 My first Civil War book, A
Scratch with the Rebels, was published traditionally by a small press in
2007. As is frequently the case with traditional presses, the editor approached
my book with some pre-conceived ideas. She was looking for Civil War books that
would appeal to people who were touring battle sites and visiting their museum
stores in her state. With that purpose in mind, she decided to make the book
slightly oversized (10" x 8") so that it would be noticeable on the
shelves. That, in turn produced a rather thin book, so to increase the page
count, she asked for lots and lots of illustrations. (If I mentioned a person or
a place, I was to have a picture or a map to accompany it.) And to increase the
amount of white space per page, she decided to use a two-column format, which
added that extra 3/4 of an inch down the middle of each page. Now none of those decisions were
bad in themselves, but together they created an impression that weakened the
book. The over-size shape made the book floppy rather than substantial. The
two-column format gave the impression of a middle-school social-studies
textbook rather than the serious and academically rigorous study that it was.
The preponderance of pictures added to the schoolbook look. The scholarly
apparatus of notes and bibliography ended up in the back of the book, where
endnotes were hard to locate and failed to provide the additional source
information they were meant to convey. Add to that a problem with the binding
equipment used by the company, and the result was an ugly book with a peeling
cover and off-putting visual appeal. Worse, it carried a high price tag that
put it out of reach of many customers. I managed to sell a couple hundred by
strong-arming my friends, but the publishing company couldn't even get the book
into those museum shops.  When the publisher decided to give
up on their attempts to publish the book as an e-book, they returned the electronic publishing rights to me. My decision to re-work the book and publish
the e-book as a second edition was the smartest move I made. I re-arranged and
combined several chapters to improve the flow, changed important endnotes so
that they now appear in the body of the text, and removed other purely academic
notations. I also took out most of the illustrations, which had caused multiple
problems in the publisher's first attempt to publish the book electronically.
As a substitute for those who want to see what a particular person or
location looked like, the e-book includes links to my Pinterest boards, where I
have posted the pictures from the book. The only scholarly apparatus that
remains is the bibliography. To strengthen the impression that this is a new
and improved book, I asked my designer to come up with a more appealing cover. This refurbished second edition has proved to be very popular. It has sold several copies so far this month, which isn't bad for an eight-year-old book. Why? Because I re-designed it to meet the needs of
its intended audience. Instead of trying to reach the casual tourist
visitor, the new edition appeals to re-enactors and Civil War buffs, especially
to groups whose ancestors were a part of this particular story. In the last six
months this second edition has sold more copies than the total number of sales
for the first edition over a period of seven years. Lessons learned #1. Know who
your readers are and meet their needs. #2. If you can
make a book better, do it. #3. Don't be
afraid to admit your mistakes.  |
