Sparkly Retail Death- Reformatted and Re-released!

So, a few weeks ago I put my short story "Sparky Retail Death" on a free promotion on Amazon as part of my KDP Select agreement that I signed with Amazon. I was happily watching the sales go up and watched my story climb the free charts (making it to number 32 on the short story list) before I got some startling news. Someone had reviewed my story! (This was not the startling part). He'd given me five stars and I was giddy as I began to read...then my heart plummeted. Part of the review said, "There were some typos, but I easily looked the other way as this story was good from start to finish." Typos!? Typos? Where? What? How? I am not one of those people who uploads a story without a second thought. No, I edit my stories, re-edit them and then I send them on to an EDITOR who continues to edit my story.


I understand a few things get lost in the mix. Heck, I have read some of my favorite authors' books and noticed a typo here and there, but how were there enough typos in my story to have it mentioned in a review? I quickly bought a copy of my story and opened it and my heart went straight into the pit of my stomach. The formatting was a disaster! Somewhere between my finished copy and the uploaded finished copy on Amazon there had been a horrible mistake. All the apostrophes had turned into quotes. My story looked like a piece straight out of the nightmares of editing in college. Back in those classes you would always get a piece that made you wonder, "why did this person become a writing major?" Anyone who has had to edit one of these stories knows what I am talking about.


Well, me being me, I started to panic. It didn't matter that this reviewer had ended his review with "Jill B. Zimmerman, please keep writing!" All I saw were the typos (formatting errors). Over 200 copies of my story had already been purchased and the number was rising. I quickly took it off of the free promotion and began trying to find a way to fix my formatting. After about 2 hours of frustration, I gave up and e-mailed Amazon. They were great! It took a while but they told me how to fix the problem and now my story is back up and, as far as I can tell, error free. 


So, long story short, I may not have gotten a new story up yet (soon, I promise) but my other stories are available for purchase once again. Tomorrow I will begin a two day free promotion for "Sparkly Retail Death" and anyone who already purchased the error-filled copy can hopefully re-download it. If not, leave me a comment on here and I will find a way to rectify the situation.


Thank you for your patience and happy reading!
~Jill B Zimmerman~