The Shadowrun Situation

[Murtak]

I would hope for complete rewrites of some sections of the game, the matrix especially. Most of the game should not be touched though. It works. And I do believe you can still make money easily. Obviously you can sell the new core book. You can not sell new versions of previous setting and background books, not without advancing the timeline and basically rewriting those books from scratch. Even rewriting classic adventures is sketchy. A rules overhaul would let you sell new versions of Arsenal, Augmentation and Street Magic. Not rewriting those books will let you keep some players who would just stay with 4E when confronted with having to buy 4 books instead of one.

Bottom line, I'd say it would be smart to focus rewriting the matrix and hopefully some of the other clunky areas, like chases. Next pump out a couple of adventures, perhaps a new iconic setting and perhaps a compilation of matrix locations. This way you get to keep all the 4E customers while you consolidate your new team of writers with stuff that does not fuck up the existing setting and timeline. That is long-term smart, so you can still sell Shadowrun books in ten or even twenty years.

What I am expecting is quite a bit of change for changes sake, a net gain of about zero and carbon-copies of the books that sold the best. If we are lucky we will get semi-functional matrix rules out of the deal. I doubt it though.

[spasheridan]

I hope they ditch hover feet. Seriously - wtf?

[Orca]

Another view on timing of any changeover, and Topps' motives. Does this guy sound credible?

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s ... t&p=923304

[Lokathor]

The Ends of the Matrix itself has been being handed around various Shadowrun writers as a "must read" document for Matrix design questions. I would bet five dollars that whoever gets the Matrix chapter is going to be thinking about exactly those questions and unveiling their attempt to answer them without invoking the "Brain Hacking" boogeyman. Whether they do a good job of that depends on the wargaming skills of the section author. But I figure it extremely likely that they'll be starting with the right questions to answer.

Vehicle rules will be redone because no one in the design community likes the SR4A vehicle rules. Point costs will be fiddled with because they always get fiddled with.

1) Is there any particular reason that SimSense needs to be available in a wireless form at all? If it was only available to people with cyberware and you could thusly only brainhack people with cyberware, I think people wouldn't give a damn about the brain hacking thing.

2) What would those vehicle rules even begin to look like? Has anyone anywhere put forward even a partial update for them, or have they just been left to sit alone in the dark?

[Username17]

Another view on timing of any changeover, and Topps' motives. Does this guy sound credible?

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s ... t&p=923304

I agree with pretty much all of that except for the idea that IMR could possibly pay their dues at this point and make good. The fact is that Topps wants a company that voluntarily pays royalty fees, because the entire point of licensing in the first place is to make money without having to use billable hours from their own people.

Actually allowing IMR's status as a dead duck to get out or not is not win/win either way. It has pros and cons:

• Con: If Loren Coleman can be strung along, he might pay more of his debts to Topps just before the license expiration.
• Pro: If it's generally acknowledged that IMR is not getting it, more companies may bid, giving Topps more competition to give them money, and presumably a better deal from the one they pick.
• Con: If they acknowledge that IMR is going down, then the competing bids can be certain that they aren't up against IMR and may be tempted to put in a lower bid.
• Pro: The faster they can get the turnaround to a new company, the faster they can get money in their pants and the less hours they have to have Mr. Gasper working on the legal bullshit.

And so on. Which they go with is really up to them. But the bottom line is that it's less than a month until the contract expires naturally. And if they declared IMR to be insolvent to try to take it away from them before the end of the contract, IMR would have 21 days to respond. So while they might quietly make an agreement with some company or other right now to try to give them enough time to bring out a book for GenCon, they aren't going to actually terminate a contract for IMR before it expires.

1) Is there any particular reason that SimSense needs to be available in a wireless form at all? If it was only available to people with cyberware and you could thusly only brainhack people with cyberware, I think people wouldn't give a damn about the brain hacking thing.

Well, the fact that the trode net and trode paste work without any connection to your actual nerves is reason enough. One could imagine a different answer to the Why Datajacks question.

But the general question of why people would hook their brains to computers at all if it spelled the difference between being killable with a computer virus and not is a question you're going to have to answer. You still need a carrot or a stick for hooking your brain up to computers and for turning your commlink on in the first place. If the incentives run the other way, people won't do it, and the hacker won't exist as an archetype.

2) What would those vehicle rules even begin to look like? Has anyone anywhere put forward even a partial update for them, or have they just been left to sit alone in the dark?

