Why e-books will save publishing

I just received another of my Polish language books in the mail on the Polish Army in the 18th century.  A great book with some good source material, but it still falls short.  The reason is the economics of making a full color book means it is either very expensive to get everything you want in, or you are forced to leave things out to be able to publish it at all.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these new tech people who say books are dead in physical form.  I like the feel of a book, when it is well made it is a thing of beauty, but the finances of publishing means that you can do somethings better in e-books.

First, not everyone has a color e-reader (nook, i-pad, etc) and I find there can be formatting problems in some of these devices to allow color pictures to be seen properly, but when you have a lot of illustrations, it is far cheaper do use an e-format.  For some people this may mean physical books might have websites to provide extra material on-line, or it might mean that at some point e-book sales may be used to help provide impetus for physical books. There are books and information that may not be viable in physical form, but will be allowed to get published in e-book.  I remember a few years ago at Book Expo seeing a book entitled "Birthing Techniques of Azerbajan".  I'm sure it was of use to people who study these things, but how could they afford to publish it?  This is perfect for an e-book.  The drawback is you can publish anything at any time and some non-professional stuff is already creeping onto POD and e-versions at Amazon, but the potential is there for a new burst of information.

In terms of history and especially military history, when studying armies, units and uniforms a picture is worth a thousand words and e-books may be the best way to allow information to get out there.

Writing update

An update on Polish Armies of the Partitions 1770 - 1794.  All the research is done and a first draft is finished.  This means I have enough for two plus books, but I have to edited down to one and still give you enough information to send you on your way.  Diligently working on it - I have my own deadline set for the end of August.

Next steps?  Well for this type book I have to provide the b&w illustrations and give them captions.  I need forty and I have about eighty so it is parse and paste.  Some have to be scanned, but once the office is back in operation it will all be ok.  The author also has to provide artist notes so the illustrator can produce those great pictures that Osprey is known for.  This is probably the most difficult part - you need photos, pictures or details to give the artist info to complete a detailed illustration, historically accurate (or someone will no doubt complain) and describe the scene in such a way that the person doesn't have to keep coming back to you for clarification.  Luckily, I think this is in hand, but it will take time.

 I started working out the illustrations by actually doing a sketch of how I wanted the scenes to look and what was going to be in them.  From there I just needed to collect pictures that would get us to that goal, so most of that is together.  That said it could go all horribly wrong when I hand it in, but we'll keep our fingers crossed.

This isn't to say that I have not been updating things and ideas as I go along - I am still checking to make sure I have details correct and occasionally finding new information, but if you don't draw a line in the sand it will drive you crazy.

I'm working on a new post soon on how gamers actually are the go to guys for this type of history or writting, but more on that later.