Episode #80: How Not To Run A Digital Business

As most of you probably have been able to ascertain from reading this blog, I've been looking to get back into the writing game after retiring from my day job late last year.

To that extent, I decided to re-do and re-publish an old e-book that used to be available on Smashwords but will now be exclusively available on Amazon.

Jumping ahead by 300+ words or so, the sticking point we had to deal with for the past two months was getting a cover. I briefly had issues with my usual designer {turns out my initial two e-mail when to her spam folder by mistake, which got immediately rectified once this particular incident ended} so I went off in search of another designer. 

After making some general inquiries to about a half dozen on what genres they did or didn't do, I found one which I thought would be good, Jesh Art Studio. I sent off an inquiry via FB on the type of genres she did and got a response a day or so later, complete with pricing and a form to fill out.

Here is where things went sideways.

I initially sent the form back on 2/22. On 2/26 I sent a short e-mail asking if she had received it. She said yes, give me a few days to produce something. On 3/5, I sent another inquiry asking for a status update as well as a billing link to pay for the cover {note, due to her response of 2/26, I made a financial commitment to get my book formatted, which in hindsight I could've easily waited another couple of weeks to do}. On 3/7, got an apology for the late response and a promise to have a 1st draft in a couple of days.

Despite another inquiry by me on 3/11, I never received another response from her. I waited a week and decided to give my original designer another shot. And the rest, as they say, is history.

There is a fine line between nudging along and being a pest when it comes to stuff like this. My original designer does say up front that can take one to two weeks to produce a sample, of which I made a mental miscue on this time around and apologized for the miscue. But this person had no such disclaimer on her website. So I was careful with the time gap of the e-mails that I had sent to her. 

But it seems in the end that she apparently decided that i wasn't worth the $300 sale. Which is kind of sad, if you think about. Graphic design, especially for book covers, is a highly competitive niche market and it's imperative that you make things as clear as they can be for potential customers about openings/length of time etc (I came across one who announced in 2019 that they were entirely booked for 2020 and weren't taking commissions until spring/summer 2021). Treating them like garbage is a sure fire way not to get any potential business from them.

But, there is a happy ending to this story, which I will be giving/showing to everyone next week.

Until then, have a happy week, just like these dogs.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved