[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

I could have sworn we threw that idea back/forth years (?) ago when we were discussing the expanded FAQ + instructions + a potential "priority" support fee.

I genuinely don't recall talking about providing them with destructions on making their own gravy, but in reading Dag's suggestion, it occurred to me that explaining, in some detail, in a generic document, what they'd have to do to make edits in their ePUB/MOBI might serve me in another way--showing them that there's no such thing as a "quick" edit, not really.

Then you expanded on your extensive email macros for answering everything under the sun... because you get the same questions a million times a day. And then you informed me of the people not even clicking on the instructions... let alone going into an FAQ to find answers themselves.

Yes. This was, in short, a real bummer. We have ~100 different articles in the FAQ, mostly about self-publishing itself, and several hundred canned responses that live in our customer service system. The only way folks seem to be happy with the information is if it shows up in an email. It doesn't matter if we've pointed them to the FAQ article on the topic, which is identical to what we'll send them--the information is only good enough if we go through the mechanics of pasting it into the email and hitting "send." (n.b.: too sad, too, because one of the reasons that I settled upon Desk.com for our CS system, way back when it was Assistly, was because you could "leverage" your faq. You could build an FAQ that people could search, AND, you could pull your articles from that FAQ automatically to respond to questions in the email system. I thought that was bloody brilliant until my childish hopes and dreams were crushed by the cruel reality that nobody reads. <sigh>).

You just shot down all my brilliant ideas with your customer support reality.... because the reality is, these people's eyes just glaze over and all your well-written hard work gets tossed in the garbage.

Don't feel bad. I was pretty crushed by the realization, too. Particularly as, being pig-headed, I'd spent hundreds of hours writing all the damn stuff.

Side Note: It reminds me of people who write instruction manuals. Am I the only one here who actually opens them up first thing and reads them? I need to learn how to actually use the device before plugging it in!

I suspect we are in good company here. Most of the people in this neck of MR (bookmakers and such) strike me as instruction-readers, too.

The latest story I can remember was when I purchased a dehumidifier. Instruction manual says in big bold letters: "Place at least 15 inches away from the wall". Guess where someone wanted to place it right after plugging it in... right against the wall, jammed in the corner.

Most people just plug and play contraptions, and never even touch the instruction manual (probably throw it away with the box).

I'm constantly confounded by the non-existence of manuals for things. The dreaded new keyboard, for example. There are, obviously, functions that are pre-programmed into this thing, in some combination of keyboard keys. Damn if I know what the HELL they are. There's some bizarro-world caps-lock thing, that drives me insane at least 5x weekly. Would it have killed them to put the damn manual online, at LEAST?

I don't understand why people have decided that instructions are worthless. I don't know whether to blame Steve Jobs for this or not, as I (obviously) can't know if people were like this in, say, the first half of the 20th century. But they DAMN sure are that way now.

(n.b.: Yes, I would agree that by definition, I tend to get clients that don't RTFI, because otherwise, they'd be trying to make their own books, or would know how to use Word. By and large, they don't. So, yes: my view is skewed by my own experience.)

And, yes, I was "bad," because I didn't search the Bug reports before whining about Dueling Mimetypes--so I'm guilty of the same thing that I'm bitching about.

Hitch