2:23 PM
Welcome back to my blog..... above you see Wes Cowen having a cup of coffee in my kitchen.
Sorry to have taken so long to update you on what's been happening. First off, I am holding off on discussing the Frozen Charlotte doll because I will be visiting the Strong Museum later this fall and since they have such a good toy collection, I am sure I'll learn much more and then I'll report back to you.
Secondly, as I mentioned last summer we have lots of company coming through and the most recent guest has been Wes Cowen who is on the PBS program called the History Detectives. This program is in its 10th year! Although I have known Wes for many years, I didn't know that he had a PhD in Anthropology.
Per Wikipedia- "Social Anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensivefield studies (including participant observation methods), the social organization of a particular person: customs, economic and political organization, law and conflict resolution, patterns of consumption and exchange, kinship and family structure, gender relations, child rearing and socialization, religion, and so on."
When I first met Greg Hawley, he mistook me for a teacher and others could mistake for a social anthropologist. Either one is a compliment. As some of you know, I have a a masters in social work- specifically social administration and community planning and I worked as a social worker so I always take the stance of the social anthropologist. My first semester in college, I took sociology and learned how much a person can learn when going through someone's trash.
He read my book proposal cover to cover (all 20 plus pages), then he reviewed Greg's book, Treasures in a Cornfield and said he really was impressed at the depth and grasp I have on Steamboat Arabia's history and that of the consignees. He wanted to know where I was with my book and this turned into a long hour conversation.
I replied that I heard back from my first book publisher which was a university press. It was turned down, for the following reasons (per the editor):
- Oversized format with full-color illustrations are very expensive to produce and that we almost always had to have some sort of subsidy in order to publish them.
- Having reviewed your proposal, I regret to say that the project does not appear likely to lead to a book for our list.
- The tack you take—moving from the artifacts outward to the businesses that never received the cargo—is certainly a distinctive one and has some educational value, but such a book would probably not appeal to a sufficient audience to justify the large expenditure for its production.
I offered to cover the expense of the copy right for the images and other expenses, but it seems they needed grant money to cover their printing costs, which I was unaware they needed. So, now I do.
I loved the feedback I received from the editor because it gave me a stamp of approval that my idea was ahead of the curve. It was a new idea of looking at the collection and that makes it priceless (if this was a Master Card commercial). I admit that University Presses are looking to sell their books as text books for college courses and he could not see a demand at the university level for a history class.
So for the last few weeks, I have began to seek out publishers that print books for social anthropology courses and I think it wouldn't hurt to talk to a few college professors.
Then again, maybe Jeanne was right that the book should be published under the Arabia Steamboat Museum's press because they could control reprints of the book when a university or other press may not reprint 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions.
So, life is good and I am moving forward to a better book. I would like to hear from anyone who has any suggestions how I can justify that people want this book published.
0 comments:
Post a Comment