Six months ago I attended the Notacon hacker conference in Ohio and gave a presentation on how to self-publish books and the advantage of doing so. After my presentation I was approached by a fellow author who had previously purchased and enjoyed my first book, Commodork. We hit it off (at least I thought so) and talked about possibly combining efforts on some future writing projects. We shook hands and parted ways.

When I got back to Oklahoma I did all the virtual things we virtual friends do: I subscribed to his blog, added him on Facebook and subcribed to his Twitter updates. As I began reading through all of this guy’s old blog entries I remember telling Susan, “this guy writes like me!” I really felt a connection with this guy, and the possibility of working with him and the two of us helping one another in our writing endeavours really excited me.

A few weeks later, my new friend’s first book went on sale. I proudly purchased a copy and looked forward to it arriving. Unfortunately, it never did.

After waiting a month or so (I paid for priority shipping), I dropped my new friend an e-mail and was informed that he hadn’t got around to shipping all the books, but would do so that day. No problem; I’m pretty easy going. In fact, I waited two more months before asking again; this time I was told that my order had been “set aside” so that he could include some special extras with my order. While it was a nice gesture, all I really wanted was the book. Did I mention the book never arrived? It never arrived.

Today I got a Facebook broadcast message from my virtual friend, asking everyone on his list to pre-order his new book via Amazon. I didn’t order his new book; instead, I removed him from my Facebook, dropped his Twitter feed, and unsubscribed from his blog. There are more direct and/or vocal things I could do, to be sure. I could clutter up his Facebook page with whining about not receiving my book or perhaps send him a fourth or fifth inquiry about the status of my order, but the older I get the less of an effort I’m willing to put into these types of situations. Raising a ruckass at this point is unlikely to get me my book — more likely it’ll just end in wasted energy on my part.

I’m not upset about losing the twenty bucks ($20 is a cheap lesson). I’m more upset about not receiving the book (I was looking forward to reading it), but I’m most upset that I bought into this guy’s spiel hook, line and sinker. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think this guy’s evil master plan is to go around friending fellow authors and suckering them for $20, but after asking on multiple occasions about my book I now see I don’t even register on this guy’s radar. Oh well.

I’ve got two, maybe three books currently in the works. The next time I have an order come in for one of them and I consider waiting a a couple of days before shipping, I’m going to remember this incident.