Just a short post today on patience.
About 6 weeks ago we had an author throw up her hands and decide to walk away because three months after the contract we still hadn’t sent her any edits. Now, I can understand the frustration and even the resultant anger, but surely the appropriate response would be to send a (relatively) polite e-mail asking where your book was in the queue.
This lady didn’t and pulled her contract.
I made a new Facebook friend today (I use it as a networking rather than a social tool) and as always checked the bio. This particular author signed a contract two months ago with one of our larger eBook publishing rivals and is happy her book is slated for release in February 2011. That’s another 6 or 7 months away depending on whether it’s at the beginning or the end of the month.
We operate a policy of not giving a fixed schedule to enable us to remain flexible and we publish a book as soon as it’s ready. We’d rather do that that give an author a definite date, let them get all excited about it, even planning launch publicity etc. etc. and then two weeks before throw a month’s delay at them because “I’m sorry, the book before yours is taking longer to edit than anticipated”.
Either that or rush everything and end up with a sub-standard product that reflects badly on everyone and leaves the author with the taste of ashes after all that hard work.
It’s a difficult one, and with the pair of us having suffered both of the above scenarios, you can probably see why we chose the route we did.
I suppose we could always give a date so far out in the future no-one would complain. So, from now on your books will be published in September 2012............ LOL
Talk to you all again, next week.
Patience has never been a virtue of mine, it's true. But why would I spend months or even years writing a novel only to rush the final polish? I'd rather chew nails waiting than release a sub-par edition of my work just because I got in a hurry.
ReplyDeleteBut that's just me...