Example Draft of "North America" section of the Book

Here is an example draft that I prepared on google slides for the Oblivious Publisher that hired me to do a book for them. I prepared this so that they could have an idea of what photos would be going in the book. This is the section for "North America", focusing on some of my favorite taxa and themes. There are still sections for Chile, Brazil, Dominican Republic, South Africa, West Australia, NAmibia, New Zealand, Tasmania.

Working with this publisher has been hell. They have been incommunicado. Back in spring, I would send them an email and not hear anything for three or four weeks. It was like working on a project with someone who never comes into the studio and is an alcoholic. I would ask for clarity about what they were expecting or how to send in photos and how to assign them to certain pages for layout, as well as how to assign photos to the text, and they gave me absolutely no instruction on how they wanted it prepared. The publication date has already been pushed back and these idiots have already paid the advance, so fuck 'em. The one person that I am in contact with there is kind and cool, but she was initially under instruction not to correspond with me because she was new. To add to the frustration, nobody working there has any literacy regarding botany/biology/plants.

Not knowing what to do, I wrote a manuscript and turned it into 7 months ago. To this day it has still not been read. I then went through the manuscript, found photos that accompanied the regional write-ups, renamed the photo files to have the genus and species name of the plant species mentioned, and told the editor that whoever is doing the layout should read the manuscript and then find the photos of the plant species mentioned in it, and then take their pic of which photos to use according to which ones will fit best into the layout.

None of this was done, Instead, they came back at me three weeks ago telling me that I need to sort through the photos myself and pick what photos go on what page, etc. , I responded and told them that if Im supposed to do this, then I should be the one to do the layout on indesign, which I would have to charge them additional money for, since I am swamped over my head with shit to do and I don't work for free. They have not yet responded.

It became clear to me that the only way that this book is going to work is either if I do the layout myself on indesign (very time-consuming), or they hire somewhat who is at least semi-literate in biology/science/nature to do the layout so that they know where things go and what photos are what (or even, what a genus and species are for chrissakes, or that the latin name of a plant is italicized). The person they currently have doing the layout is some french guy who makes things look nice but as far as I can tell has no background in nor awareness of natural science whatsoever.

 This is taking far too much time for what it is. I design presentations weekly. This book is, in effect, just one very large powerpoint presentation. It shouldn't be hard, but they have not given me a clear idea of what they want or how to do it and they are not paying me enough for the amount of vague unclear bullshit involved. It's quite likely that the people on the ground who are working at the publisher are overworked and short-staffed, too.

What the fuck do I do? Take a look at the material here, which is lacking text (the text is far too long to have included in this example, which is to focus solely on photos of the subject matter) and let me know.

i'm working on another book, and whenever I need to talk to the editor, she responds the next day. Working with the publisher for this book has been a fucking nightmare. A fucking underpaid, life-consuming nightmare.