JoeGKushner
Adventurer
At least ICE had the "benefit" of doing the whole bankrupcy thing eh?
Boy, Does It Ever Suck Not Getting Paid!
- Thread starter John Cooper
- Start date
At least ICE had the "benefit" of doing the whole bankrupcy thing eh?
DItheringFool
First Post
My guess was two...are you counting the word "Publishing"?
dmccoy1693
Adventurer
Watching, Waiting, Wondering.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Yeah, that's the third word. And the products in question are alliterative.
tlg
lol :d
Huh. John hasn't been paid for six months and there's this company that hasn't been heard from the last six months.
lol :d
Huh. John hasn't been paid for six months and there's this company that hasn't been heard from the last six months.
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John Cooper
Explorer
Well, here we are on the 1st of July and I still haven't received my $120.00. The individual I've been dealing with at the company in question did email me last week, hoping to extend the deadline once again by a week or so. I told him I had had enough of deadline extensions, and since he was the one who had promised payment by the end of June, I was not interested in extending it any further. Last night he emailed me again, hoping to find a way to get me my money overnight, but his suggestions didn't work for me (I don't have a PayPal account, and Western Union is problematic for me). Since the post office was already closed by the time I read his email, I seriously didn't expect my money to have gotten to me today, and how about that - it didn't.
So, for the record, the "company in question" I've been referring to over the course of this thread is Dog Soul Publishing. The first individual I was dealing with - the one who constantly offered me payment, then neglected to pay me and ignored all my attempts to contact her until I started up this thread - is Deborah Balsam. The second person I've been dealing with is Sean Frolich.
In February 2007, Deborah contacted me with an idea she had come up with: having seen several of my reviews, she was impressed with my ability to find and correct stat block errors, and thought a "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" would be a good product line, wherein I would go through the monster portion of the SRD and fix up any stat block errors. I agreed to do it, and she drew up a contract wherein I would be paid $60.00 for each of the PDFs in the series. She originally envisioned that a new entry in the series would be released every two weeks.
So I started going through the SRD. For each letter of the alphabet, I would send Deborah a Word document with my changes made and my "Cooper's Comments" sidebars explaining why I had changed what I did. She in turn would turn it into a PDF. Fortunately, part of my stipulation in doing the series was that she would send the "finished" PDF to me before it was released to the public for sale, because I had gotten burned years before by a different PDF company who didn't bother making all of my changes because they didn't think they were important. (They were important to me: my name was listed as "proofreader/editor," and I hated the fact that there were known errors that I had pointed out but were left in the product nonetheless.) When I received the initial "finished" A-C PDF, I typed up a list of the additional changes that had to be made, she made most of them, I sent back a list of the things she had missed, and so on, back and forth, until I was satisfied with the finished product. (Despite the fact that I had already made my changes to the original Word document from the SRD, there are some things that can't be checked until the document has been converted to a PDF: things like hyphenation of a word split between two lines, proper spacing between entries, standardization of font sizes and styles, proper location and placement of sidebars, correct page numbering, and so on.) Let's just say that the first PDF she sent to me was...way below my expectations of quality.
At that point it was pretty obvious that the "new PDF every two weeks" was not going to happen.
In any case, determined to do my part to keep the process rolling, I finished up the monster portion of the SRD through the letter "Z," sending each file to Deborah for eventual conversion to a PDF and subsequently (after my tweaking) a finished product. Right as I was about to start the Animals and Vermin appendices, I realized I had yet to be paid for any of the PDFs that had been released thus far. Deborah originally promised payment in May 2007, then immediately after GenCon, and then, after 4E was announced and PDF sales pretty much dried up, "as soon as she could." Around November, after getting no responses to my emails, I finally started up this thread, and shortly thereafter Sean was assigned to dealing with me.
I think all of the next part of the story is pretty much summed up, in stages, in the earlier parts of this thread. And that takes us to today, when, after over a year of promised payment for the work that I did (actually, not even that; just the work that I did that was subsequently published), I still have only been paid for one of the three PDFs in the "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" series.
I'll leave it for Sean and Deborah to explain their inability to pay me what they owed me, should they desire to do so; while I know the reasons they gave me, I don't feel it's my place to broadcast that information.
So, where does that leave us? To begin with, I refuse to do any further work for Deborah, Sean, or Dog Soul Publishing. This means that the "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" series will never be completed, which is a real shame, because I was really looking forward to the finished series, and I think it would have been a very valuable tool for those who are interested in correct stat blocks. But oh well. I asked Sean and Deborah to delete the remaining files I had sent them, and informed them that they were not to produce any further entries in the "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" series, because I would not be doing any pre-release PDF proofreading/editing and did not want my name associated with any product that I had not done any final checking on. (Nor, based on that initial "finished" A-C PDF Deborah had sent me, was I in any way convinced that the desired level of quality would be maintained without my involvement.)
