Practical Meerkat Has No Patience With Your Entitlement

Book Publisher Goes To Court To Recoup Hefty Advances From Prominent Writers

A New York publisher this week filed lawsuits against several prominent writers who failed to deliver books for which they received hefty contractual advances, records show.

I made the mistake of reading the comments in this, and was astounded (and yet not all that surprised) by the level of clueless entitlement in many of the responses, including a few people who should know better.

Folks, a contract is a legal document. It is binding on both parties. So before bitching about a publisher's behavior, read your contract. If you agreed to terms, and don't deliver your end of the deal (either by not-delivering or delivering something that does not match the terms of the deal, ex: was a fake) then in most every contract ever written, they have every legal right to ask for their end of the bargain (the advance) back.

This is not astounding. It is not unfair. It is business.

Traditionally, publishers have written off "bad" advances as the cost of doing business. They consider it the price of maintaining good-will, and weigh it against the cost of fighting to reclaim said advances. Tradition should not be taken for terms. If we're going to demand that publishers act like fiscally responsible businesses when it benefits us, we also need to accept that this may occasionally bite us on the (delinquent) ass. Especially when the economy is crap.

Don't like it? Don't sign the contract. Or, better yet, live up to your end of the deal. Get your book in. Within a reasonable timeframe of the deadline (where reasonable is defined by how much they want to keep you and what you can work out with your editor ahead of time).

We bitch about publishers, and rightfully so. But that does not make the author always the angel.

tech upgrade

So I am writing this on my laptop...which is now hooked up to a larger monitor. And on one hand, this is great, and on the other it's... whoa. My eyes are still trying to explain to my brain (or maybe it's the other way around) what the fuck is going on.

Also: monitor has vertical and horizontal settings! It turns sideways! It's an owl-monitor!

Meanwhile, I'm wondering if there's a way to split the chores between screens, or if I have to use one or t'other. Nothing in the limited instruction book (mainly: how to set up the monitor) gives a peep on that. Anyone? Bueller? I figured it out. It's not ideal, because it's mirrored rather than independent (what I do on one shows up on the other, rather than running several things independently) but it gives me both monitors, so yay!