Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Writer Beware? (a bit of a rant)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2101193" data-attributes="member: 2067"><p>Again, maybe I'm naive and inexperienced, but I wasn't aware that part of the author's responsibility was to remind the publishers of their responsibilities? I mean, when a publisher gives me a deadline, she doesn't expect to have to repeatedly contact me to ensure that I complete my end of the deal: I complete it, or I'm pretty well jacked. When I give a publisher the work, should I reasonably expect this lack of professionalism? This disregard for those who contribute?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The reason is mostly one of it not being relevant. If it was one publisher who did it over and over again, then I'd call them out. But this obviously isn't just a one-publisher, or even really a minority-publisher problem. It's spread pretty far. The problem is one with at least a certain percentage of the industry as a whole, ne? It's not about these specific publishers, it's about the entire trend. I'll deal with the specific folks privately (or not, as the case may be), but this trend seems to need some public attention, at least to make sure that other new writers know of this, or in the hope that this raises awareness. Who would know not to trust professionals to be professional? That part of a writer's job is to badger publishers into paying them? That there are contracts out there to prevent this sort of thing?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You're right. A lot of D&D fans want to write, and a lot of them don't have the ability to lock down to do what the publisher wants on time. I can only imagine how many publishers get the "my x is rich an inventive, better than any magic-loaded twinkish setting to date, and I'm offering it to you to publish as long as you do nothing to change it and promise me 50% of the profits!!" kind of talk.</p><p></p><p>And yeah, I'm frustrated that even the paltry value they agreed to pay me isn't worth the time it takes to remember I exist. And yeah, I'm inexperienced -- the existence of contracts has been a phantom to me (mostly it's been responding to open calls to build a base of published material that has given me the opportunity, but it's also been more in-deapth discussions about book lines and one-offs). I got rid of a lot of the documentation of the conversations with publishers. Since I haven't got a lot of experience, it's hard to know what to expect, and one thing I never really considered was that they would <em>forget</em>. I never expected my job to include constantly harping on them to get their stuff together.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't feel right calling them out when (a) they gave me an opportunity to get my work out there, even if they later changed their minds or didn't give me the promised compensation, and (b) I don't know what a proper row of ducks looks like. Because this is frustration and inexperience -- it could be entirely my own fault for thinking that the job of publishers was in part to pay contributors and that they would do it because they're businesses who enjoy contributions. Mostly, I find the fact that this happens over and over again with a lot of different publishers a lot more disturbing than one "Mystic Eye Games has had some illness." That's understandable. But if Mystic Eye Games, Mongoose, EN Publishing, and Mom and Pop PDF.com all had issues with this communication, if half of them stopped talking to me and the other half never paid me, that seems tobe a problem that's beyond my specific circumstances (it wasn't them, that's just an example). Regardless of my row of ducks, it seems like *they* don't know what to do, and, theoretically, it's their *job* to know what to do, right?</p><p></p><p>Yes, I could tenaciously run them down and corner them and politely bear my teeth and request the money or the book. That's my affair. But shouldn't that be mentioned in the discussions? "Oh, and if we don't pay you, it's your responsibility to track us down and make us pay you, because frankly we have better things to do." Even if that is the accepted way of doing things, in what bizzaro-world is that right, or should it be expected?</p><p></p><p>I'm not looking to burn any bridges and I'm finding out through this thread that it's nothing to give up on. I can accept my naievete and inexperience as a reason to have things vanish into the aether thus far. But at the very least, I'd hope that publishers who don't intend to pay those who don't badger them might hear of this and warn the writers. Or that someone else who's just starting out will see this and know that they'll have to do some legwork and some extra pressure to get their check. That if you want to get published or make ANY money, you may very well have to find where they live and annoy them into it. You don't just have to write something that sells them books, you have to constantly harp on them until they remit. On the best side, maybe some publishers who have allowed that to happen will recognize the problem and try to fix it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 2101193, member: 2067"] Again, maybe I'm naive and inexperienced, but I wasn't aware that part of the author's responsibility was to remind the publishers of their responsibilities? I mean, when a publisher gives me a deadline, she doesn't expect to have to repeatedly contact me to ensure that I complete my end of the deal: I complete it, or I'm pretty well jacked. When I give a publisher the work, should I reasonably expect this lack of professionalism? This disregard for those who contribute? The reason is mostly one of it not being relevant. If it was one publisher who did it over and over again, then I'd call them out. But this obviously isn't just a one-publisher, or even really a minority-publisher problem. It's spread pretty far. The problem is one with at least a certain percentage of the industry as a whole, ne? It's not about these specific publishers, it's about the entire trend. I'll deal with the specific folks privately (or not, as the case may be), but this trend seems to need some public attention, at least to make sure that other new writers know of this, or in the hope that this raises awareness. Who would know not to trust professionals to be professional? That part of a writer's job is to badger publishers into paying them? That there are contracts out there to prevent this sort of thing? You're right. A lot of D&D fans want to write, and a lot of them don't have the ability to lock down to do what the publisher wants on time. I can only imagine how many publishers get the "my x is rich an inventive, better than any magic-loaded twinkish setting to date, and I'm offering it to you to publish as long as you do nothing to change it and promise me 50% of the profits!!" kind of talk. And yeah, I'm frustrated that even the paltry value they agreed to pay me isn't worth the time it takes to remember I exist. And yeah, I'm inexperienced -- the existence of contracts has been a phantom to me (mostly it's been responding to open calls to build a base of published material that has given me the opportunity, but it's also been more in-deapth discussions about book lines and one-offs). I got rid of a lot of the documentation of the conversations with publishers. Since I haven't got a lot of experience, it's hard to know what to expect, and one thing I never really considered was that they would [I]forget[/I]. I never expected my job to include constantly harping on them to get their stuff together. I don't feel right calling them out when (a) they gave me an opportunity to get my work out there, even if they later changed their minds or didn't give me the promised compensation, and (b) I don't know what a proper row of ducks looks like. Because this is frustration and inexperience -- it could be entirely my own fault for thinking that the job of publishers was in part to pay contributors and that they would do it because they're businesses who enjoy contributions. Mostly, I find the fact that this happens over and over again with a lot of different publishers a lot more disturbing than one "Mystic Eye Games has had some illness." That's understandable. But if Mystic Eye Games, Mongoose, EN Publishing, and Mom and Pop PDF.com all had issues with this communication, if half of them stopped talking to me and the other half never paid me, that seems tobe a problem that's beyond my specific circumstances (it wasn't them, that's just an example). Regardless of my row of ducks, it seems like *they* don't know what to do, and, theoretically, it's their *job* to know what to do, right? Yes, I could tenaciously run them down and corner them and politely bear my teeth and request the money or the book. That's my affair. But shouldn't that be mentioned in the discussions? "Oh, and if we don't pay you, it's your responsibility to track us down and make us pay you, because frankly we have better things to do." Even if that is the accepted way of doing things, in what bizzaro-world is that right, or should it be expected? I'm not looking to burn any bridges and I'm finding out through this thread that it's nothing to give up on. I can accept my naievete and inexperience as a reason to have things vanish into the aether thus far. But at the very least, I'd hope that publishers who don't intend to pay those who don't badger them might hear of this and warn the writers. Or that someone else who's just starting out will see this and know that they'll have to do some legwork and some extra pressure to get their check. That if you want to get published or make ANY money, you may very well have to find where they live and annoy them into it. You don't just have to write something that sells them books, you have to constantly harp on them until they remit. On the best side, maybe some publishers who have allowed that to happen will recognize the problem and try to fix it. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Writer Beware? (a bit of a rant)
Top