The Official Release of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition of The Weird Accordion to Al is Being Postponed For Bullshit Technical Reasons
I have been looking forward to July 27th, 2020 for the last couple of months the way children look forward to opening presents on Christmas morning. Because that was going to be the magical day when three and a half years of hard, joyous work would finally pay off with the official release of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition of The Weird Accordion to Al.
If all went according to plan, I would press the “publish book” button on Amazon’s self-publishing system and after an hour or two the book would go live and be available for purchase all around the world. Looking back, I’m not sure why I assumed that everything would go according to plan. In hindsight, that was unbelievably naive and ridiculously hopeful considering that, if life has taught me anything, it’s that nothing ever goes according to plan, particularly important things like book launches.
Yet I nevertheless assumed that the launch would go off without a hitch and that by noon on July 27th, my book would be on sale at Amazon and I could start promoting the holy living shit out of it all over social media and in the three, yes THREE articles I published on the site on Monday to promote the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition of The Weird Accordion to Al’s all-important publication day: an excerpt from the book covering Al’s 1985 long-form video The Compleat Al, a blog post encouraging folks to buy the book on its first day of availability and a Big Squeeze entry on the song “Hooked on Polkas.”
So you can imagine my chagrin when I pressed “publish book” at 7 AM on Monday and when I checked in throughout the day it was in an indefinite limbo state called “In Review” where it’s not live and not available for sale but you also can’t make any changes.
I found myself in a dilly of a pickle: I’d published a bunch of articles hyping the ostensibly concurrent release of a book that did not, in fact, end up getting released on that day or the next. Today I found out the reason why: it has something to do with the formatting of the cover file and while I hope to fix that as soon as humanly possible I honestly cannot tell you conclusively if that will be today or tomorrow or Friday.
So instead of being in a place to sell hundreds of books in a single day the way I did the first day the original version of The Weird Accordion to Al went on sale, I sold literally ZERO books on Monday.
The old me would be despondent over this turn of events. I would be overcome with anxiety and depression and self-loathing over having blown my book’s release date. I wouldn’t be able to focus on other work because my brain would spend the whole time yelling at me for being a self-defeating idiot.
Thankfully I’ve learned a little something about perspective in my forty-four years on the planet so while I am, as you might imagine, very frustrated that I wasn’t able to make my publication date I’m choosing to see it as an unfortunate setback that I will deal with accordingly and not something to despair about.
That’s the tough thing about publishing a book through Amazon rather than a traditional publisher: you’re dependent on a sometimes glitchy system and rather than having a concrete publication day Amazon starts selling your books once you’ve cleared all their hurtles and not a second earlier.
Kind-hearted patrons have waited two long, obscenely eventful years for me to finish researching, writing, refining and perfecting a FIVE HUNDRED PAGE MAGNUM OPUS covering every facet of Al’s career with humor, heart and insight. I’m hoping y’all will be willing to wait two more days as well.
It will be worth it! That’s the Nathan Rabin promise!
You know what to do! Get a signed copy of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition of The Weird Accordion for just 23 dollars, shipping and tax included directly from me at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop Offer only valid in the domestic United States
or you can buy it elsewhere at