Originally Posted by Hitch
Of course. That's not the issue--the money--it's the TIME. The 4-edit lady wanted them TODAY. After everything we'd done, on the original production (I'm not kidding--3 guys worked 36 hours straight, to get their books done), plus the revisions then, which we ALSO did seriously faster than we normally do--and I warned them, that wasn't the norm--and then this, today. The same people that didn't publish the books right away. So, now, weeks later, they are STILL unpublished, and because of their cycles, they want the edits--today. I said no. I'm sorry, but I realized, mid-conversation, that she's a pusher. She's just the kind of person where fast isn't fast enough. She has to dominate you, make sure that you do the impossible, EVERY TIME. I would hate to lose a customer, but in this case...I might be okay with it.
The other guy? Same thing. Sent in his edits a week ago, which aren't really 117 edits; it's 351 edits, all in. Even a really fast editor can only do ~20 edits/hour, whether in INDD or in HTML (slower in HTML, BTW). That's 17.55 manhours--two days of one person's time. Two DAYS. We're slammed right now. I just don't have 18 hours of one person's time, or didn't, in the last 7 days, to dedicate two days to this one client. Simple as that. We put edits in, in-between other work. So, say Jane is working on 3 books, over the course of two days--typically, that's from 6-18 hours of work (fiction). She works two hours on Book A, and rather than moving instantly to book B, she takes an hour and does edits on Book C and maybe even Book D. She puts them up to QA, and once checked, those go out. We TRY to do normal edits (under 20 edits) in 2-3 days. That's what we say we'll do.
We don't say that we'll do 4 edits same-day. In fact, we pretty expressly say that we won't. Nor do I ever say that we'll dedicate two man-days to edits, because you screwed up and published your print and ebooks WITHOUT proofing them, and now you're embarrassed. We'll get them done--probably this week--so that you'll have your books in, say, 10 days from the time you showed up with this small disaster on your hands.
It's not ideal, but we're SO busy right now, I'm having trouble delivering books remotely "on time." (Another lovely issue--we tell people, ~8 working days, give or take, for your typical fiction eBook order, right? In the T&C document, we TELL THEM in no uncertain terms," this is an approximation. Stuff happens, people get sick, etc." But, if we run a moment over, well....)
I don't like a paying client waiting that long--I don't. Even for edits that shouldn't have happened. BUT, we are slammed. It's not like I keep spare bodies laying around, just in case someone screws up and we have a book with hundreds of edits. I can't just put on temp people, because then I'd have to check their work, every edit--and checking those would take just as much time as doing them in the first place. And lastly, I don't have two days' of time, to just do them myself, either.
It's simply one of those things. When a client screws up, and has that many edits, it creates a massive burden on us (which, Wodin, they don't pay NEARLY enough for. For eBooks only, we do those edits at $1/per. Typically, it almost covers the actual hourly cost of the work. Yes, before you say it, we're likely doubling that rate for 2018, because of this type of crap. I went to a fixed-per-edit rate, for the ebooks, about 5 years ago, because we had SUCH a problem with collecting the editing fee invoices, if people got those AFTER they received their books--and honestly, I hate holding a client's books hostage unless/until s/he pays us for the edits. PLUS, when you invoice hourly, there's a fight, every time--well, nearly--over how long editing TAKES. Nobody will believe that 20 edits in an eBook takes an hour, or that uploading a book at the KDP to make sure that the fonts are working takes 30 minutes. The other plus is, when you have a fixed price upfront, the client can see, before they send in the sheet, how much their edits will cost.)
{sigh}. Lately, it seems that all I do is come here and bitch about this stuff. Sorry. Thanks for listening.
Hitch
|