How to Choose a Vendor – a personal decision

happy-sad-facesI self-published my latest book Dirty Little Secrets because I wanted to get the book out quickly. It was like a deamon in my heart – needing to come out and almost virulent in it’s ability to take over my soul.

Needless to say, when it came time to choose a way to put the book into print, I was committed to finding the best. The problem was, there is no way to get a book published world-wide through available POD printers here in the States. One POD house gave me great capability in the U.S. and in the technosphere. One POD house gave me capability in bookstores and in the U.K. but not in any other country.

OK. So I compromised. For those folks who were able to find my www.dirtylittlesecretbook.com site, I hired someone to do non-U.S. fulfillment and get the books out.

But then I got a bit of a shock. One of the publishers – the one I like the most and who have given me fabulous, incomparable customer care – has a less-than-adequate product and the print job and paper are sub standard to my personal specifications. They are trying to fix it, and are in caring contact, but it’s like trying to fix the Titannic once it’s afloat. The other publisher has a higher standard of print, but give absolutely horrific customer service, and every time I deal with them I get a stomach ache.

What is a client to do? Unfortunately, in this case, I am choosing the publisher I dislike because I owe my clients, and my book, the best possible quality. But I am annoyed about it, and resent having to use them. They communicate badly, don’t make it easy for us to order – or order correctly – and we have to keep calling them to find out if we got it right, and then discover we didn’t and the order is still sitting in their in-box because their technology was unintelligible.

I sure wish I had an alternative to them both. Can’t I combine them and get the publisher of my dreams? Good product AND good service? Anyone have any other ideas?

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3d-DLSRemember: Thursday is the last day you can purchase Dirty Little Secrets and get the freebies from: Tony Parinello, Jill Konrath, Anne Miller, Lee Glickstein, Lee Colan, Mitch Gooze, Jim Altfeld. And stay tuned: I’ll be announcing a call-in coaching program soon for folks who want to learn Buying Facilitation™.

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