The Vent and Rant Thread

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Hitch

S/he could, but then we'd have to reconvert the material to the output formats--PDF, ePUB/MOBI. We do our PDF work in InDesign, and of course we do the eBook work in HTML. There isn't any viable way to get edits from, say, a Word file--like somebody uses track changes--to an ePUB. Not automatically or in any fashion like that. Once the ebook is made, the edits have to be done by human hands. Ditto the production files in InDesign, for the print interior.





In some ways, I miss the "good old days," when authors had to understand what it took, for the publishers to make edits. Now? S**t, now, they think that because you can open Word and make changes and hit "save," that's how EVERYTHING works. It's sooooooooooooooooooooo frustrating. And all the other things that authors had to learn/do, back then?

Things like hiring proofers, or bartering for those services, via a critique group or writer's group? Or, hell, using a writing group AT ALL, to improve one's writing skills? Pah, I laugh at your naivete, to think that that's still the way. Pah!, I say! We don't need no old-fashioned stinkin' writing skills, I tell ya.




Yup, hundreds. I think I said this--we had a client with >2K errors. TWO THOUSAND? How do you miss two THOUSAND errors?

I dunno, man. I just don't know. I was so beat up today, I actually left the office "early" (at 1:30, having gone in at 5:30) and laid down and slept for a few hours. In the middle of the day. Sheeeeesh.

Hitch

Yes, you did mention that.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Not our doing, you understand? Theirs.

Hitch

You don't have a clause in your standard contract that says post production edits cost megabucks?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by wodin

You don't have a clause in your standard contract that says post production edits cost megabucks?

I think she deserves gigabucks.

Oh and my cream style corn popped up and burned my thumb.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by wodin

You don't have a clause in your standard contract that says post production edits cost megabucks?

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

[Cinisajoy]

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

20 edits in an hour sounds fast.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

20 edits in an hour sounds fast.

It is quick. We have a lot of clients give us very inefficient proof forms. For example, hand-written ones. (no copy-paste-search). Or ones where the edits are buried in paragraphs, even though we pretty expressly tell them DON'T do that. (Same reason--if we have to read a paragraph, we've lost money on the edits.) We show them, in sample edits on the form, the best way to do them (for everyone). Very simple, typically a sentence or half a sentence, 5-6 words surrounding the edit, old text/new text. You'd think those instructions would be easy to follow, but....apparently not.

Same thing with using the forms. I ask, and ask, and ask, and STILL, 30+% have to send the edits in, in an email. Will NOT use the form, even though it exists in pretty much all word-processing formats. When that happens, I have to read the email, copy the edits, and then either put them in the form, or reformat them so my guys can easily read them, paste them to the right place, etc. It doesn't sound like much time, granted--and it wouldn't be, if it was ONE person. But it never is; it's 5 or 10 or....

Thx
Hitch

[Katsunami]

Bah. Since the last update Firefox is behaving poorly. When starting or opening a tab, the mouse freezes until Firefox/tab has loaded. Then it freezes for a fraction of a second while the page loads. On my systems it only takes a second or so, but it's annoying.

Other programs don't freeze the cursor when starting or updating.... except... Thunderbird.

Besides a compact theme and an adblocker with a whitelist for often-visited sites, I have no extensions installed; even so, disabling both doesn't help.

The only conclusion I can draw is that 'something' has changed in Mozilla's XUL framework.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Bah. Since the last update Firefox is behaving poorly. When starting or opening a tab, the mouse freezes until Firefox/tab has loaded. Then it freezes for a fraction of a second while the page loads. On my systems it only takes a second or so, but it's annoying.

Other programs don't freeze the cursor when starting or updating.... except... Thunderbird.

Besides a compact theme and an adblocker with a whitelist for often-visited sites, I have no extensions installed; even so, disabling both doesn't help.

The only conclusion I can draw is that 'something' has changed in Mozilla's XUL framework.

56 or 57? But yes, it's heavier each update.

[Blossom]

We switched to Opera. It's really fast.