The SR2 Rigger Blackbook vehicle rules were a little on the complicated side, but they worked at all. Writing vehicle rules is certainly possible. It really depends on who they draft to write them.

-Username17

[Windjammer]

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions at such length, Frank.

As a minor follow-up, have you guys here at the Den ever thought of writing up a workable set of vehicle rules for SR4A?

I found a general discussion on the issue of vehicles here, but it doesn't touch on Shadowrun. For one, we're obviously talking about a smaller scale than ships in space - I'd assume, street vehicles and helicopters - for another, it's a less scientifically advanced setting.

Side question: what do you guys think about the vehicle rules for Dark Heresy? (It's a free web enhancement on the 'net, the file going by the name of "Apocropha_Vehicles" on DarkReign etc.). Does that strike you as a good start, or is it utterly wrong headed to port (bits thereof) over to SR?

[Stahlseele]

I hope they ditch hover feet. Seriously - wtf?

Fuck NO!
Hover-Feet are the first novel and genuinely fun thing i have seen in SR4 at all!
Also, it's just logical application of Technology.
In SR3, there were Hover/Skimmer-Drones that could lift several kilos.
Take two of those, strap them together, put a board above them and you have a Hover-Board.
Strap two of those under your feet and voila, Hover-Shoes!
Next logical step is miniaturization and upgrading of output power and making this available as cyberlimb-upgrades.

[Username17]

I agree with Stahlseele that vectored thrust technology is more than sufficient to fly a 70 kilo dude around in Shadowrun. UCAS had Flying Tanks in 2050 based on that principle, and miniature flying drones were used simultaneously. The process is adaptable to both larger and smaller than man-sized objects, so well, obviously.

I also agree with spasheridan that hover feet are stupid. The technology would fit on the user's center of mass, not their feet. Shadowrun tech implies jet packs, not rocket skates. More Buck Rogers, less Air Gear.

But when 5th edition rolls around, you both lose. personal vector thrust units are almost certainly not going to fit in the already cramped gear section, and so they won't be put in or take out until one of the expansion books.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Back in SR1 times one of our characters had a custom "Hoverboard" built. Though it was not really a board, but a large hoverdrone in the form of a platform he could stand on.

Not really stable, and a karma drain (back then you paid 1 karma for a reroll, there was no pool) with all the pilot rolls with high TNs he had to make and reroll just to avoid crashing.

[Username17]

Limited Edition Update: the distributors shipped LEs out early, and game stores in multiple countries have them in their hands. Meanwhile, shipping to people who preordered is still being done by Randall Bills' wife. And well, let's just say that I don't expect a lot of hard work from the Bills family right now. So if you preordered from Catalyst, you don't have the book yet, and if you preordered through a store that put an order in with a distributor, then you do. Because that won't cause bad blood at all.

In other news, I got around to reading the master plan for the DotA stuff. Oh my fucking goodness. You know what? Argh. It's just... I'm really glad that the whole company fell apart before that could be inflicted on people. It has all kinds of problems, from being a Dragonheart tie-in at all to being totally a shallow rip of the Thultanthar plotline. But really, it all comes down to this quote:

Note: It’s always a nice idea, whenever possible, to tie seemingly unrelated plot threads together-especially long-lingering ones.

NO! That is not always nice. In fact, that is lazy as shit and involves the creation of things which are completely incoherent.

Which gets a bit to the heart of how sausage is made. Or rather, how it isn't made at Catalyst. Recall that Shadowrun has historically run year to year in real time. That is, a year today corresponds with a specific year i the future timeline for releases. Every book then comes from the future of the previous book and the past of the last book. If you buy the books in order, you can't get spoilers. As of SR4, the timeline was fixed 65 years in the future - it says so right in the book. 2005's book offerings were dated 2070 and 2006's book offerings were dated 2071. But something happened. Between the dickery, the mismanagement, the financial crises, the driving talent away, and the dickery, the timeline slipped. It slipped a lot. Vice is set in 2072 - it was literally scheduled for 2007!

Which means that the multi-year plotlines have never gotten off the ground. New Horizons had some seeds planted in Emergence that were supposed to be followed up in late 2006. That never happened because of the collapse of FanPro, and by the time Catalyst management got around to that shit, pretty much everyone had forgotten what the story seeds even were. Which necessitated restarting the whole idea, planting new seeds in 10 Jackpointers - and well, those seeds are dumb.

