doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Death by Internet--Obituary 2010

One of my roomates, several years past, was the dircetor of the book department for the Minnesota Historical Society. Was laid off due to the fact that the society got rid of all it's books. The museum is strictly "interactive" because kids won't be bothered any other way.


Best,
Ted

I'll ignore the quips and respond to the legit questions:

AmarilloMike: Is it the printing costs or the distribution or both that makes publishing books so high?

A. A publisher wants to price a book at retail at least 7 times total first-printing production costs, which means a book with a cover price of $49.95--like my Parker Guns: The "Old Reliable"--is a deal-killer at much over $7.00 (second and subsequent printings are less expensive because the editing and composition and tooling are already done).

Distributors want 55% off cover price and the right to return the books, without regard to trashed condition, for a full refund with no questions asked. Dealers get discounts ranging from 40% to 50% depending on quantity. Then there's time value of money tied up in inventory and accounts receivable and slow-pay or no-pay booksellers strapped for cash in a declining business.

In other words, all vibes are negative in the dead tree publishing businesses: Venerable old big-city newspapers are going broke; magazines are hurting; and without CountrySport, Safari Press, Krause, and Collector Books anyone with double-gun info who wants to preserve it in print for posterity is going to have to pay up front.

There are hard-cover subsidy publishers such like Schiffer who may still be in the business, but be ready to cough up $50K to do a 9x12 coated paper H/C with color pictures. I recall talking to the LCS author at Vegas before he passed away, and he said he fronted over $175K on his project. I recall talking to the Remington guy at Opryland shortly after his book was released (1995-96?) and he said: "Thank God for the Credit Union." Ask The Parker Story authors if they ever got back their costs...and that was back before things started to get bad in the book business.

Pardon me if I'm coming through as somewhat a business lawyer/consultant...next?

PeteM asks: "How many copies are we talking about here? Self publishing is cheaper than ever..."

Pete--If you are thinking about self publishing you better call me, or better yet take a day and drive out to the farm. As to numbers: PG: The "Old Reliable" had a first print run of about 6,750 copies including the 500 Signed Ltd Ed. The usual first print run for such a book would have been then 2,000 to 3,000. The second printing was about 2,300, and the inventory at the publisher is now "short stock."

My advance royalty (to bind the contract)for The "Old Reliable" was the same as Tom Clancy got for Hunt for Red October; a distributor picked up 10% of the print run in his own truck, and the $85 Ltd Ed. sold out mostly before the book was released in August 1997. My royalties earned out quicker than John Grisham's first book, A Time to Kill, but unfortunately Tom Cruise didn't option my second book for a movie. This is endemic to non-fiction versus fiction: Novelists are usually slow starters, but with "legs," while us non-fiction guys have to rely on a preexisting group of "true believers" to buy our stuff.

Point being: Anyone contemplating self publishing had better have a real good mailing list. Note that there is a difference between "self publishing" (which generally involves a Trade Paperback with low production qualities, and few if any pictures), and "subsidy publishing" (such as The Parker Story or Semmer's Remington book, where glossy paper and a multitude of pictures, some in color, which cost mucho dinero).

ejxxs (in Chile)asks: "Why you try a second edition for The "Old Reliable" instead of a third printing?

This is not my decision to make. Safari Press decides whether there will be a third printing. Meanwhile, Safari passed on my new book, Parker Guns: Shooting Flying, because after buying Sports Afield magazine and changing (reducing) the format to big game and African hunting, they got out of the shotgun-related genre. Parker Guns: Shooting Flying is, in effect, a second but completely different edition of The "Old Reliable" that expands on various topics. So it's not either/or: Both books are in print, but two different publishers (Safari of CA and Collector Books of KY).

Obsessed-With_Doubles asks, "Does this mean the rights to all your stuff is up for grabs?"

NO. Safari continues to sell (at retail and wholesale) the second printing of Parker Guns: The "Old Reliable." Collector books continues to sell (almost all at wholesale) the first printing of Parker Guns: Shooting Flying. Both publishers pay me royalties based on books sold. Each publisher will decide when inventory gets low whether to order up another printing...this is not my decision to make. But they are in the business and if they judge that the market for my books doesn't justify another printing, I defer to the power. However, technically, if a book goes out of print then usually the rights revert, but the right for an author to spend his $$$ to keep a non-seller in print would not be very smart. And Mrs. Muderlak did not raise any sons who are stupid. And finally...

ebb says, "I hear that the gun-book publishing industry is going offshore to the Chinese."

All publishing of 9x12 picture hard-cover books is going offshore...Ooops! dinner's ready...in summary, PG:T"OR" was done in PA (1st) and China (2nd); PG:SF was printed in TN.

Lets all drink to the preexisting group of "true believers"!! I think I hear a cabernet calling me from downstairs.

