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The Evil Author of Doom and Destruction
ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am this close to renting a machete (I only need it for a few hours, why buy one?) and going to town on one of my authors. He has peppered the last few months with periods of total stress, to the point that when I hear his voice on the phone or see an email from him pop up I either feel sick or want to hit someone. He has become so toxic that he has been declared unusable by the Head of Publishing. He has done five books with other editors at the company in the past, and those editors have nothing but war stories. It appears that with every book he got worse and worse. He shall do no more books with us. Some co-workers think he is actually becoming a little unbalanced, but I think he's just really nasty.
I should point out that I did not commission this book, but rather was assigned to it. Oh the humanity.
Who says publishing is a gentle profession???
The Crimes of Evil Author (EA)
Time time time
His manuscript was two months late, even though he was repeatedly rung and emailed to remind him to hand it in. He kept saying it was finished but he was tweaking it. I wanted to tell him that intended to rip it apart anyway in the editing process...
Worth a thousand words...
He was contracted to provide 40 colour pictures. He was three months late giving us any. They were too small. Those of you with IT skills will know that to print a picture in a book, it has to be high resolution, 300-600dpi, usually around 1MB in size. He had been told this many times. What did he send us? 20 pictures, none larger than 13KB. We told him to send us usable ones. He sent us 15 500KB pictures. We need more, still 25 short. He then sends us 40 400KB BLACK AND WHITE PICTURES. I give up. His book now no longer has a colour section.
Girl
That's what he called me on the phone several times until I made a point of telling him I didn't like it. I am 25. I don't wear my hair in pigtails anymore.
Proof protocol
Most people, if they were sent the page proofs of their book to read over and check, would know what to do, ie. write the corrections in the margin with a nice, easy-to-see red pen. However, to make sure this happens, we tell all our authors exactly this. No room for error. Not with EA. He wrote us 4 pages IN PENCIL on separate sheets. His corrections did not even have page numbers, so we had no chance of lining up fragments such as 'to his soldiers' with the appropriate sentence in a 288 page book. We told him this, and he yells that he refuses to do them again. Fine. From what I could gather from his scribbles, he was mostly putting grammatical mistakes back in.
Cover crap
He doesn't like the cover. He wants to use a different picture. The only copy he has is 40KB in size. Not usable. Turns out he doesn't have the rights anyway, so we would get sued or have to buy the rights for £1400 to use it. No deal. He wants a picture of himself on the back cover. No. He is ugly, and even attractive authors only get their picture on the inside right flap. He sulks.
Phone etiquette
He rings up to complain about something, but I am in a meeting. When I come out, I am told that a young 18-year-old editorial assistant kindly picked up, thinking to take a message for me. He proceeded to rant at her (as I presume he had intended to rant at me) and told her that she was working for a terrible company. She ended up sniffling for a good half an hour after that.
Acknowledge This!
He sends an email informing me that he wants to remove 'I would like to thank BookBint and 'Publishing House' for their help etc' from his acknowledgements section. Fine.
Pissing off everyone
He starts ringing up the finance department badgering them about when he will get royalties, even though the book is not yet published, and also harrasses the sales and marketing people about god knows what. They now refuse to pick up the phone when his number comes up on the display.
Too important to index
His contract states he has to provide an index, or accept that we take money from his advance to pay to have one compiled for him. He refused to do one. Fine, we pay a freelancer, and the finance department take the cost out of his final advance payment. When he gets the cheque he rings up demanding why it's less than it should be? I tell him. He rages that we've stolen from him. Oh for god's sake...
Bite my schedule
Because the manuscript was two months late and the pictures were three months late, we had to move the book's publication date back 2 months. This itself was impressive, and meant we had to work our arses off to do 3 months of work in that time. When he realises it won't be out for Christmas he has a massive fit and writes angry letters to the CEO, Head of Publishing, Head of Finance and Head of Marketing, saying they are killing his baby. Only the CEO bothers to reply with a terse two-sentence letter back basically saying that since he was so late with the book we are not even contractually obliged to print it at all.
And today...
This was his addition to my shitty day, and why I am writing this thread. It's author exorcism. Begone from me evil spirit of bad author juju! He rang up to inform me that he had seen errors in the proofs (that I sent him 3 months ago and he provided no usable changes to). Sorry, the book has gone to press. Bye bye, no changing it now. This makes him mad. I should go to the printers and get it back! No. Can't. Sorry. It's getting printed in India, and much as I'd like a holiday... no. His response? I don't know my job. I cut him off and put the phone down.
