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Originally Posted by ElMiko
FWIW, this is precisely what I had in mind when I said I'd seen instances in which i felt the resident gurus/cognoscenti would be justifiably indignant and less-than-forthcoming with assistance. That is to say, "client" isn't an ipso facto dirty word. As you seem to be reasonably suggesting, it's the word "client" in conjunction with a grey-scale determination of the quality of the question that determines the righteousness of the request for help.
And, again, to be clear (and this is kind of in response to DD, too), I can't really get overly worked up about people withholding help, since there's no sense in mandating generosity, much less mandating excessive generosity. I do, however, wonder if it isn't a waste of one's time to chastise a guilty party. As I asked, what exactly does one achieve by calling out a moocher here (taking, in this case, that moocherdom/ism/ness/ation as a self-evident fact)?
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ElMiko:
@Actually, I never said I wouldn't help a fellow professional; nor did I say I wouldn't help an amateur. However, this instance, with RalphieDee, was actually the second or third occasion--different threads--upon which this arose. He had asked for very basic (I mean...I can't even describe it properly, what's less than basic? Novice?) questions about making an ePUB, and then said his "client didn't want..." yadda yadda yadda. That was the first thread upon which I, and I think Wolfie and some of the gang, said--"WT(Heck)?," and declined to assist him at that point.
Then this thread came up. Somewhat ditto. I didn't rip the guy a new one, generally--I said, learn how to do it and
then start charging. When I got a bit vexed is when exaltedwombat said that I was being professionally selfish. I'm still waiting to find out what EW does for a living, because I'd like to structure an analogous hypothetical situation and see if he'd go for it, when it's
his paying work. Again, I'm not looking for a flamewar, but it's easy-peasy to say, "well, you should help that guy because to do otherwise is SELFISH."
My issue isn't "helping." I've been helped here. I've helped others here. What I haven't done is try to bootstrap my utter novice-dom by using MR brains to get a client to pay me, when I was freaking
clueless on what to do. When I first started ePUBs, yes, I was ePUB-clueless; but I'd been making MOBI's for about a year for money, and the year before that for NOTHING. I at least understood how to export a Word file (and other word-processing files, PDF's, etc.) into HTML, clean 'em, etc. I struggled with CSS for ePUBs, because that was new to me. People here helped me. But I at least had some fundies. And, FWIW, not that this makes me a saint, I did
not charge those first 6 poor bastards who were my guinea pigs for ePUB. I charged them "MOBI" prices only, and struggled through the ePUB side
on my own nickel. (And back then, it wasn't ePUB-->Kindlegen magic, either.)
Granted, this isn't surgery, or rocket science, and people won't die if we bollox it up, but it's still my profession. It matters to me if it's done well, or if flim-flam artists or scammers or whatever decide to populate the field, because then not only do I have to compete against them (and they're invariably cheap), but I have to fight against the impression that they create, or the bad taste that they leave in people's mouths. It's not freaking fun. If anyone here is a car mechanic, I'll bet you know what I'm talking about!
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Sure, he went about it the wrong way. But how did WE learn? Hands up anyone who planned a career in eBook design, chose a school, studied and qualified, joined a guild with trade secrets and THEN found their first job? No, an opportunity arose, we thought "I can do that!" and learnt on the job. And remember, if it's going to be a paid job, it has to start that way. Work once for free, you have to for ever.
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@exaltedwombat:
No, I didn't. I didn't start out on some guy's dime. I did books for free. I made dozens for my own Kindle, starting out with plain text files from PG (oy), then moved up to making mobi's from Word files, and then, after a year of making books, started charging when an Edgar-winner asked me to do his. That started a whole flood of books, and then when B&N started to be real, I bit the bullet, downloaded Sigil and struggled through a CSS class, and then, yes, I asked questions HERE, doing about half-a-dozen ePUBs for
free, while I made the accompanying mobi's for the then-usual money. (LOL, about $75 back then! Ye gods!). Seeing my own lack of knowledge, I contracted with a guy from here, who helped "learn me some CSS" while we made ebooks together. I didn't charge some client to learn on his dime;
I paid someone, after those first 6 books, to ensure that the client got what they paid for.
This is business. It's not some fly-by-night joyride, where everybody does whatever the hell they want and stick it to the clients. That's my position on it. While the world has internships, and apprenticeships, the basic premise behind that is that someone who knows what they are doing is overseeing your work. That's not the case here, unless we all think that we're the overseers for this guy's work, or guys like them. In an apprenticeship, the employer gets the dough, and the apprentice gets his (much smaller) wage. That's not the case here. The only "payment" we're getting is the purported satisfaction of helping someone, but we don't know the actual details of what's going on. I don't want the responsibility of trying to oversee this guy's work.
Really, @EW, would you be perfectly happy to go have a brake job on your car, and pay full boat, to some guy who was getting instructions on how to change out your oil filter, on the internet? Do you want to go to a gourmet restaurant, when the chef is out sick, so the waitress pitches in and reads the recipe over the internet, getting "help" from Allrecipes.com's forum? Or, hey, how about a DENTIST, with his iPad up on the little tray table, getting info from total strangers on the Internet? Should you pay full price in those scenarios, or, would you, instead, think that you should be entitled to a discount, at LEAST? C'mon, you know damned well in your heart that that's
exactly what you'd think.
You're dismissive of this, because you know how to do it, pitched in and helped someone, so, hey, it's not a big deal. But somewhere out there is some poor schmuck who hired this guy in good faith,
believing that he knew how to do what he said he could do.
Sorry, to me, it's just
wrong. I guess I'm stupidly old-fashioned that way. I have had craploads of OJT in my not-short life, but bygod, I was earning every penny I made while I learned, because I had expertise in something
else at the time.
I mean, taking this argument about "OJT" to its extreme, what the hell, let's just do away with colleges and universities altogether, and have everyone learn WHILE being paid! Why should those poor students have to PAY to be educated? How unreasonable! Yes, it's an extreme, but it's precisely the same argument (which is how you logically test arguments--by going to extremes to determine the fundamental soundness of the arguments). Can't wait to have my first OJT surgery or dentistry.
Done now on this topic, please.
Hitch