Dave

Book retailers are having a very hard time these days also. Even ones with very low cost, like Half Price Books, are in big trouble. Two Half Price locations near me have just closed along with one Barnes and Noble. The chain retailers are in just as much trouble as the newspaper and publishers in general.

You can down load a fiction book for $5-6.00 or buy a hard copy for $25.00. And who here doubts they make more profit on the down load? A Kindle DX can hold 3,500 books. The real problem is that book retailers are being bypassed in this type of book sale. So if you have 20-30% of your sales lost to the e-book trade then even the retailers are in real trouble and I have seen forecast that predict 50% of future sales will be by e-book format in 5-7years.

The business models just do not work right now and must be changed for anyone to make money in the print business. That or we need a better e-book product that will allow us to read and view books in electronic format that we have traditionally done in a paper format.

Information exchange, and that is what publishing is all about, is not going to stop. It is just going to be very different. In the early 1900's there were many double makers and now there are just a very few so publishing is going to be under a rapid change and most likely consolidation. The problem for us it that with the PC climate who will publish books about guns. A very non PC subject for too many people.

EDM, I have enjoyed your books and hope that the changes to come in publishing allow you and others to continue your works. Too much has already been lost due to time. The first person to figure out how to go to e-books and e-publishing and make the system work will make a ton of money. What does a down load cost? A few thousandths of a penny. Get a big enough "e"library and there is real money to be made. Someone is going to make it work.

To get an art book published, with promotion and a show at the provincial gallery, I'll have to raise at least $125,000-150,000 for the publisher.

A distinguished art critic published a book on a friend who is an internationally acclaimed artist after raising $150,000 for the publisher.

Notions of such an integral part of our culture as writing and publishing are generally deplorable. Everything changes, though; we'll get back to books.

CountrySport is an interesting situation: The publishing co. was started by Brian Belinski and (?) Smith; Brian (Fieldsport) is a regular at double-gun events; I don't know Smith (Steve?), but I believe he is still involved in publishing. They came up short and someone else got the business, and it changed hands again and wound up owned by DownEast (SSM), who eventually shut it down. Brian mentioned me to Ludo of Safari Press at a SCI event, and he pitched me for PG: The "Old Reliable," probably the first time in the history of the world where a would-be author with but one DGJ article to his credit was contacted by a major gun book publisher...I thought it was a joke!

I heard reliable stories from a printer's rep that certain CountrySport printing bills weren't paid (before DownEast took over) and the tooling for a well-known author/editor's book(s) were being held hostage till someone made good on money owed. And herein lies the crux of the reversion of rights problem:

Reversion of rights without a contractual provision that the publisher turn over the print-ready tooling (now on disc) is not worth anything. You as author have the "rights" to start over at manuscript level on a book that has proved unprofitable for a publisher that already has done the editing, composition, tooling, and sales promotion. In the final analysis, authors are at the mercy of the publishers, even with a contract. The number of best selling authors who wind up suing there publishers is real long (Mitchner comes to mind). The business is brutal. And now the money has gone out of books. Working up an acceptable manuscript is a labor of love, but putting a second mortgage on the home to see it to fruition does not make economic sense nowadays. Alas! EDM

I realized a few months ago that the library that I had accumulated over the past 40 years would probably be something that my heirs would have to pay someone to haul off after I was gone. I bought a signed copy of one of Gene Hill's books on ebay the other day for $7. That was only $2 more than was origionally paid for it 30 years ago. I still have all of his that he personally incribed to me 18 years ago when I sent them to him along with a qt of Virgina Gentleman. They will never be sold in my lifetime but may well be worthless when I am gone. It is a sad world in which we live.

EDM thanks. That was informative and interesting.

Mike

I treasure my books and have been collecting them for over 50 years. I still have the first book I ever bought, "The Real Book of Snakes," that I bought at my 5th grade book fair. My younger friends treasure their books also and I think,and hope, that there will be a revival of serious interest in the printed word in book form.It ain't over 'till the fat lady sings.

Well, instead of all the pitiful groin-licking, let's examine why this is happening.

1) Economics has always driven publishing. Not many people are willing to lose money in order to publish something. If gun books were selling, people would be lined up to publish.

2) Most books - gun books or otherwise - are poop. The art of writing has gone downhill greatly. I read 3-4 books per week; I seldom make it through a book without seeing grammatical errors. Additionally, their content is also lacking - short on facts or compelling text, long on rambling opinions.

3) Shooting guns is a lot like sex in that it's OK to read about someone else doing it, for a while, but much better to be actually doing it. There's not much new under the sun when it comes to gun writing. Gun writers usually are scrounging for something, anything, to write. Good books are driven by subject matter waiting to be told.

So is publishing falling apart because of the internet or because the content has gotten so middling?