4 ms·

She could be traveling for the holidays and away from her usual setup. Someone in the replies mentions having this happen to them while in rural Newfoundland fo

She could be traveling for the holidays and away from her usual setup. Someone in the replies mentions having this happen to them while in rural Newfoundland for a funeral, equipped with only a cellphone and a spotty connection. Either way, I bet many programmers would run into trouble if asked to drop everything and immediately spin back up a production-ready environment for a project they haven't touched in a year.

Baeocystin 7y ago
A full book manuscript is tiny, and requires zero spinup whatsoever, unless you count opening a PDF or DOCX file as such. I have a copy of everything I've written over the past thirty years available immediately, and it would fit on a $4 thumb drive. If my career depended on it, I would be quite certain to have it with me at all times.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  And what if you _didn’t know_ your “career depended on it?” What then?
  - Baeocystin 7y ago
    If a professional author doesn't think it might be important to keep copies of their work readily available, then I don't know what to tell them other than good luck.
    - pmiller2 7y ago
      Does “readily available” equate to “on your person at all times?” I’m sure the greats all did so before flash drives of sufficient capacity were available, right? Should a professional accountant keep copies of all the tax returns they prepared, on a flash drive that’s with them at all times, in case a client gets audited? Should I keep a copy of every line of code I ever wrote? Where does this professional responsibility end for you?
      - Baeocystin 7y ago
        I've written and published myself. Keeping manuscripts handy is part of the job. The problems mentioned in the twitter thread didn't exist before digital distribution, so what authors did beforehand is a bit of a non-sequitur. There were fewer of them, and the ones that made a living by it had real support on the business side of things, something vanishingly rare nowadays. Accountants are required by law to maintain a minimum of seven years' worth of records for exactly that reason. Fundamentally, if you want to sell a book you've written, no one is going to care more than you. That means that if you're a small, unsupported author (the vast majority of cases), it's on you to take care of the annoyances that come along for the ride. That's the nature of work. That flagging can be used as a form or harassment is a genuine problem- this is an inevitable side-effect of systems designed for pure automation, without a human in the loop to provide feedback. Over-reliance on automation is an issue that goes far beyond the world of publishing. That is orthogonal to the issue of being responsible for one's own creation, in terms of having needed resources on-hand.
      - lmm 7y ago
        Would you have your portfolio on your person at all times? Probably not, but you wouldn't go on a long trip without it. If you were actively working you'd have it available. If you didn't have it, you'd accept the risk of losing a contract or having your work temporarily withdrawn from sale. Maybe a bookseller would notice typos in your current edition and takes your book off the shelves until you can make a revised edition. I mean, fundamentally, if you're saying your book needs to be on sale 24/7/365 then you need to be standing behind it 24/7/365 or paying a person or organisation to do that for you. If you want to take a break from the business of your book you should be prepared for Amazon to do the same.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- JasonFruit 7y ago
  I have a book that is generated from a sqlite database, and is dependent on a certain version range of Scribus and Lilypond. It would take me days to get a setup that would work for me to make changes to it, but it saved me years of work in the initial edition.
  - Filligree 7y ago
    That's not exactly typical, to be fair.
    - JasonFruit 7y ago
      It gets worse. There was Python, elisp, Lilypond . . . it was a whole thing. But what I describe above is just what it would take to make changes now.
- shakna 7y ago
  > A full book manuscript is tiny, and requires zero spinup whatsoever, unless you count opening a PDF or DOCX file as such. That is not uncommon, but neither is it the quantitative norm. A lot of authors are particular about the typesetting of their documents, and it does require a rendering environment. It isn't unusual for a half-LaTeX half-something-else monstrosity to be rendered in a semi-custom environment. Especially if you're dealing with anything academic. In those kinds of environments you may have a ton of assets, like graphs, that may either be large file-sizes, and/or re-generated during the rendering process from various large datasets. Those assets are not small, and may prevent you holding much more than a couple books on your $4 thumb drive.
  - Baeocystin 7y ago
    If you have to use an academic, LaTeX monstrosity as an example to even somewhat limit the number of books you can store for a few dollars, surely we can just agree that the cost of storage is inconsequential compared to what an author will produce over their career output?
    - shakna 7y ago
      Perhaps. But months and years down the line, recreating an environment to regenerate the book can take considerable effort.
notafraudster 7y ago
I think it's reasonable to assume that if a store discovers a serious product defect, they should be able to expect the producer to respond in a short period of time or pull the product for sale. If the product is not important and never gets fixed, it never goes on sale. If other things take priority, it's off sale for a while and comes back. If it's the most urgent thing in the producer's business, it gets fixed immediately and never lapses. I would argue that the whole point of having a publisher is to avoid having to do this kind of thing yourself, but I know many authors forego publishers because publishers don't want to publish their stuff or they don't agree with the publisher's cut. Both reasonable objections. It's sort of like if you own a restaurant. If someone dies in your family, and at the same time a health inspection gets failed, you have one of two options: Drop everything and coordinate passing the inspection; or deal with your family stuff first and lose income when your product is not selling in the mean time. The more employees and structure you have, the easiest it is to get away for a few days. The more it's a sole proprietorship, the more your fate is in your hands. (FWIW I am from Newfoundland -- although I'm not an author -- and while the isolation of rural areas is not exaggerated in the comment, it's also not a surprise to people traveling there. When I travel home, which in the last few years has just been for funerals, I have a plan in place)
- jtbayly 7y ago
  One author mentions that publishers don’t care enough to do anything about it, leaving the author once again the one punished. It’s not as though this is a result of self-publishing.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

