Sheesh.

Publishers.

Some days all you can do is shake your head at them.

Today, for instance, a letter came in the mail. Serious stationery it was—heavy, textured stock unlike the plain cheap paper all the credit card offers are printed on. It wasn’t time yet for a royalty report, so I opened the letter with considerable curiosity.

Hmmm. It was a contract addendum. Wait a minute, it was a contract addendum I’d already seen, nearly a year ago. I looked again—oh, I realized, it was just a copy for me, signed and returned.

In other words, it took them about ten months to receive and process a three-page contract addendum. The sluggish pace of doing business with them is irritating enough, but the topic of the addendum almost makes it funny—it’s about the e-rights to my books. Ah, well, at least they created the ebooks and got them released months ago.

I wonder if their e-technology people might someday persuade their accounting and legal people to streamline and modernize their processes just a tad. Funny how it’s the parts of the business to do with paying out royalties that seem to be the least efficient.