blackshirt5 said:
But the point that I'm trying to make is that if you look at your sales and see a serious difference between products that bear the name of GMS and those that don't, that I think it'd be time to evaluate whether or not it's worth it to hire him and cost your company money again, or find other freelancers to work with.
It doesn't matter if he is "the best", which is always a matter of opinion. It's a matter of "Wow, there's people that dislike him enough to not buy a book that he worked on. It doesn't affect him though because we're taking the hit, as the publishing company, because we've already paid him for his work."
Blackshirt, let's look at it a different way. Let's say Green Ronin publishes a really kickass book on some potentially controversial topic, let's say Devils (just for fun, let's call it
Legions of Hell).
Now, let's say that people who hate the subject of devils, or people whose religious beliefs are in conflict with the topic of the book, or people who are just completely misguided and think we're teaching Little Johnny to summon demons come out in protest of the book.
Green Ronin's position has always been that we're going to do the best books that we possibly can, but that not every book we do is going to be for *every* person. The people who find the devils book to be in poor taste, or to cover taboo subject matter, or who just plain don't like the book are free to go about their lives and ignore that book. Fine with us!
What we won't do, however, is preemptively cancel a book because people might get their panties in a knot. As long as the book itself is good and sells to the people who want it, and is well received by the people who were its target in the first place, we're happy. If our book of devils doesn't sell to people who hate devils, that's really no surprise and nothing to get all excited about.
Same goes for people who, for whatever personal reasons, hold an opinion about the authors or artists that we've used! You're all free to not buy books from people who personally annoy you. I respect that. I do the same thing myself: there are people on my list that I've vowed never to support with my hard earned money, for no other reason than I've found them to be personally offensive. I'm free to ignore the people who bug me, and you're free to do the same.
I think that's really all I have to say on this matter.
Regards,
Nicole
edited to clear up my demons/devils confusion
Anyway, I'm not going to bash anyone for taking a stand on principle, since I've done exactly the same thing myself. I'll just let out this one pitiful little meep about getting caught in the crossfire and let it rest.
