I have a couple of ideas in the works for industrial heritage books. I had considered Arcadia and went as far as having them send me their publishing guidelines, but was not impressed by the limitations they would place on my works. Not being able to used scanned images is a big downside. Some of the pictures that I have are only available in digital format.

So I thought about self publishing. There are several websites that offer self publishing services. They run the gamut from ultra simplistic "photo albums" to a very professional product that you woudl supply the finished page layouts for and they would merely print.

The one that I have looked at and at first glance like is www.createspace.com. Its a division of Amazon. You upload your completed book in digital format, they print it, assign a retail price to it and then put it up on Amazon.com. They gave an example that for a 100 page book selling for $25.00 would net a $14.00 royalty to the author.

I haven't really read too deeply into that site, but on the surface looks to be a good deal, especially if your audience is limited and buys mainly on Amazon or ebay or in your museum's gift shoppe.

[deleted by user]

Don and others,
Go to Amazon.com and look up Kindle. I do not support Amazon or Kindle but I point to it as a case of where "publishing" is headed. Sales of "Paper" is on the down swing but RSS and such is starting to take off. In the "Kindle" there is no "wireless" fee, it is included in the price of the download I presume.
FCC is having a "Bandwidth" sale and Google along with a gentleman who had something to do with an orchard (Apple) are expected to bid. Gee, wonder how they plan to use the access?
Don, if you are looking to share your knowledge base but control it to some extent put it on the web. Keep in the back of your mind the possibility of "Paperless" subscriptions.
Getting newspaper, books, audio, video and such to a hand held device is now easy. You put it in the air but only folks that have paid to "have" a copy will be able to download. This is done by "turning on" their device with a built in code. Designed for that certain hand held ID #, called ESN (Electonic Serial Number).
Over the air publishing is now in the basement, only one way to go and that is up!

[deleted by user]

The bigger hazard of a purely on-line distribution is the obsolescence factor and archival longevity of digital data. What if the device is damaged or lost? If you want your research to remain accessable to a larger portion of the reading public, then you really should consider hard-copy publication. How many folks can access 3.5" floppies, or documents stored on old hard drives of obselete computers?

I work in printing, so perhaps I have a prejudice here, but when my local newsletter went from hard copy to digital distribution, I found I hardly looked at the thing after initial receipt. There are other things I have downloaded that I do refer to, but all are one hard drive crash away from oblivion, or I will need to burn back up copies of the information on the media of the day.

Why not both? Web for control and continual updating, and the book for long term information preservation?

Michael Seitz
Missoula MT

If you are reading this, here, on line at RYPN you have already self sorted to those who are commuter users. By definition, if we are here we use a computer, and by corollary, if you are not a computer user, you will not be arguing your case here.

As for Arcadia, I was contacted, and after reading their rules decided that it wasn’t for me. They want photo intensive works, with little or no academic review. I want a narrative with photos to support the narrative. I have helped a couple of friends publish Arcadia books, for who this was a good route.

If you read their rules, you will find you have signed away your right to publish a more academic book using the same photos for some period of years. You are taking responsibility for the “rights” to the photos you use. In reality, if the photo was taken after the late 1920’s this isn’t a legal issue, but may be a moral issue.

There are also other ways to publish in the “brave new world”. Desk top soft wear, cheap scanners and your local copy mart make it possible for any of us to put together a very professional looking book. Its our (and our associates) efforts and care which will make this good or just a hack job. The Arcadia model makes it easier to put something out, but doesn’t assure quality.

When Arcadia first contacted me, I asked them specifically if doing something through them impaired my future ability to author another more sholarly work about the same subject at a later date. The response I got was that as long as I did not produce another small format paperback book that was about the same size and format as the Arcadia book I would be okay.

The people I worked with at Arcadia wanted me to include references to my website, and in the end I elected not to. Something written down on paper has a good chance to be around for a long, long time, but anything on the web is tenuous at best. I could get sick of my website and yank it down tomorrow, or the server could crash, or go out of business...a lot can happen to any web site, and I am reluctant to put something on paper that may not be around in its present form for an extended period of time.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

That was the same interpretation which I have come away with. There is a great deal of material that didn't make the cut which I could use in a more comprehensive work. But therein lies the consideration. The larger work will preserve more information but the number of units that can potentially be sold are much fewer than the type of book that Arcadia produces. Self publishing isn't much of an option either, once you consider the cost of the required time and production.

Bottom line is that you should examine your motives before making a commitment to publishing. If you want to make a living off of publishing, you'd better be ready to keep churning out books as fast as you can. If you're interested in exposing more people to the history, write to the level of the person that you're wanting to get to. For most of us, we should expect at least to cover our costs and perhaps get a little pocket money at the same time.

While the Arcadia agreement may be disagreeable to some, at least you own your copyright. All they do is fill orders and cut royalties. I do pretty decently considering I make no effort to promote my book (or even acknowledge it exists).

As to the debate of computers versus paper, paper will always win in the long run. It is much easier to preserve over very long periods (hundreds of years). If damaged by fire or water, it can sometimes be saved. On a computer, data can be lost through corruption. Hackers can damage or alter data as well.

