So I want to write a book............possibly

As mentioned the digital version is one way to go but for those who would like to produce a true printed bound book, you need to check out self publishing with one of the Print on Demand publishers. These can be very cost economical, you don't have to worry about print run sizes, or up front payments. Once you have your manuscript finished, proofread, the layout the way you want it, etc. You convert it to a PDF file and upload it to the publisher. You can decide what kind of binding you want, upload the cover art etc. They will tell you what the cost per book is for the publishing. You can then decide how much profit per copy you want for yourself and that establishes the price of the book.

Now you can decide how you want to handle distribution. You can handle taking the orders yourself, having some printed up to have on hand for filling orders (you pay the publishing price and sell for what you want. Or you can advertise the book and use a website provided by the publisher. Customers go to the site and order, the publisher prints the book, binds it, and handles the shipping to the customer. You then get the payment for your share from the publisher.

In some cases the printer will even attempt to place copies with book stores where they can be purchased over the counter.

For example at a publisher I am looking at the original edition of my book, 436 pages 8.5X11 hardbound on 50# paper, would have a publishing cost of around $23.75 per copy. (To that you would add the publishers commission and your royalty per book. If I had known it at the time, I could have produced my book at the same price I charged, but could have had it as a hardbound book instead of a comb bound.) I've purchased a couple of book from that publisher and I have been pleased with the quality, and so far the delivery time has been fairly quick.

 

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You may or may not get help, but many folks who have already put substantial time into studying a series might want to have creative or editorial control of certain portions of their input and that would run counter to what you would like to do with the material. Regardless, my guess is that you are wildly underestimating the time, work and discipline needed to accomplish your goal. That is not a dig at you as an individual, but I have worked on this book with Dick as well as published a PhD thesis in molecular biology and in both fields I have found that most who want to do something don't have much idea as to how hard it will be to accomplish.

 

A minor point, do what the Rand McNally map company did many years ago, before the electronic age. In a map of Ohio, for instance, they would slip in one "bogus" town, somewhere out in the boonies, one of those that on the Map Key would indicate as having 0-250 population. If that bogus town showed up on a competitor's map, they knew it was plagiarism.

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Also, the persons who buy the book are natural-born BUYERS of that type of material, so you keep their addresses, phones, and emails, and try to persuade them to allow you to send a quarterly newsletter of high-end items for sale. This is quite common in the stamp biz.

Finally, and this is only good marketing technique, never have just one thing to SELL. You don't necessarily have another book to sell, but something, or preferably several things. Strike while the iron is hot, such as Barber Half decals for sweatshirts, to stretch a point. Bet you've never gotten a pitch to sell "something" without half a dozen more "somethings" available, plus a coupon for yet another item, to be announced.

 

Like I said, I've got PLENTY of time and I'm in no huge rush. The main thing right now is acknowledging that I may want to do this down the road and to start seeking and saving relevant information NOW, instead of waiting until I am officially ready to write it.

This is just the beginning stages, the even seeing if it's plausible stage. But also this is the time to start saving info instead of back tracking for it later on.

 

Another thing to keep in mind. Writing can't be THAT hard, there's literally MILLIONS of books in like every language know to man. Plus writing is a lot more simple than you think, all you have to know how to do is READ. Look at other books and get an idea for a format that fits you and then fill in the info you want. But by god there's an infinite number of templates out there to follow. That's not to say gathering pertinent info will be easy, but just the idea and actual writing of a book can't be as hard as everyone makes it out to be when SOOOOO many books exist and more and more are published everyday.

 

I disagree -- writing is hard work, and you're never finished. But if your book gets a bad review, then you're dead in the water. The number of books in print is directly proportional to the sum of all the hopes in the universe.

 

You are proving my statements correct.

 

I disagree with your opinion.

So you are telling me that I cannot look at books that I have read (going further here and even zeroing in on the industry standard or how say QDB lays his books out), that have been successfully published, and cannot use that information to set up HOW I would want format mine? That using previously discovered information about the subject at hand and expanding on it is somehow not correct nor beneficial? I think not.

Please dont sit here and think that I am under the impression that this will be some sort of breeze and easy to do. I have already acknowledged before even getting started that I am likely looking at 10+ years of work, but somehow I dont understand the scope of the project that I am about to undertake?!? How does that make sense? I understand its a HUGE project, but again writing isnt that difficult, researching, asking permission to use various bits from other folks, actually physically printing and publishing (if doing it yourself), and gathering all of the necessary pieces is the hardest part. Putting the thoughts on paper and in order will be the easiest as you just follow chronological order and continually refine the work.

