Hiding from your troubles (publishing post)

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I’m sure you all know people who hide from their problems. Maybe you’re one of those people yourself–I’ve certainly been there and understand the urge. The short-term pain of telling someone something they don’t want to hear–along with the chance that they will truly freak out and lose their cool–can be so upsetting that people put it off as long as they can. Yeah, it will all be worse someday, but at least they’re avoiding the pain of right now.

It’s always better to be as up front as possible: This book will be late, there’s a problem with these checks, chain store X won’t be carrying your books. Present the problem as soon as you know for sure you can’t avoid it. Present a plan to fix it. Apologize for the difficulties it will cause. Yeah, there may still be anger and embarrassment, but it will be less.

Now, I don’t *know* this was the problem with Ridan Publishing (Context), but the particular author mentioned in that post did a good bit of research into them before she signed with them to make sure they were legit, and still things turned weird. No payments. No communication. No acknowledgements that contracts have been terminated.

But that’s what it sounds like.

The good news is that the publisher has contacted the unpaid author in question with the promise that communication will resume and issues will be addressed. It’s a good first step, but I’d like to hear that all royalties have been paid.

Whatever the cause, I realize it’s not as simple as saying “Always be upfront about problems.” Of course that’s easy to say, right? I know that it life can sometimes seem overwhelming and stress can make us do the wrong thing even when we know it’s wrong. Still, however hard, doing the right thing is usually less painful than doing the wrong one.

In other news, I completely forgot that Brickcon is this weekend. Maybe my son will want to go tomorrow, since today is already dedicated to errang running.

See, yesterday afternoon my internet suddenly shut off. I tried all the usual tricks but couldn’t reconnect, and my son hovering at my shoulder (he had a multi-player Minecraft session planned) didn’t help. Eventually, the help tech at my ISP declared that my problem was my modem and, although it bounced back for a while last night, I have to spend most of this afternoon on a three-bus trip to buy a replacement.

I hate going to Best Buy.

Anyway, it’s another writing day shot all to hell. Ah well. At least I’m not pretending the modem is just fine and I don’t have to do anything about it.