I’ve been working in the e-publishing industry for almost six years now, and I’ve worked for over a handful of publishers and with more authors than I can count. I’ve talked on the phone with maybe a total of six of these people in all these years, but I’ve only met one person face to face: Tina Burns, publisher at Liquid Silver Books. And that was just recently, really. I’ll be meeting with her again tonight while she’s in town for work.

It’s ironic that I’ve never met or chatted with most of these people, and it’s because of monthly and quarterly checks from them that I’m able to pay my rent and my bills at all. It is so vastly different from how things worked when I was at an ordinary day job. I used to have to shower and get dressed every morning, pack a lunch and drive to work. Then there’d be the settling in, the small talk, the little bit of work, and the looking over shoulders at each others’ desks as we shared work projects or personal photos. Everyone worked similar hours, so breaks were taken at relatively the same times. And meetings. Meetings took forever and sometimes meant snacking and using up more man hours than you could afford to spend.

My work situation these days has me working at whatever hours I like—even though they’re still about the same number of hours. I work in my pajamas, sometimes with my hair still in its slept-in mess, and if I get tired of sitting up at my desk, I grab my laptop and work in bed. Socializing and meetings are about as long as an e-mail, or a half hour tops on instant messaging, and everything in a meeting is recorded for you automatically in a chat log or a forum posting, all completely searchable when you need to refer to it again. No secretary needed. No need to put on a game face (or nice hair and makeup). No need to drive anywhere.

It’s kind of neat, especially for a lazy introvert like me.

Still, it’s nice to be able to put a face with a name you’ve worked with for so long. I know that other people in the business have networked more and have seen more faces, at conventions and conferences and various other events. But for me, it’s a novelty. I’m like the hermit Sandra Bullock plays in The Net, where even my neighbors don’t know me. Except, I imagine, I have a higher percentage of people I’ve actually met in my list of Facebook friends than would Angela Bennett.

And that’s just fine with me.

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