doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Fun with Brown Rifles.

Steve, I don't doubt a word of what you say. People that right science actually pay the publisher to print them. That's right, as an author, I pay to have my work published, not the other way around. Luckily, my paycheck comes in a different form, but yet part of it goes to produce those publications, without which I loose the check... Screwy world.

There is a demand for these things, but it certainly is a small demand numerically. It is a high demand individually - that is those of us that want a particular thing, want it bad.

I know what you mean about Calfee, but that is part of what I like about him. In his writing (and apparently his smithing), he is not afraid to go outside of the box. Thank god I need some variance! My colleagues (and maybe me) believe there is only one way to write anything and so we force it upon our students and other colleagues (I am an associate editor for a journal - unpaid of course), and writing Calfee-esque is verbotten. Hence, the profession is more than a little boring generally speaking.

Brent

Oh Good ,I get to plug my book. I want to do research and not be a book seller but it’s part of the game. Precision Shooting did the publishing, I did a lot of advance advertising by sending info packets to many of the larger buyers like Brownells, Midway and such. The book is now in the second printing and by all accounts is doing well. In a couple of years I should have enough articles on the same subject published to do volume two. I am working hard on color pictures, posting them here for feedback for a “Big-Book” someday in the future. In my case this is working because I was paid once for the original publication of the articles then again when they (PS) or I sell a book. You can get a copy of my book from me for $29.95 or $30 if you want it signed by priority mail.

Steve, I've already bought two copies of your custom rifles book and one copy of one of your shotgun books, will soon have the other. Michael, I already have your book and wait eagerly for your next one.

Michael makes my point perfectly. The ASSRA already has rights to most (not all) of its already-published articles and so the only added effort would be to organize the info and paste it up, or whatever the digital equivalent is these days. Printing and distribution costs are the same whether the info is new or a reprint. That's what Dave Brennan did with Michael's articles as well as several other PS authors, and it seems to work well for him. Also I'm sure Brett Boyd wouldn't be reprinting his SSE stuff if he wasn't making a profit. The ASSRA wouldn't even have to pay the original authors any additional fees, unlike the deal with reprinting Michael's PS articles. Froggie has volunteered to collect the info so we'll see what happens. If the ASSRA won't fund the reprint then maybe they'd grant the reprint rights to Froggie. BTW the ASSRA does not own the reprint rights to my articles but I've given them to Froggie for this project. I wish him luck and will buy the reprint even though I already have all the articles in my Journal back issues.
Regards, Joe

Steve I have your book on custom rifles recomened by Joe.(Michael I will check on your) And the guns are great. BUT there is a lot of people who want to see how alot of these diffrent things are done. SOme of us want to learn some of these things ourselves.How big a market.?? I think if done properly It could be great. AS there is a lot of Gun nuts.Smile Personally if someone had a good book with lots of pictures and how to do articls on diffrent guns etc.NOT how to clean etc. I think it would do great. JMHO. Whitey

I've written several articles over the years for the ASSRA and I gave them ONE TIME RIGHTS. I believe, but could be wrong that each author would have to sign on before their articles could be reprinted. At one time I thought all this copyright stuff was worth something but I have found out otherwise. One well known writer re-wrote one of my articles, not word for word but darn close using everything in the same order and used all the production and barrel numbers as I wrote them. Not a thing I could do, I raised a little hell but when the dust settled he most likely made ten times what I did off of my research. If I had to depend on any income from writing to live I would have starved long ago. The in-depth research I do cost money, a lot of money. As an example I flew from Alaska to Chicago, rented a car and spent a week in the Dowagiac, MI area doing background work on the Niedner Rifle Corporation. I do this because I hope I can record some of the history of the American Custom Gunmakers before it's lost. The plus is I'm having a grand time of it. If I have any more fun I'd have to hire someone to help me enjoy it.

Hey, I greatly appreciate each of you for your support and especially enthusiasm. My first book Fine Gunmaking: sold out the first printing of 4500 in the first eight months in 1998, Krause Pub. ordered a second printing of 4500 immediately as sales slowed. ( I averaged about $2 per book over the course of the sales, 10% of actual sales price, pretty standard) A collection of my early Shooting Sportsman articles poorly edited and you should have seen the flack I caught right on this forum for all the misspelled words.... I re-edited every page, by my self, for the second printing. I kept the copy with all the pink and yellow high-lights.




I was tremendously lucky with my timing, not much else available on the subject, but I never received a royalty check for more than $900 a quarter. I bought the last 300 remaindered and held on to them for about five years until the used market caught up with the retail price, and am now selling them again as an exclusive.

The Custom Rifles book was entirely self-published and printed here in Montana, with a partner who found out she didn't enjoy sales... and you've already heard that story. The real money I made was in finding a high class of clients, but the idea was to make money on multiple, book sales.

