My Book was on the Cards
T S Crawford
describes a hobby which led to him writing a book and publishing it himself
 It began during a prolonged convalescence after an
operation. Simply to amuse myself, I started to collect old picture postcards showing
military scenes in Wiltshire.
This isn’t
as odd as it sounds. Since 1897 the county
has been a major training area for soldiers, and during the Great War many British and
Dominion troops endured the discomforts of Salisbury Plain, a thousand dying from
accidents and sickness.
I found my
cards in secondhand bookshops, stalls, markets and soon acquired a large collection. I
arranged them in sections —
individual
camps, military aircraft, army hospitals and so on.
For each card, I wrote up a short account, which sometimes meant researching local
records to explain what was shown, especially when a card depicted a news incident such as
a plane crash or military funeral.
I started by reading local and military histories. Then I progressed to scanning contemporary newspapers and
then to reading original documents at the Public Record Office and
Imperial War Museum. I came to realise that there was a great deal of
unpublished information and that, surprisingly, there was no book
specifically about Wiltshire in the Great War.
So I went ahead and wrote one.
 My
career had involved a lot of writing and some booklet production, and
I’d had a book published in 1970.
So I knew what I was doing —
more or less. Military
memorabilia is fairly popular, but I wasn’t surprised that no publisher
was interested in the end result; after all, it was rather parochial.
I had long been aware of the pitfalls of vanity publishing —
paying a company a lot of money to publish one’s work
and then selling a handful of copies. But I looked at books on
self-publishing, did some basic budgeting, and approached a local
company that produces
many books for small publishers. Four hundred copies would cost just
over £2,000.
(For some reason 460 copies were delivered, at no extra cost.)
Luckily my word-processor printed sufficiently well to produce
camera-ready copy, thus saving having to pay for typesetting (which
would have made the project financially unviable). But I had to pay £7 a
time for 37 selected postcards to be scanned into the text.
 Marketing
the finished product was my weak area. I dreaded the personal
approach. I drew up a list of local booksellers from a couple of
directories and sent them mail-shots, just a page announcing the book,
contents, price and where available. This resulted in some orders.
Encouraged, I hesitantly approached those shops that hadn’t responded,
the first of which turned out to be a sex-shop!
The smaller bookshops were generally very encouraging, though I still
can’t work out why one, in a barracks town, only ever took one copy. The
well-known bookshop chains were not so receptive and expected larger
discounts. A recent book on self-publishing had said it was all right to
approach individual branches of WHSmith with a local title, but too late
in the day I discovered that first approval was needed from head office.
By the time this had been given, I had completed my tour of Wiltshire
shops, so thereafter I only bothered with Smith’s branches if I happened
to be in a town where I knew there was one. The company demanded very
high discounts, and paying postage would have meant selling copies at a
loss.
Wiltshire libraries took twenty-one copies, sight unseen (which I
thought was trusting of them) and at the full cover price of £12.95.
The best orders
were those made direct to me through personal contacts
or resulting from reviews in specialist magazines --
no discounts! And it was gratifying when someone
recommended the book to a leading seller of military titles, who ordered
twenty copies.
 Within
a year of publishing, I had recovered my production costs, though should my
tax inspector read this she should note that my travel expenses for research
purposes more than wipe out any profit!
Six months later, I was down to my last five copies, and a secondhand
one had sold at a specialist book auction for a pound above the cover
price!
I have had some very nice comments, and no-one has written to me to
point out any errors. There are some, though, and my main regret is that
I did not put the typescript to one side for at least six months and
return to it with a fresh eye and mind.
A reprint wouldn’t be economical but who knows, as the centenary of the
Great War approaches in a few years’ time there is bound to be increased
interest in the subject and scope for a revised edition!
For books on military history, contact Tom Donovan Military Books, the
leading specialist on military history from 1800-1945. Email:
tom@turner-donovan.co.uk
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