mojomikey said:
Long story short - guy joined our writer's group 6 months ago, said he had his memoirs (dealing with mental health issues). He liked my writing (I have made a living writing fire department books - was a LT on the FD for 29 years - have written others, but those books pay the bills). He likes how I write, wanted to know if I'd edit his book for pay. I said sure. Big mistake. He had no beta readers, no writing group, no nothing. No problems doing line/copy editing - which it needs a lot of, but the book flat-out sucks. You don't feel for him at all. Unorganized, disjointed, cliched, you name it, he broke the rule. He has not taken suggestions as to what to expand on,what to take out, how to organize the book better, etc. But he wants me to turn it around and give him back a book that will sell as well as my first one. I told him if he wants a good book, it needs a LOT of work, but I can turn it around and it'll be ....I think I said a mediocre book.
Do I take the money and run -making sure my name is off the book? Do I try to encourage him to make the book better? He's got some great stories, but he's left them out of the book. He is convinced he knows which ones are the great stories. Ahhh, no.
help, please
Never be afraid of saying "no" and handing back the cash. You only get one life, and it's too short to waste your effort on effectively writing someone else's rubbish book for them.
I've been in your position, when a publisher I do bits and pieces for asked if I could do a "final polish" on a debut novel last summer. I had a very defined window of time where I could do it, before moving house. The book arrived so late that I don't think the publisher was even able to open the file. They just asked if I could do "as much as I could" in the 36 hours remaining of my window, and reiterated that this was just a final polish.
Much of it wasn't even written in paragraphs.
I skimmed the manuscript and my heart sank even further. Quite apart from the massive amount of work needed to even put it into vaguely accurate English, the book was just horrible. I'm not interested in naming and shaming here so I won't go into any more detail than that, you'll have to trust me. It was truly nasty stuff, and given that I've written a short story about the abusive relationship between a small boy and the evil clown under his bed, you can imagine I have pretty relaxed boundaries.
And the deal was that I was getting my name attached as an editor, and a [very modest] percentage of the royalties. I took a deep breath, emailed the publisher and basically said: "Look, I can spend a few hours working on this, but it won't scratch the surface, and it's not a book I ever want to see my name associated with in any way. Have you actually
read this?"
Things went very quiet, but then the book was published towards the end of last year, without my name or any work from me. I've not read the published version, so I don't know to what extent the problems with it have been addressed. Weirdly, I heard that it's actually selling pretty well, but I remain satisfied that I had the integrity to turn down the work.
And the publisher in question is putting one of my shorts in a chapbook in the next month or so, so my brutal honesty doesn't seem to have tarnished our working relationship.