Here’s a sample. I sent Intruder off to my agent in the form he asked for on January 2-?, this year. Last night I got a strange e-mail relayed to me by my publisher/editor from the cover artist asking where the book was and complaining it was going to run him against the wall because he didn’t have it. My publisher asked if I’d ever turned it in because she couldn’t find it in files nor find any e-mail about it. And I know I haven’t been paid yet. Which is not uncommon. I turn it in, and get paid when somebody gets around to reading it—or it goes into production, whichever comes first.

Well, it seems my agent didn’t ever send the book to the publisher. So I transmitted it myself last night on the spot.

This means the publisher won’t get a real chance to read it, because it will simultaneously go to the artist, and probably simultaneously go to the copyeditor, and everybody is going to be in a frantic rush, because this book seems to be in production already, meaning it’s slotted for September and the wheels are turning despite the fact they had no book and the artist had no book and cover design has no art, book design has no text, and there was NOTHING in that folder but a name for the book. The editor/publisher was deep in the throes of another book in the heat of production with its own crises, and hadn’t realized that there was a thundering silence surrounding a book she had every reason to believe was in the folder and coming along as per normal. The copy editor doesn’t have the editor’s notes and probably never will have—it’ll make schedule, because books don’t fail schedule without major stuff—but! Small wonder I hadn’t been paid yet.

And by the time it does come out, I’m sure there’ll be some errors you get straight from my keyboard, because staffs aren’t as large as they used to be, and instead of paper standing in stacks on shelves where you can SEE there’s a spot with no paper stack on it, it’s all transmission of files.

Welcome to the totally paperless way of doing things.

I’ll try to be hyper-careful checking galleys on this one, but things get by me for the same reason I made the mistake in the first place.

Well, worse things have happened. Far worse. The time much of the whole production run got stuck in a snowbank. The time the cover got the wrong ink mix. The time they didn’t glue the cover on. The time a copyeditor corrected all of Jones’ ‘ain’ts’ to ‘isn’t’s and it went to press that way on my first hardbound. The time a piece of paper stuck on  the printing plate so neatly square that half a critical page was missing for most of the run, in a place that looked like a ‘finish’ to a scene.

We’ve survived them. But there are times being an editor OR a writer means an extra large bottle of Excedrin.