Re: What does $3 a page mean to you?

["Bonnie Granat" <bgranat -at- granatedit -dot- com>]

Michele Davis wrote:
> A small claims court judge may not take your side about the word
BOOK
> being "snuck in" at the last minute,

But why not? The agreement we had didn't say "book pages," but
"pages," which in the industry is a standard that means manuscript
pages. I cannot see why a judge wouldn't think that a transmittal memo
is NOT an agreement, just as I do.


and it doesn't matter if it's in
> your agreement or not. I've won small claims court with no contract
at
> all. You knew it was book pages, and you could have walked away at
> that point. You did not, therefore your invoice is going to have to
> reflect
> that $600 loss.
>

You're probably right. At the time the memo arrived, I should have
known. But because most of their correspondence with me was so
ambiguous that I had to write several e-mails to clarify what they
were indeed saying, it just didn't occur to me that they would be
changing our agreement in this manner. That's my error, and I suppose
technically, because I went ahead and did the work, that implied that
I accepted their doing what they did. So, I learned a lesson.

That's why the publisher is very clever, indeed. They sneaked the word
into that memo, but made no mention whatsoever about "book" pages when
asking me for my agreement to their terms. When I had that memo, I saw
the word "book," but frankly, it didn't set off any alarms in my head
because it just never occurred to me that they would change the terms
of our agreement in that kind of underhanded way. They hoped I
wouldn't notice, and they were right.

Someone here or on the copyediting list suggested this was "bait and
switch," and I think it's a classic case of it, actually, but a judge
might take your view. I may suggest to the publisher that it think
about informing copyeditors it hires in the future that "pages" means
"book pages" when they state their terms.

I will most likely respond to them that I now see where I made my
error and submit an invoice for the lower amount. But I am going to
wait until later today to do anything.



Bonnie Granat
www.granatedit.com





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