Update:

I received a note from a noted rail photographer who had discovered, to his concern, that two of his photographs had been used in a recent Arcadia rail-theme book, without his permission. The only possible source for those photos would have been two postcards published, with his photo credit, years ago by one of the then-big rail postcard publishers. So, obviously, they can use scanned images now, or just don't care. He had never been contacted prior to publishing. (Mind you, this guy is NOT easy to find online, by his choice. Search for him, and you'll find some football player that is way too young, and some extra listed in credits on IMDB.)

He courteously contacted Arcadia with his concern, and was willing to be "bought off" with a complimentary copy of the book.

I would absolutely not be surprised if people in this field searched recent Arcadia rail books and found photos "lifted" from other sources, such as excursion line PR material or publications, used without the photographer's/owner's knowledge or consent.

You can't infer that the indifference is Arcadia's, it may well have been from the author of the book, who may have done due diligence to reach the photographer and was thwarted by the photographer's own mechanisms. "That's what you get for being unfindable."

You might also allow for the possibility that Arcadia/author DID get permission from the big publisher, and either the publisher lent those rights erroneously, or the photographer doesn't realize he signed those rights away.

Just goes to show that file cabinet of photos every railfan has... fully commercially exploited, probably has a sum total value of about $500.

It's hard to say. A quick check on the "large color postcard company" (OK, if you want to be coy, I'll be coy) website says they have been in business since 1967, and the major change to US Copyright law dates to 1976. Prior to that, one did not get an automatic copyright; one had to file for it. If the photos were taken before 1976, and the photographer did not file for a copyright, he doesn't have one. However, I seem to recall that the postcards from the "large color postcard company" always carried a copyright notice, so that is likely where the author went for permission.

Luckily, I have very little interest in railroads post 1976, so this really isn't a problem for me, but the change in the law in '76 has created a huge problem with orphan works; you can find an awful lot of images (both digital and hard copy) where there isn't a clue who holds the rights.

Having just completed a book for Arcadia I find this thread most interesting. My experience overall has been very positive. I was first contacted to do something about the Oahu Railway and Land Company. Due to their format requirements, which did not fit with the amount of research we have done, I suggested an alternative subject which fit the format much better. It was accepted and hopefully will make it to print later this year. I scanned most photographs per Arcadia's requirements but some existed only in digital format and they were accepted also so long as the quality was sufficiently good. My reasons for writing were not motivated by potential profit for myself and any money goes to the Hawaiian Railway Society (HRS). HRS will make the most by selling the book in the gift shop which is the goal. As far as content, that's up to the ability of the author. Hopefully mine will measure up. The book covers the Navy's narrow gauge railroad operations on Oahu between 1908 and 1972. It is hoped that it will appeal to railroaders, Navy historians and folks who are simply interested in Hawaii. This information would never have been available outside of the HRS if not for Arcadia

Jeff Livingston
Historian
Hawaiian Railway Society

While we're being coy and circumspect on here about this subject, I heard the story of the expropriated photographs from the photographer themselves (and believe me, just about everyone here has at least heard of this person and seen their work numerous times in any number of hobby and industry publications). I can see how this can easily happen. I put a couple of photos of a former Cedar Point loco (formerly Maude L., now Disneyland's Ward Kimball) up on the interwebs seven or eight years ago and was contacted by an author working on a book about the acquisition and rebuilding of it by Disney. He asked if he could use one or both photos in his book, and I agreed and asked him what format he wanted them in (print, jpeg, etc.) He said he already had usable images from what I thought were the fairly low-resolution images I had put out there. Several months later I received a complementary copy of the finished book in the mail, and the reproduction of my photos in it was perfectly fine. So, apparently it doesn't take a high-quality original image anymore to make a publishable color photo in a book.

Also, continuing to be coy, I know someone who just had his fourth Arcadia book published. In discussing the process of dealing with Arcadia with him over time, it appears that they depend heavily upon their authors to do the vast majority of the work necessary to get the author's book published, including personally securing or purchasing any rights to photographs, to the point that the costs of securing said photos comes out of the author's cut (which is no doubt why you see a lot of university archive, library, and public domain photos in Arcadia books). So, Arcadia probably was not directly at fault in failing to secure permission to use this well-known photographer's work in one of their books. Although, it was published under Arcadia's name...

It is in the contract that the responsibility for making necessary determinations as to acquiring rights to or obtaining permission to use photographs or other copyrighted material is the responsibility of the author.

Also, while Arcadia prefers that high quality original images be used for publishing, that is not a hard and fast rule. When I published my book, there were certain events for which the only photograph available was a low resolution print or copy.

In my case, the only cost for obtaining rights to use certain photographs was simply that of gas and a couple of letters. Pretty much all of what I needed was available from friends or local historical groups that I knew people in. There were a couple of advertisements that I did go to Norfolk Southern to obtain permission to use as they had the Southern Railway name and logo present. NS was easy to work with.

Overall, I more than covered my costs and am happy with the occasional check that comes in-considering I do absolutely nothing to promote sales.