The Vent and Rant Thread

[covingtoncat73]

Thanks, grandfather Fallon said, "Give everyone their 'dew.'" (Tullamore Dew)

[Angst]

[badgoodDeb]

Indeed!! That's FAR too thick to use for a bookmark. Anything thicker than a single sheet of paper is bad for the spine of the book, imho.

[Jessica Lares]

*Is guilty of using my Kindle as a bookmark*

Better than dog ears at least.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by Angst

Classic! A story within a story!

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by cromag

Classic! A story within a story!

Is this an example of metafiction?

[Hitch]

I'm just sick and tired of working 6/days/week for 51 weeks out of the year. Phlllllbfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft.

Hitch

[ProfCrash]

I would not like that either

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I would not like that either

Y'know, I've always worked a LOT. When I was building hotels, I worked at least 6 days a week, but that was a lot of years ago now, and I was younger. Not to mention, it paid a boatload better. That line of work isn't a "9-to-5" job. (Can't say I've ever really had one of those).

It's the bane of small businesses; especially service businesses, which don't have the profitability or scalability of product-type businesses (or software). For most small biz's to be profitable, you end up working that 6 or 7 days a week--because you can't afford to hire someone to let you leave on Saturdays, or whatever. I just don't, as I'm aging, have the same stamina and energy that I did in the 80's-90's-aughts, etc. I think that being in a service biz that deals with "creatives" is also particularly wearing. It's startling to me how completely DIFFERENT this is, compared to Real Estate Development/Construction. The people in each field are night/day.

I'd love to find out what it's like to have two days a week off, especially in a row. I know when there are 3-day holidays, I am always delighted to get that two days in a row off together. It's lovely.

Spoiler:

<grumble> I'm either going to have to raise my prices, or add products, or something. If I think about doing this for another few years, it makes my head explode. I'm too old for this s**t. </grumble>.

Hitch

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'm just sick and tired of working 6/days/week for 51 weeks out of the year. Phlllllbfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft.

I believe you work for yourself, so the short answer is a variant of the old line "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "So don't do that!"

Speaking personally, I'd set rules. I worked five days a week, for X hours a day, with decent vacation time in there. I'd inform clients what my business hours were, and make clear that only things I agreed were an emergency merited contacting me outside of working hours, and might incur extra costs over my normal charges.

Having set those rules, I'd follow them.

Of course, that's easier said than done. Are there reasons you can't do that?
______
Dennis

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I believe you work for yourself, so the short answer is a variant of the old line "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "So don't do that!"

Speaking personally, I'd set rules. I worked five days a week, for X hours a day, with decent vacation time in there. I'd inform clients what my business hours were, and make clear that only things I agreed were an emergency merited contacting me outside of working hours, and might incur extra costs over my normal charges.

Having set those rules, I'd follow them.

Of course, that's easier said than done. Are there reasons you can't do that?
______
Dennis

Well, sure, I could close the shop on Saturdays--but the resulting Mondays are bloody awful. As it turns out, in this new age of self-pubbing, most writers are writing in their nights/weekends. And, if my place is anything to go by, they decide to find resources (cover designers, book formatters, et al) on the weekends. When we weren't open on Saturdays, the huge amount of email on Mondays was simply overwhelming; we'd end up working 12-15 hours on Mondays to make our way through the pile.

Our line of work has a very high rate of email, per client. Our average client will email 7-12 times prior to accepting the quote, and 40x more during the 10 days or so that we have the book in the queue. Most of these emails are, quite honestly, utterly unrelated to the actual services that WE provide, and are questions about self-publishing.

Spoiler:

The obvious answer to that is, "ignore them," but most folks who buy formatting seem to think that answering all these other, unrelated questions is part of what they are getting from you, for their shekels. (Before you say it: we have an extensive FAQ; we have an 80+ page Handbook; we have canned responses. We've done absolutely everything you think will fend them off. It doesn't work. Ironically--and no, the irony is not lost on me--self-pubs do NOT read anything that looks like work, particularly about the work of being a publisher. Yes, this is generalizing; but most folks in my line of work will say the same exact thing. For whatever reason, it's endemic. There seems to be an anaphylactic reaction, by Creatives, to the idea of publishing AS A BUSINESS. Thus, they simply refuse to learn about it, instead asking the consultants that they use the same questions that they could get the answer to--faster, mind you--if they simply googled it. If I answer a question about ISBNs once a day, I answer it 5x a day, and yes: we have FOUR different articles about that up on our website, and it's in our Two page FAQ ATTACK! that every single client receives.)

