I was supposed to have
a book release today.
I had scheduled it
months ago,
had set up pre-orders
and promotion
for it.
Then Amazon announced
today and yesterday
were Amazon Prime Days.
Amazon Prime Days
are the equivalent
of a Black Friday.
There are massive sales
and a lot of traffic.
Things go terribly wrong
on Amazon Prime Days.
New releases are cancelled.
Pre-orders are lost…forever.
The site often goes down
or is extremely slow.
Reporting is usually a mess.
That’s a stressful environment
for my readers (customers)
or for me (the business builder).
So I changed my release date
to the previous week.
Readers received the book (product)
a week earlier.
I didn’t have to worry
about Amazon’s site going down.
Amazon didn’t have
that additional strain
on its systems.
It was a win-win-win.
But that only happened
because I evaluated the situation,
realized it was a disaster waiting to happen,
and I reacted quickly.
Many writers didn’t react.
They’re now posting about
their release being a mess
and their readers are
extremely unhappy.
Learn what a disaster
looks like
in your industry.
Try to spot those events
as early as possible.
Then work to avoid them.