When I started on my public domain book design project last November I didn’t expect it to snowball into what it’s become. I figured I’d put out a book through Amazon or Ingram and that would be that.

Instead, the first one was immediately snapped up by a small press and, a few months later, I had a deal with a New York publisher for two books, with the very real possibility of many more to come. I’d self-published the first of those two and they wanted a new cover. I worked and reworked and reworked it until everyone was happy. There was no additional payment but I figured the extra labor might grease the wheels for a continuing financial commitment.

Everything was humming along apace until an email arrived stating that the publisher’s designers couldn’t use the print-ready files I’d sent and instead needed me to generate a text manuscript with instructions on where to place the images. Such a document did not exist. I assembled these books piece by piece, marrying text to image. I was taken aback by the request but sat down and made the thing they asked for.

A month passed and another email arrived. It had a sample of what the designers came up with. They changed typeface in places, changed the margins, and printed the author and book names at the top of every page. It was horrible and had little in common with what I’d made.

I didn’t write these books so my contribution is the art and the design. If you take apart those elements and reassemble them your own way it is no longer my work. I told this to the editor in my reply. He wanted to get on the phone and fix things. To see what he could do to make me happy. But there’s nothing to be done. I signed a contract and I’ll honor it. But these are no longer my books.

This morning I got an email from the designer requesting a link to the files. I wrote back that the editor had them. He requested I resend them, then wrote back that he couldn’t open the links. He wanted me to transfer them to another cloud storage site. That’s when I lost it. Told him to figure it out and not to contact me again.

Had a lovely talk in a park with June Skinner Sawyers.

Updated my events page.