Let me ask another question from the authors in the group. Was each and every idea your own original work, or did you research and find common ideas that were already penned before you ever decided to jot down what you wanted published? If you say all of your work was original, then I would have to call that bluff. It may be written in such a way that makes the wording original, but I guarantee every author in the last 50 years used printed information from somewhere to gain the necessary knowledge to write about what they wanted to write. Unless of course you include fiction, but we are on the topic of numismatic related reference books.

 

Also, I find this sort of an arrogant statement to make. It comes across (and not saying this was your intention) as if because you have published a book that somehow you are part of this elite club of writers and no one else is equipped to do so. Every single Author out there had to write their first book, so its not some out of world experience to become published. Now publishing a GOOD book is much more difficult, but I dont see that as a real problem at this stage, you have to get it written first before you can find out if its good or bad, and I'm nowhere near that level yet.

Also, I think that you are under the impression that I believe I will just be able to research all of this, write it down, and have it published in like 6 months. That is NOT what I am trying to do, nor what I am after. I DO have experience researching from scratch a topic that I find interesting, doing all of the work WITHOUT asking for anyone's help that was alive (I used information I found in books and magazines and articles, mostly written 75 years before I decided to write on my topic), AND having it published to an audience of 100,000 people or so who are an active part of the organization I was writing for. So even though the experience was 5 years ago, and was relatively small, I still learned how to do some of the necessary work involved in writing for other things in life.

Also, my attitude may be coming across as cocky or confident in my ability to pen the book that I want, but again let me ask another question.

Who wins the race?

The man who, before he ever starts, knows he is going to not only finish the race, but WIN it.

Or

Is it the man who is walking up to the starting line with doubt on whether or not he is even capable of making it to the finish line?

I will be the man KNOWING I will finish the race, and even if I dont win, I still finished and hopefully with the preparation going into the race, I will at least place.

Without self confidence, you are dead in the water before anything has even begun. At least with some confidence the worst that I can do is fail, but AT LEAST I finished what I started out to do.

I have been both men in my life already, and I choose being the self confident, nothing can stop me or hold me back man over the whimpy, 'what if' man every single time.

I dont want to live my life with a bunch of 'what ifs', I will live my life as I DID this, I may or may not have been successful at it, but at least I can say I did it.

 

Going back to your original post,

"Information about the time period and its relation to how and why the coins were made..."

there's an opportunity to do something new, not mentioned yet, and that's to analyze all the patterns and essays attributed to your designer of choice. I don't know if Barber had any patterns (that's not my interest), but it seems important to look for any evolution through the 1870s and 1880s that led to the radical design change of 1892. The year 1890 is generally considered the closing of the frontier, followed by the true rise of the industrial age, the era of oil and steel and railroads and international trade. Gobrecht's Liberty Seated design(s) date back 25 years before the Civil War, so, somewhere within the Government, there must have been pressure to "update" the coins of everyday commerce, even though the Barber era lasted less than a quarter century. It was also the last time the U.S. had unified designs for the dime, quarter, and half dollar (and silver dollar, through 1873). The year 1878 marks the first year the Seated Liberty design was ousted, i.e., it was not resumed after the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 -- a new design was adopted. It's probably worth asking why the Liberty "head" design passed into history, in the middle of World War I, to be replaced by three virtually Art Deco representations of Liberty.

My rambling here could run 100 pages, but, I simply encourage you to integrate your designer's patterns and essays (if any) into the mix.

 

Another expansion of your subject just occurred to me: in 1890-1892, what was happening to coin designs in other countries? And how much of any change was political, and how much aesthetics? In general, did U.S. Mint officials (or a Congressional committee) look at changes in the coins of Great Britain, France, Germany, etc., etc., and say, we better catch up, Liberty Seateds are sooooo 19th Century...

 

I was already thinking along this line too. I so desperately want to spill the beans on the subject matter, but I cant let the cat out yet.

 

Slow down Doug, I am NOT doing the Barber coinage, lol. That was just an example of sort of the layout I was wanting to use, going from denomination to denomination.

 

My mistake, I thought your focus was the Barber series.

