The Vent and Rant Thread

[poohbear_nc]

How do you plan to proofread it?

Have a sing-a-long?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

How do you plan to proofread it?

Have a sing-a-long?

PROOFREAD? Brother, I ain't proofreading that sucker. My damn brains would melt. I can only take so much, and that? That's a bridge too far.

Hitch

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by Hitch

PROOFREAD? Brother, I ain't proofreading that sucker. My damn brains would melt. I can only take so much, and that? That's a bridge too far.

Hitch

Amen and amen! Do you get cash up front for your truly weird books? In case their rabbi hears of it and puts the kibosh on it?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Amen and amen! Do you get cash up front for your truly weird books? In case their rabbi hears of it and puts the kibosh on it?

Hi:

We get cash upfront for ALL our books. The first two years I was open, doing more business as a proper business (rather than sitting at home doing a few books here and there) I was ripped off $10K the first year and $12K the second--by authors. That was the end of "pay upon completion" forever.

People used to talk to me about how I worked in the Real Estate Development world, and with contractors, etc., and about how it must have been awful to work in such a corrupt world, with crooks everywhere, etc--trust me when I tell you, authors and publishers are FAR bigger thieves than any of the contractors, union guys, F&B providers, or the like, ever were. EVER. I had far less trouble with people ripping me off, being corrupt or anything like that, in my former line of work than I do now.

There's simply something about digital goods--whether they're eBooks or PDFs for print interiors for paperbacks--that just makes people feel as though they're not receiving or thieving, something of value. If they can't SEE you do the work, well....then, it can't be very hard/valuable, either, can it?

Hitch

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Hi:

We get cash upfront for ALL our books. The first two years I was open, doing more business as a proper business (rather than sitting at home doing a few books here and there) I was ripped off $10K the first year and $12K the second--by authors. That was the end of "pay upon completion" forever.

People used to talk to me about how I worked in the Real Estate Development world, and with contractors, etc., and about how it must have been awful to work in such a corrupt world, with crooks everywhere, etc--trust me when I tell you, authors and publishers are FAR bigger thieves than any of the contractors, union guys, F&B providers, or the like, ever were. EVER. I had far less trouble with people ripping me off, being corrupt or anything like that, in my former line of work than I do now.

There's simply something about digital goods--whether they're eBooks or PDFs for print interiors for paperbacks--that just makes people feel as though they're not receiving or thieving, something of value. If they can't SEE you do the work, well....then, it can't be very hard/valuable, either, can it?

Hitch

Real Estate Developers, contractors, etc. have to deal with Yelp, authors... not so much.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by wodin

Real Estate Developers, contractors, etc. have to deal with Yelp, authors... not so much.

Well, when I was in that biz, there wasn't any Yelp, or anything even remotely like that. Nonetheless...I confess to being shocked that so MANY people would be SO crooked and corrupt.

Hitch

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by Hitch

PROOFREAD? Brother, I ain't proofreading that sucker. My damn brains would melt. I can only take so much, and that? That's a bridge too far.

Hitch

Ever wonder who proofread "Finnegans Wake"?

[binaryhermit]

Another wtf ebook, this time advertised in my daily bookgorilla email
Kindle Unlimited: How To Cancel Your Kindle Unlimited Subscription by Just Using Three Easy Steps In Under Two Minutes! (A Short Guide On Canceling Your Kindle Unlimited Subscription In No Time)
99 cents, but of course it's "free" with kindle unlimited
I swear, some people are idiots

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

Ever wonder who proofread "Finnegans Wake"?

In fact, Pooh, yes, I have! Poor sod.

Hitch

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

People used to talk to me about how I worked in the Real Estate Development world, and with contractors, etc., and about how it must have been awful to work in such a corrupt world, with crooks everywhere, etc--trust me when I tell you, authors and publishers are FAR bigger thieves than any of the contractors, union guys, F&B providers, or the like, ever were. EVER. I had far less trouble with people ripping me off, being corrupt or anything like that, in my former line of work than I do now.

And in your former line of work you learned very quickly what the deal was and took steps accordingly.

A former co-worker was previously involved in large scale erections. His father had been a master millwright, and taught him things like keeping verifiable records of union staffing on projects to prevent attempts to charge for hours not actually worked by men not actually on site. He made sure the shop stewards knew he kept such records, and false claims didn't occur.

He described a project he worked on where a paper company was building a new mill in Canada. The equipment in the mill was from a German supplier, and my co-worker represented the company supplying the equipment, with responsibility for seeing it was properly installed as per factory specs.

The building was a two story concrete structure. He was on site when a truck pulled up in the lot, and a guy got out, erected a scaffold, and began to drill holes on the second floor. There had apparently be an after the fact decision that an external elevator needed to be installed to provide access to the second floor, and the drilling was the first step in the process.

My guy complained to the contractor it was a bad idea, but he didn't work for the mill and the contractor was going to do the job he was told to do. My friend set up a folding chair, told onlookers he had the best seat in the house, and sat back to watch.

The area the guy was drilling into contained 440 volt feeder lines for the mill equipment. They were live. He drilled into them. He got blown off his scaffold onto the ground. Fortunately, that had not been paved and was still dirt, so he escaped with scrapes and bruises. The entire facility was shorted out.

My guy spent the next two weeks with a team of electricians following him around to run new lines. He told the plant owners "No. You will not splice around the break. You will run all new cable. If you don't, I will not sign off on the mill equipment installation, and you will not have a working mill."

