Bf-109G

[lmritger]

A companion book to Spitfire The History by Edward Shacklady, Eric B. Morgan would look on my bookcase..

That is one of my absolute favorite books of all time. It set a standard which has yet to be equaled. The one big, HUGE thing I'm wrestling with at the moment is how many loss/damage listings to include - because I have over 20,000.

My plan at the moment is to keep an eye on page count as I work through the body of the book and get an idea where it's going to land. Page count = money, and while I love the idea of replicating the Shacklady/Morgan approach for the 109, I'm not sure I could justify 600+ pages to the publisher!

Cheers,

Lynn

[old iron]

Lynn,

Do you know what the break-even point is concerning the number of books that the publisher needs to sell before they make money? I am hearing a number like "2,000", which is a lot of books. I ask because I am potentially doing something on my own, but much that I hear is discouraging.

This is why I recommend doing everything you can to keep costs per unit down. My guess is that once the books start costing more than $80, the number pf buyers will start to seriously diminish. (What are your thoughts on all this?)

Kevin

[lmritger]

That's actually a fantastic question Kevin, and I will be 100% honest here - I genuinely have no idea. Obviously there are costs involved at every step of the process, and I am doing as much of this by myself as I can... for instance, all of the photos to be used for the book will already be converted to 300dpi (which is industry standard, as I understand it). It's a small thing, but if someone else had to do that, their time would add up pretty quickly. I will say that the subject matter of a book can also be an early indicator of how well it might do in the marketplace... bluntly, books on the Luftwaffe seem to be popular, whereas a unit history of VMB-433, for instance, wouldn't generate nearly as much interest.

What sort of project did you have in mind? Feel free to drop me a PM if you like, I'd be happy to help.

Cheers,

Lynn

[Spitty]

Maybe break it up into parts or eras?

[Jim MacDonald]

Hey Lynn,

How about including the loss list as a CD included in the book. CDs would be easy and cheap to produce and would keep the page count down keeping the book's price at a decent level.

Mac