When I had enough material for the third book, Double Shotguns, I called my editor at Krause, long gone as the company had changed hand twice, the new book aquisitions editor did not even return my phone call! When I finally got ahold of him he said, " You've got a great piece, but we are not interested, we no longer warehouse books. They've got to amortise in one year like Gun Digest."



After waiting most for a year for an incompitent, and later fired editor, I signed a deal with Shooting Sportsman Press who had all the stories archived (was six weeks late with my first advance money on a six month deadline!) and then spent six months re-editing with a very experience book editor, the entire manuscript. You have no idea how much work it is to change magazine stories into book chapters, and if you think it easy, read Mike's book (this is no knock on him and he knows I love the book) it reads like a bunch on magazine articles and not like a book. (Petrov is also very luck to have a corner on the subject and had to work his ass off for virtually nothing for decades to come up with enough material for a small, thin book with B&W photos. Again, Mike knows the reality of what I am saying, and it is a wonderful publication, but not really a professional presentation. Just wait till he prices color, my most recent has 10 pages and the rest converted from color to B&W. What a shame, eh?)

Brent, Whitey, Joe, you are great guys and in my corner I'm sure, but as much as we would all love to see more great gun books, it is a very tough row to hoe, ask Tom Rowe, or Ludo Wurfbain (Safari Press), or Dave Brennan... Ask Campbell if he made any money?
I'm trying to make a living... you guys do something else for a living. It's different.

I wish you the best of success and am seriously thinking about starting my own Specialty Gun Books Publishing Co. with the experience I've gained, but don't have nearly enough money, and don't have the energy I once had...And I'm serious, I've got a whole color book written and illustrated, anyone care to publish it? I'd hire that editor to help me turn the magazine article into a book in a minute, if I had any money. And as much editing as I've done, I'd still hire a professional editor.
(Double Guns had sold about 2000 in the first year, paying back my $4000 advance which paid me for the time converting it and then netting me about $1000 but I'm now a shipping clerk so I make a bit more money, and you should be seeing it excerpted in Am. Rifleman - my doing not the publisher- in Feb. which should help a bunch, but it is all work and I don't enjoy being anybody's hero) Even got in in Sam's Club last xmas, sometime I will tell you about that debacle!

I'm a real lucky guy, and do enjoy what I do, counting my payoffs differently than most folks, but it is not like knocking over a string of dominos, more like walking over a string of knocked down dominos.
It's time for a glass of Maker's Mark...
Thanks guys!

Steve, I have no idea how anyone makes a living writing about guns at any level, must less the specialty market. I would never dream to try. The shooting world, since the 20th century has been more about amateur tinkerers than about professionals I think.

The few people like you that make a living at it are in a very very special business, and I don't think it is one that is going to expand much either. That is sad, but I don't know what else can realistically happen. Publishing entirely electronically may be some sort of salvation but I don't know that it is the real solution and for sure it is not very satisfying. I, and many others, avoid publishing in electronic-only journals. Either way, it costs me about a grand for a ten-page article. I can't imagine writing a book and having it become nothing but electrons either. But that is the future I suppose.

BTW, whatever happened to Campbell after he left the ASSRA? My wife's dog just ate his book the other day and so I just bought another copy. Maybe that is the answer. More dog-eating books to sell more copies....

Brent

Writing articles is not the way to make much money either. I wrote what is still the definitive - because it is the only - article on the development of the .22 Hornet for Gun Digest about ten years ago. Probably represented five years of intermittent research, some of it quite intensive, lots of telephone, photo and postage expense - today would use email. Paid $500 as I recall and I subsequently got their annual John Amber award of a thousand bucks more. I then wrote two more Hornet articles with the help of Dick Wright, the benchrest ace who worked up 5/8" handloads for Townsend Whelen's gun, for Precision Shooting, which added another bit of money. After the whole business I figured out that I had not come even close to earning minimum federal hourly wage.

It was just a idea. But I wonder how many people bought copies of Home shop machinest. Just to get the articles on building a single shot rifle.Then he published it in a book.Again I wonder how many copies.? I do know that once home shop machinest ran out and before the book was out.Somebody had 50 sets of the magazines (I think 5 or 6 issues) sold out in one weekend at 100.00 per set.Whitey
PS: Smile I will not beg anymore

I understand everything being said about the difficulties of publishing. Obviously it is a labor of love as there is just about zero chance of making a living and not much better chance of breaking even. Unfortunately that means a huge amount of knowledge, painfully accumulated, won't be passed on and may be lost. The more I've seen posted on this site the more I want to know and I'm willing to pay for it. It has already cost me the price of SDHs books, and several other books that I didn't know I needed until recently. Even so the expense has been less than one Medical text.

It's worse for Brent. Professors have a publish or perish problem and they have to pay to get published. What's worse is the accepted style of "professional writing" is almost unreadable it's so stilted and dry. As Brent is the editor of a professional journal I urge him to allow, demand even, some individuality and style to shine through.

Jerry Liles