and in paperback. I know because I've seen it. Sadly, owing to the vile Kobo software, I cannot check how my own books look.
Ahh, I feel a bit better now. Right I'm going to have some tea and then spend the evening editing my book. It's a Word document so I'll view it using Microsoft Word. It just works! Bloody rotten Kobo.
Just to finish on a positive, the new book should be out (even on Kobo) by the end of the week.
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