A fair fee for the job

Sometime last week, a publishing company not a million miles from Wordsmith Towers got in touch to offer me some on-site copy-editing work. I'm not averse to working on-site - it can make a welcome change from being home-based, with the opportunity to meet new people and make new contacts.

And so it was that yesterday I got suited and booted and headed into the darkest depths of south Manchester to go and shake hands and talk terms. The job was straightforward enough in terms of what was required and all the work was on-screen (I gave up working on paper proofs 20 years ago). So far, so good.

Inevitably, the discussion turned to money. I was completely gobsmacked to be told the budget was £10 to £15 per hour - for this, they want a skilled and experienced copy-editor who can correct, rewrite, re-order material, fact-check, flag up queries, deal with authors and all the rest. (Plus I was facing an hour's commute each way, by two buses.)

I pointed out, as politely as possible but through somewhat gritted teeth, that the suggested minimum rate my professional body, the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, recommends for such work is £26 per hour. My own minimum rate is even higher, and that doesn't include rewriting and re-ordering. His face was a picture when I told him how much I charge.

Somehow, I don't think I'll be accepting the work if it's offered to me, although I doubt it will be. I'm simply too expensive, dahlinks. Besides, it looks as though I've enough work right until at least July (and yes, the holiday has been postponed, but I will take one soon).

Sold out

No, not me. God forbid. If that ever happens, please line me up against the Mur des Fédérés in Père Lachaise and pull the trigger on an AK 47.

Apparently, my first edition has sold out in under a week. So my publisher says. To me, it's meaningless. I don't even know how big the first print run was (although I think 2k). Yes, it's going into a second edition - I'm the biggest-selling author my publisher has ever had, not that that's saying much. It's a tiny outfit with 3 staff (largely indifferent) and they've not exactly been proactive with promotion.

I still haven't even seen the book and I'm gutted I'll now never have 1st edition copies to sign and give to those few people who really matter to me.

I was so excited this morning and now I feel hollow. I rang one friend, my rock, but what I really wanted to do was go out and get pissed with mates but it was obviously not going to happen for a number of reasons. Ended up getting drunk solo, never a good idea. Now have to get up at stupid o'clock to catch a train to Birmingham for a networking/training day when I think I'd rather stay in bed.

Stacking shelves at Aldi suddenly looks very tempting...

Throwing the book

I have a book coming out in a matter of just days and I want to throw the entire print runit at my publisher.

I've been so wrapped up in contract work, and slaving away for long hours to get it all done, that I didn't really pay too much advance attention to the book. I kept thinking - it's a few weeks away, I've plenty of time to start pitching. Then suddenly the weeks whizzed past and this morning it dawned on me that I'd heard nothing from my publisher at all since mid-March.

Where the hell were my dozen author copies? What had they lined up for promotion? (Back in mid-March, I'd filled in a massive form detailing stuff about various press contacts, local bookshops, names of editors at local radio and TV stations etc, precisely to assist them with that.)

I was just about to pick up the phone when an email arrived from the bunny at the publisher. The bunny's job is to get publicity for the books they publish. So, 4 days before publication she decides to let me know she's hastily cobbling some promo slots together for me.

To say I was enraged was an understatement. My anger was not helped by the fact that I've been severely sleep-deprived for a couple of months, which has made me very grouchy indeed most of the time. I asked her where my books were.

- We posted them to you at the end of March, she said.

- I haven't received them, I replied.

I'm not going to recount the entire string of mails that went back and forth but it transpired that the books had been sent to my old address, which I left 4 months ago and is 40 miles away. This despite the fact that I mailed the bunny in January to give her my new contact details, and again in mid-March to remind her of my new address. So she had all this on file and still managed to send my books to my old house. Worse, she insisted I must have them as they'd been signed for. I pointed out, rather tartly, that I'd not been back to my old town since I left and that I'd paid Royal Mail a large sum to forward all my mail for a year so I still should have received them (and yes I'm going to stick a rocket under Royal Mail tomorrow - watch me light the blue touch paper and stand well clear). But the bunny could have sent them to my current address in the first place if she'd paid a bit more attention. And if she'd bothered to email me a month ago to say the books were en route, the problem would have come to light very quickly.

But I'm more hacked off with the fact that I spent several months working on the book for an unbelievably paltry advance (and basically earned only about £50 in January from other clients because of time taken to finish the manuscript), in the hope that it would sell reasonably well and I'd at least earn some royalties.

But no, it's all been left to the last minute and I ended up bleating my woes on Twitter - some colleagues rallied around with ideas and contacts, for which I'm very grateful (even though I was horribly grumpy at the time), and I've now managed to secure a slot on the local BBC radio morning magazine show. It's something at least. Fortunately, there's an "awareness week" coming up mid-month, so I may yet be able to pitch a feature or two around that, much as I hate awareness weeks.

I am so knackered that I've had to apologise to lots of colleagues today for being a foul-tempered cow lately. And I had to grovel to the parental for going off-radar for several weeks, as well. I'm not massively popular right now. On days like these, I feel like jacking it all in and stacking shelves at the supermarket instead.

Lesson learned, though. I shan't write for this publisher again. Although I shall, of course, milk the fact I have a book out because it's good for the old CV.

Do I wish I'd never signed the contract? Hell, yes. At least right now. But I hope I might still be able to salvage something out of the current mess. The Manchester media community have been the best, today, with their offers of support. The next round will definitely be on me.

Wannabe revisited

Hee. I had a reply from my illiterate wannabe last night.

"I just want to be able to submit my work to you and you can do the rest in terms of publishing it for me.."

Er, excuse me? Do I look like a publishing house? Is my middle name Penguin, perchance? Not when I last checked.

Wearily, I mailed back again, explaining that I'm not a publisher and can't publish his book for him, or distribute it, but if required I'd edit it and provide consultancy. For a fee.

The ensuing silence has been blissful, allowing me to get on with proper work.

Illiterate wannabes

First day back at work and the nutty emails are flowing in already. This landed in my inbox today:

Hello,
I'm a songwriting I can write all sorts of stuff, the book will contain verse's, poems, etc etc... I want my words to touch the world, I am lyrically blessed and I would like to have my work published. So if you can be of any help in any way I would be most grateful.
PS.I live in the XXX area..

This was the second mail I'd had from this person. The first - almost identical - arrived a few weeks ago. I decided it couldn't possibly be serious so I deleted it unanswered. I almost left this one unanswered too, but it dawned on me that I'd probably get bombarded for the next year. So I hastily typed a reply, in which I set out my rates and hoped I'd put this person off as much as possible.

These sort of enquiries are never worth bothering with. The wannabe author invariably has an over-inflated opinion of their work (the one above needs serious copy-editing), no money and expects publishers to be queuing up to print their illiterate ramblings. Fortunately, mention of rates is usually enough to put them off - the realisation that it will cost them at least the price of a bottle of decent single malt for even 1 hour of my precious time can come as a shock to the system.

2008's off to a great start then...