Professionalism and Self-Preservation

So here is a six dollar question:

On one hand, you have me musing that poor and unprofessional behavior on the part of some authors could in fact drag down the entire genre, and such behavior ought to be discussed because if I have one WTF question about the community of romance, it’s “Why on earth do so many people act as if writing romance is akin to joining a social club? It’s a business, for fuck’s sake.”

And on the other hand, or the other side of my arse, depending on your point of view, there’s Karen, and Jane, and me, all asking at varying times, “Wait, why can’t authors criticize their publisher? If the ground is supposedly saturated with the crazy sauce, and a publisher or publishers are acting in a manner that can only be described as unprofessional, why can’t an author speak up and say so?”

The question is this: where is the middle ground? Is there one? Where does professionalism end and self-preservation as a small business owner begin? Or vice versa?

Take us for example. We’re an LLC, so we’re a small business. One particular small press has asked to buy two advertisement spaces from us, and asked that we design those ads. I’ve done so, both times, and received neither confirmation that the proof was accepted, nor response as to when they would like the ad to run. My requests for payment were left unanswered, and my email requesting a response, any response, hello…Bueller? Bueller? have gained me nothing except time wasted and fees lost.

Since it was small potatoes in more than one sense, my elected option was and is to not do business with them from this point forward. But should I announce to all and sundry (sundry, for the record, is such a tart) that this press seems to have screwed me over? Maybe it’s a miscommunication, or maybe the URL in my email landed me in the SPAM filter, or maybe they took the ad that I designed and used it elsewhere. How the crap do I know? I don’t. So I sit and wonder.

So where does professional behavior begin and end? Is it professional of me to gripe about this press by name and say “authors beware!” since I think my experience speaks volumes as to the professional behavior of this press? Many writers will probably comment and say, “YES WE NEED TO KNOW! Our livelihoods depend on accurate information in a rumor-laden industry!”

And others will say, “That’s your business and it reflects poorly on you to make it public in this manner.”

Every time certain presses are discussed online, and it happens often with a few of them, authors email me and confirm the rumors being reported, revealing their own problems while begging that I not reveal their names, as they fear retribution from those publishers that would damage their careers. And then, on the flip side, there’s author behavior that is so breathtakingly bizarre, and not in a good way, that one wonders if anyone in the publishing end of things notices, if it has any career-based effect in the long term, or if it even should. Somewhere in the middle there are authors who speak out on their blogs about how upset they are regarding some publishing decisions. Sometimes that plays out to their benefit; sometimes it makes them look like they regularly aim firearms at their own toes.

How does one criticize one’s publisher and do so in a professional manner? Is that even possible? And on the flip side, is it ever ok to say, “Holy shit, your behavior as an author makes us look bad, and I so wish you’d shut the hell up?” Where is that line?

Categorized:

Random Musings

Comments are Closed

  1. RT was a good experience for me, too.  Of course there were parts that weren’t as great as others-I think that’s normal.  But none of the cons were enough to outweigh the pros.

    If it would get me fired or arrested or committed if I said it in public, I change the names to protect the innocent and write a short story. 🙂

    Heh.  I’ve done that.  Writer’s therapy.

    One thing about blogging as an author, you need to be prepared to stand behind whatever you say if you blog about something controversial and not backtrack if everything explodes.

  2. Arethusa says:

    The author loops are where we talk about plans to promote our books at that house.  I will take advantage of that information to promote my books at that house. I won’t share it with another house because that would be wrong.

    Look folks, I’m not trying to say JC is bad and EC is good because that is no more true than the idea that JC is subject to sainthood or that EC is the evil empire. Nothing is ever that simple.

    Janet

    I think one part of it is pretty simple. JC Wilder may be an employee of a different company as an author for another publisher and once connected to that publishing loop she received no information that would make her two hats an ethical conflict because, d’oh, s’author loop. I’ve seen no one provide any evidence to the contrary just a lot of hand waving.

  3. Robin says:

    I think one part of it is pretty simple. JC Wilder may be an employee of a different company as an author for another publisher and once connected to that publishing loop she received no information that would make her two hats an ethical conflict because, d’oh, s’author loop. I’ve seen no one provide any evidence to the contrary just a lot of hand waving.

    A lot of this really seems to revolve around roles, doesn’t it?  Which is I think both inevitable and interesting, because one of the thing that often marks some small and electronic publishers is that those who own/run them are also authors.  So there’s already so much mixing of roles, how are you going to draw lines for others?  As someone mentioned above, isn’t a situation where the press owner is also one of its authors a problem when that is not disclosed to other authors in the press?  That, it seems to me, might be classified as a conflict of interest if there is one to be found here. 

    But in any case, I have often wondered whether some of the unique issues we tend to see in some small and electronic publishers emerge from the fact that (currently writing) authors are so often sitting on both sides of the editor/publisher desk.  In some ways I think that can be seen as a unique strength, but in other ways I think it can make things very difficult, especially when there is confusion about which role one is inhabiting at any given time.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons for so much permeability across the author – editor/publisher boundary, too. 

    What strikes me so strongly in this instance, though, is the idea that Wilder should be subject to rules that no one else is, despite the fact that others are similarly situated, either as authors who write for more than one publisher or as authors who also act in other roles (as editors, art directors, etc.) at the same or other publishers.  So the “conflict of interest” argument can appear a bit hypocritical within an environment where multiple professional roles and relationships seems standard.

Comments are closed.

By posting a comment, you consent to have your personally identifiable information collected and used in accordance with our privacy policy.

↑ Back to Top