"Endearingly funny, candid and intelligent" • 23 May 2007 • The SnowBlog

"Endearingly funny, candid and intelligent"

          Oh, you. 

So although I try to avoid posting things relating to cute overload, because, you know, this is a professional, grown-up publishers' blog, and you don't come here for fluffy 'tocks or spooning ferrets, here is a photo from their site. I like it because although the site owners live in the US, the photo includes a Hackney council tax form. I am getting one of them cages, and a hamster to go with. 

 So today I have updates on what day it is, time management and cars. First up: today is royalties day. I have sat and calculated and checked and calculated and written statements and checked and double-checked and am ready to go. One day, in the future, I will have a big button I press for all this to happen automatically. I've kind of half-written an automatic system which gets me half-way, but doesn't do the obsessive compulsive checking bit. Shame. 

Now, I hate writing cheques as much as the next small publisher, but there is something about writing royalty cheques that makes me go all soft inside. Er, in a good way. It's the essence of what we do: we take the output of someone's time and effort, turn it into a product, sell that product in exchange for folding cash money, and the royalty cheque writing bit is us passing the money back to the author. It is what it's all about. I hope no-one minds if I share the fact that we have generated £35,000 in royalties for our authors in the last period. We have changed the world for the better a little bit. Without us, those authors wouldn't have that money. Go us. 

Next up: time management. I have just written out this post, sharing some brilliant tips on time management, but then the internet connection dropped, I saved this page, it froze and failed to save. So you'll have to wait until I have the patience to type it all out again. When is someone going to invent a user interface device that connects straight into my brain so I don't have to do all this typing? 

Finally, an update on Streetcar. I am in LOVE with this service. So you recall that last time I mentioned it, I had signed up in the least effort-ful (nice English usement structures, there) way. I booked a car to drive a load of stuff to Excel where I spent the weekend at a martial arts show (I should tell you about that, sometime). However, the swipey card that you use to get into the car hadn't arrived. Bah, I thought. Oh well, I thought. So I phoned them up to cancel, and started to explain that the post had let us down. "No problem, Mrs. Barnes," they said. "Just go to the car, phone us up and we'll UNLOCK IT REMOTELY." Whaa? They BEAMED open the car. I GOT IN the car. I DROVE off. It IS THE FUTURE and, as Rob said, proof that alien technology does sometimes fall to Earth.  

I had cause to doubt their brilliance about half an hour later, though. It was a really hot day (in a traffic jam on Commercial Road, at least) and whilst I had the blowers on it was still baking. Thankfully it was only two and a half hours later, when I got to Rob's flat to pick up a computer, that he was able to point out to me that there was a perfectly serviceable air conditioning unit all ready to go and cool me down. 

What was that Mark said about me being intelligent? 
Emma