So Angry I Could Commit Authorcide...

[BookBint]

This one is a saga. I can't bear to type out the full extent of the horrors, so shall try to keep it brief. As an editor I deal with many books at one time, but this one has now taken up two solid weeks of my time, 8 hours a day.

The book was commissioned before I joined the company, and was due to be published FOUR YEARS AGO. The only reason we are still trying to print this book is because it contains incredibly valuable and rare interviews. The crimes committed by this author are many. They include:

1) Being five years late in handing in the manuscript.

2) Sending a manuscript so disordered and badly written that it took UberBoss (the other editor on my team, and the one who commissioned this car wreck) 3 weeks to edit, a week being the average. While the interviews themselves were gold, the 200,000 words actually written by the author (the interviewer and supposed historian) were terrible.

3) Sending over 300 pictures without names, and the list of captions in 4 separate documents without any clue as to what caption went with what picture.

4) Getting angry when we asked her to provide numbered pictures and captions.

5) Being the most entitled and haughty bitch to ever write an email, including writing in capitals, which is pretty much shouting.

6) Winning the award for 'author putting most pictures of themselves in a book'. She is no oil painting.

Eventually we got the book paged, that is to say, had our designers take the Word documents and all the pictures and make it into a book in InDesign, the paging programme used by publishers. We sent hard copy proofs to her. Her response?

1) We had edited out everything good and she had contacted the Society of Authors and would not allow us to publish the book in its current state as to do so would be against her moral rights.

2) That the pictures were in the wrong place (we had put them EXACTLY where she had told us to, the designer had just followed her instructions).

3) That the book was full of errors!!! SHE WROTE THE DAMN THING! Did she think we'd put them in, a funny little scavenger hunt?

3) That she had decided that the last 6 chapters would have to be rewritten. The new versions were in total 20,000 words longer than the ones we had paged, thus requiring us to add 32 pages to the book and move EVERY SINGLE PICTURE.

Naturally UberBoss declined her demands in no uncertain terms. Her hundreds of changes were without exception bad, would make the book almost unreadable and scupper any chance at good reviews. A week of angry emails followed. Up to this point I had had little to do with the project. Then the head of the department informed me that UberBoss had had enough, the author was threatening legal action, and I was going to have to take over. My brief was to do EVERYTHING she wanted. Starting with editing the new 6 chapters and repaging the book. So, what did I do for the next two weeks?

1) Busted my balls reading 40,000 words of terrible writing, trying to craft it into proper English, but knowing that if I edited it as firmly as UberBoss had done with the first draft, we would be back at square one.

2) Was forced to send the Word documents back to the author, knowing full well she would try and put the errors back in.

3) Repaged the 6 chapters, including moving all the pictures and renumbering over 200 footnotes by hand.

4) Sent her a PDF of the new version of the book. Her immediate response was that while I 'was doing a good job, errors were clearly creeping into the text.' She was saying I had added errors! Again, she had so little self awareness that she thought that she had sent a perfect document and I had nothing better to do than put in incorrect apostrophes!

She is now 'checking the book for errors and to see if the pictures are in the wrong place'. I have never hated an author so much, especially since management have completely put me out to dry on this one. I have very little power to say 'no' to her, although I ignored many of the changes she demanded. I'm hoping she doesn't spot all of them, but I am willing to defend them, every last one. Meanwhile, the head of the department has been pretending to be dealing with the project (while getting me to do the hours of difficult editorial work) and keeps sending incredibly bum-sucky emails along the lines of 'deeeear X, thank you soooo much for your cooperation and patience,' thus making the author even more entitled and putting our balls in a vice.

While I have been dealing with this mess not of my making, my own projects have been sliding. My small revenge has been, while trying to force an extra 20,000 words into a very tight space, to shrink every picture with her in it to half the original size. But basically I have been rammed.

Thankyou and goodnight.

[South Texan]

I wish you could send back the manuscript exactly as she had sent it to you, but in a different font to make it look like you had edited it; then, when she complains that you inserted errors into it, apologize for having sent back her original and immediately produce the edited version in which you had caught all those errors she made but just now saw.

Then again, I tend to be rather passive aggressive.

[EricKei]

Quoth South Texan

I wish you could send back the manuscript exactly as she had sent it to you,....

My name is EricKei (not really), and I support this message (really)

[shadow1186]

Quoth South Texan

I wish you could send back the manuscript exactly as she had sent it to you, but in a different font to make it look like you had edited it; then, when she complains that you inserted errors into it, apologize for having sent back her original and immediately produce the edited version in which you had caught all those errors she made but just now saw.

Then again, I tend to be rather passive aggressive.

I think that sounds like a brilliant idea! I've had to pull similar tricks in my job to make them realize the craziness of their requests and it works quite nicely.

[Betweenshades]

Quoth South Texan

I wish you could send back the manuscript exactly as she had sent it to you, but in a different font to make it look like you had edited it; then, when she complains that you inserted errors into it, apologize for having sent back her original and immediately produce the edited version in which you had caught all those errors she made but just now saw.

Then again, I tend to be rather passive aggressive.

Oooh! Pull a Harley Earl! He's the one responsible for the gigantic tailfins on GM's. Basically, he gave a model with huge fins to the powers that be who told him the fins were too large. So, he made another model with larger tailfins, said that it was the original concept and showed the powers that be both models. They liked the first one. :P

[chainedbarista]

if there is justice in this world, you can triple charge her; once for the original time frame, twice for the extremely late manuscript and asinine changes and trice for being a general idiot who should in no way be allowed anywhere near a word processor, paper, pens, pencils, or crayons.

[Tama]

What an (*$@($@* asshole that woman is!



One thing I am curious about...

When an author has just written the book, should they try to self-edit first, or let the publishers do it because it is their 'job'? (Not trying to sound rude, I just don't know how it works!)

[Rapscallion]

I used to edit for an online publication. Pulling shit like this would earn a rejection. Are your bosses so short of work that they'd not reject crap like this?

Rapscallion

[MoonCat]

I know there are other CS'ers who write, besides myself. This woman is an object lesson in what NOT to do as an author. BookBint has my sympathies.

[Reyneth]

And the sad thing is that if this book gets published and gets good reviews, it will all be due to the work of BookBint and her coworkers, but the author will get all the credit.