FAQs: Please Help Me!
on September 15th, 2009This is a screen shot of my email inbox today:
I have always made a sincere effort to answer every single letter. However, I want to write and draw, and stories are not getting written and drawn when I am answering mail.
I appreciate every letter. More importantly, I appreciate the fact that many of you are coming to me for help. And I especially appreciate the fact that more and more people read this blog every day.
The best way to get me to help: DON’T write me a private email. DON’T send me a question via my Facebook box, either.
If you have a question about something you think is important about publishing, or contracts, or anything of that sort, please post that question publicly on this blog so everyone can read the answer. If the answer is important to you, it may be important to someone else.
There are no stupid questions. There are, however, some pretty silly ways of going about trying to get the answers to those questions.
Don’t come to a pro with basic questions about copyright, trademark, and contracts because many of these questions can be answered in moments with a quick web search on the official government copyright and trademark office websites.
Whenever you go to a pro, you have an opportunity to get an answer to something you can’t find on the web; some obscure contract matter, something tricky about accounting you won’t learn in the top three hits on Google. A pro is giving you their professional opinion, and they are performing this service for free. Please respect yourself and their time: do some research on your own first.
If you consider yourself a professional quality artist or writer, and you do not have basic contract knowledge, then you are not taking your work seriously. You are signaling that when you go to a pro and ask beginner questions.
Claiming you are a writer or artist while not knowing the basics of copyright and trademark law is like claiming you are a physicist who can’t do long division.
This is your job. You must know these things before you can pursue a career with any sense of professional devotion. And you should not expect professionals to take their time to act as career consultants for you when you will not make this basic effort.
I have spent hundreds of hours over the last couple of years helping out creators, writing articles, and volunteering for various organizations as an advocate. But my time is not unlimited, and I need to be able to do my own work. I also need to limit my attention to creators who are serious about their work. I could have finished several issues of my comic in the time I devoted to others over the past two years, and I just can’t do this on behalf of people who do not respect their work or my time.
This is about your self respect. This is about responsibility.
If you need someone to review your contract, here are resources where you can get pro bono or low cost legal aid. I am not a lawyer and cannot review your contract for you. Also, there is a long list of free online legal blogs at the right of this page. Any one of them will have hundreds of entries which will help you.
If you want to know about industry practices and standards, you should try the Graphic Artist Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines.
If you are a publisher or creator looking for contract templates and solid, basic advice, there are many books by Tad Crawford available.
Let me revise that: if you are a publisher coming to me asking for free advice for your company, please refrain. Seriously, you are not a real publisher. Get a lawyer. Do your research. I will not work as your unpaid consultant.
And if you can’t refrain, my rate is $250 an hour.
But do yourself a favor. Get those books by Tad Crawford and that Graphic Artist Guild Handbook and read them cover to cover before you come to me again. And if there’s something you can’t find there, my rate is still $250 an hour.
If you are a publisher, you can pay for my help. And if you can’t pay me, you can’t afford to be a publisher.
You’d be grumpy too if you had to get through my inbox.
I will help creators who show me that they are also willing to help themselves.
As opposed to “publishers” helping themselves to hours of free professional consultation services.
Dude. That’s a lot of mail.
Remember last year at SDCC when you were doing the copyright panel, and that one guy kept asking the same damn question? The exasperated expression you had as you told him he needed to disabuse himself of the notion that he knew what he was talking about was priceless, and I picture you wearing it as you wrote this post.
(And totally understandably so.)
Great post, Colleen!
And I’ve duly taken note of the book recommendations! Wonderful! I’m going to order some of the titles for myself — but I’m also noting them to include in the reference recommendations for the book I’m working on. (um… I do need to email you about that, but it’s not a priority at the moment.
)
My sympathies for the mass of communications!
I have been driven to tears this week out of frustration.
I might post some of the letters I get. I don’t want to be cruel, but you would not believe this stuff.
When I get letters from interesting people like you, or Sarah or Arlene, it is such a relief. You have no idea.
And VT: yeah, that is what I am talking about. Absolutely dense.
People seem to think their personal definition for what a copyright ought to be is more important than what the copyright office website says it is.
No, you cannot copyright an idea.
Many people are concerned with copyrighting their ideas while they are willing to cherry pick ideas from the work of others for their own benefit.
oh yay. I had that paranoid “oh crap I’m adding to that stack of email aren’t I?” I feel better about that now.
Yes, please post some if you have them. Nothing is more illustrative of what not to do than letters doing exactly that.
LOL! OK, I will have a post on Friday with some classics. No way are you among the problem people, Arlene!
