[Hitch]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

Do you normally charge a flat fee for your services? Maybe you could state up front that anybody who doesn't follow instructions will be charged an hourly rate (in addition to your standard fee) for you to fix their mess!

Yes. But the reality is, it's a tough market and you can't be too negative or it scares them off. At one point, I'd actually made up a checklist, of stuff that publishers need to do, to successfully publish their books. I realized after a few weeks that if I gave a prospective client the checklist--they disappeared and never came back. It was too much work. They don't want to know. And don't forget, I'm NOT their boss--they're ours, effectively.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

In the printing business, they have the acronym AA, which stands for "Author's Alterations". This translates to "We charge extra for aggravation", as AAs occur when the author wants to make a change after the job is on press.

Yes, Dennis, and we have that too. That's not really the problem.

A job goes to a printer. The printer sets up the job on press, and runs proofs for the client to approve. Usually, those changes will be things under printer control, like not getting colors in a color job quite right. That's a minor on press adjustment. Make it, and print.

Sometimes the client decides on seeing the proof that they really want something different than what they sent to be printed in the first place. This is doable, but may require creating new plates and setting up the job again. Press time on major commercial presses is carefully scheduled, and having to rip up the schedule and redo everything is not well thought of. The printer will charge you extra (a lot extra) if you want that. Sometimes clients think better of it and decide they can live with what they originally sent when they find out how much extra the changes will be...

(I used to work for a major commercial printer decades back, and saw this frequently. I encountered one case that left me grimly amused. We had done an annual report for a corporation. There was an error in the financials in fine print that were part of the report. The way the applicable regulations were written, we couldn't just insert an errata sheet. They had to redo the entire job from scratch. Client error, not ours, but nobody was happy. The client had to pay for a whole new job. We had to redo our production schedule and decide who we had to make unhappy because their job wouldn't be on the big Rockwell 4 color web offset press when it was originally scheduled to be. It's a reason I'm glad I'm not in that business these days.)

Ditto. That sort of thing, we have.

But meanwhile, it sounds like you need to rethink your quotes, more carefully delineate just what you commit to do as basic service, and what you can do but will charge extra for if you are asked to do it. You want to be able to point to what the client agreed to when you signed the original contract and say "The contract doesn't cover this. I'm going to have to charge you more as specified in the supplemental fee schedule I sent you along with the original contract."

Again--that's honestly not the issue. They make AA's, we charge 'em.

The big issue, for me, are emails. I know, it sounds dumb, but we STILL get huge, massive numbers of emails, and they all take time. When client X sends me an email with 10 or 20 questions in it--and this happens all the time--I don't know of a good way to say "I can answer your questions but it will cost you money." The problem, as I see it, is that they believe that the questions they ask us are part of OUR service. For example, "do I need an ISBN?" "Should I register my copyight?" "How much should I charge?" It's freaking endless.

My view is, that crap ISN'T part of our service. Our service is fairly simple--you pay us, you get two products. One for print, two eBooks. Maybe a cover, etc. But we're NOT a free self-publishing consulting service that's a one-stop shop for answering questions. I feel that as SELF-publishers, they should research this stuff, register their own ISBNs, and all that. It's a BUSINESS, and they should treat it as such--not think that they are the AUTHOR and I'm their Publisher. I'm NOT and that constant advice is not part of what we sell. That's what the likes of Outskirts Press, etc., do, for about 3x our fees. THIS is the conundrum.

Like my other kvetch, about the damn cover artists. It's all part and parcel of the same damn problem. They see me as some Publishing Mommy, answering all their questions. I resent it, because my time is sparse enough as it is.

(To talk about how much email I deal with, seriously, I use Grammarly in my browser, as a typo-catcher, right? All my client emails are browser-based, both in our PM system and my admin system. Know what Grammarly tells me? That since 12/2015, I have typed 6,375,620 words. I mean...think about that. I'm NOT working on a book or anything remotely like that. That's 99% email. In 3.5 years, I've written 63.75 long novels, or 100 short ones. Take your pick. 6,325 words per working day, 6/days/week for 3.5 years. So, every 10 working days, I write a romance novel. Sheesh.)

The client will doubtless squawk, but they either pay up or it doesn't get done.
______
Dennis

Still can't figure out the email issue.

Originally Posted by CRussel

We called those "change orders". And got rich off them.

Charlie.

I don't disagree, Charlie. That part is easy. See above, sweetie.

Hitch