[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

When I was self-employed in a different field, this strategy worked well. It's not working at all with this business.

That's a function of the business you are in and the clients you deal with. It does not come as a surprise.

Believe it or not, I had a job not dissimilar to this, in the late 70's, early 80's. I gave it up primarily due to the folks like her, that sadly, didn't leave the company.

For the most part, I was happy there. The big part was figuring out my boss was a stress puppy, who needed to be in a nervous tizzy to function. If there was nothing to be nervous about he'd unconsciously create something so he could behave in his accustomed manner.

But he wasn't technical, knew he wasn't technical, and relied on me for that. (Indeed, I once threw him out of the computer room because machines misbehaved in his presence. "But I just wanted to ask..." "If you stay here, something will fail. I'll come see you!") When he had a technical need, he assumed I would do the research, and present him with specs for what he needed to buy, at the best price that would do the job. He didn't try to second guess me. His sole concern was getting the President of the company to approve the budget.) I also ghost wrote some of his correspondence because he thought my English skills were better than his.

What I object to is the cognitive dissonance of "well, I'm going to be my own PUBLISHER, take charge of all of this, pay for everything (me: "...") myself and keep the profits myself" coupled with "I suck at sales, and I refuse to read up on the topics I ought to, to call myself a publisher, or even anything CLOSE." I truly don't understand the refusal to learn what you need to know to run the business you've undertaken (publishing).

Like I said, ignorance and wishful thinking.

Yes, but that's the thing, isn't it? They don't think of it as a hobby--they want to be PAID for it, but don't want to do what that part entails. Twice in the life of this business, I've created "self-publishing checklists" that have lists of typical publisher tasks, and suffice it to say, every time I give them out to clients, they disappear. LITERALLY. The amount of real work involved freaks them out.

And beyond that, even if you do the work, success is unlikely.

I tell folks about stats I saw from the ABA back before the Internet Ate the World, and all publishing was traditional and print. There were over 50,000 titles a year, nearly a thousand a week, being published in the US. Who would buy and read them all? Most were not bought and read. The failed to find an audience, died on the shelves, and got returned for credit and remaindered. The publishers were all betting enough titles would sell to cover the losses on the ones that tanked, and make them enough money to remain in business.

Now we have the Internet and self-publishing, and it's more like a thousand new books a day. The same question and answer above applies, but the bar has been enormously raised. You must write an excellent book. You must do a lot of work to get it into a decent form for self publishing. You must do an enormous amount of work to promote yourself and your work, and let the audience that might be interestrd know you exist.

But most of all, you need a benevolent deity to work a miracle for you and give you a giant economy sized helping of luck. You will not be lucky.

But frightening away some clients with such a checklist might be a feature, as they are likely the ones that will be the most trouble.

I don't hold out much hope that I'll ever come up with a reasonable way to say "10 emails is enough," or whatever metric we use. It's a weird one; it's not a problem I've ever run into, or not known how to address, in any other line of work.

I don't think there is a reasonable way to say it. All you can do is continually reiterate than this is your business, you are at any time working on multiple projects, and you don't have time to handhold and be instantly available to all clients, all the time. At some point, you simply have to say "This is the tenth email you've sent me today about stuff you should have found out before you contacted me. I don't have time. If you keep this up I'll tell you to find another service and stop working for you."

The real trick is getting a feel from the initial contact which folks will be problems, and responding "I'm sorry but I'm fully committed, and can't take on new clients at this time." I'd also keep a list of major problem children to say that to if they come back for another project.
______
Dennis