Monday, April 29, 2013

Ty B.

Ty B. is another one of my repeat customers. He sends me interesting and cool business articles to write. In other words he says, "I want an article about How many frogs eat out in Italy," and I find out and write the article for him.

He has some really cool articles, and I actually learn a lot. His jobs are probably the most important to me, because I am now considered a small business owner. So things like knowing how many frogs eat out in Italy becomes vastly important.

His articles are so informative, that I frequently want to tell others about them - "Hey, did you know that 7,500 frogs eat out at restaurants in Venice on Thursday nights in May?" but I can't. Instead, I have to think up crazy titles just to tell people about him.

This is because I have a confidentiality agreement with Ty B. (In case you didn't guess by my vague references, I also have a confidentiality agreement with Simple N as well.)

Few customers actually require them, but I honor them when they do. However, even when I do not have an explicit confidentiality agreement with someone, (for example Johnny-5) I still maintain some confidentiality until the project is at least complete and old. This gives my employer a jump on the market should he or she want it.

There was one employer that I got fed up with over her confidentiality agreement and canceled the contract. She was from overseas, so I give her that. However, her confidentiality agreement wanted me to destroy all copies of my work if requested. I did not feel comfortable about this. I do not mind if someone else uses my work and says it is their own, but I do not want to destroy all my records of my work. I did actually sign this contract with her, but then I sent her my contract and she balked.
She wanted my contract to say that I would keep rewriting books until she was satisfied - sorry, been there and not doing it again. My contract stipulates one rewrite for dissatisfaction. Usually, I will have forgotten some key detail or have some minor editing. However, I am willing to actually rewrite something twice if a client is dissatisfied. Giving someone unlimited rewrites is asking for trouble, so I refused.

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