A long drawn out and frustrating conversation 27th November 2011.

We have been rather trapped into a long and ultimately frustrating conversation with a potential author over the last four months. I guess if I’m perfectly honest about this, she’s no longer a potential author for us, irrespective of the quality of her manuscript.

This, probably, very nice, lady sent in a submission around the end of July. Unfortunately we had a problem with the attachment, so we couldn’t open the attached manuscript – it was corrupt on receipt.

My business partner replied to her, politely asking her to forward another copy, suggesting alternative formats she could use. We heard nothing for nearly six weeks.

Then we got an answer asking, rather pointedly if we had received her first e-mail, and were we actually interested in her book.

We, of course replied, forwarding our previous e-mail back to her.

Nothing more was heard then we got an even more pointed response from her, asking us in her words “for a final time” if we were interested, and she was surprised by our lack of common courtesy in not even replying.

By now, our own patience was wearing a bit thin, so we checked out the e-mail link, and ascertained everything was fine at our end, and we weren’t black listed for spam with anyone either. It was clear she was either not receiving the return e-mails or, they were being dumped into her spam folders and she wasn’t checking them. She provided no alternative means of contacting her.

Over the weekend we’ve received what I can only assume will be her final e-mail to us:

“It's been another two months since I asked you if you were going to help me. Seems like I should have an answer by now. Would be nice if you tell someone if you are going to help them or not. Thanks anyway.”

She has of course now gone away cursing us for not replying, when we have, and we in the mean time are annoyed someone is now going to be posting the fact we haven’t replied all over the internet and telling people not to touch us with a barge pole.

Frustrating is only the start of it.

Arrrggghhhh!