 

If it takes me 20 years Doug, then I can still say that I accomplished what I was out to do. I just know that the book I am thinking of can be of good use.

I also realize that I will need to use what you call 'primary' source information, but I can assure you that compiling and formatting the existing information will take up a HUGE amount of the space that I need. Again, not saying that it will be easy, and there is probably a million (literally) pages of information that I will need to absorb, but in this case I think the secondary sources you mentioned will be the bulk of this book.

And again, I WILL be adding new things, ideas, updated numbers, etc. But the majority of the work has been done already, it just hasnt been compiled the way that I would like to see things done and all of the information hasnt been put together yet.

 

The idea presented would be relevant for any design.

 

I just checked, and Gobrecht died in 1844 (!), so his Liberty Seated designs persisted for nearly 50 years after his death; that strikes me as remarkable. So there is an interesting little research, comparing (any) designer's year of death with the last year his coins were minted.

Compare John Sinnock, 1888-1947, designer of the Roosevelt dime and Franklin half dollar. His dime is still minted 67 years after he passed, but his half dollar disappeared after only 15 years, due to a political assassination. And Victor D. Brenner's Lincoln (obverse) persists 90 years after his death (is that a record?).

 

I'm not going to address all the items you bring up because there is no use for me to engage in a debate over fine points. Rather, I will explain why I wrote that you are proving my statements correct and will then touch on a few broader points from those posts.

I had previously stated that I believe you are wildly underestimating the time, work and discipline needed to accomplish your goal. Your goal, as best as I can recall from the statements in the beginning of this thread, is to write a definitive, illustrated, multi-volume encyclopedia set devoted to a single designer and going through all the iterations of their US Mint work. It may include other items, too, but I haven't gone through to re-read everything since it really isn't important for this post. I wrote my wildly underestimating comment and you responded with a paragraph that contained, in part, the following quote-

"Writing can't be THAT hard, there's literally MILLIONS of books in like every language know to man. Plus writing is a lot more simple than you think, all you have to know how to do is READ."

I left your usage of capitalization as you had written the words. The sentences quoted were why I wrote that you were proving my statements correct. In my opinion, they seem to support the idea that you are underestimating the task at-hand. I'm not stating that you can't get this done; but while you acknowledge that it will be a long road, I don't know if you truly believe it will be a tough road, too.

The rest of the two posts in your response I read and will address those points I think most germane. The book that Dick and I worked on together was split up by interest so that Dick did virtually all the die marriage write-ups and I did the background, history, Congressional Acts, etc... This worked well for us and, since the book will most likely be in front of an audience looking for information on die marriages, Dick's name was used as the author while I was recognized as author of certain parts. Neither of us wrote completely original content and that of course is recognized in the book, too. It would have been impossible to write without the studies of those who came before us.

Your reading of my tone as possibly arrogant wasn't my intention although I realized when it was written that it could be taken that way. This is how I write and I would have spoken those words to you if we had been face-to-face and then, if you bristled, could have explained in-depth any points. Oddly enough, in one of those two recent posts you wrote that you may be viewed as cocky or confident (also known as arrogant) based upon your words in this thread. I would not argue with that observation and think it might be a little more extreme than you think.

Lastly, I bring up my PhD thesis because that is an essentially decade long process in a field where the final result includes a long written work that contains some novel ideas or experiments and that is meant to move the field forward. In many ways it is similar to what you are proposing. Your acknowledgement of the length of the project and strong confidence before starting it (or before getting that far into it depending upon what you have done already) is incredibly and eerily similar to what I witnessed in many graduate students while I was in graduate school. These were awfully smart folks who had already accomplished things in their chosen fields and were set up in Ivy League environments. They also realized it would take quite a while to accomplish their goals yet were brimming with confidence. The attrition rate within this group of qualified, pre-selected folks was essentially 50% within the first two years and only rose thereafter. More than confidence, intelligence and a realization of time are required to achieve certain goals.

 

I had a couple of astronomy books for young readers published back in the early 90's (Small Worlds: The 60 Moons of the Solar System, and Millions of Miles to Mars). It does take a lot of work, and getting it published is not easy without a literary agent. I happened to luck out at the time as I fielded a call at the planetarium where I worked from an agent who was fishing for an interested author. The self-publishing options available today provide some interesting alternatives to the traditional publishing route. Good luck!