Production Update Questions

[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.

[slayn666]

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?