So, on an average day, we have ~200-300 emails coming in the door; 80% are from clients in production and the others are inquiries, folks with questions prior to accepting a quote, tire-kickers (my faves: "how much to format my novel," without telling you jack about it), etc. If we don't open on Saturdays, Monday will have 50% again more email. I burned through several admin people this way...so now, we're open on Saturdays. I try to make that a "half-day," but that works out pretty much like you'd think--the first 12 hours, or the last 12 hours. ;-)

Hitch

[Cinisajoy]

Hitch,
Hubby rarely gets 2 days in row. Now he usually gets one day off in the middle of the week.
Though the last time he scheduled a Saturday off it was before vacation. Rather than vacation, he wound up with 67 hours and no day off that week.
The boss called at 4 pm on that Saturday hoping we had not gone out of town yet. So he had to work Monday through Saturday. Note he is not a youngster.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well, sure, I could close the shop on Saturdays--but the resulting Mondays are bloody awful. As it turns out, in this new age of self-pubbing, most writers are writing in their nights/weekends. And, if my place is anything to go by, they decide to find resources (cover designers, book formatters, et al) on the weekends. When we weren't open on Saturdays, the huge amount of email on Mondays was simply overwhelming; we'd end up working 12-15 hours on Mondays to make our way through the pile.

I didn't say which five days should be your work week.

My hours have historically been flexible, and not always Monday through Friday, 9-5. At one employer, they were more like 10-6, because the shop had a night shift, and I was the resident sysadmin/network admin/telecom admin. It was useful to be there during transition to make sure the night crew had everything working as expected.

And calls at home during dinner were not uncommon, nor were calls on weekends. On one notable occasion, I got a call at home during dinner because the supervisors weren't able to get into one of my servers. I could do so from home remote via SSH. Hmmm. Better go down and check. (I lived in walking distance.) I got there to discover both the Solaris server where 3/4s of the work got done, and the Novell server for the other 1/4 down. I powered both back up, and my irony meter pegged off scale as I watched the big mutha UPS they were plugged into glitch and put both down again.

Okay. Unplug the servers, find other places to plug them in, take the failed UPS out of service, bring the systems back up, do the cleanup required, and get everyone on line and working. I resumed dinner around 10pm. At 2am, my phone rang. It was the night lead supervisor. She was trying to do her nightly production reports, and couldn't get to the NT server. I blinked sleep from my eyes, mentioned a couple of things she could try, and said "If you still have problems, leave a note on my desk. I'll send the reports for you in the morning." At 2:30am, the phone rang again. It was the night supervisor, who wanted to tell me she was able to send the reprints and I didn't have to be concerned. Er, leave a note on my desk?

The following day, I was in a meeting including the SVP/Operations I reported to. He said "How are you?", and I said "Tired!", and explained why. When I got the the calls at 2am and 2:30am, his eyes got very big and he said "Why is she calling you at those hours over something so trivial?" "Larry, it's because she doesn't know it's trivial. She's trying to do her job, and dot the Is and cross the Ts. I respect that, which is why she's still alive. She needs to be told the sky won't fall if she can't send the reports that night, and yes, I've already had the conversation with her boss." She was later released by the company for reasons I parsed, reading between the lines, as "Too stupid to do the job."

I also didn't take contiguous vacations. My preference was flexible scheduling, and being able to say "I'm taking a long weekend, and will not be in next Friday or Monday." I could tell the employer well in advance which weekends would be long ones

Our line of work has a very high rate of email, per client. Our average client will email 7-12 times prior to accepting the quote, and 40x more during the 10 days or so that we have the book in the queue. Most of these emails are, quite honestly, utterly unrelated to the actual services that WE provide, and are questions about self-publishing.

<...>

I interact with the self-publishing crowd elsewhere, and am at the point of giving up. There is a simply astonishing level of ignorance and wishful thinking.

My basic response summarizes as "Write because you have to, and cannot imagine not writing. Self publish because you can. Do not do it expecting to make actual money, because you won't! If you can't deal with that, find another hobby."

If I were you, I'd raise prices, look at expanding my product line, and distill the answers to the most common self-publishing questions into a short FAQ that could be attached as a canned response to most of the unrelated to job in progress questions, to cut down the time required to deal with them. I'd also be firmer with problem children about just what I did, when I did it, and what they could expect for what I charged. And at some point, you have to draw a line, because you reach a state where no amount of money is adequate compensation.
______
Dennis

[Cinisajoy]

Hi Dennis.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Hi Dennis.

Hello, Cinisajoy. I gather my war story above had resonance for you?
______
Dennis