Paying to write

     I just read a friend's blog.  She did a long thing about a new "self publishing" service she had heard about.  It's another "pay and we'll pay you" scam.  At least that's what it looks like to me.  What the hell is with these people who want money up front before you even start to sell your books?  My friend gets a bit more technical.

http://networkedblogs.com/9cOUb

     Yes, her blog is called "Written in Blood."  Great title for a Vampire book author's blog!  Anyway, she makes a few technical points on the good and bad points of the new program.  I'll just go simple and call it a scam.  People want money for everything now!  Gimmee, gimmee, gimmee!  Las Vegas is notorious for greed.  It seems like every night I go to work I end up dealing with some idiot who's yelling "I lost $50,000 here!  You need to let me do whatever I want!"  Is that supposed to matter to me?  The person was dumb enough to lose that kind of money and that's supposed to mean I let them destroy property, or attack someone else?  Having, or losing money doesn't mean anything to me.

"I'm sorry sir, but losing a lot of money here doesn't mean you can swim in the decorative pond with the coy fish!"

     You have no idea how many coy have died from eating vomit.  That's probably why there aren't too many coy ponds around Vegas anymore.  At least none that aren't behind about six inches of protective glass.  Everything here needs to be behind some kind of glass.  Things even need to be protected from the casino EMPLOYEES!  They decided to paint a path going to an employee entrance.  So as not to block the entrance off, they only painted half at a time.  After painting, they blocked off the painted half with barricades.  Some employees still climbed over the barricades and left footprints across the paint.

     The other night I ended up back in dispatch.  I hadn't been there for a while.  Before the shift was over, there were a couple officers downstairs in the security manager's office complaining that I had assigned them to do security details!  They felt that I shouldn't have been telling officers what to do!  If there were details to be done, someone else should have had to do them, not the people who were hired to do them.  No, I don't understand this either.  In a time when there is so much unemployment, you would think people would want to be thought of as a valuable employee, not someone who refuses to do his job!  I'm honestly stunned by these people.  They want to be paid, but they don't want to actually do any kind of work for the pay.  And as security, most of the time you just stand somewhere and watch someone else.  This is apparently too difficult for some of these people.  If not for security, I wonder what these people would do for work?  Maybe get a job as a Walmart greeter and then complain all day that it's too much trouble to actually greet people?

     What does all this have to do with self publishing, and paying to get your work out there?  Nothing.  If you read the things I write, you know I ramble on.  Oh well, if you're really interested in publishing yourself, read Katie's blog.