But the core problem is that with all the management dickery and the glacially slow release schedule, these long plot lines just don't have time to develop. New Horizons and Earth Rise (alternate gay title: "Gaia Rising") were on the table in 2005. And because things don't move forward, people end up sneaking in other, shittier plot arcs like Corruption Master. And then when things go apeshit and people like me want to go spy on the proceedings, they don't even have to get recent material - because the stuff for immediate release is three years old, and I fucking worked there back then.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Soo . . does that mean you might have more knowledge on stuff yet to come that you might be willing to share? ^^
OK, you probably have more knowledge, but you also probably are not willing to share i guess *grins*
Also: Yes, the DOTA stuff is pretty dumb, as seen by Mary Sue Frosty and the such . .

[Username17]

Soo . . does that mean you might have more knowledge on stuff yet to come that you might be willing to share? ^^
OK, you probably have more knowledge, but you also probably are not willing to share i guess *grins*
Also: Yes, the DOTA stuff is pretty dumb, as seen by Mary Sue Frosty and the such . .

Sort of. Let's take a step back for a moment and consider the fact that in addition to being a story, Shadowrun is also a business. Which means that in order to get a book made you have to have someone who wants to get that book made (from an artistic standpoint), and you also have to convince someone that the book will sell decently enough to justify the investment. This is where the "Format Wars" come in. Everyone wants to have plotlines go the way they want them to and to add stuff to the world that they think is cool. And everyone has a different idea of how to best sell the compiled books to the audience.

Here's the core, inescapable fact:

The Core Book sells more than Toy Books sell more than Story Books.

That's just a fact. There are a couple other facts that throw a monkey in there though. If you have more Toy Books, it drives people out of the hobby (bringing in a third or fourth Magic Book for an edition would probably cost more sales of the Core Book as people abandoned the line than it would sell). And then of course, there's no one right way to do a story book.

That's the part that has really killed the spirit of cooperation and the unity of focus in production plans. Because opinions are like assholes and so are game designers. Everyone has an idea about how they want the books that aren't Man and Machine to look like. And they've been variously (un)successful. I don't have great data from the SR3 days, but go ahead and look back through the library and see the massive formating differences between Shadows of Europe, Target: Smuggler Havens, Cyberpirates!, and Aztlan. And those are all just location books. There are also adventures (contrast Dream Chipper and Universal Brotherhood), world event books (contrast Bug City and Year of the Comet), faction books (Threats vs. Lonestar), and concept books (Underworld Sourcebook vs. Shadowbeat).

So when SR4 launched, the Format Wars were still burning, but the powers that be (mostly Peter and Rob) had their pulse on what kinds of books they wanted and how they wanted to have them formated. And that's why your basic world events book was Emergence (in turn set up a lot like System Failure), and the new location format was unveiled in Runner Havens. The Faction ad Concept books were pretty much on hold. And the opening adventure was On The Run. If you want, I can give the argument for any of those decisions. But right now instead I'm going to give you the argument against: Runner Havens sold like a flavored enema.

The original concept was to do the whole Shadowrun world Runner Havens style - a snap shot of a few major cities per book until they ran out of places that weren't Milwaukee. After Feral Cities there was supposed to be Cities of Intrigue, Awakened Haunts, War Zones, and some others that hadn't been named yet. But the problem was, the format sold like ass. And you can probably armchair calculate why, but that's not even the point. The point is that it did. So after Feral Cities was too far into it to pull back but before anyone had penned anything for Cities of Intrigue or Awakened Haunts - the program was scrapped. And a new location book format was sought. And that's where things diverge. And by diverge, I mean about twenty different formats getting suggested, and that's not even including the "Why don't we go back to (fill in book)'s style? That seemed to work fine."

So here were the two winners: 6th World Almanac (my favorite), and a new version of Tir Tairngire that was also an advanced magic supplement in the back. I didn't like that one as much, because I don't like the idea of not knowing how the magic system for the world works because I haven't read a book about a country that I don't care about. I think that one is probably dead in the water now, because the company is on fire and it was still stuck in development hell at the end.