I don't know what that "Oops!" cost the company building the mill, but it probably would have paid several years of the salary I was making at the time, and I was decently paid.

The father of an old friend was a union electrician for 40 years, and talked about the art of stealing stuff from job sites. He apparently thought it was a perk of the job. Rule 1: Anything not nailed down on a job site is fair game for a union worker. Rule 2: If it can be pried up, it's not nailed down. See Rule 1...

At a bank I used to work for, a fully loaded PC disappeared from an office. The facilities manager agreed with my guess that a union guy working on extensive renovations of the facility made off with it. The IT staff of which I was an unofficial part were disgusted. The PC used contained the only copy of custom software being developed for the bank. There were no backups. There wasn't even a hard copy source listing. "Incompetent" was the mildest adjective applied to the developers whose machine it was.

There's simply something about digital goods--whether they're eBooks or PDFs for print interiors for paperbacks--that just makes people feel as though they're not receiving or thieving, something of value. If they can't SEE you do the work, well....then, it can't be very hard/valuable, either, can it?

Not just digital goods, but yes.

One of the things I've tried to get across to people for a while is that value is relative - something is worth what someone else will pay for it. If you can't get your asking price for something, you need to rethink your idea of what it's worth.

I was grimly amused then the movie studios and record companies ere push the SOPA and PIPA legislation, attempting to wave a legal wand to stop piracy. They were making the assumption that "Oh, if we can just stop these nasty pirates making stuff available for illegal download, the downloaders will buy instead, and our revenues will soar!

No, they won't. If the downloaders can't get it free, they will simply do without. They don't think the content is worth paying for, and have other uses for the money.

I've had similar conversations with authors about pirated eBooks. I say "Ignore the piracy. It isn't cutting into your revenue. The folks grabbing pirated copies wouldn't buy in the first place, even if you could somehow manage to prevent piracy of your work. Concentrate your efforts on reaching the folks who will pay for your work, and make it is easy as possible for them to do so."

Getting authors to understand that is an uphill battle.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

Ever wonder who proofread "Finnegans Wake"?

At a guess, no one. The publisher sent typeset gallys to Joyce and let him proof it.


(The late SF writer John Brunner described his experience on one book. It was in the days when you still submitted hardcopy manuscripts. He did a book with phrases that were deliberate that he knew a copy editor or proofreader would try so "correct". So he printed a submission draft of the manuscript, and went through it and circled all instances that might get corrected and wrote STET! in big letters in the margin beside each instance. Sure enough, he got the galley proofs and every instance had been "corrected". We were bemused that the people involved on the publisher end who worked on the manuscript didn't know what "STET!" meant.)
______
Dennis

[Hemmi]

Have I mentioned what a thankless job scheduling is? Idiot coworker's latest complaint is that she works more weekends than anyone else. Ummm, no. She hasn't even been working weekends for a full year yet. I had to go back thru my schedules for the last year to count up everyone's weekends and lay it all out. Guess what? She doesn't work any more weekends than anyone else.

She's on a 4 weekend rotation. Most of the weekends that are supposed to be hers she's requested off lately so that makes her flip flop weekends with someone else. All that flipping and flopping means sometimes you end up working one weekend, have one off, and have to work the next one.

One thing I am very vigilant about is keeping everything even and fair in regards to scheduling. Doesn't matter if I love you or hate you. It's all fair. I have a calendar book and it's all laid out there.

I'm very tempted to take a hard stand and make a weekend rotation schedule and post it and make them all sort it out when they want their weekend off. I've done it before. Not that they won't find something else to bitch about.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

At a guess, no one. The publisher sent typeset gallys to Joyce and let him proof it.


(The late SF writer John Brunner described his experience on one book. It was in the days when you still submitted hardcopy manuscripts. He did a book with phrases that were deliberate that he knew a copy editor or proofreader would try so "correct". So he printed a submission draft of the manuscript, and went through it and circled all instances that might get corrected and wrote STET! in big letters in the margin beside each instance. Sure enough, he got the galley proofs and every instance had been "corrected". We were bemused that the people involved on the publisher end who worked on the manuscript didn't know what "STET!" meant.)
______
Dennis

Or, more likely, they simply ignored him. :-)

Hitch

[Greg Anos]

Monday I have to talk with an Unemployment Case Worker. I look forward to that with the same joy I would have changing a tire in a sleet storm . . .

I'm a highly specialized computer programmer. I'm also 62 years old. Retraining at my age is a joke. I'm under consideration for 5 jobs, none of which have responded yet.

But I expect to have to deal with a Government HR type, telling me how I need to be "flexible". . . .

[Rumpelteazer]

I was just at the supermarket and saw one of my cousins (the son of the uncle we're having legal problems with). I said hello, not intending to say more than that, and he totally ignored me.

Does it surprise me? Not in the least, especially after his sister also ignored me during a get together in January. It's strange, when we scattered my grandmother's ashes a couple of years ago everyone got on well and now my uncle's kids seem to hate us.

I had already heard there was some drama about a cousins get together in September, I had already decided not to go. In June a daughter of my aunt invited all family to her place and my uncle's kids never let her know whether or not they would come (they didn't). So I think my aunts daughters are also fed up with them.

I'm not going to force contact. It's now up to them if they want any contact with me, which I doubt they want. However, if they want to have contact it doesn't mean I want to, at that time I will see how I feel. If they would contact me now I would friendly but firmly let them know that after the way they've treated me I feel no need to let them into my life.