A good editor can make or break a book – ever writer worth their salt knows that.
They should also know that nothing good comes from annoying your editor.
No good at all.
And this proofreader and their antics are the proof as to why!
Check it out.
I’m a proofreader/editor by trade; I do all kinds of work from instruction manuals to essays to books.
It’s pretty fun and I get to set my own hours as long as the job gets done.
There’s some backstory to this one!
Lots of stories of cheapskate clients, but I thought you’d enjoy the one below.
I assure you it involves malicious compliance, but I apologise for making you read until you get to that bit.
Late last year I get an email from a man (let’s call him Martin Von Madeupnametoprotectidentity).
Martin has written a book, and he wants an editor.
Before the job began (in fact, before we’d even negotiated my fee), Martin asks to meet up.
I didn’t have a problem with this; he lived locally and I quite like coffee, so we met in a local cafe.
This guy was one of a kind!
The man swaggers in like Johnny Depp in the Pirates franchise; before introductions are over he slaps a sheet of paper on the table and says “I need you to sign this.”
I take a glance at it, and it’s an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement).
Martin, like a lot of people who’ve never completed a book before, believed his book was the best book in the universe, an idea that needed to be protected from all the idea thieves out there.
That’s INSANE!
Now, I don’t judge literary merit, that’s not my job, I’m just here to make sure that the manuscript is polished and well presented.
I also don’t usually discuss any project with anyone who isn’t directly involved with the project itself.
I read the NDA thoroughly, but didn’t mind signing it.
It forbade me from EVER discussing his project with anyone.
I wouldn’t even be allowed to mention his name.
I thought it a little extreme, but the fee for the job we’d negotiated was good enough.
Who knows? Maybe he had written the next best seller.
He knew what was coming!
SPOILER ALERT: Martin’s book was not the best book in the universe.
Who could have guessed? It was terrible.
Martin was also one of the worst clients I’ve ever had.
Ignoring the petty stuff like the daily phone calls to see how I was doing (seriously, we set a deadline, it’ll be done by the deadline), he did some things that really got me mad.
Firstly, I’d edited half the manuscript when he decided that he had rewritten the first two chapters himself.
That’s right, I had to cast out a lot of the work I’d already done in order to re-rectify his mistakes.
UH OH…
Not a big deal in itself, but this sort of thing happened so often that the book ended up eighty pages longer than when I received it, and a lot of the work was doubled up because of his “visionary rewrites”. This led to the second problem.
This job was priced at a certain amount per page. Every time he added pages, I reminded him that the price was going to go up.
He assured me this was fine, and I kept a careful note of the extra work (always a good idea).
I’m sure that you, dear reader, will be as surprised as I am by what happened next…
This guy was a pain!
I complete the job (a week before the deadline, he added smugly) and send Martin an invoice for the final bill.
A bill that he knows has been growing steadily from all the daily updates he’s been demanding.
People in the creative industry will be well aware that getting money out of some clients is difficult, but Martin was determined to turn non-payment into a creative industry all by itself.
He shouted, begged, pleaded, and threatened me with a lawsuit unless he got his manuscript back.
My reply each time was that he’d get his manuscript when he paid the bill, the bill that he’d agreed to on many occasions.
He knew how to deal with this guy!
He demanded a PDF of his project first: I sent him one with “SAMPLE, CLIENT HAS NOT PAID” watermarked on every single page.
This goes on for so long that I have to issue an ultimatum: either he pays or I delete the entire manuscript at midnight the next day.
He did pay (at 23:35), and I send him the completed manuscript and think that that’s that.
Nope: he suddenly phones me up and asks me to get the book listed on a print-on-demand service that gives you a free ISBN (and will list the book on Amazon for you).
He wasn’t going to do any extra favors for this stupid client.
Normally, I do this for free for nice people (it’s nice to be nice), but I told Martin it’d cost him.
He actually sent the money to me within the hour and I list the book for him.
Sorry, I can hear you screaming “WHERE’S THE MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE?”
Sorry for the delay, it’s in this bit.
A couple of weeks ago, Martin sends me a text.
It turns out that his book, despite being listed on Amazon, somehow isn’t number one on the best seller list.
Not my problem (I’m not a literary agent) so my response was simple: “Okay.”
Here’s the cherry on top!
Martin then, after all the insults and the irritations and the barely disguised attempt to steal my services, asks me if I could “tell all my friends, and maybe get them to buy a copy to get the ball rolling?”
It felt incredibly satisfying to send this reply:
“I’m sorry, Martin; under the terms of the NDA I signed I’m not at liberty to discuss the book with anyone.”
He loved what he did!
I know it’s petty, I know it’s not as spectacular as most of the stories on here, but I hope someone gets a kick out of my story – I know I did.
Also (just to make something clear in case I get questions about it) I am a man of my word; not even my closest friends know who this guy is or the title/contents of the book.
Unlike some clients I could Martin sorry, mention, I won’t try to break a contract!
This client surely tried his best to get free services!
Only if the client knew who he was messing with!
Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.
This freelancer knows the pain of working with such clients!
This person enjoyed this story and loved what this guy did!
This guy knows people like Martin aren’t fun to work with.
This user is at the airport and they surely had fun with this story!
This author shares how they think the Martin guy is insane!
If only Martin had been decent enough to acted professionally, he wouldn’t have gotten a blow like that in the end!
Hopefully he learned a very valuable lesson.
If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.