But really this all gos back to gross mismanagement. And Dickery. Lots of dickery. Consider, in the three years that Shadowrun 1st edition was up and running, they managed to get out The Grimoire, the Street Samurai's Catalog, Virtual Realities, Rigger Black Book, Paranormal Animals of North America, Shadowbeat, Sprawl Sites, Shadowtech, Two Native American Nations books, Seattle, London, and The Neo-Anarchist's Guide to North America. That's 13 books, more than four a year, before we count the 4 novels and 9 Adventures (Universal Brotherhood, DNA/DOA, Mercurial, Dreamchipper, Queen Euphoria, Bottled Demon, Harlequin, Dragon Hunt, and Total Eclipse). Which in total doubles the output. And that was with a writing staff that was basically four core guys writing (Tom Dowd, Robert Charette, Paul Hume, and Jordan Weisman), pulling in additional talent mostly for adventures. We are 5 years in to the SR4 experience, and we only get to 13 books if we include adventures and the core book rerelease.

The idea that it would take 9 months to rope together a book in the modern age when you can email drafts back and forth in moments is insulting.

-Username17

[Username17]

Update: CGL has announced that they'll be selling e-books of novels! Now you may ask yourself: "what is that about?" and you'd probably give yourself the obvious answer: "to make some money."

And that's basically true. Even reasonable, considering that making money is supposed to be what a company does with their time. Nevertheless, most of you are probably waiting with baited breath to hear me tell you why it's a bad sign. Which of course, it is. Because CGL is in such dire financial straights that any news, even no news, is bad news. If the news doesn't come in "a really rich dude who really likes Shadowrun dropped 250 Gs on IMR with little expectation of getting anything in return in the near future" pretty damn quick, you can probably bet money that anything that happens at IMR is just people maneuvering to be closest to the parachutes when fuel runs out.

So here's how it works: Nigel Findley is dead. He had a tragic heart attack in his thirties and won't be writing any more books. Ever. But his stuff was (justifiably) popular, and with a new generation of Shadowrun fans running around, there's a new generation of people to sell copies of 2XS to, and they'll be better for it. So people have been working to arrange to republish the Nigel Findley books since before I worked for FanPro. It has run into various snags involving the fact that it's hard to get people to distribute novels when they aren't new and your company routinely reneges on release dates. But also because publishing normally takes money up front, and with IMR's hand-to-mouth existence, that just hasn't been happening. Of course, I did just say normally, which is something I'll come back to shortly. In the mean time I want to talk about Shdowrun payment contracts.

Remember how people withheld copyright on books like Running Wild and Vice? The reason that was possible is because IMR is contractually required to send payment to their writers within 30 days of the books being published. And if there's no publishing? They don't ever have to pay at all. That's why information from Shadows of Latin America was used in Ghost Cartels without ever having paid a dime to anyone who wrote anything for Shadows of Latin America. No books were ever printed, so the countdown for when those concepts have to be paid for never started. And yeah, IMR is in the same position vis a vis a pure e-book sale of books that were contracted for print release. The actual date when they have to pay money for the writing of those books won't ever come as long as they don't actually print them. And since the transactions of internet sales are instant - even if the authors pull their contracts, all they will have to do is stop selling them - they won't actually owe any money to anyone at that point. And with so few people in the office, you can guess how long it'll take them to acknowledge any such withdrawal claim.

So yes, the pure e-book publication is a way to attempt to squeeze some amount of money out of peoples' writing without actually paying for it. There is ample precedent for this, and it really should not surprise anyone at this point.

But I promised to get to the whole printing being a cash-upfront situation - mostly. There are in fact printers who will take promises to pay and bill later. And Loren Coleman found some of them. He found four of them. One in Thailand, one in China, one in Canada, and one in the United States. And he stiffed all of them. Which means that all four of them are currently holding the remaining books until IMR pays them. And good luck to them with that.

So yes, the e-publication is a way to try to get a quick buck with zero money down. To try to take that money and funnel it to a printer creditor before any of the other people owed cash get their hands on it. So that they will have actual books they can sell, so that they can take the money and pay themselves with it.

In other news, Jason Hardy has announced that Running Wild, Seattle 2072, Dusk: Dawn of the Artifacts 1, Vice, and Midnight: Dawn of the Artifacts 2 are all back on sale. However, some of the people involved in Seattle 2072 say they are still withholding copyright on it. My best guess is that IMR is going to sell a few copies of Seattle 2072 before they acknowledge the oversight and put it back on the no-fly list. DOTA 3 and Runner's Toolkit are still in total limbo of course, with that status for DOTA 3 getting a thumb's up from me personally, because I still hate that plotline.

