Hi there folks. Apologies for coming in all fresh and new and then starting a question thread so quickly after joining, but I've got an ongoing situation and I'm losing sleep over it.
Also, this is such a long post... I promise that reading it will make you a richer human being and more attractive to the gender and orientation of your choice.
So, I have a contracted publishing deal with a small press publisher. My editor is also an author with the press and the owner of the company.
He gave me some notes on my first draft, which I went through (probably not perfectly) and was told that he wanted to go straight to work on the final manuscript. His plan was that we'd have a meeting over skype once a week and we would simultaneously edit the manuscript into its final form AND typeset it at once. This seemed a bit strange, but the idea of having written a perfect novel stoked my vanity and so I went with it.
The arrangement lasted for four sessions, at which point we reached a part of the book that makes me think he might not have actually read the manuscript beyond chapter three. There's a big twist early on where the protagonist finds out that what he thought was a missing persons case is actually his family's history catching up with him. It's the 'first disturbance', and it involves the character he's been paid to find turning out to be fictitious, and the person who hired the protagonist turning up dead. He's alone and in trouble, and so the actual book can begin.
My editor had no idea about this, and it hit him like a ton of bricks. Called a two week break and I didn't see him again for three months.
I saw him again by accident when I was working at a conference. He wanted to resume out sessions, but I'd started work on publishing something with a friend and I said I'd go back to it the following April, if he was interested. He wasn't happy, but he agreed.
I got back in touch, I said that I wanted to work with him, but not in that way: that I thought it would be better to do a more normal system of sending drafts back and forth before we did any typesetting. I also offered to do the typesetting and basic design on the interiors if would help (I have experience of typesetting for print and that sort of thing), and he agreed.
I wrote a new draft. This one was much simpler with no twist (which was probably a good thing) and fewer characters. He'd found the original plot too confusing so I paired it right back to 'guy stumbles into his buddy's problems, now he's on the run,' which was also probably a good thing.
I sent it, he said it was late, and so he'd have to get to it when he was back from a book tour, which was fine. It probably was late. I asked if he'd mind helping me to cut it down to the world limit. It wasn't badly over, but I'd already cut a lot out and I was at the point where I just couldn't see what needed to go anymore. He said he'd get to it when he got back from his book tour.
Three months later my wife, who was the cover designer, had to drop out. I told him and offered to pay part of the cost of hiring a new cover designer. He agreed. During the conversation he asked if I'd ever finished the manuscript. I re-sent it and asked him to send me his specs for what he wanted on the cover. I have no particular opinion about that sort of thing, I'm not a very visual person, but if I was going to be handling getting the cover sorted out I wanted to get the damn thing as close to being right first time as possible, since every change was going to cost us money. He never answered.
Five months later I did some spring cleaning on Linked In: I added my new book deal (another small publisher, this time a history book) and my new column on a website (it's quite high-traffic for it's niche, so I thought it was worth putting on) and suddenly this guy is emailing me again.
He's either completely ignored or forgotten my last email, and he's forgotten how long the book is (he now thinks it's 20,000 words over, it was about 7,000 words over). He wants yet another copy of the manuscript, and wants to know what's going on with the cover (nothing, because I'm not spending any money until we have some kind of plan,) and seems to think that we agreed at some point that I was going to typeset the interiors of the book already, which would be a mad thing to do since it doesn't look like he's read the bloody manuscript.
On top of that his main reason for not getting back to me is that he keeps getting invited on foreign book tours... but I have friends who run small publishing companies, I've run a bookshop, and I've got friends who are themselves published authors. I know how big you have to be to get continual foreign book tours, and I've not been able to find any evidence that either he or his company are that big.
Is this normal? Am I just not understanding the industry? If so, all good: I'll get on with things. If not, what should I do?
Also, this is such a long post... I promise that reading it will make you a richer human being and more attractive to the gender and orientation of your choice.
So, I have a contracted publishing deal with a small press publisher. My editor is also an author with the press and the owner of the company.
He gave me some notes on my first draft, which I went through (probably not perfectly) and was told that he wanted to go straight to work on the final manuscript. His plan was that we'd have a meeting over skype once a week and we would simultaneously edit the manuscript into its final form AND typeset it at once. This seemed a bit strange, but the idea of having written a perfect novel stoked my vanity and so I went with it.
The arrangement lasted for four sessions, at which point we reached a part of the book that makes me think he might not have actually read the manuscript beyond chapter three. There's a big twist early on where the protagonist finds out that what he thought was a missing persons case is actually his family's history catching up with him. It's the 'first disturbance', and it involves the character he's been paid to find turning out to be fictitious, and the person who hired the protagonist turning up dead. He's alone and in trouble, and so the actual book can begin.
My editor had no idea about this, and it hit him like a ton of bricks. Called a two week break and I didn't see him again for three months.
I saw him again by accident when I was working at a conference. He wanted to resume out sessions, but I'd started work on publishing something with a friend and I said I'd go back to it the following April, if he was interested. He wasn't happy, but he agreed.
I got back in touch, I said that I wanted to work with him, but not in that way: that I thought it would be better to do a more normal system of sending drafts back and forth before we did any typesetting. I also offered to do the typesetting and basic design on the interiors if would help (I have experience of typesetting for print and that sort of thing), and he agreed.
I wrote a new draft. This one was much simpler with no twist (which was probably a good thing) and fewer characters. He'd found the original plot too confusing so I paired it right back to 'guy stumbles into his buddy's problems, now he's on the run,' which was also probably a good thing.
I sent it, he said it was late, and so he'd have to get to it when he was back from a book tour, which was fine. It probably was late. I asked if he'd mind helping me to cut it down to the world limit. It wasn't badly over, but I'd already cut a lot out and I was at the point where I just couldn't see what needed to go anymore. He said he'd get to it when he got back from his book tour.
Three months later my wife, who was the cover designer, had to drop out. I told him and offered to pay part of the cost of hiring a new cover designer. He agreed. During the conversation he asked if I'd ever finished the manuscript. I re-sent it and asked him to send me his specs for what he wanted on the cover. I have no particular opinion about that sort of thing, I'm not a very visual person, but if I was going to be handling getting the cover sorted out I wanted to get the damn thing as close to being right first time as possible, since every change was going to cost us money. He never answered.
Five months later I did some spring cleaning on Linked In: I added my new book deal (another small publisher, this time a history book) and my new column on a website (it's quite high-traffic for it's niche, so I thought it was worth putting on) and suddenly this guy is emailing me again.
He's either completely ignored or forgotten my last email, and he's forgotten how long the book is (he now thinks it's 20,000 words over, it was about 7,000 words over). He wants yet another copy of the manuscript, and wants to know what's going on with the cover (nothing, because I'm not spending any money until we have some kind of plan,) and seems to think that we agreed at some point that I was going to typeset the interiors of the book already, which would be a mad thing to do since it doesn't look like he's read the bloody manuscript.
On top of that his main reason for not getting back to me is that he keeps getting invited on foreign book tours... but I have friends who run small publishing companies, I've run a bookshop, and I've got friends who are themselves published authors. I know how big you have to be to get continual foreign book tours, and I've not been able to find any evidence that either he or his company are that big.
Is this normal? Am I just not understanding the industry? If so, all good: I'll get on with things. If not, what should I do?
