[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Naivety is situational, and stems from lack of knowledge. We are all naive about something. Your experience comes as no surprise to me because I've been watching the process for some time. I expect the folks at the vanity presses back in the print only days could tell similar stories about clueless clients.

Thanks--I appreciate how neatly you let me off the hook, there. ;-)

I did manage to not say "Larry, take two Xanax and call me in the morning."

I was once so aggravated about Mr. X's drama (I mean, he could scream in ways that I didn't even know had been invented, I s**t thee not.) that I told him if he DIDN'T take two xanax, I wouldn't be in the following day--or EVER again. Bygod if he didn't at least shut up.

I told Larry "You have a mysterious power to cloud machine's minds. They fail in your presence."

He should have been delighted. Usually, becoming The Shadow takes years of difficult training, after all.

But the computer room at the shop had been built out before I came on board, as fast and cheap as possible. <SNIP> There were some incoming cables where we never did discover what they connected to.

Been there, done that. In fact...I fear to look behind my main CPU as I type this. Probably have that scenario right now, sorry to say.

No, you don't care, nor should you. You aren't editors or publishers concerned with quality or material and whether the book has a prayer. You are paid to put whatever it is into a form suitable for electronic issue. With luck, you can mostly avoid even reading it.

(A late friend was a copy editor on the Penthouse Magazine "Letters" volumes. He commented that typesetters are trained to connect fingers to eyes, and don't normally actually read what they set. He could tell when a tale grabbed a typesetter and they actually read it because errors in the galleys would soar. I said that was a consequence of typing one handed. )


Not just publishing. Film, music, and TV are similar.

Mostly, we don't read them. We obviously can't, not and finish them in a reasonably productive manner. And some--well. Let's just say, it's better if it isn't sticky. The tale about the Penthouse setters is amusing, thanks for that.

And I'm philosophical about the stuff I consider crap that becomes bestsellers, because the money those books make makes it possible for the publisher to issue the literary stuff I like to read.

I don't even CARE about tripe becoming a best-seller. Twifright? 50 Shades of Dreck? Good-o. After all, let's not forget: by all meaningful measures, fully HALF of the population is below-average. They want reading material, too. This thought helped me reconcile myself to the idea of purportedly grown women being emotionally involved in crap like "Team Edward" or "Team whatever guy." So...good for the crafters of dreck.

I looked. Well done.

Thanks--I'd love to take credit, but mostly, that's a store-boughten template. Because I'm terminally cheap, I ended up doing scads of the work myself, but I still had to hire out all the Joomla customization. (Wanker CMS, let me just add that. Utterly crackpot ways of doing things.)

But it sounds like you are well enough established now that you might be able to afford to scare off some clientele. It's no longer a matter of "OMG! I need every client, now matter how much of a PITA they are, to keep my head above water."

You certainly won't want to do it as often as you might wish to, but as mentioned, you have to draw a line somewhere.

I've definitely become more savvy at simply cutting off customers that are unsuitable, no matter whose fault it is. Some simply need more than we provide--that's hardly anyone's fault. Some...we just don't gel. No click. But I've learned how to catch on to this sooner, fortuitously.

If all it does is make you feel better to have an understanding ear at the other end, it's worth doing. If it gives ideas for things you can try, even better. You're more than welcome.
______
Dennis

Thanks. As I said: I mean it.

And, a big THANKS to Badgood Deb, Charlie and Free. ()

Hitch