Another Massive Pubit Fail and a #ROW80 Update

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Part 4 of my Tome About Promo For Indies to make a Public Service Announcement.

In a Fail that makes the keyword screw up (still not fixed, btw) seem like small potatoes, last night, many Pubit authors, myself included, became aware that our books were marked as Public Domain (and all the keywords had disappeared–annoying but since mine never worked in the first place, that isn’t as big a problem).  We sent out a Twitter blitz announcing it to others (I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of that today) to go check their works listed on Pubit within the Dashboard for each title.  Of course I immediately went in to correct it.  Of my two titles, last night Devil’s Eye was the only one affected.  I updated that it most certainly was not public domain, and saved, republished.  Tried to go back and re-enter keywords for both titles, but naturally the system crashed.

I went BACK this morning to check my sales, and went all the way into the listings again to check, only to find that BOTH my books were AGAIN marked Public Domain.  I fixed it again and have posted on the Pubit Help Boards to help get more folks aware.  Those who have emailed Barnes and Noble about this issue have been met by silence.  Not sure if that’s obstinacy on their part or if they’re just THAT far behind on their tech support (which, frankly, would not be a shock).  But either way this is so far into Unacceptable Territory, it’s not even funny.

Now as far as any of us can tell, there isn’t anything on the actual LISTING page that the customer sees that states public domain, and of course, there is the full copyright page within the files themselves, so I’m not precisely sure how this truly affects us, but it is a Problem of Epic Proportions–a glitch that seems to have snuck in while they attempt to fix other glitches (the sales reporting, the keyword issues).  Here’s a tip, Barnes and Noble, beta testing on live authors and customers is a really crappy business decision.

Anyway, go check your books–I’d say daily or multiple times a day at this point.  And email Barnes and Noble to let them know that this is not okay.

On a ROW80 front, I can report that on Sunday I wrote 341 words (I now take weekends off, so that was a bonus).  Monday and Tuesday I didn’t get diddly done.  But I have really really good excuses.  On one hand, I received the tragic news that my oldest friend’s fiance died yesterday morning.  It was very unexpected and she’s devastated and that totally takes precedence over writing.  On the other, I also have some Really Big News that I hope to announce later today or tomorrow.  So I claim Brain Explosion and say that this week, my focus is going to be on writing the last scene for the anthology story, and writing a LECTURE for my Learning and Behavior class.  Not on my usual list of goals, but I have 4 of them left and I’m running out of lead time.  I’ve been so so SO busy at work, that I haven’t been able to sneak in any work on them there and they MUST BE DONE.  So I’m taking another week’s hiatus from Red to finish them so that they’re DONE and no longer hanging over my head.

13 thoughts on “Another Massive Pubit Fail and a #ROW80 Update

  1. Yeah, mine were fine last night (minus keywords). I log in this morning, and all my titles are suddenly Public Domain. Not Cool. When I try to fix it, I’m met with the same error I got last night: We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please try again later. We apologize for the inconvenience.

    Keep apologizing, B&N, keep apologizing. My works are NOT Public Domain and I am seriously ticked that stuff gets rearranged and deleted and messed about with without my consent or knowledge. And, to add insult to injury, the inability to FIX it myself.

  2. This is totally unacceptable. I’m beginning to wish I had left everything with Smashwords. They are customer service oriented. Are they perfect? No. But they’ve fixed a lot of issues that caused us all to go to B & N in the first place. Just too late. 🙁

    Kait, I’m really sorry about your friend’s fiancée. That’s just horrible, and it definitely takes precedence over writing. I think you’re doing great considering what’s going on in your life.

  3. Kinda glad they won’t let the rest of the world join in now. They seem to have rushed this out too soon.

    Looking forward to hearing your big news. 🙂

    Sorry about your friend, of course that’s more important right now.

  4. The B & N snafu is total crap.

    Very sorry to hear about your friend’s loss. I’m glad you’re there for her.

    Totally understand taking time off from writing to get everything else out of your head so there’s actually room in there for some good and focused writing.

  5. Crap. I fixed mine last night (thank God for Twitter) – just one was marked wrong, but I’ll check them again, I guess. What the heck?

    Horrible about your friend’s loss.

    Best of luck with your big news.

  6. I noticed this on my book last week, only because I was going in to add a review blurb. I figured it was just something crazy that I’d done (forgotten to enter keywords, checked the public domain box), but I guess not. Very odd.

  7. Well, on the writing front, you’re still writing, sounds like you had to deal with some other projects (lecture, for one) that got Shelved. You certainly can Not shelve a friend. And, the B&N “Public Domain” shuffle isn’t something you can shelve either.

    All things considered, I’d say you handled the first part of the week really, really Well. “Red” will be there tomorrow 🙂

    Hugs, and it’s good you can be there for your friend.

  8. I’ve just been trying to find out more about pubit. they dont really say much on the web site about copy rights. will my book still be my own or will all writings posted on pubit become there’s. (where I lose the right to remove it or sell my story to any one else)

    1. Pubit is just a distributor, exactly like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Program. You retain full rights to your work and are free to remove it at any time, as well as to sell through any other distributor.

  9. If you read current postings at the Pubit forums, lots of indies there are complaining about numerous problems including their payments for sales not being sent to their banks and the Pubit people not answering to emails. Some of them are saying they haven’t been gotten a single payment after months of selling their ebooks through them. It’s not just a few indies saying these things but an alarming number of them. So you can add these problems to the incorrect catetgorizing of copyrighted works as being “public domain”. They may have fixed that problem by now but these other problems make it sound like the company is either struggling or they don’t have enough employees.
    Sounds a little scarey to me.

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