Fred Arrived At The Stroke of Midnight Which Is 8:00 PM EST

I’m late sharing the good news here, but my children’s book, Fred The Coconut, went live on Amazon KDP on Friday, June 26th— Fred has been published!! 🌴🥥👍😊

I mentioned in my last post that I’d been working on a website to support the book, and that, too, is now live. It’s got some fun stuff, and you can check it out here.

I still have some revisions and tweaks to make, but it’s good to be up and running.

Here’s a little Amazon publishing quirk that might amuse you.

I had originally set a publication date of May 29, 2026, then decided I needed more time and pushed it back to June 26, 2026.

About a week before publication, I found myself wondering exactly when on the 26th the book would go live. I did some googling and learned that all of Amazon’s scheduled releases go live at 12:00 AM GMT.

In other words, at 12 midnight, Greenwich Mean Time.

What the heck is Greenwich Mean Time, you ask? It’s the yearly average (mean) solar time at the Prime Meridian (0° longitude) in Greenwich, London.

From 1884 to 1972, GMT was the international standard for time zones around the world. It still exists, but the new standard (since 1972) is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) which is measured by atomic clocks which are more precise.

You can read more about the history of GMT here.

So how does all that tie back to Fred?

I’m in New Hampshire, USA, and that puts me in Eastern Standard Time. I found a site with a World Clock Converter which indicated 12 AM GMT was 8:00 PM EST, meaning 8 PM the previous evening.

Would it really happen? I wondered.

I received the following email message from Amazon at 8:22 PM EST on June 25, 2026:

So there was a bit of a delay, but it timed out pretty close.

There you have it— your arcane trivia for the day: Amazon KDP scheduled releases go live at midnight GMT— local delivery times will vary.

Please take a look at Fred’s Amazon book page and see what you think. I’d really appreciate your opinion, and thanks for all your support! 🙏🥥😊

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About Mark: I’m an illustrator specializing in humor, branding, social media, and marketing. My images are different, like your brand needs to be.

You can view my portfolio, and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Questions? Send me an email.

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