A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: The Difficult Author
(photograph by Frank Perez) It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic addresses difficult authors. No publisher likes a difficult author. All publishers get them at times. All difficult authors are difficult in different ways but here are some that we have seen (not necessarily within MSI Press, where we have a wonderful consortium of authors supportive of each other and the press itself but with sister presses, for the most part): They want to have control over every aspect of production, e.g., the time schedule, the cover design, the marketing plan, color vs B&W; this can be particularly the case for first-time authors. There is a good r