There was a mistake…

Whoops …

It was embarrassing. The link that I had sent to everyone who had supported me, didn’t do what I had expected.

A month earlier …

It was October, and Business Analysis Wisdom had just been published. It was available online at Amazon.com, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it, and … the CreateSpace eStore.

CreateSpace, the company that prints Business Analysis Wisdom, had two major distribution channels – Amazon and their own eStore. And in the eStore, authors were able to create their own discount codes. Which I did. For 25% discount.

I wanted to thank everyone who had indicated that they were interested in following the progress of Business Analysis Wisdom.

And to do this, I sent an email to these wonderful people with a link to the book in the CreateSpace eStore and the discount code. The offer was valid for 1 month.

3 weeks later …

We were now into the middle of November, and I decided to send everyone a reminder that the offer would only be valid for a short time.

Then two days later, I sent a reminder to those who hadn’t opened the first reminder. I’m not really into that pushy sales stuff, but I was new to this and was excited…

The bomb dropped …

The final day of the offer had arrived. I entered the URL for the CreateSpace site so that I could cancel the discount offer.

And I couldn’t find my discount codes on their site anymore. I searched and searched, but to no avail. There was nowhere where I could cancel that code anymore. In fact, I couldn’t get into the eStore anymore, either.

I clicked on the link that I had sent out. It opened up on the Amazon page! Thinking that I  had made a mistake, I hunted down the original link that CreateSpace had given me and clicked on that… Amazon, again.

I couldn’t see any mention of this “problem” on CreateSpace’s website, so I went to Google…and found a blog post by someone who talked about CreateSpace shutting down their eStore at the end of October …

What the … ?

It seems that CreateSpace had decided to focus on one distribution channel – Amazon. Now, this makes sense to me, but it also meant that for the last 3 weeks, the CreateSpace eStore link that I had sent to my loyal supporters, was just pointing at Amazon.com.

And there, the discount code would not work.

And I had been sending out “reminder” notices.

After initially using a variety of words that are best not repeated here, I started to feel awfully embarrassed.

What Now?

Stern emails have been sent to CreateSpace. And many unhappy/angry/crying emojis were used.

And an apologetic email was sent to my supporters.

I’m also looking at setting up a prize draw. One of the people who have indictated that they want to be kept up to date with the progress of the book, and the upcoming titles, will win a free copy of my book (the physical version). I will send it to anywhere in the world.

This contest will only be for the “early supporters”.

I’ll be arranging further competitions in the future. If you want to be able to be part of these, click on the button below:

Keep me updated! .