Shadow of Victory missing from the monthly bundle

There is no lack of communication from Baen.

They didn’t know when RFC would finish working on SoV. RFC himself didn’t know when he would finish.
So ‘delayed until further notice’ is the only realistic answer they can give.

But hell, they went further in the E-Mail you posted from last week, explaining the situation on their end. They even made it clear that the Earc would be delayed for days rather than weeks or months.
I just fail to see what more you can realistically expect from them.

Yes, it took RFC longer to finish it than this Jenny Cunningham from the Baen Books Web Team guessed. So what? Thats why you don’t put up official dates in the first place when you are facing delays.

John Prigent wrote:I must be unusual. I avoid buying eArcs. I'd rather wait for the completed, edited and proofread full version and then buy the Ebook - which I have to do because I can't cram any more dead tree books onto my shelves.

Cheers
John

Unusual, unnatural, and possibly outright heretical.

There's no way I would let an eARC of a Weber book sit unpurchased more than a few hours, much less a day. I have a couple of physical ARCs of the MWW's work, including the last book of his Baen did before offering eARCs (SoSag), acquired through eBay. I'll probably troll eBay a few times for the latest Safehold ARC just to see if anyone is letting one go cheap, though the last few Safehold ARCs hit in the $200+ range, which is a bit too rich for me. One day Tor (or rather their corporate holding company masters) will see the light.

I do hope Baen counts eARC purchases with the total sales volume for best seller list purposes.

Star Knight wrote:There is no lack of communication from Baen.

They didn’t know when RFC would finish working on SoV. RFC himself didn’t know when he would finish.
So ‘delayed until further notice’ is the only realistic answer they can give.

But hell, they went further in the E-Mail you posted from last week, explaining the situation on their end. They even made it clear that the Earc would be delayed for days rather than weeks or months.
I just fail to see what more you can realistically expect from them.

Yes, it took RFC longer to finish it than this Jenny Cunningham from the Baen Books Web Team guessed. So what? Thats why you don’t put up official dates in the first place when you are facing delays.

I have been a business professional, for over 37 years. If I simply told my boss/clients/customers that my expected deliverables were simply "delayed" past my expected delivery date, with no additional information I would have been collecting unemployment years ago.

In business, delays sometimes happen, but an explanation of the issues involving that delay, and a new FIRM delivery date are expected to be communicated to your boss/client/customers. Telling your customers that it will be ready maybe tomorrow, or the day after, or maybe next week is NOT an acceptable answer.

Huddle your team up, figure out when you are sure that you can get the product out. Then communicate the new delivery date, along with an explanation of the reasons for the delay to your customers, that is the proper business practice.

RFC did a great job of explaining why the book was delayed. Even though it was not his responsibility to have to do so, he covered for Baen's lapse of customer communication.

But there is no question in my mind, that Baen could have, and should have done a much better job of telling their customers what was going on, and when we should expect receipt of the 1st half of the book.

Just providing a new date only works if the date has a reasonable chance of being accurate. There's no value in providing a new date if you're just going to blow past it, too; or drastically undershoot it.

Giving how writing works as a creative endeavor, it's a lot more prone to "when it's done" style scheduling. There's a limit on how much the process can be compressed if initial plans or estimates are off. Not to mention, since it depends on a single person, delays are harder to compensate for.

Yeah right, great idea to pick delivery dates at random. What could possible go wrong.

It may be preferable to provide firm dates but you cant relay information you dont have yourself.

They didnt know when the manuscript would arrive.
RFC himself didnt know it.
They told you that when you ask them.
End of story.

And honestly, was there' a tactful way to say it? RFC was running behind, and if you're Baen, you don't want to look like you're placing blame on RFC.

I don't think Baen could have said anything specific since anything they said would have been a guess. Giving a false date would be dishonest. Saying that it depends on RFC seems unprofessional and bad for relations with authors. Refusing to update was as we see in this thread a not great move either.

LTArmstrong wrote:

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:It seems a little graceless to be complaining about the unavailability of a book months before its official scheduled publishing date.

Baen and RFC are trying to do something cool for all of us fans by making their titles available early to us. We should be thankful for that, as they certainly are under no obligation to do that.

I'd like to thank RFC for all the great work he has done. And the nice folks at Baen, as well.

It is not "graceless" to expect a book to be delivered as part of a "Monthly Bundle", that I have paid for to be release on the date that was designated for delivery. Baen offered a the 1st half of the "Shadows of Victory" for sale on the 15th of August, 2016. I accepted that offer and purchased the 1st half of the book. That sort of dealing is usually called commerce on the free market. It is not "graceless" to expect that a contracted purchase to be delivered as promised. If you chose to wait for the paper print (which I will also purchase)to read the book in November, that is your choice. But when I contract for something to be delivered, I expect it to be delivered.

<snark> So when did you ask for your money back? I mean, you had a contract and they didn't perform, right? (Well, they delivered 'only' 75% on time, and 88% with a week's delay.) If it's not important enough to rescind the contract, why is it important enough to gripe and argue over?</snark>

I hear what you're saying, and I'd be much more supportive if we were talking about an agreement for a stock item that wasn't in the process of being created. I also agree with you that more communication couldn't hurt.

Nevertheless, it's been what, 208 weeks since the last MWW Harrington novel? I'm willing to be forgiving if it shows up in 210. Baen isn't sitting on completed manuscripts. They're ready when they're ready, and gripeing won't make it come any faster.

We got 75% of the bundle on time. _Angeleyes_ came out a week late. I can't see that this is something to get worked up over.

