Ed didn't make his money writing books. That's his message. It's relatively rare to make a living from writing.
KB: You got it right, as usual. My first article for the
DGJ cost me more to get it typed by my secretarial service than it paid. Writing about one's passion is a labor of love. Getting paid for writing about one's passion is some validation of the merit of the content and the presentation; a form of financial peer review, after making it over the editorial hurdle. Getting paid disconnects the process from the emotion and, thus, is good.
I have an extensive library of shot-gunning books: virtually everything that was written and published in America from the first book in 1783 until WWI. Books were hard to get published in America because most all authors who wrote about the American experience with guns were not wealthy and were not in a position to self publish.
The reverse was true in the UK where every Lord of the Manor dribbled on in print about every little inconsequential thing. Thus American-published shotgun-related books of merit predominate in the relatively small available library, while a collector of British shot-gunning books has his work cut out to separate the wheat from the redundant chaff.
Don't get me wrong: The Brits have tremendous library of seminal titles--conventionally published, subsidy published, and vanity press--and that's good. But a collector of British titles can wind up owning a lot of bling that never suffered any editorial or economic scrutiny like their contemporaries on our side of the Big Pond.
And another "don't get me wrong": When I advised newbie writers not to write books, what I meant was DON"T be blinded by emotion. Ask around. Find out what it really costs in time and money. Photography is expensive. I bought paper by the box of reams and went through untold numbers of printer cartridges in our industrial-size printer.
My wife Nancy did the typing and typing-over, sometimes 20 times per chapter, from my tapes, which involved full-blown secretarial dictation equipment. If I had to pay Nancy secretarial wages and benefits it would have exceeded $150,000 at today's rates.
Parker Guns: Shooting Flying involved 5 years work, and I had no day job. I'm glad I did it, but thank God a publisher handed me a contract with check attached and converted the completed manuscript into finished product at no cost to me. I don't even sell the Trade Edition. My work is done! But contra...
Before anyone decides he is going to do a gun book, ask around. Ask the hard questions, like, for example, Charlie and Louis and Bill and Roy: "You guys had solid gold, the long sought Parker factory records back in 1991 or so, and thought your book would be available for Xmas 1993...then 1994...then 1995...and the first volume was released in 1998 or 1999 and the second in 2000; Would you have undertaken the project knowing, as you now do, what a time and money drain it involved?" I suspect
The Parker Story guys would say "Yes, or at least "Maybe," but recast the question to ask if they plan anymore books. Ah! That's a different Parker story, I'm sure.
But let's assume a newbie writer wants to go ahead with a gun-related book, he should be sure that his material is new and different. I recall back in 1995, after Safari Press pitched me for my first Parker book, I was at OpryLand at Wally Bienfeld's NRA show, the first annual get-together of the PGCA. I mentioned the Safari overture to Ron Kirby, and when he introduced me to Wally, he blurted out: "Ed's writing a Parker book!" (It should be noted that Bienfeld Productions was Larry Baer's publisher.) Wally looked me up and down with his evil eye and said: "How is it any different..." and then was paged away to deal with something. I never got to answer him, but his telling question stuck in my brain, and has been there constantly since.
Lesson Numero Uno (That's # 1 for those who are not illegal aliens): If you are going to write what people want to read (and actually pay for), you gotta be different, fresh, new, imaginative, special. This is the hard part. EDM
