[Hitch]

Well.

Life's been swell here, lemme tell ya.

First, I get a person who wants us to make an eBook from a game he designed, using an online game-making SAS system. It's a "choose your adventure" type game.

I take a look at the gaming system/software, and it's heavily text-based. Now, we can't use javascript and all that, but we can use links. So, okay. I explain all this to the prospective client.

He comes back with a sort of heated response--I'm getting lectured here--as to how eBooks aren't keeping up with the tech, yadda. (Whatever). Then he proposes that I do some sort of "hybrid" deal with him...he says he's "too rusty in my programming skills..." (oy. This is always "warning, warning! Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!") to do the work himself. He further lectures me about how his wife is an educator, blabbety and so on. And how he had some decades in education, as well. Then he lectures me all about how "retailers like Kindle" are so behind the times.

So his proposal is, apparently, that we "join" with him in the development. (I had three of these, this week, alone. I guess nobody notices that we don't have the word PUBLISHER on our website...)

So far, most of this is just...water, meet duck's back. I get a LOT of these. A bunch. Not usually this heated, so early on, but...hey. NP, right?

I respond, and I lay out all the issues that surround app development, if you're trying to work with a client that's not in your immediate state. The wireframing, the development of the graphic understanding, more blabbety, and how customers always want to know "how much" going in, but that before the app development aspect, the "how much" can't be known. I tell him what I've seen, in terms of numbers, what we have to spend in terms of time, video conferences and the like, just to get to the "how much" point.

And we don't hear back from him, after that.

But lo...that's not the punch line. We look him up (I forget why, TBH).

Spoiler:

And first, we stumble across a battery arrest, for throwing acid in a woman's face. (uhhhhhhhh....) He asserted self-defense, and I don't know the outcome here. My Queen of Customer Service continues, now, because...well, wouldn't you?

and then...(I bet you already see this coming, don'tcha?)

Spoiler:

He is a registered SEX OFFENDER. Yup....kids.

Thus, I'm all for taking the "never heard back" option.

I had another doozy this past week, but I'll have to leave you with that one, as I'm not sure that I had one to top it. Not this week, anyway.



Oh, the other doozy, the last two weeks or so--doesn't compare to the other guy, but...:

Spoiler:

I get a guy who wants me to do a "personal conversion" for him, of his copy of Poor Charlie's Almanac...which is in copyright, EVERYWHERE.

I told him that while I don't have a personal objection to format-shifting, as a pro, I can't risk that type of thing. I didn't even have any real way to discern that it was, indeed, his book, as all I saw was a godawful scan from print. I told him, nicely, that I really couldn't risk it; even if we had, from that file, it would be in the 4-digit range, to format to our standards, and I recommended that he continue his Calibre efforts, and do the nitty-gritty clean-up himself. I mean...I don't want ot turn down work, especially in the summer, which is slooooooooooooooow, but still....

<sigh>

Hitch