[Hitch]

Originally Posted by nadabutamor

So, Hitch,

THANK YOU so very much for yet again honest reply. You've always managed to give me a slap in the face that I'm not an expert or as experienced in the field of ebooks as you. You've formatted over thousands; maybe, even more, books so it's safe to say that you truly are the extravagant expert in all things ebook related.

Thank you so much for the honest reminder.

I agree that I may be a novice and not as experienced as you or the thousands of formatters out there, I have a lot of questions and I make a whole lot of mistakes but isn't that a learning experience? I enjoy this work and making clients happy with the simple books I put together for them.

I may run into some errors here and there, and that's the reason why I'm asking a forum about it. For feedback, for help, for support, for all of us to learn from each other. Isn't this what forums are here for?

So thank you for confirming that changing the font won't do anything. I've always appreciated your honest replies, so thank you once again, I hope you have an amazing rest of the week!

Everyone needs experience. My point is, and always is, there's a huge difference between gaining experience, charging to gain that experience, and then...what's the best word for this?...telling the client something that flatly isn't accurate. That's my point.

If you think I'm the only member here who gets exasperated at seeing post after post, from inexperienced bookmakers who are charging people to make books, you're wrong.

I don't care if you format books. I don't care if you need experience. I do care if you are charging people while you are learning. You think I'm being a d*ck, fine. But what you're not thinking about is how may utterly unqualified formatters out there are taking money from people and turning out utter sh*t, then coming up with these excuses and stories, about how it's "the device" or "the format," etc. And here's my bitch about it:

It gives "formatters" a bad name.

I just, just had an email about this, this morning. I received a forward from a writing mailing list, of various self-pubs, and there was a thread about some author "looking for a formatter." The horrifying number of replies, about how "ALL" formatters are incompetent THIEVES, because so-and-so paid some guy that did X, or couldn't do Y, or who lied that their eBook couldn't do Z, makes me sick to my stomach. It's not bad enough that every bloody Tom Dick and Harry thinks that formatting is word-processing, but THIS gets added into the mix, and I might as well be trying to make a living in a mountain of faith healers.

You say, "...I make a whole lot of mistakes but isn't that a learning experience?" Sure--but you're CHARGING people to do this. Like all people that are new to something, you don't know what you don't know. You didn't know about this issue with line-heights (due to descenders, by the way), which most formatters wrangle with, inside of their first 3-5 books.

I mean, seriously, do you think I CHARGED people, for the first 10 or 20 books I made? I most certainly didn't. I made books using Project Gutenberg raw material. I made them from txt files. I made them from HTML, etc. In order to learn how to make the books correctly, before I ever charged a dime. Even when people asked me to make books, early on, when I was just giving people free help on the DorothyL mailing list, of course I didn't charge, because, to make my position clear, people have zero right to charge for ANYTHING, of ANY KIND, if they don't have EXPERTISE in it.

Sure, it's "just" book formatting. It's not Rocket Surgery. It's not Brain Science. It's "just" formatting, but this effing attitude that it's okay to NOT KNOW how to do something properly, but charge for it, boggles me. When the hell did this become the norm?

Would it be okay for some schmoe to show up at your house, in response to an ad you ran, asking for a painter, a plumber, an electrician, charge you and then when something goes wrong, say, "oooh, oops, well, I'M JUST LEARNING?" This absolutely slays me. I suspect you'd be irate if someone did that to you--but that's exactly what you're doing to this client--a client that WANTS Dropcaps, and you're going to tell him/her that the "device can't do it."

Sure, you're not blowing up his house, or exploding his toilet, or putting on paint that will show every single thing below it. You're not doing anything that's life-or-death--but you know what? That author worked hard to make that money that you're pocketing. Maybe harder than you know. He has a right to the expertise for which he paid. Expertise which, clearly, you do not yet have. Right? You don't claim that you do, at least, not here. How do you reconcile that?

This is becoming so common, with the advent of the Internet--people just hang out any old shingle, claiming to be whatever. eBook experts, publishing experts, experts in this or that, or "literary agents," and there's nothing stopping them.

I know of a woman who used our service, in 2010, to make her ebook. It was dreck, pure and simple. She spent an absurd fortune having the book commercially prepared for print, having illustrations created, etc., thinking that this was going to be some huge commercial success, spawning a series of related self-help books, right? The thing is an ABYSMAL failure, by any stretch of the imagination.

But by God, now she's ON THE INTERNET, now as an "EXPERT" Self-publishing coach and book shepherd. A self-appointed, self-anointed expert, fleecing those who know even less than she does, with her VAST experience in being a total failure to help her. Part of her alleged "expertise?" BOOK MARKETING. Right, because her knowledge propelled her own book to the 5 millionth position, or whatever, on Amazon.

So, what, people who pay her should just have thought "caveat emptor?" Is that what they should think about you?

Sorry, but I don't "get it." I don't understand why anyone thinks it's okay to charge to do something that they don't have full expertise in. It's the same crap, over and over on Fiverr, etc. (where I've seen a "cover designer" advertising his services using the covers created by Derek Murphy, for his DIY Book Covers Service, another "honest" citizen who's just learning, right?), over and over again.

Whatever, do what you want. People don't know what to ask, they don't know HTML, they can't know whether or not a formatter knows ANYTHING, or not. Every publishing scam out there knows that wanna-be authors are easy pickings. Why should YOU be any damn different?

In ten years, not ONCE I have I told a prospective client that we knew how to do something that we hadn't already done successfully. When we've been asked for something new-to-us, I tell them the truth. I say "well, nope, we haven't done that, but we've done X, which makes me confident that we can do Y, and if you're willing to be our crash-test dummy, I'll give you a significant break on your fees." You know what? Every single person that I have had that conversation with has accepted, and both sides have been happy with the outcome.

Are YOU telling your clients that you've only done a handful of books? That you're a novice? Are you charging like you're a novice, with full disclosure? If you are, then I'll shut up. If you're not, I'll continue to point out that you--or anyone like you--shouldn't charge, for ANYTHING, until you know how to do it, at least to the point where something like that Raised Initial/Dropcap won't throw you off.

Happy now, that you got your response in? I'm done with this.

Hitch