So my latest book, Firmament: No Man released last week. Things, of course, did not go smoothly, although certain aspects did, and I’m grateful. But here are just a few of the things that went wrong:

1. Worst and foremost, the Firmament series website is down, and has been for about a year now. We have investigated and tried to get help multiple times — so far our only progress is figuring out that the domain seems to have been stolen but then locked down in limbo before it could be sold. So I’ve contacted multiple people trying to get it back with no help whatsoever so far. It’s been extremely frustrating.

1b. Leading up to this release, I decided to buy another slightly different domain to put the site on in the meantime so I could still send people to it. Bought the domain. Tried to change the site over. Apparently it should be a simple process, but it’s not working. A couple people have looked at it and also haven’t been able to get it to work. Again, extremely frustrating after all the work and money I’ve put into the site!

2. The ebook apparently released with random gaps in the text. Nothing missing, thankfully, just places where it skips to a new page for no reason. We can’t figure out why, and I tried and failed to fix it myself, but my formatter seems to have fixed it now.

3. I sent out a newsletter about the book pre-order but I accidentally forgot to change the subject line from the last time I sent out a newsletter (which was a long time ago because of OTHER technical difficulties) — so a few of my subscribers got an email claiming there was a free book available when that was not the case. I canceled it and sent out a correction, but yet again — frustrating.

I keep bemoaning all this to my husband with the words “I feel so unprofessional!” I try so hard to do a good job and do my very best with this whole book-publishing thing, and yet I always fail (sometimes through my own fault, sometimes not). And — as you may have heard me say — I get FRUSTRATED. Because now people will think I’m UNPROFESSIONAL. They can’t visit the site that’s listed on my books because it’s down and I can’t make it not be down. They get emails with false information. They have to endure weird gaps when they try to read.

A few years ago, fellow author Jason McIntire wrote a guest post for my blog called “The Reason For the Typo.” In it, he talks about the frustration of authors who go back in their previously published works and find typos staring them in the face. I know this feeling only too well (Just a few days ago I was reading Firmament: Gestern to my husband and found a brazenly misplaced quotation mark.) But Jason points out that these typos can actually be a good thing — they keep us humble. They remind us that our work is not and never will be perfect. Only God’s work is perfect.

I want to remember that rather than focusing on the humiliation of feeling unprofessional. Because you know what? I am unprofessional. I’m not a full-time working author or publisher. I’m a mom just stumbling through this, trying to bring joy and provoke thought by sharing my stories with others. Excellence is a good thing to strive for — but being kept humble is good, too. Just like my publishing process, my stories aren’t perfect. I will always do my best — and I will always have many failures.

So to you, readers, I’m sorry for my mistakes. But I have the feeling that I’m much more impatient with myself than any of you are with me. For that, I am grateful. And I am also grateful for the reminder that I, in fact, do not have to and cannot be perfect. In anything. Ever.

It’s a very freeing thought.