When you do something creative, you open yourself up to absolutely, positively every type of criticism known. Such is the nature of the Beast. Through the years, I’ve accepted rejection and pushed on. Though sometimes it was harder than others, wallowing in self-pity is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Asking people to read a novel is quite an undertaking. Let me just say a thanks to all who have read or intend to read My Life As A Retail Pharmacist – A Fictionalized Memoir . Listening to a new song, critiquing artwork, or visual entertainment is almost instantaneous. You form a immediate opinion. Reading takes time. So I wanted to make sure I expressed my gratitude. Hope it was time well spent for all.
So after you receive enough rejects to wallpaper your house, you self-publish. Pretend you hear lots of imaginary fireworks exploding. The dream becomes a reality. Then your first sale. It’s all good. I have Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) on my favorites and click on it to see the Reports of books sold, borrowed, and, yes, even REFUNDED. Since that word is in capital letter,s you can only imagine where this is going.
Yes, I experienced my first REFUND. Talk about the cluster fuck of self-pity. Wow! It sucks. When you receive a form rejection letter from an agent, publisher, or some other schmo you thought, hoped, and prayed might help you advance in some way, however small that may be, it’s hard. Sometimes, you actually READ the rejection and come to find out the letter doesn’t even correspond to the submitted piece. Then, you just light that fuckin’ piece of paper on fire and watch that baby burn, realizing the person who sent the reject was a complete moron. But, this. Did I say it sucks?!
In my dismay, I read the reasons KDP may allow refunds. And with a few frantic e-mails to ‘contact us with questions’ I was somewhat – but not much – comforted to learn that refunds are usually offered for clarity issues, wrongful purchases, and the dreaded ‘circumstances that are deemed necessary’ or something to that nature. Okay, I’ve worked retail long enough to know that means a pissed off, unhappy customer. So, I’m just banking on the fact that since the refund was within a close time frame to a purchase, I was the wrongful purchase or clarity issue. Don’t judge my coping technique, okay.
Then I went to the KDP Community. A bitch fest for all us self-published writers that are experiencing the same thing. Here, I was comforted. Especially when I read a New Thread Post from an author that ‘decided’ she liked refunds because “refunds were better than a 1 star review”.*
Those positive-thinking people are good for something, eh?
*she wasn’t able to get her star to paste either
