A List of Requests From Professors That I Have, Sadly, Had To Honor (Because I Make Custom Books)

 - "Can you put this picture of my dog on the cover?"

 - "Can you make Book X look like Book Y, and change all the page numbers in Book Y, and then change all of the internal references in Book Y for those page numbers, and then do the same in Book X?" (Subrequest, two weeks later: "Can we add some pages of Book Z, too?")

 - "Can you please acquire permission to publish this article about Michael Jackson in my book?" (Note: this was a book about aliens.)

 - "Can you put this drawing I made on the cover?"

 - "Can you send me a desk copy of this book in two weeks?" (This is usually requested in a handwritten note accompanying the handwritten manuscript, which by the way - it takes two weeks just to set up the printing press.)

 - "Please see my corresponding notes throughout the manuscript."  (This usually means someone has either gone to town with their red pen and we'll spend weeks making their changes, or else I'll have to navigate Post-It Notes coming out of every corner.  By the end of a season I'm buried in Post-It Notes.)

 - "Can you please acquire permission to publish this article about homoerotic motifs in Star Trek in my book?" (Note: this is true, and for the same book about aliens.)

 - "Can you put this picture my kid drew on the cover?"

 - "Please retype 196 pages of third-party material, combine with 400 pages from two other textbooks, repaginate entirely throughout, update all internal references, combine and update two indices, design a new cover appropriate for the theme of my book, and -- wait, hold on.  I'm going to send you a preface I wrote, OK?  Hold on."  (Four weeks later, she still hasn't sent the preface and we no longer have time to do the book before her classes start.)

 - [Paraphrased:] "Please publish my highly inflammatory opinion."

 - "Can you please add this Foreward written by my Esteemed Colleague, Dr. Such-and-Such?  He is Very Important in the Intellectual Circles I Travel In, and it is Crucial that it be Included with My Work."  (Note: your book is customized for your own course.  It's not sold on the mass market.  Everyone who buys your book does so because it's assigned reading. They have to.)

 - "Can we put some Endorsements from my Other Esteemed Colleagues on the Back of My Book, which will say how Great My Book Is?" (Same lady.  Same thing.)

 - "Can we pick up all of the content from this book, but just take out this one photo?  It's gross." (Note: This was a Biology book.  Admittedly, it was pretty gross.)

 - "Can you put this screenshot from Swingers on the cover?"

 - "Can you make the professor some photocopies of the book at Kinko's?  The real books won't be published for a few weeks but they want to see it now."

 - "This cover sucks.  Change it."