Okay I hate liars and it seems this area I live in people are always lying about something. Hubby was let go because they put him on a new line and the guy in charge there is a complete jerk. He yelled at him to move faster, when hubby didn't the second time he blew plastic particles in his face. Hubby still said nothing but continued to work at his pace. The guy got in his face again and hubby told him I can't go any faster, this is my pace. Do what you gotta do. After break he moved hubby to a different area everything was cool again because he could keep up with this machine. Hubby got let go because get this he told this guy he rather be home playing strike force (or something like that) shooting people?

My husband has never played a combat video game in his life! Animal crossing yes, Harvest Moon yes, Klondike yes but other than Klondike and Knights & Brides those are his only games. Does that sound threatening to you? Not that he said anything like that. This guy lied and cost hubby his job. It was a crappy job but he was handling it okay. I really am starting to hate this area. I miss the south.



Sent from my Nexus 7

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

56 or 57? But yes, it's heavier each update.

56.0.2.

I don't know why this is happening. Even if I start a large program such as Calibre or LibreOffice, who take 3-4 seconds to start (one because it's Java, the other because it's Python), and then continuously move the mouse, the movement of the cursor is never interrupted during the program start. I can also start GIMP or Scrivener while moving the mouse, without the program start interrupting the movement.

When I start Firefox, the cursor stops moving as soon as the browser appears, and it stops again when the screen refreshes to show the home page.

This is annoying, because, as I start the program, I already begin moving the mouse to where the control, button or menu that I want to click is going to be.

It's only Firefox and Thunderbird, on both my laptop and desktop.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

It's only Firefox and Thunderbird, on both my laptop and desktop.

Same here

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I really am starting to hate this area. I miss the south.

The Netherlands isn't much better with regard to the job market. Companies are screaming they can't find good software engineers (or IT people) in general. Then when you send in your resumé, you're almost treated as if you're lying through your teeth, and they want to give you 'tests' to 'see what your skills are.' Dude, I've got diploma's. I've worked at several companies for several years on end, delivering systems you can go and **** SEE RUNNING for yourself if you so want to. Call the factories who're using them or something.

In addition to the test, they want you to have a talk with an HR person, the manager of the department, the teamleader, and if all that is 'fine', there would be a talk about salaries. If there was a test, they might also want you to come in again to discuss the results. Do they care that each of those mostly useless talks cost me €25 each way? Of course not. With a 3 to 5-step application procedure like that, an application costs me up to ****** €250!

And then, somewhere along the way, you get told: "Yeah, your tests were fine, and you'd be a nice addition to the company, but.... dude X or Y isn't feeling the vibe." As I told you.

A week later, the newspapers scream: "There aren't enough people studying IT! We have major shortages in the work force!"

Go ***** ******.

Same happens in the teaching world, by the way: schools who have 'ghost jobs': In schools, salary is determined by the government. After each year, you get a bit more. So, what happens? You work at school X, for 2 years. Then you need to either be fired, or get a permanent contract. So, there's another school Y, who also has a teacher in that subject. Every two years, these teachers get fired, and two job openings are opened up. The teacher from school X goes to Y, and the other way around... starting at the starting salary again, with a temporary contract. Rinse, repeat.

Some other people will be interviewed, but I'm 100% certain this is only for show. I've been there. I've had three talks to teach IT / Software Engineering at bacherlor level, and then was rejected because "someone else fitted the job a tiny little bit better." Well, I later found out that this someone else had worked at that school before, then went to a different school, and was now coming back again...

But at the same time: "So many teachers are leaving the teaching field! Nobody studies to become a teacher anymore! There are huge shortages!" Eh.... surprised much? I'm not.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Same here

You have the same mouse stuttering problem? In that case, I don't have to look any further.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

You have the same mouse stuttering problem? In that case, I don't have to look any further.

Yes, but not all the pages, only some of them. The mouse stops, the computer is blocked a couple of seconds... and puff, everything is ok.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

A week later, the newspapers scream: "There aren't enough people studying IT! We have major shortages in the work force!"

Go ***** ******.

Exactly the same here in Spain.