On Staying Small and Going All In
I’m up at 4:00 AM talking to D— from tech support, trying to work out (for the ninth time since October) a weird glitch that means I can receive emails but not send them through some of my accounts.
I’m very familiar with the tech support script at this stage: First, D— understands how frustrating this is for me.
Then, he asks the same questions I’ve answered in the last eight rounds, gets me to delete my email software and set it up from scratch, and change some passwords.
Then D—makes a change to the back end, asks me to wait 24 to 48 hours, and promises that this time it’ll be fixed for sure.
By now, I ask for the log number of our call, because I know I’ll be contacting them again in 28 hours and going through the exact same script again with a different member of the tech support team.
I try to be polite through the whole thing, because I’ve worked tech support before. D— is one of a huge team of tech support folks working for a major ISP and m problem—whatever it is—doesn’t fit into their script.
At the same time, I’m one of their smaller customers. They’ve got no real incentive to prioritize my issues, and it’s not D—‘s ass on the line if this doesn’t get resolved.
Which is actually one of the things I love about running Brain Jar Press and GenrePunk books: we’re small1. I’m hands-on with every aspect of the business. I get to know my readers and what they’ve ordered and where problems arise.
One of the best things about running my own store, rather than sending folks to places like Amazon, is getting excited about each new reader who shows up or coming to recognise the real hardcore fans who are there for each new book.
My ass is always all the line when it comes to Brain Jar and GenrePunk. I’m all in on every interaction, and I’m invested in solving problems when readers contact me on the rare occasions things have gone wrong.
It also means I can occasionally do projects just because a handful of people are going to love them.
A reader will mention how much they love stories about time travel or Vikings or TV shows like Sliders, and that will sit in the back of my mind until a short story or novella pops out.
In this case the story is On The Corner of Caxton and Petrie, 12:04 AM, which will appear in Unfamiliar Shores coming out later this month.
We live in a world that celebrates huge corporations, and even my anti-capitalist ass can recognise the benefits of them.
But there’s still something to be said working hands on and personal with your readers, and it’s literally one of the best parts of this gig.
- Even the “we” can be msileading here, as it’s often just me and the cats. My Spouse-Mouse is there when Brain Jar needs them, and there’s the occasional freelancer or intern, but current day-to-day operations are all me. ↩︎
