It was quite exhilarating to actually hold a physical copy of my novel in my hands. For years, I dreamed about it. I couldn't wait to start handing out promotional copies to get it into people's hands. What I should have done was taken the time to inspect it better. Now I need to get some changes made.
First I noticed that the title page was on the wrong side of the sheet. In a traditional novel in our culture, you can open the book to the title page and the title will be printed on the right hand side. For my novel, it was on the left hand side. Okay, I thought, that's odd but it's a relatively minor thing.
It was not minor. Instead, it was a symptom of a larger issue. All the pages were moved to the wrong side of the sheet, i.e. off by one page. All the pages were there and otherwise laid out well, but the page numbers were in the gutter (the side nearest the spine) instead of the outer margin.
Since this is my first novel, I will assume that I screwed up. When I approved the layout, I did so online instead of looking at a physical copy, so I didn't notice. I'm also the one who put together the electronic form of the novel for submission, so that is probably where it happened.
For the moment, I have a message to Barnes and Noble Press to see what I can do to fix the issue. My hope is that I can just make the paperback version unavailable for a very short time, upload a new file for the contents, and then make things available again. Fortunately, I have yet to do my promotion plan and haven't spent any money on that.
I will chalk this up to a learning experience. I always tell people that when things don't go smoothly it makes for a better story. I will have to heed my own advice.
Update - Fix in Progress
The fix is in progress. It should take about 72 hours for the updated version of the paperback to be available at the Barnes and Noble website. Fortunately, the ebook version is still there.