I need a drink.
I am this close to renting a machete (I only need it for a few hours, why buy one?) and going to town on one of my authors. He has peppered the last few months with periods of total stress, to the point that when I hear his voice on the phone or see an email from him pop up I either feel sick or want to hit someone. He has become so toxic that he has been declared unusable by the Head of Publishing. He has done five books with other editors at the company in the past, and those editors have nothing but war stories. It appears that with every book he got worse and worse. He shall do no more books with us. Some co-workers think he is actually becoming a little unbalanced, but I think he's just really nasty.
I should point out that I did not commission this book, but rather was assigned to it. Oh the humanity.
Who says publishing is a gentle profession???
The Crimes of Evil Author (EA)
Time time time
His manuscript was two months late, even though he was repeatedly rung and emailed to remind him to hand it in. He kept saying it was finished but he was tweaking it. I wanted to tell him that intended to rip it apart anyway in the editing process...
Worth a thousand words...
He was contracted to provide 40 colour pictures. He was three months late giving us any. They were too small. Those of you with IT skills will know that to print a picture in a book, it has to be high resolution, 300-600dpi, usually around 1MB in size. He had been told this many times. What did he send us? 20 pictures, none larger than 13KB. We told him to send us usable ones. He sent us 15 500KB pictures. We need more, still 25 short. He then sends us 40 400KB BLACK AND WHITE PICTURES. I give up. His book now no longer has a colour section.
Girl
That's what he called me on the phone several times until I made a point of telling him I didn't like it. I am 25. I don't wear my hair in pigtails anymore.
Proof protocol
Most people, if they were sent the page proofs of their book to read over and check, would know what to do, ie. write the corrections in the margin with a nice, easy-to-see red pen. However, to make sure this happens, we tell all our authors exactly this. No room for error. Not with EA. He wrote us 4 pages IN PENCIL on separate sheets. His corrections did not even have page numbers, so we had no chance of lining up fragments such as 'to his soldiers' with the appropriate sentence in a 288 page book. We told him this, and he yells that he refuses to do them again. Fine. From what I could gather from his scribbles, he was mostly putting grammatical mistakes back in.
Cover crap
He doesn't like the cover. He wants to use a different picture. The only copy he has is 40KB in size. Not usable. Turns out he doesn't have the rights anyway, so we would get sued or have to buy the rights for £1400 to use it. No deal. He wants a picture of himself on the back cover. No. He is ugly, and even attractive authors only get their picture on the inside right flap. He sulks.
Phone etiquette
He rings up to complain about something, but I am in a meeting. When I come out, I am told that a young 18-year-old editorial assistant kindly picked up, thinking to take a message for me. He proceeded to rant at her (as I presume he had intended to rant at me) and told her that she was working for a terrible company. She ended up sniffling for a good half an hour after that.
Acknowledge This!
He sends an email informing me that he wants to remove 'I would like to thank BookBint and 'Publishing House' for their help etc' from his acknowledgements section. Fine.
Pissing off everyone
He starts ringing up the finance department badgering them about when he will get royalties, even though the book is not yet published, and also harrasses the sales and marketing people about god knows what. They now refuse to pick up the phone when his number comes up on the display.
Too important to index
His contract states he has to provide an index, or accept that we take money from his advance to pay to have one compiled for him. He refused to do one. Fine, we pay a freelancer, and the finance department take the cost out of his final advance payment. When he gets the cheque he rings up demanding why it's less than it should be? I tell him. He rages that we've stolen from him. Oh for god's sake...
Bite my schedule
Because the manuscript was two months late and the pictures were three months late, we had to move the book's publication date back 2 months. This itself was impressive, and meant we had to work our arses off to do 3 months of work in that time. When he realises it won't be out for Christmas he has a massive fit and writes angry letters to the CEO, Head of Publishing, Head of Finance and Head of Marketing, saying they are killing his baby. Only the CEO bothers to reply with a terse two-sentence letter back basically saying that since he was so late with the book we are not even contractually obliged to print it at all.
And today...
This was his addition to my shitty day, and why I am writing this thread. It's author exorcism. Begone from me evil spirit of bad author juju! He rang up to inform me that he had seen errors in the proofs (that I sent him 3 months ago and he provided no usable changes to). Sorry, the book has gone to press. Bye bye, no changing it now. This makes him mad. I should go to the printers and get it back! No. Can't. Sorry. It's getting printed in India, and much as I'd like a holiday... no. His response? I don't know my job. I cut him off and put the phone down.
I need a drink.
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