The Final Word: Yes and No

18 days ago, I found out that my book covers were AI created without my knowledge. The artist told me that she had done the art herself and then created it against Fiverr's guidelines, causing my copyright to be rejected by the U.S. Copyright Office.

I started a customer service ticket soon after that. They cancelled the order on book 2's cover, which I could have done myself, but they refused to refund the first cover, as it was out of their 14-day "grace period". When I continued to ask for the cover refund, they gave me store credit worth less than the cover even cost and a promo code. After five customer service agents, Fiverr has marked my customer service ticket as complete. Their solution:

They finally gave me back the money for the first cover! However, they refused to refund me for the fees it cost me.

Here's a breakdown of what this cost me:

• $134.20 - first cover

• $223.66 - second cover

• $75 - file revision uploads to IngramSpark (printer)

• $70 - copyright registration ($65 for registration plus $5 shipping to Copyright Office)

• $36.35 - unsellable books ordered

• Total: $536.21

Of the $536.21, Fiverr refunded the first cover ($134.20) and the second cover ($223.66). They refused to give me what it'll cost me to reupload the files, reregister the copyright, or order more books. That's a total of $181.35 out of my pocket.

I'm not giving up on The Otherfolk or Beyond the Wall, even though I got pretty close to abandoning BtW altogether. $181.35 isn't going to stop me, even though that's a lot for a young self-published author - and neither is the postal service taking forever to deliver my manuscript, or my work schedule, or anything else I'm going to run into. I'm still doing my best to pull every string I can and get Beyond the Wall with a real, honest, beautiful cover in your hands on November 14th.

So, with the decision to keep the Nov. 14th date comes a few things to look out for...

• The first chapter release right here on my blog by next week.

• My new, better cover reveal on my blog and Instagram within two weeks - done by none other than my best friend Talitha!

• Revamped Meet the Characters on my IG.

• The Otherfolk's new cover.

• Info about a launch party on publishing day, open to everyone.

That's all for now - stay tuned and write on, resonators.