As a final note on the "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" line, I'd like to personally thank Claudio Pozas for the cool cover he did for the PDFs, featuring me in all of my bearded glory, sitting hunched over a tome of monsters while a trio of creatures stands in line waiting their turn. Thanks again, Claudio! (And I hope you were paid for your work!)
And finally, while I personally will have no further dealings with Dog Soul Publishing, and hope that any freelancers who are interested in working for Dog Soul Publishing will learn from my mistakes, I would also hope that Sean and Deborah have learned some valuable lessons about how to (and, perhaps more importantly, how not to) run an RPG publishing company. Hoping to pay your freelancers from the proceeds of their work just isn't a very good idea. I fully expect that they will be changing their business practices and this won't be a problem in the future.
However, I hope I'll be forgiven for not testing this theory myself.
I'll post here again when I finally get the $120.00 still owed me, just to close the loop on this whole deal. Despite everything, I still believe that Sean wants to do the right thing, and will do so when he's able.
So, for the record, the "company in question" I've been referring to over the course of this thread is Dog Soul Publishing. The first individual I was dealing with - the one who constantly offered me payment, then neglected to pay me and ignored all my attempts to contact her until I started up this thread - is Deborah Balsam. The second person I've been dealing with is Sean Frolich.
In February 2007, Deborah contacted me with an idea she had come up with: having seen several of my reviews, she was impressed with my ability to find and correct stat block errors, and thought a "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" would be a good product line, wherein I would go through the monster portion of the SRD and fix up any stat block errors. I agreed to do it, and she drew up a contract wherein I would be paid $60.00 for each of the PDFs in the series. She originally envisioned that a new entry in the series would be released every two weeks.
So I started going through the SRD. For each letter of the alphabet, I would send Deborah a Word document with my changes made and my "Cooper's Comments" sidebars explaining why I had changed what I did. She in turn would turn it into a PDF. Fortunately, part of my stipulation in doing the series was that she would send the "finished" PDF to me before it was released to the public for sale, because I had gotten burned years before by a different PDF company who didn't bother making all of my changes because they didn't think they were important. (They were important to me: my name was listed as "proofreader/editor," and I hated the fact that there were known errors that I had pointed out but were left in the product nonetheless.) When I received the initial "finished" A-C PDF, I typed up a list of the additional changes that had to be made, she made most of them, I sent back a list of the things she had missed, and so on, back and forth, until I was satisfied with the finished product. (Despite the fact that I had already made my changes to the original Word document from the SRD, there are some things that can't be checked until the document has been converted to a PDF: things like hyphenation of a word split between two lines, proper spacing between entries, standardization of font sizes and styles, proper location and placement of sidebars, correct page numbering, and so on.) Let's just say that the first PDF she sent to me was...way below my expectations of quality.
At that point it was pretty obvious that the "new PDF every two weeks" was not going to happen.
In any case, determined to do my part to keep the process rolling, I finished up the monster portion of the SRD through the letter "Z," sending each file to Deborah for eventual conversion to a PDF and subsequently (after my tweaking) a finished product. Right as I was about to start the Animals and Vermin appendices, I realized I had yet to be paid for any of the PDFs that had been released thus far. Deborah originally promised payment in May 2007, then immediately after GenCon, and then, after 4E was announced and PDF sales pretty much dried up, "as soon as she could." Around November, after getting no responses to my emails, I finally started up this thread, and shortly thereafter Sean was assigned to dealing with me.
I think all of the next part of the story is pretty much summed up, in stages, in the earlier parts of this thread. And that takes us to today, when, after over a year of promised payment for the work that I did (actually, not even that; just the work that I did that was subsequently published), I still have only been paid for one of the three PDFs in the "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" series.
I'll leave it for Sean and Deborah to explain their inability to pay me what they owed me, should they desire to do so; while I know the reasons they gave me, I don't feel it's my place to broadcast that information.
So, where does that leave us? To begin with, I refuse to do any further work for Deborah, Sean, or Dog Soul Publishing. This means that the "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" series will never be completed, which is a real shame, because I was really looking forward to the finished series, and I think it would have been a very valuable tool for those who are interested in correct stat blocks. But oh well. I asked Sean and Deborah to delete the remaining files I had sent them, and informed them that they were not to produce any further entries in the "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" series, because I would not be doing any pre-release PDF proofreading/editing and did not want my name associated with any product that I had not done any final checking on. (Nor, based on that initial "finished" A-C PDF Deborah had sent me, was I in any way convinced that the desired level of quality would be maintained without my involvement.)
