Production Update Questions

[St. Troy]

Raise your hand if you had it drummed into you to begin your schoolwork immediately with the step of...writing your name at the top of the paper. I did it countless times, and it seemed easy enough, but hey, live and learn.

[RonClinton]

No sweat, Brian, I didn’t take it that way — my skin’s not that thin and on the contrary, I appreciate you giving us a peek behind the publishing curtain to show how this all actually works, all the variables that have to work together to make a project come to fruition. Those of us who aren’t privy to some of that and aren’t knee-deep in it everyday can only muse at what might be a solution. It’s always good to understand why ideas that seem obvious on their face don’t work when practical, in-houses realities are added into the equation.

[Brian James Freeman]

Ron, my apologies if I came across at all harshly. Typing from my phone while on the go isn’t the ideal format for conversation for me!

I just wanted to add that “cutting our loses” is definitely not a concept we’re unfamiliar with, and it has happened before. For this particular project, it would just be a matter of whether doing so actually helped get the project done sooner.

This time of year, as our printers get ready to shut down for their two week holidays, etc, isn’t really the right time. If, in a few months, Richard was like, “Let’s get this to the printer this week!” Well, then changes might have to be made. But for now, there’s still the opportunity to deliver the book as planned/promised/promoted, so we’re going to try to make that happen.

Brian

[Martin]

I have very little to add to this conversation. The exception being that I have no issue waiting for the book to be published as CD envisioned it.

[RonClinton]

Joe is only signing one volume. So your proposal is two volumes signed by the artists, one signed by Joe, and one signed by no one.


Brian

Ah. Yeah, that clearly wouldn’t work. Sounds like patience is the only option...hopefully 2020 will be the year.

[slayn666]

So... The solution to artists being slow to fulfill their contractual obligations with CD is for CD to not fulfill their contractual obligations (such as it were) with customers.

If you don't think a fair number of customers would go absolutely nuclear if CD shipped anything without all the promised signatures, then I can only imagine you've never worked in customer service. I've seen people lose their minds over a missing signature when the author/artist died before the signature sheets could possibly be sent out.

[Brian James Freeman]

Joe is only signing one volume. So your proposal is two volumes signed by the artists, one signed by Joe, and one signed by no one. Keeping in mind, if we declared this project “done” today, Richard might have 6 months worth of projects he wants to send before it... so we would be declaring it “done” with only some of the promised signatures when all of them were still possible?


Brian

[RonClinton]

Yes, I think they would be okay with two volumes having a signature page with both author and artist, and the other two volumes with newly printed signature sheets signed by Joe only, if it meant that they would not have to wait another year or two beyond the two+ already passed.

But, again, this is all just musings for discussion...no one expects that outcome. But, yes, were it to occur, I don’t believe you’d hear much, if any, grumbling, probably quite the contrary.

[Brian James Freeman]

Ron, the artists are named on the page and have been for some time.

The sheets that are currently out of the country are the ones to be signed by Joe. Do you think people will be okay with “cutting our loses” and publishing without those?

Brian

[RonClinton]

I understand and appreciate that the delay in STRANGE WEATHER is generally out of CD's control, which is why I didn't coach my question that prompted this discussion with any tone or content that would suggest otherwise...things happen, I get it, that's the way business goes.

However, for the purposes of discussion, were I to put on my Marcus Lemonis hat and put myself 100% in charge of this book, I would opt to just publish the thing with whatever contents I now in hand and fulfill the obligation to my customers to put the product that they paid for 2+ years ago in their hands as quickly and efficiently as possible, even if it is not signed by all artists as initially advertised.

Is there any belief that Joe Hill's fan bought this deluxe project largely because of the still unnamed (as far as I recall) artists involved? Of course not...while their signatures are a nice bonus, it was not the primary driver of interest by any stretch. 99.5% of those who preordered would be delighted to receive it now minus two artists' signatures rather than waiting another year or two for it to arrive; for those who cancel, there are plenty of prospective customers who missed the first round who will snatch up that .5% or pre-order cancellations. Fulfilling delivery with current materials would assuage customer impatience and frustration, and get this off the dock for CD, and not further contribute to CD's unfortunate reputation among some for late deliveries, even if it is often due to circumstances out of their control.

A company has to at some point cut their losses if involved with creatives that create an impossible situation, as customer and publisher patience should not be seen as inexhaustible, and instead turn their attention to fulfilling customer expectations for timely delivery, and STRANGE WEATHER would seem to be an example where that approach would, for most, be quite welcome.