Baeocystin 7y ago

A full book manuscript is tiny, and requires zero spinup whatsoever, unless you count opening a PDF or DOCX file as such. I have a copy of everything I've written over the past thirty years available immediately, and it would fit on a $4 thumb drive. If my career depended on it, I would be quite certain to have it with me at all times.

pmiller2 7y ago
And what if you _didn’t know_ your “career depended on it?” What then?
- Baeocystin 7y ago
  If a professional author doesn't think it might be important to keep copies of their work readily available, then I don't know what to tell them other than good luck.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    Does “readily available” equate to “on your person at all times?” I’m sure the greats all did so before flash drives of sufficient capacity were available, right? Should a professional accountant keep copies of all the tax returns they prepared, on a flash drive that’s with them at all times, in case a client gets audited? Should I keep a copy of every line of code I ever wrote? Where does this professional responsibility end for you?
    - Baeocystin 7y ago
      I've written and published myself. Keeping manuscripts handy is part of the job. The problems mentioned in the twitter thread didn't exist before digital distribution, so what authors did beforehand is a bit of a non-sequitur. There were fewer of them, and the ones that made a living by it had real support on the business side of things, something vanishingly rare nowadays. Accountants are required by law to maintain a minimum of seven years' worth of records for exactly that reason. Fundamentally, if you want to sell a book you've written, no one is going to care more than you. That means that if you're a small, unsupported author (the vast majority of cases), it's on you to take care of the annoyances that come along for the ride. That's the nature of work. That flagging can be used as a form or harassment is a genuine problem- this is an inevitable side-effect of systems designed for pure automation, without a human in the loop to provide feedback. Over-reliance on automation is an issue that goes far beyond the world of publishing. That is orthogonal to the issue of being responsible for one's own creation, in terms of having needed resources on-hand.
    - lmm 7y ago
      Would you have your portfolio on your person at all times? Probably not, but you wouldn't go on a long trip without it. If you were actively working you'd have it available. If you didn't have it, you'd accept the risk of losing a contract or having your work temporarily withdrawn from sale. Maybe a bookseller would notice typos in your current edition and takes your book off the shelves until you can make a revised edition. I mean, fundamentally, if you're saying your book needs to be on sale 24/7/365 then you need to be standing behind it 24/7/365 or paying a person or organisation to do that for you. If you want to take a break from the business of your book you should be prepared for Amazon to do the same.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
JasonFruit 7y ago
I have a book that is generated from a sqlite database, and is dependent on a certain version range of Scribus and Lilypond. It would take me days to get a setup that would work for me to make changes to it, but it saved me years of work in the initial edition.
- Filligree 7y ago
  That's not exactly typical, to be fair.
  - JasonFruit 7y ago
    It gets worse. There was Python, elisp, Lilypond . . . it was a whole thing. But what I describe above is just what it would take to make changes now.
shakna 7y ago
> A full book manuscript is tiny, and requires zero spinup whatsoever, unless you count opening a PDF or DOCX file as such. That is not uncommon, but neither is it the quantitative norm. A lot of authors are particular about the typesetting of their documents, and it does require a rendering environment. It isn't unusual for a half-LaTeX half-something-else monstrosity to be rendered in a semi-custom environment. Especially if you're dealing with anything academic. In those kinds of environments you may have a ton of assets, like graphs, that may either be large file-sizes, and/or re-generated during the rendering process from various large datasets. Those assets are not small, and may prevent you holding much more than a couple books on your $4 thumb drive.
- Baeocystin 7y ago
  If you have to use an academic, LaTeX monstrosity as an example to even somewhat limit the number of books you can store for a few dollars, surely we can just agree that the cost of storage is inconsequential compared to what an author will produce over their career output?
  - shakna 7y ago
    Perhaps. But months and years down the line, recreating an environment to regenerate the book can take considerable effort.

notafraudster 7y ago

I think it's reasonable to assume that if a store discovers a serious product defect, they should be able to expect the producer to respond in a short period of time or pull the product for sale. If the product is not important and never gets fixed, it never goes on sale. If other things take priority, it's off sale for a while and comes back. If it's the most urgent thing in the producer's business, it gets fixed immediately and never lapses. I would argue that the whole point of having a publisher is to avoid having to do this kind of thing yourself, but I know many authors forego publishers because publishers don't want to publish their stuff or they don't agree with the publisher's cut. Both reasonable objections. It's sort of like if you own a restaurant. If someone dies in your family, and at the same time a health inspection gets failed, you have one of two options: Drop everything and coordinate passing the inspection; or deal with your family stuff first and lose income when your product is not selling in the mean time. The more employees and structure you have, the easiest it is to get away for a few days. The more it's a sole proprietorship, the more your fate is in your hands. (FWIW I am from Newfoundland -- although I'm not an author -- and while the isolation of rural areas is not exaggerated in the comment, it's also not a surprise to people traveling there. When I travel home, which in the last few years has just been for funerals, I have a plan in place)

jtbayly 7y ago
One author mentions that publishers don’t care enough to do anything about it, leaving the author once again the one punished. It’s not as though this is a result of self-publishing.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]