When I worked for a year as an intern for my now-publisher Windstorm Creative, one of the duties I pulled was "production." Imagine if you will the loud rumble of many giant machines, the scent of industrial adhesive and strong hydraulic lubricant. Imagine ear plugs and goggles, sweaty people crammed together and a break-neck pace. Now stop imagining and I'll tell you what it was really like:
I recently read on the B.G.D.F. (Board Game Designers Forum) that standard royalty is 5% on monies received. I get 15%. Actually, all Windstorm authors get 15%. Windstorm can do this because unlike what the drama-addicted idiots that run the supposed watchdog sites (read: sites where rejected authors get to complain and publicly get their mad on) insist, you don't have to have a freaking office in New York City to be a legit publisher. Founded in 1989, Windstorm didn't even have an office until 1999 and they've had regional and national bestsellers--books and games.
That office is beautiful but it's only 800 square feet. Literally surrounded--almost swallowed--by evergreens. Inside the ceiling towers at 20 feet and there's a cherry-wood catwalk across the back wall lined with books. The catwalk leads to storage on the left and the production room on the right. The central room is filled with soft, warm, auburn leather chairs and a couch around a heavy treasure chest-style table. A small green pellet stove warms the space... which includes two small white, silver spotted rabbits in a large enclosure. The room smells like pine and books and the antique typewriters that line another wall.
Go up the stairs to the catwalk and exit to the right. You're on a little landing now looking down the long production room. It's ten feet wide and twenty feet long. In houses a book binder the size of a small car, a general table, a hydraulic cutter with a 24 inch blade that 1.5 inch thick, a server, a laptop, and three massive printers. One person works in this room at a time. One person and one stereo. Cranked. The truth of the matter is, a shift on production is a cakewalk. A vacation. A dream come true job.
I can't tell you how many times, especially during my summer time there, that Jennifer (the *CEO* of the company!) flipped coin to see which one of us got to work production. Jennifer health isn't so good now, but back then she was in full-on boxing form and she's work for ten hours straight, bobbing to classic '80s and '90s rock and roll, in blue jeans and white tee, her braid bouncing against her back (when I watched her jealously from the landing). She still holds the records for the number of flawless books bound and trimmed in one day--602.
I was never so calm. I brought in a backpack full of CDs and wound up playing DJ for my ten hour shifts. I sang at the top of my lungs (because the machines *are* loud), played "drums" with metric rulers, and was known to time the cutter blade to the bass line.
One of my favorite things about the production room is that--day or night--the room is all windows and looks out on solid forest. Birch, pine, spruce, oaks. Raccoons. Deer. Bear. Greenmen. Jennifer's kids add to the wonderment because in the depth of these great woods is their homemade pirate ship play structure. Like little wild animals, those two play! "Argh!"
Production rules were very, very strict. You mess up a book? You pay for it at cost. Jennifer always said: "Work quickly and perfectly. I can do both; so can everyone else." She had no problems poking her head in and calling out, "Faster, E.J.! There's 500 more galleys waiting out here for you!"
Pinned to one of the windows, in the very bottom corner, was a "Dilbert" cartoon cut out from a newspaper. In it, Ratbert is sitting on the corner of a desk. The Pointy Haired Boss approaches. "In the short time you've worked in Quality Assurance, you've found a huge number of flaws in our prototype," says PHB to Ratbert. Ratbert smiles, "That's my job!"
PHB is furious, "You're destroying our schedule! We'll miss our deadlines. The entire project will fail and it's all your fault!"
"How is it my fault?" exclaims Ratbert.
PHB explains, "If a tree falls in the forest, and we've already sold the tree, does it have quality?"
"How many angels can dance on your head?" Ratbert counters.
This cartoon has been pasted to that window since the office was built in 1999. It shows so perfectly Windstorm's attitude: Print in small quantities, quickly and perfectly, because if, at any point, an error is found, it *will* be fixed. Jennifer would rather have a product delayed by months and have it be perfect, than have shoddy items with her company's name on them. Jennifer challenges us all to be Ratberts... and she's one mean Ratbert herself.
This year, she took it a step further. This year there will be an official Ratbert Award given to one staff member. To win it, you must not only catch a mistake but fix it. And *there* is the heart of my blog tonight :)
Jennifer calls it, "Errors without offers." This is the biggest sin at Windstorm. Find an error or problem but don't offer a realistic solution. At Windstorm, you not only have to be the perfect, positive, happy Ratbert but you also have to have the know-how, or know-who, to fix any problem you find. Oh! And you have to know the difference between a problem and a complaint. That was a big one for me. "A problem," Jennifer told me, through gritted teeth after realizing I'd wasted eight hours "fixing" something that, in truth, wasn't broken. "Is something that *more* than one person has."
I've been very lucky so have some pretty amazing Ratberts in my life. MG3K players and authors who find errors and fix them. Who point problems out politely and calmly and then talk with me about solutions, and offer of their time and knowledge. Gille, Launa, Chris, Lunah, Brianne, Cris, and, of course, Jennifer. "Mardi Gras 3000" is, after all, my *first* game. There is a learning curve. I'm far from perfect... no matter how good I look grooving to the music between the binder, the big silver file cabinets and the hydraulic cutter.
Thank you, Ratberts, for making my stomach drop every time I see an email from you. And I mean that in a good way... kind of ;)
E.J.
