Caution required when testing Amazon's self-publishing system

Learning a new system can be a pain. You're bound to make mistakes first time round. I certainly did. But the biggest was over the publication date Amazon automatically assigns to your book. This date cannot be changed - but there is a workaround.

In truth, once you get used to it, Amazon's system is relatively straight forward. But it's getting used to it that's the key.

Once you upload your book, put in your description and so on, you then take the brave step of hitting the publish button. That button steals today's date and hammers it into your book's Amazon page forever.

But if you were only testing the system, trying to learn it, playing with it to see how it all works, including publishing your book even though it's not finished yet, then clicking the unpublish button when you're done, you'll be stuck with that publication date forever. Six months later, you upload your final final redraft only to find the publication date is six months out.

No matter how many times you unpublish and republish, your publication date will never change from that first time you hit publish.

So when testing the system, don't put in the real title of your book. Instead, put in a fake title like Test Book and then upload and publish your book as normal, including the cover with the real title on it. Then you can unpublish and republish that as often as you like.

Once you are happy with how it looks, click unpublish on your Test Book and then leave it alone until you want to play around with how your next book looks on Amazon. To publish your real book, add the book as a brand new entry by clicking the 'Add new title' button and go through the cover and book upload all over again. For book description and other fields, you can copy-n-paste from your Test Book to a text file on your computer and then in your real book entry, copy-n-paste from the text file back into those fields.

Here is how my Bookshelf looks, with my Test Book and my real book, The Record Count of Westminster.

To my Test Book I added the subtitle: Not for publication - just testing the system

Believe me, doing it this way will save you a lot of hassle later.

If you haven't done that and are stuck with the wrong publication date, then don't worry - there is a workaround. However, to keep this blog entry short, I'll explain that tomorrow.