As a final note on the "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" line, I'd like to personally thank Claudio Pozas for the cool cover he did for the PDFs, featuring me in all of my bearded glory, sitting hunched over a tome of monsters while a trio of creatures stands in line waiting their turn. Thanks again, Claudio! (And I hope you were paid for your work!)
And finally, while I personally will have no further dealings with Dog Soul Publishing, and hope that any freelancers who are interested in working for Dog Soul Publishing will learn from my mistakes, I would also hope that Sean and Deborah have learned some valuable lessons about how to (and, perhaps more importantly, how not to) run an RPG publishing company. Hoping to pay your freelancers from the proceeds of their work just isn't a very good idea. I fully expect that they will be changing their business practices and this won't be a problem in the future.
However, I hope I'll be forgiven for not testing this theory myself.
I'll post here again when I finally get the $120.00 still owed me, just to close the loop on this whole deal. Despite everything, I still believe that Sean wants to do the right thing, and will do so when he's able.
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Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I'd hoped that things would turn out differently. Sadly, this is a story without surprises, and I think a number of us figured out who the company was and what the products were well in advance.
By the way, John, they're Dog Soul Publishing, not Dog Soul Press. Sorry to nitpick - it's the editor in me (I'm sure you understand
).
This is truly saddening, as I really wanted to see the rest of those products.
John, is there any possibility that you'd be willing to complete the series with a different company? They wouldn't be able to use the name "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" to be certain, but there shouldn't be any reason why they can't put out corrected entries for monsters from the SRD. Heck, since the SRD is all OGC, they could even reprint the existing work you did on the line (that is, monster for A-G) under a different title. I know some companies - ones who'd make sure to pay you - who'd be happy to work with you if you want to put your work to good use.
I hope you also asked them to immediately cease selling the PDFs of "D" and "E-G" since they have yet to pay you for them, meaning they're selling and profiting off of your work, which they do not own.
By the way, John, they're Dog Soul Publishing, not Dog Soul Press. Sorry to nitpick - it's the editor in me (I'm sure you understand
).John Cooper said:
This is truly saddening, as I really wanted to see the rest of those products.
John, is there any possibility that you'd be willing to complete the series with a different company? They wouldn't be able to use the name "Cooper's Corrected Creature Codex" to be certain, but there shouldn't be any reason why they can't put out corrected entries for monsters from the SRD. Heck, since the SRD is all OGC, they could even reprint the existing work you did on the line (that is, monster for A-G) under a different title. I know some companies - ones who'd make sure to pay you - who'd be happy to work with you if you want to put your work to good use.
I hope you also asked them to immediately cease selling the PDFs of "D" and "E-G" since they have yet to pay you for them, meaning they're selling and profiting off of your work, which they do not own.
John Cooper
Explorer
Alzrius: Yeah, it's Dog Soul Publishing, not Press. What can I say? It's late, I'm tired, and I lost my entire post after an hour and a half of playing around with the wording and had to start all over from scratch. I went back and edited my post above, though - thanks for the correction. I don't like my work to have errors in it, even if it is just a message board thread post. 
And I certainly wouldn't be adverse to completing the series under a different title with a different publisher, should there still be any interest in such a product. It seems as if quite a lot of publishers are moving on to 4E.
And no, I didn't ask Sean and Deborah to stop sales on "D" and "E-G" - I figured the more money they made from those sales, the more likely I'd finally get paid. Foolish, perhaps, but I was still giving them the benefit of the doubt. Again, I don't think either of them was being devious or underhanded, so much as inexperienced.
Vigilance: Believe me, I'll be adopting your First Law of Freelancing in all of my future dealings. Live and learn.
And I certainly wouldn't be adverse to completing the series under a different title with a different publisher, should there still be any interest in such a product. It seems as if quite a lot of publishers are moving on to 4E.
And no, I didn't ask Sean and Deborah to stop sales on "D" and "E-G" - I figured the more money they made from those sales, the more likely I'd finally get paid. Foolish, perhaps, but I was still giving them the benefit of the doubt. Again, I don't think either of them was being devious or underhanded, so much as inexperienced.
Vigilance: Believe me, I'll be adopting your First Law of Freelancing in all of my future dealings.
Live and learn.
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