Production Update Questions

[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!