Our friend Ron McDaniel over at Buzzoodle just published his first book, and he did it through the self-publishing tool at Amazon.com.
The problem: Many of the first 100 books sent to Ron were flawed. Minor stuff like scratched book covers and smudged ink, but enough to warrant a call to customer service. If you click here, you'll get a rundown of his experience and the lessons he learned about how "the little things matter."
I just wanted to add a few things to his list:
- The added hassle that Ron had to go through soured an otherwise effective customer service experience. Its strange to me why some companies insist on creating hassles for their customers.
- Why did they do it in Ron's case? I'm guessing they are hoping that their request is so burdensome, most authors will not want to spend the time and just forget about ordering replacements.
- This was, as Ron points out, just a "little thing" out of his overall experience, which sounds like it was positive. But now look at what has happened: He blogged about it, and now I'm blogging about it. So now the little thing has snowballed into something bigger. Granted, Ron and I aren't Hannity and Colmes (we're both better looking than Colmes, by the way) but we are two voices that are complaining about a little thing. And in my opinion, that's a big thing.
Want to order Ron's book about creating buzz for what it is you're selling? I recommend it. Click here to order it online (guaranteed to me scratch and smudge free).