If you were, you would be one of the half dozen small presses who wants me to send them copies of my bigger publisher contracts so they can see what to expect. Or to give them the names, addresses and phone numbers of top creators who will be (no doubt) dying to work with them for small press prices.
Or you would be one of the many sub-literates who benefited from a lifetime in our fine public school system and yet writes as if English were their fourth language.
Or you will be one of the manga fans who insists that manga are not graphic novels. And that they want me to give them detailed lists of American manga people who specialize in manga, not graphic novels.
Or you want to send me samples, but want me to prove I am the REAL Colleen Doran first, lest I turn out to be a crook who wants to steal their brilliant ideas. That letter was awesome.
Or you are sending my 20 MB files of your art without asking.
Or you send me your art and then beg me to delete it because you are sure I will steal it.
And on.
And on.
Delete.
Delete.
Delete.
The worst are the ones who start out normal and then turn out psycho, after I have spent hours trying to help them. Which happened this week.
It seems to be going around this week; John Scalzi just yesterday posted about this very thing.
Exactly how were you supposed to prove you were yourself? DNA tests?
LOL! Oh, great, could have saved myself a couple hours last night just by linking!
But then, I will follow up on Friday with actual mail so you can see what actually drives us crazy. Because most of the people we encounter are perfectly nice and it burns me up that the 10% who are bumfart crazy take up 99% of our time.
Yikes! While I’m envious of the talents of artists and writers, I don’t envy the banality of the inquiries you all have to put up with.
It’s the end of the fiscal year at my work and pretty much everyone is in the mode of “unless the building is on fire, don’t bother me”.
Though I still get calls from attorneys asking things they should have known in law school (I’m a Patent Examiner). I really get aggravated when I have to tell someone who’s making probably triple what I’m making how to do their job.
Sometimes some people, once they find out what I do for a living, will say to me, “You know, I have an idea for…” and then tell me about some invention they have. I try to be polite and I have to tell them that telling me this doesn’t do them any good since there isn’t anything I can do. Consult a patent attorney. One had the gall to ask me if I could do a search in the patent database to see if something like their idea is out there. I couldn’t believe they were serious. First off, I’m actually prohibited to do such a thing and secondly, I’m not going to put aside my work to do things like that. Sorry for the rant, just been a stressful time lately!
Colleen, if someone wants your contract info, I suggest asking them for their social security number and mother’s maiden name. When they say it’s none of your business, just have them repeat that and they’ll have your answer.
Or you want to send me samples, but want me to prove I am the REAL Colleen Doran first, lest I turn out to be a crook who wants to steal their brilliant ideas. That letter was awesome.
OMG yes, yes! “I’m spamming you unsolicited stuff, but first convince me I’m spamming the correct person!”
I can just see the answer that was expected: “Oh yes! How thoughtful of you to think of me to see your unsolicited work for which I have no use and no reason to look at! Where would you like my DNA and credit references sent to for verification?”
Between the paranoia about the Sekrit Cabal, and the paranoia about the mythical blacklist (and I know a few pros with more than their fair share of crackpottery who add to that myth), and the paranoia about having your work stolen, I conclude many of these people don’t need careers in publishing, they need a dose of valium. The anxiety level is off the scale.
We’ve all been ripped off, we’ve all been treated badly. The only way to ensure your work won’t be ripped off is to never show it to anyone. Which is sort of a career ender right there.
What? You have an email address?!? Let me send you this…
I save up all my questions and ask them whenever I see you at a convention.
As for showing you my ideas, I’ll wait until I get a contract, and then need someone to provide the visuals.
As for stupid questions, well, I’m a librarian who has been using the Internet since back when we had to use ASCII characters to make pictures. I know well enough to do Google and Wikipedia searches.
I a bit surprised that someone has not yet impersonated a celebrity’s assistant.
Speaking of which… why not outsource your generic email address to an online assistant? THEY scan your email each day, send out automated replies when necessary, forward the important ones to your super secret email address located in the monkey house at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, and post the crazy ones here for our enjoyment.
Actually, I had a nice lady assistant for awhile, but I just can’t afford one right now. Wagh! I pity me.
Yeah, email can be a huge time hog.
I had my Outlook email configured to automatically put new email into predefined folders based on who the sender was, and I also had it highlight the messages from my boss and my reports.
There are a few time saving tricks listed in this article:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4438.html
I used to have a better article but I junked all that stuff when I took my severance last year.
Now that I am back working part time, I may need it again but they haven’t given me e-mail,,, yet!