I know, of course, that that will not occur and more patience will be called for, so I'll take off my Lemonis hat of idealistic practices and come back down to the real world. I do continue to look forward to the four-volume set, and I'm sure it'll be something quite special whenever it appears.

[Brian James Freeman]

Ultimately, at the end of the day, there are a lot of "creatives" we no longer work with for various reasons. We are very reluctant to "throw someone under the bus" publicly about being the source of the delay, but sometimes it's pretty clear on the production updates page where things are stopped. Some of the last books we made the mistake of announcing before they were written are still on there, and there's no denying what the problem is with them. (And books like that are WHY we no longer announce projects that are under contract but not completely written!)

For STRANGE WEATHER, one artist has told us he is mailing the sheets back as soon as possible now that his country's postal system is working again, and the other artist replied to our follow-up this week and promised that he and his collaborator are really going to get them signed ASAP now.

We can, obviously, threaten to not work with them again if we think that'll speed the process up, but in this case, they're both very busy in the comic world (where they are paid 10X more per page than we could afford to pay them) and we've found that polite follow-up emails nudging them along, pointing out how excited fans are for the book, etc, works better than outright threats. "We're not going to work with you again!" can easily generate a reply of, "And I'm not signing these sheets." It becomes a pissing contest.

(These posts today are actually one of the reasons I kind of want to "end" this Production Update Questions thread. Not to cut off questions about projects, but to instead direct people back to the individual book threads with their questions like the old days. When your questions were there, it was easy to point the person who is bottlenecking the project toward the thread -- to show how excited/disappointed people are!)

Also, just a friendly reminder: Dan and I answer questions about projects whenever we can because we're the only ones from the office who actually venture to the forums. That doesn't mean we have ANY control over when or how things happen. We report back what we're hearing, of course, but at the end of the day, we're just cogs in someone else's machine...

Best,
Brian

[Brian861]

Like I said, I'm naive in the ways of the small press. I'm gonna tell my boss today, "Don't pressure me or I'm not doing shit". Then I'll get to go home and find another job But if the business model is the creatives have you by the balls, so be it. Throw the customers balls in there for good measure as well.

[Brian James Freeman]

Here is the latest update from one of the artists:

“Sorry for not getting in touch before, but the latest weeks have been quite a mess over here as we had a national crisis in Chile in early October that became a major civil problem and had us with the infrastructure, business activities and normal routine turned upside down for over 7 weeks (including state of emergency, curfews and calls to the national guard in the first days).

Because of that, most of us here spent the last 2 weeks catching up with work and trying to recover a closer to normal routine.
Next to that, basic public services and private business (like mailing companies) started to get back to their usual work on late November.
Because of that, I was still unable to send back the already signed sheets, but I'm hoping to be able to do it finally during the weekend or very early next week. I think I do have the print guide with the mail return instructions, so I'm hoping not to have problems with that. If I do, I'll let you know and will ask for help.

Once again, I'm very sorry for this delay, but as you could imagine, some sort of unexpected events are simply unmanageably big at times.

Hope to be able to confirm the package is on its way very soon.“

[slayn666]

But in this one instance, 2 years of waiting

Let's not pretend this is a one-off deal here. For better or worse, a two-year wait is business as usual for CD. Dan and Brian have both said repeatedly they're trying to fix that, and Rich has said the same in interviews, and that's great and I wish them all the best in that endeavor, but to be perfectly frank, Strange Weather is not even late by CD standards.

Comedy response: Dan and Brian, you guys need to tell that Stephen King slacker to hurry the hell up with the intro to Dark Debts, that thing went on sale three years ago. Lazy bastard needs to honor his contract!

[jeffingoff]

I don't disagree, but these aren't lawyers and engineers you're dealing with. You ruffle their feathers too hard and they'll just not work with you in the future. Which may or may not be the same conclusion CD (or any other publisher) comes to due to delays in completing the terms of a contract, be it turning in art or signing signature sheets.

To put it another way, CD has around a long time. Don't you think if playing hardass about contractual obligations worked to get their books out quicker, they'd have been doing it all along?

As a creative myself (a marketing creative which is a lot different than an artist or author, but a creative professional nonetheless) I totally agree that squeezing creatives and being a hardass is not the way to go. This is a relationship-driven business and creatives totally need their space to their best work. But in this one instance, 2 years of waiting (that's just after it went up for presale--that's not counting all the time that led up to it with contracts being signed and things getting put into place before the public announcement) is a generous amount of time. No one could accuse CD of being a hardass for wanting the signature sheets finished. It's not like we're only 2 months or 6 months or even 1 year late. The artists have some expectations to be a little more professional.