-Username17

[martian_bob]

Looks like the tactic's paid off, at least a bit...
http://catalystgamelabs.com/2010/05/05/ ... reet-date/

[martian_bob]

Also - has anyone yet commented on the virtual fire sale on Catalyst products on RPGNow and DriveThru? I bought the SR 20th Anniversary Edition PDF for $25 last year, it's $15 now.

[Jay Levine]

Some high quality talent is extremely easy for the new license holder of Shadowrun to pick up. Let's be real here: Ancient History was willing to continue working even while he was telling other freelancers that the company was outright lying to them (which they were), and only pulled his contracts when they locked him out of the freelancer forums for sedition and offered him the laughable plan that they were going to go ahead and publish his work without payment until after the license award in late May. That's a series of insults so egregious that it would get Lenin to quit Russia. Some high quality talent is going to be hard to get: Jason Levine walked on Catalyst years back over contract shenanigans, Stephen Kenson makes real money now and just got majorly burned on Seattle 2072, and Frank Trollman has fucking medical school to work on. It will be interesting to see who they rope in to do various projects, and I would pay real money to watch the various "This time it will be different, and we know you still love Shadowrun" speeches they give t valued veterans.

Yeah, I did walk out in 2008 over contract shenanigans. But I'd write for Shadowrun again. I just have to be reasonably convinced by the license holder (whoever that is) that a good working relationship with freelancers will be maintained. Maybe that's difficult, but it seems entirely reasonable to me.

The original concept was to do the whole Shadowrun world Runner Havens style - a snap shot of a few major cities per book until they ran out of places that weren't Milwaukee. After Feral Cities there was supposed to be Cities of Intrigue, Awakened Haunts, War Zones, and some others that hadn't been named yet. But the problem was, the format sold like ass. And you can probably armchair calculate why, but that's not even the point. The point is that it did. So after Feral Cities was too far into it to pull back but before anyone had penned anything for Cities of Intrigue or Awakened Haunts - the program was scrapped. And a new location book format was sought. And that's where things diverge. And by diverge, I mean about twenty different formats getting suggested, and that's not even including the "Why don't we go back to (fill in book)'s style? That seemed to work fine."

At least according to my notes from the devs and my own recollection, the original concept for the location books was to do five or maybe six. Three of which were published. That was where it was going to stop. The plan mutated over time, but that was the original discussion.

That's why information from Shadows of Latin America was used in Ghost Cartels without ever having paid a dime to anyone who wrote anything for Shadows of Latin America.

No, material from SoLA was used in Ghost Cartels with the authors' permission. In the case of the Aztlan material (especially the warrior orders, which were basically cut-and-pasted from my Aztlan draft), it was my material and I chose to put it in Ghost Cartels and I was paid for it.

It was mostly the same people who worked on both books, we wanted to find a place to use some of the material.

[Username17]

Yeah, I did walk out in 2008 over contract shenanigans. But I'd write for Shadowrun again. I just have to be reasonably convinced by the license holder (whoever that is) that a good working relationship with freelancers will be maintained. Maybe that's difficult, but it seems entirely reasonable to me.

That's good to hear.

At least according to my notes from the devs and my own recollection, the original concept for the location books was to do five or maybe six. Three of which were published. That was where it was going to stop. The plan mutated over time, but that was the original discussion.

It was an open-ended list, with more being added/discussed all the time. Runner Havens was the one that was most pinned down originally, and the rest were fuzzier. Remember when there was "Weird Places" on the list?

No, material from SoLA was used in Ghost Cartels with the authors' permission. In the case of the Aztlan material (especially the warrior orders, which were basically cut-and-pasted from my Aztlan draft), it was my material and I chose to put it in Ghost Cartels and I was paid for it.

It was mostly the same people who worked on both books, we wanted to find a place to use some of the material.

I don't see Jong on the list of authors or shout-outs, but I do see references to his Bolivia chapter, which he was never paid forto my knowledge. I'm glad you got paid for your ideas, but not everyone did.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

When is Lorraine Coleman going to return all of the money he stole? So we can get the damn books published. That would be capital.

[Username17]

When is Lorraine Coleman going to return all of the money he stole? So we can get the damn books published. That would be capital.

That would be hilarious. I also like referring to him as Lorraine Coleman, it really feeds the image of the scenario well to people well versed in RPG scandal history. But no, he ain't paying everything back.

In related news, it's Audit Week at IMR! They are sending out their "records" to everyone who ever freelanced for money with Catalyst. Except, you know, their records don't actually go back that far. Or maybe they are just being vindictive. I didn't get one, and neither did a number of other people who worked for IMR even this year.