I think drinksmuchcoffee's suggestion that such complaining is "graceless" isn't far off the mark.

Star Knight wrote:Yeah right, great idea to pick delivery dates at random. What could possible go wrong.

It may be preferable to provide firm dates but you cant relay information you dont have yourself.

They didnt know when the manuscript would arrive.
RFC himself didnt know it.
They told you that when you ask them.
End of story.

You should never pick delivery dates at random. In business, the way to handle a delivery date with unknown variables, is that you assume a worst case scenario, and then you add a time cushion on top of that. You never get in trouble for delivering your product before your drop dead date. But you always get crucified, when you miss your delivery date.

Baen could have given out (or still could give out) a very conservative delivery date (ie September 30th, 2016), and everyone would have relaxed, and quite worrying about the 1st half of the book until sometime close to that date.

The people at Baen know their business variables. They could have, and should have, figured out and communicated a realistic but conservative, new delivery date for the 1st half of the book to their customers.

LTArmstrong wrote:

Star Knight wrote:Yeah right, great idea to pick delivery dates at random. What could possible go wrong.

It may be preferable to provide firm dates but you cant relay information you dont have yourself.

They didnt know when the manuscript would arrive.
RFC himself didnt know it.
They told you that when you ask them.
End of story.

You should never pick delivery dates at random. In business, the way to handle a delivery date with unknown variables, is that you assume a worst case scenario, and then you add a time cushion on top of that. You never get in trouble for delivering your product before your drop dead date. But you always get crucified, when you miss your delivery date.

Baen could have given out (or still could give out) a very conservative delivery date (ie September 30th, 2016), and everyone would have relaxed, and quite worrying about the 1st half of the book until sometime close to that date.

The people at Baen know their business variables. They could have, and should have, figured out and communicated a realistic but conservative, new delivery date for the 1st half of the book to their customers.

I understand what you're saying, by and large, but the problem is that determining a "realistic date" in this case simply wasn't possible for Baen. Any date they gave you would have been based on the dates I was giving them and my dates to them were "unrealistic" for several reasons. i told them inititally that they'd have the book by mid-March, and they did . . . except that it needed radical surgery and I asked them not to put it into any bundles until i had time to make the necessary fixes. At that point, I was supposed to deliver the next Safehold book by April 30. That was my date, nor Tor's. At that point, the book would have been early. Life, health, IT, and family issues intervened; I actually got the book delivered on August 2nd and turned to Shadow.

There were two sections in the book which required input/assistance from editors outside Baen, and the final turn in date was controlled by that, as well as by my own schedule. My original estimate to Baen was that they would have it no later than July 15, hence the original date in their scheduling. I was then bounced back by Safehold and told them August 15, which --- as it was coming in electronically --- would still have given them time to make their schedule with perhaps a 1 or 2 day slippage. Then my own schedule blew up in ways over which Baen had absolutely no control.

I'm not party to the internal decisions as Baen, but they had every reason to expect the book momentarily from the 15th on and the delays (not all of them my fault) were certainly not all their fault. But with me telling them "you'll have it within 12 hours of my receipt of the material I need which should be here Any Time Now," they had every reason to believe it would be in their hands literally momentarily.

So they went with "delayed" rather than giving you a hard and fast date. That was the most accurate information they had and they weren't going to create one out of whole cloth. Yes, they could have done that; i disagree with you that they should have done that. Instead, they gave you the information they had as honestly as they could.

From where I sit, that's about as professional and businesslike as one could be.

Oh, and BTW, I worked in marketing, customer relations, and PR for over 20 years before I sold the first novel.

LTArmstrong wrote:

Star Knight wrote:Yeah right, great idea to pick delivery dates at random. What could possible go wrong.

It may be preferable to provide firm dates but you cant relay information you dont have yourself.

They didnt know when the manuscript would arrive.
RFC himself didnt know it.
They told you that when you ask them.
End of story.

You should never pick delivery dates at random. In business, the way to handle a delivery date with unknown variables, is that you assume a worst case scenario, and then you add a time cushion on top of that. You never get in trouble for delivering your product before your drop dead date. But you always get crucified, when you miss your delivery date.

Baen could have given out (or still could give out) a very conservative delivery date (ie September 30th, 2016), and everyone would have relaxed, and quite worrying about the 1st half of the book until sometime close to that date.

The people at Baen know their business variables. They could have, and should have, figured out and communicated a realistic but conservative, new delivery date for the 1st half of the book to their customers.

Quote RFC:


I understand what you're saying, by and large, but the problem is that determining a "realistic date" in this case simply wasn't possible for Baen. Any date they gave you would have been based on the dates I was giving them and my dates to them were "unrealistic" for several reasons. i told them inititally that they'd have the book by mid-March, and they did . . . except that it needed radical surgery and I asked them not to put it into any bundles until i had time to make the necessary fixes. At that point, I was supposed to deliver the next Safehold book by April 30. That was my date, nor Tor's. At that point, the book would have been early. Life, health, IT, and family issues intervened; I actually got the book delivered on August 2nd and turned to Shadow.

Ect.Ect......


RFC:

I will bow before your knowledge of the publishing business. And simply state that, normal business rules must not necessarily apply to the publishing business. I especially respect your opinion (in addition to respecting your opinion just because it is your opinion) because, as you stated, you have worked in other business endeavors before ever writing a book. So you have a pretty good understanding, on how business deadlines work. So if you say this is an exception to the general rules of business, then I accept that judgment, and will shut my mouth.