About once a day or so, it seems of late (April, 2018), I see a post in the KDP Forums, with a self-pubbing author lamenting that for some weird, indecipherable reason, his book upload just "won't work."  He tells the tale of how he did everything he was supposed to, and his latest upload just does. not. work. What on earth could be wrong, he asks? What's a poor publisher to do?!

Is That a Reflowable eBook In Your Pocket, or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

99% of the time, what transpires is that Alfred Author originally published a fixed-layout eBook, using Kids Book Creator or Kindle TextBook Creator, and lo, he's discovered that for his particular book, it was a disastrous decision.  Not being (too) slow on the uptake, he decides to fix the situation by doing what he should have done in the first place, and he creates/makes/pays to be made, a reflowable eBook. Hooray, right?  Well, no, wait, oops...when he goes to upload Book 2 over Book 1, it won't go. He then gets an email from Amazon, which tells him the problem—but he can't quite wrap his head around it.

In short, once you have uploaded one  type of book, you can't plumb that bob again.  Once a fixed-layout eBook, always a fixed-layout eBook, and vice-versa.  Now, you may shrug—no big deal, right?—but some authors come to the realization that they've uploaded the wrong book type, late in the game. Their existing book has reviews and sales rank that they want to keep. Alas, their only choice is to remove the existing book from sale, and put the new book format on sale, as a new book. All that sales rank, all those reviews, are simply lost.

So, while my subheading is joking around—it's no laughing matter. If you're not sure what type of eBook format your book needs, ask someone who knows. That "who knows" does not include self-appointed gurus that post anonymously on the Internet. If you can't tell who someone is, don't take their advice.  (And I mean that about everything, not just publishing, mind you.) It's easy to be an anonymous jackass on the Net, and anoint yourself "God Expert of Everything," but there are plenty of not-anonymous posters out there (like yours truly) who will be willing to give you actual, valuable advice.  

The same is true for authors that publish reflowable eBooks, and then realize that they need Fixed-layout. So don't go wildly into that Publishing Night—take a little light with you, so that you can see and know where you are going.  You don't want to be like our example, Alfred Author, losing reviews, sales rank, etc., because you realize too late that you published the wrong type of book.