I'm not sure what to make of that. I really don't see how deliberately failing to contact genuine business expenses could possibly be to their advantage at this point. Possibly they decided to risk claiming that they couldn't find me? Not sure what I would say to the auditor that would be worse than saying nothing at all.

-Username17

[Lich-Loved]

Frank -

I do not always agree with your game design decisions and we certainly have our differences but this:

But right now instead I'm going to give you the argument against: Runner Havens sold like a flavored enema.

kind of writing makes reading every one of your posts mandatory for comedic value alone.

[Wesley Street]

So yes, the pure e-book publication is a way to attempt to squeeze some amount of money out of peoples' writing without actually paying for it. There is ample precedent for this, and it really should not surprise anyone at this point.

As someone who works exclusively on Shadowrun eBooks, I have been paid in full for all of the products I've written/done design work on and that have been released. This may not be true of everyone, mind, but speaking for myself I've been compensated.

I'm also a "B-List" writer so paying me the hundred bucks or so per tiny project probably comes out of IMR's beer-and-pizza money.

[Username17]

So yes, the pure e-book publication is a way to attempt to squeeze some amount of money out of peoples' writing without actually paying for it. There is ample precedent for this, and it really should not surprise anyone at this point.

As someone who works exclusively on Shadowrun eBooks, I have been paid in full for all of the products I've written/done design work on and that have been released. This may not be true of everyone, mind, but speaking for myself I've been compensated.

I'm also a "B-List" writer so paying me the hundred bucks or so per tiny project probably comes out of IMR's beer-and-pizza money.

That's an important point, and it gets to the heart of the surprise e-book skeeviness. If something is solicited as an e-book, it has payment schedules based on that fact. But if something is solicited as a dead trees book, the payment schedules are based on the dead trees printing.

So if something gets solicited as a dead trees book, and the e-book comes out first, then the payment schedule for the writer is still based on when the dead trees version gets printed. And if those two dates are separated by months or years, that is still true.

So when Catalyst announces that they have e-book releases for upcoming dead trees books with no scheduled printing in the near future... color me unimpressed. That means that they've offered to sell something which they have as yet not started the countdown on ever having to pay the writer as per the contract signed.

But yeah, releasing an e-book that was solicited as an e-book carries no such moral hazard.

-Username17

[BeeRockxs]

That's an important point, and it gets to the heart of the surprise e-book skeeviness. If something is solicited as an e-book, it has payment schedules based on that fact. But if something is solicited as a dead trees book, the payment schedules are based on the dead trees printing.

So you have seen a current contract between a freelancer and CGL, or are you basing this on contract from back when you wrote for CGL as a freelancer?

[Wesley Street]

My ICs state payment is due 45 days from PDF publication. I'm curious as to what the dead tree writer ICs have as a payment due date. If it's from date-of-printing I would agree that that's a shitty deal. The publisher is already bringing in cash off of a writer's work when the pre-print PDF goes on sale.

Was the Findley Omnibus actually solicited as a print item? I only remember seeing blurbs about short stories and collections "from familiar authors and old friends like Mel Odom coming soon" in a blog post.

[Username17]

That's an important point, and it gets to the heart of the surprise e-book skeeviness. If something is solicited as an e-book, it has payment schedules based on that fact. But if something is solicited as a dead trees book, the payment schedules are based on the dead trees printing.

So you have seen a current contract between a freelancer and CGL, or are you basing this on contract from back when you wrote for CGL as a freelancer?

I have not read other peoples' contracts. My own contracts from 3 years ago were like that, and I asked people who had contracts current through March or so if they still said that, and they said yes. I submit that it's possible that they could have rewritten the contracts so that they'd be mandated to pay people money in a timely manner that they weren't previously, but it's seriously hard for me to imagine them doing that.

My ICs state payment is due 45 days from PDF publication. I'm curious as to what the dead tree writer ICs have as a payment due date. If it's from date-of-printing I would agree that that's a shitty deal. The publisher is already bringing in cash off of a writer's work when the pre-print PDF goes on sale.

30 days from print publication.

Was the Findley Omnibus actually solicited as a print item? I only remember seeing blurbs about short stories and collections "from familiar authors and old friends like Mel Odom coming soon" in a blog post.

Obviously I am not privy to whatever contracts were signed on that, but people have been trying to swing it for five years - before the PDF option was one. So I'm assuming that it was a print item, yeah.

-Username17