Posted By:
Paul Muchinsky
I believe the single major issue to be addressed by any prospective author is the most basic question of all: "What do I want to achieve by doing this book?" If you can clearly answer that question, I would say you are over half-way done in answering the big questions about such a book.
For me the whole issue turned on whether I wanted to do a book that was "representative" or "comprehensive" (as one can hope to make it). You would be surprised at how many decisions automatically fall into place once this decision is made. Among them are:
1. Length. If you want representative, you can specify a pre-determined page limit, and simply fill the book with select items until you reach your limit. If you go with comprehensive, you will have as many pages as it takes to provide the comprehensive depiction you want. Even then, some will say your book wasn't "comprehensive enough". Despite my having a valid reason why I omitted pins in sets (because another book had already done a splendid job on this), some people wanted my book to include pins in sets.
2. Cost. This is simple. The longer the book, the more expensive it is to produce. How much money do you have to put into the book? Are you willing to forgo adding some items to your collection because you already spent it on presenting what you already had? I don't know much about "e-books", but if you don't mind hefting a computer instead of a book, pixels are cheaper than paper (and also modifiable).
3. Photographic skill. I was/am not a professional photographer, nor was I interested in spending the money on equipment to fake it. The quality of my photos in the baseball book reveal what an amateur I am. I learned a few tricks along the way and photos in the boxing book came out better. I eventually met a professional photographer who told me the #1 cause of my amateur-looking photographs in the baseball book was I had more than one pin in a photograph. Not surprisingly, some of my "worst" pages contain the most pins. OK, but now what? I presented about 3,500 baseball pins. Want to take out a second mortgage to pay the cost of 3,500 photographs? For the boxing book I was able to get each pin in a separate photograph, but then I only had about 420 items to photograph.
4. What to present. If one person has all the goodies in his or her own collection that will be in the book, fine. Then just turn your den into a photo studio and have at it. If several collectors are going to contribute items, either the items go the designated photographer's house for the shooting, or the photographer packs up the photo gear and goes to the items. Your friends will send photos from their collection? Maybe, but get ready to meet Dr. "Moray" (his last name sounds like moray--like the eel--but it is spelled differently). Dr. Moray was a physicist who discovered when photographed items are presented in a book, you are in one sense creating a new photo (the book page) of an old photo (the object photographed). I'll skip the math, but it basically means the two photos have to be in synch with each other. If not, the image appears blurry. Although there are several way to correct a "Moray Problem", one involves manipulating the size of the image to create allignment. This process becomes more complex if the original photos were taken with different settings, caused by different people using different cameras to take photos of their own items. In reduced form, combining photos from different sources for a book is much more involved than combining photos from different sources to create a family photo album. I don't recall how many pinback photos were in the Smithsonian book, and what percentage of the photos taken wound up making the final cut, but Rob Lifson told me the folks from Smithsonian were at his house all day just to take those few shots. It is all about the technical stuff of photography about which I know little that produces a patently superior image (as in the Smithsonian book) versus an amateurish image (as in my book). Like everything else in life, it is more complex than it looks.
5. Why am I doing this? This is a re-statement of the critical primary question. I will answer this question for myself. I did the two books because I love what I collect and I wanted to share it with the hobby. After I am gone and my collection has been scattered or resides in its entirety with someone who is not as passionate about pinbacks as I am, at least hobbyists will be able to see what there is to collect out there. Such books are nothing more than eye candy treats for those who suffer from our exquisite addiction. I spent more on the baseball book than I ever made or will make. But I don't care. I discovered the cost of sharing my candy ultimately brought me more pleasure than the cost of buying some more candy. If you do such a book, do it because you have a story to tell, and you want to tell it, because if you don't, it may well never be told. If you list prices in the belief that some readers are as interested in value as much as aesthetics, get ready for a raft of "experts" to not only tell you are in error, but ascribe motives to why you must have written the book in the first place. My favorite is the following: My prices, when they are "wrong", are more likely too high than too low. This must mean by my saying something is worth X, I will induce someone to pay me X, which is the rationale for why I wrote the book. I have recently decided my collection is worth $700 billion. The line forms at the right. I don't take PayPal.
Write the book for the sheer joy of seeing beauty in print, beauty that would not be seen and shared with others if you didn't do it. While you did not create the original beauty, you are responsible for why others can see it and enjoy it. I believe that is the most noble motive of all. Sign me up for a copy. I like beautiful baseball eye candy.