The perils of living far, far away

[penmage]

We have an author who lives far, far away.

Most of the time, the magic of email means that this doesn’t matter. I don’t care where he is, as long as he can respond to my email. He’s a good writer who gives us good books.

The only time it becomes an issue is when we have to send each other actual physical things. Hard copies. Contracts and copyedited manuscripts (hereby referred to as CEMs) and first pass pages. Because he lives far, far away, it takes a long, long time for packages to get from us to him, and then from him to us. It slows things down, and makes it all the more necessary for things to happen on schedule.

Case in point, this time. I sent him his copyedited manuscript. If you’ve never seen one of these babies before, then I will tell you that they have copyedits on the page, and then queries on post-its stuck to the page. The page edits are usually simple grammar and word usage notes—the post-it queries are usually more complicated questions that the author really needs to respond to.

Now, when we send packages to our author, who lives far, far away, because he lives in such a remote location, his packages go to the general post office, who send them on to his remote location. This time, he asked the PO to make a photocopy of the copyedited manuscript and hold on to it, in case something happened to the original en route. (FYI: before I send out any CEM I photocopy it, just in case it gets lost. The one time I didn’t, it got lost.) All of this is well and good.

Except the PO accidentally sent him the photocopy and not the original. Okay, still not a big deal. We do need the original back, but we agreed that he could do his copyedits on the photocopy and then send them both back.

They arrived on my desk today, and I was all set to transfer the copyedits from the photocopy to the original, when I discovered

that the photocopy didn’t include any of the query post-its. Somehow they were just not copied.

So he didn’t respond to any of them.

Not his fault, obviously, but I just want to headdesk headdesk headdesk, and call him up and yell “Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!” a lot of times into the phone. This is his fourth book. He’s been through the process before. Did he really think his manuscript was so perfect that there were no queries at all, only copyedits? I mean, it’s good, but not that good. Not at this stage. Was he not at all confused as to the lack of queries?

We don’t have time to send this back to him and have him send it back to us. We need the answers to those queries.

I don’t know how we’re going to proceed, but it is going to stir up a lot of unnecessary work for me. Either reading them all to him over the phone, or faxing a 300 page manuscript, or typing up all the queries or something.

I want to hit something.

Comments

[shhbabe.livejournal.com]

Tracked changes? Convert the manuscript to PDF and put pdf notes everywhere you had a post it?

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we'll probably do something like that. There are just a LOT of changes, and this is work that ought to be totally uneccsary, so it irritates the heck out of me.

[shhbabe.livejournal.com]

Also, did they put the post its back on the manuscript in the right places? Or did they just take 'em all off and toss 'em in the box? Either way: weird.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

That's the weird thing. The post-its are all still where they started. Some of them are photocopied really illegibly, but most of them don't show up on the photocopy at all.

[debg.livejournal.com]

I like the track-changes option. Hand it to an intern or assistant, offer them a fantastic lunch as a thanks, and get it out by email.

I have to say, as the receiving end of a ms stuffed with tiny little post-it notes written with a gnat's eyelash and most of which are layout questions that are not within my authorial purview, I think the whole post-it method is Satan's Little Helper. But there you go, your mileage will certainly vary.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Wait... you're an editor.

Could you possibly give me some information about your company?

And *hugs*. That DOES sound frustrating.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

What kind of information are you looking for?

[coppervale.livejournal.com]

For the first few paragraphs I think I stopped breathing... until I got to enough details to be sure it wasn't ME.


*whew*

(Head still thumping from the brief adrenaline surge, though).

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Oh James, don't be silly--I wouldn't post something like this about you! And trust me, you don't live anywhere near far enough to be considered far, far away. Far, far away involves crossing an ocean at least.

[coppervale.livejournal.com]

LOL... it's the fact we have to pay attention to UPS schedules to make ship times out here (in semi-far away), combined with the fact I JUST sent back a package (but hadn't checked to see if it arrived yet)... let's just say parts of my brain went into fifth gear really really fast...

;)

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Your package came yesterday too! It's safe and sound, so no worries there :).

[tabbyclaw.livejournal.com]

Hit the post-its. Really hard. In the direction of Far,Far Away. with any luck they will conk him in the noggin.

[npkedit.livejournal.com]

A piece of advice from one publishing pro to another: tell whomever it is in charge to move into the 21st century and have the copy editors edit on-screen using the comments feature and track changes. Or if you must use PDFs, then get your authors on Adobe Acrobat with comment features. We're not the only major publishing house that does this and it saves everyone delivery fees and heartache.

I've got writers all over the globe and if I was faced with post-its and hard copies from authors all of the time, I'd freak.

[g33kgrrl]

That's what I was going to say, of course minus the "one publishing pro" part.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

Ditto ditto ditto. I was sitting here thinking, "Why not use Acrobat Professional?" The one time I did a little (freelance) proofreading on a manual for Lionbridge, every change and query was made using this.

[debg.livejournal.com]

As one of the authors at the receiving end, picture me nodding like a bobblehead on crack, over here.

My own publisher has used post-its and they're the stupidest idea since the invention of the hoola-hoop. Half the post-its aren't even authorial queries, they're layout or typeset questions. But I still have to go through every. last. one. of. them.

Feh.

[esc-key.livejournal.com]

penmage and my company likes living in another century. It makes for "fun" livejournal drama the occassional historical fiction more accurate . ;)