Catastrous Disastrophe
I am having a hard time finding the origin of that phrase, but it pops up elsewhere on the net, so I know that I didn’t make it up.
I sent an email to one of my favorite self-pub romance authors, just poking my head in and saying my two cents. She offered to hire me for editing. Considering that I would edit for her for free, I was quick to accept.
Mistake 1
Too quick. I undercharged by a lot. Perception of value is important, but I looked around at what other people were charging.
“I don’t have an MA and BA in English,” I thought. “I better price at the same level or below.” That was not the right thought process. What I should’ve done was scoped out what the author’s expectations were, which I did AFTER quoting her a price for editing.
On the basis of getting hired for this job, I began dreaming of creating an amazing author services company. “I can format, and most of my work experience is in editing and QA. Surely I can handle the little things, right?” I’m going to charge triple that price in the future for anyone else, although if you keep reading, you’ll find out why I am now extremely reluctant to edit for anybody.
Mistake 2
I thought, “Hm, I should underpromise and overdeliver. This is the path to delighting your customers, which is very important as a freelancer. Important to people running the rat race, yes, but doubly important when you’re just a buoy floating alone in the sea.” So instead of just sending an edited file, I also formatted it. “This first one’s free,” I said, “and you can hire me next time if you like it.”
Four minutes later, I had an email saying “I LOVE IT! WOO! YAY!” Ok, not really. But that was the gist. I was smug. “I’m the best editor and formatter in the world!”
“How is this mistake #2?” you’re thinking. Just wait.
Four minutes after that, I got another email. The file doesn’t actually work.
“How can this be? I use this exact same method to do my own work!” So I went and hunted down an answer on the Internet, like the Millennial I am, and I saw that I had made a mistake in believing that the formatting software did something that it did not do. I panic. I fix it so that the formatting works. I send it.
Half an hour later, I get back the edited Word doc that I sent over, now with the author’s edits. “Try again.” I try again. I send back a file, with every part of it ruthlessly checked a dozen times. By all the stars above, I will not fail her this time.
Mistake 3
Except I do.
I’m so caught up in making sure that the file is immaculate that I make the gigantic mistake of sending her an email FROM ANOTHER EMAIL ACCOUNT. Let me be clear here - she is getting an email from an absolute stranger with her entire book in it. I would be alarmed if I were in her shoes. Hell, I’m alarmed, and I’m the one who sent it.
This is a place where I always feel better because of Ramit Sethi.
Most of us claim we want to take risks. But if you really did, you would naturally fail as part of the process. So — when was the last time you failed? A week ago? A month ago? Longer? In Gmail, I have a “Failures” tag, and if I’m not failing at least 4x/month, I know I’m not trying enough new things.
….
Only NOW, after 10+ years of writing every single week, people hear I live in apartments in NYC and SF and they see me email ridiculous stories to a list of hundreds of thousands of people and fly across the country for last-minute ski trips, they say, “Wow. Running your own business. That must be nice.”
I didn’t do all this without failing. I did it because I knew failing was a natural part of growing.
I tried something new. I fantasized about replacing my day job income with freelance editing and formatting work. I got slapped in the face with reality, which was that I massively underperformed at the first test out of the gate.
You only get better by failing, picking yourself up, and going again. She might hire me to do editing again, but frankly, after the charlie foxtrot that was an insult to every Charlie and foxtrot, I wouldn’t hire me to do editing and formatting again. My time is better spent actually writing. I only accepted the job because I love her work. Heaven forbid that I format and edit for someone who is not beloved. It would probably turn out 10x worse.
I owe formatting to someone else as part of a barter. I can only hope that I triple-check like I should’ve this time around. I may have scraped my knees, but I felt better after licking my wounds for a little bit. I try to be as honest with myself as possible — self deception leads down a very dangerous path — but I also feel like I have an expectation of myself to be perfect out of the gate every time. I believe that’s unrealistic.
Paypal
This is a sidenote from that debacle. I got paid via Paypal. I've noticed how, as an entrepreneur and pseudonymous author, Paypal is necessary for a lot of the transactions I do. I use it to pay other people for services, and I'm obviously paid in turn for it. Instead of withdrawing the money I was paid, like a normal person, I'm just keeping it in Paypal for now. It's fun to use your Paypal balance, and you don't lock up your money for 3-4 days like you do when you put it in your bank account. You also don't have to have your real name on your invoices, although Paypal requires that you give them it to have a business account. So, it's totally legal, but you don't have to out your real name on Paypal to random strangers on the Internet, some of whom aren't located in the United States.
PV Excerpt: DMCA Takedown in Court
Most of the $25k award went to the lawyers, since the DMCA abuser has to pay the legal fees, but it was a great thing. Not all of us are capable of standing against DMCA abusers, but I would not be surprised if some of us banded together to help one another in DMCA abuse cases like this. Becca Mills' problem with Nolander was high profile, at least in our own community of maybe thousands of writers. Thousands of writers are capable of crowdfunding legal fees, with the idea that after a judgment in our favor, it'd go into a legal fund to try again. DMCA abusers hurt all of us, and it's in our collective interest to fight them.
It's silly, because I imagine that Authors' Guild is meant to be something like this. Instead, it's focused on upholding the dying trad industry. I wouldn't be surprised if Joe Konrath, Barry Eisler, Hugh Howey, etc. pulled together self-pub support for authors who get served with illegitimate DMCA notices. I imagine that they would only fund cut-and-dry cases, though.
Statistics: Posted by cimorene12 — Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:25 am