In case anyone wonders how I've survived till now… I mean, what I do when I'm not being an anti-life writer and generally deplorable human being, here's a glimpse of the kind of thing that keeps me from sinking forever beneath the waves of destitution, etc.
I wrote the first section of the book. No idea if I'll be credited inside, as I made no stipulations that I should be credited for what I wrote, and I probably don't hold the copyright (I'd be very surprised), either. Anyway, I suppose I might as well take the opportunity to advertise my services. I might have another job coming up soon, but if you want me to do some sort of ghost-writing job of this kind, then you can always get in touch with me and see if I'm available and able. I don't usually mention this on my blog, because I like to keep this blog separate from my 'professional' life as much as possible.
They should really be crediting you even if you have written a solitary sentence for them. That’s only fair….
Good for you and I agree that they should credit you. If they didn’t, why? I suppose I could advertise what I do to make more money for bills and food. I mainly do tedious tasks for an older man, such as cleaning his pool, organizing his medication, grocery shopping, errands and such. He despises doing these kinds of things. He pays me well and I would never get the same kind of pay elsewhere. Companies that hire helpers for the elderly pay 7 to 10 dollars an hour. That’s a mere pittance considering you’d only work a few hours a week.
Oh yeah, my ‘professional’ e-mail:[email protected]
It doesn’t always seem to happen. I’ve come to realise, by being on the other side of the printed page, that a helluva lot of workaday text out there is actually concocted by people who are never named, especially in thick coffee-table type books like this (and think of all the pamphlets and so on that are written by someone and often more than one person). Having said that, I might be named. I did work for the same company before – on one of their magazines – and was credited for that. This project was slightly different. I knew it would ‘look good on my CV’, so asked if I’d be credited, but only got a ‘don’t know’ in reply (something to do with this being a collaboration with another publisher or something). Oh, also, there are online translations from Japanese to English where I don’t seem to be credited. So, it doesn’t always happen, and if you complain about things, clients often just don’t come back. I probably shouldn’t even be saying this much, which I suppose is why I haven’t generally talked about my work here on my blog, where I tend to just say whatever comes into my head.Anyway, I don’t have my copy yet, but it looks like being a quality publication, ‘deluxe’ and so on. I mean, it even has a foreword by Heston Blumenthal.
Good for you and I agree that they should credit you. If they didn’t, why?I suppose I should emphasise that, not having seen the book yet, I don’t actually know. It wasn’t my intention to point a finger of accusation. But I thought, on the off-chance that someone interested in Japanese cuisine bought the book, and didn’t see my name anywhere on it, they might think I’d been telling fibs. I imagine that if anyone asked the publishers, they’d be good enough to say I did indeed write the first eighty or ninety pages. As to why… I honestly do not know. I think often it’s just considered unnecessary, as with public information pamphlets and so on. The writing in that first section is not supposed to have my personality stamped on it. Quite the opposite. A professional job in this case means that I successfully blend the writing in with the tone of the rest of the book. Also, my work on that first section was partly translation and partly a synthesis and precis of various raw materials I’d been given, according to very specific instructions as to what important points to include, vocabularly, house-style and wordcount. So, I’m not complaining in that sense. The text is not an expression of me that I would like acknowledged. It was a job. But… if my name is in there somewhere, it makes it easier to put in my ‘portfolio’. I can put it in my portfolio, anyway, actually, because anyone who wants to check with the publisher can, so it’s actually a very minor point.Having said all that, lay-persons are often surprised at how writers are actually treated in real life. Many people have expressed astonishment to me when I’ve told them about the ‘no multiple submissions’ rule that publishers have basically ganged up on writers to enforce, and other such things. Companies that hire helpers for the elderly pay 7 to 10 dollars an hour. That’s a mere pittance considering you’d only work a few hours a week.Converting that to pounds, I agree that that’s shamefully low. I know that carers in old people’s homes and so on here are often paid very poorly – sometimes below the minimum wage. There are many tightfisted people in this world.