Inside the Rifle -- Fundamentals of Interior Ballistics by Homer S Powley and Kenneth E Howell is nearing final shape and publication. With any luck, I'll be able to start taking orders in a month or two, for delivery after the first of the year. I think all the drawings are drawn, but there's still a little to be written, more to be checked very carefully one last time, and a passel of dull final nit-pickery -- page numbers, for example -- before I'll have a final package to present to the book-manufacturer for a quotation on the costs of printing and binding 5,000 copies. I expect the price of the book to be fifty bucks, with another five for shipping and handling. When the time comes to invite early (prepublication) orders, I'll offer a limited-time price break -- probably ten bucks off.
So start thinking ahead to what you may want to give yourself as a special Christmas gift. I'll be deeply honored if our book is your choice.
quote:Originally posted by T/C nimrod: Ken - $50.00 for how many pages? hardcover or soft?
Don't know how many pages yet. Don't have 'em all written yet and haven't added-up the ones already done, which will probably increase with last-minute insertions to clarify this, that, and the other. Probably between 250 and 300 pages, total, at a guess.
All these cost extra for the printing and binding, but they make the book about as durable as books printed on mere paper can be. I don't intend to publish a merely "good enough" book, ever. "Good enough" isn't.
Also, doing all the prep work myself keeps the cost and the price down. If I had to pay anyone for the services of editorial and publishing assistants, art directors, book designers, office managers and clerk-typists, etc, I'd have to raise the price of the book to cover those costs. Doing all this from my "living room" avoids the extra costs of separate office and warehouse facilities, too.
It's easy to see why no big publishing house would consider publishing a book with as small a potential market as this one. The costs would make the price too high for the book to sell enough copies to break even. A project like this has to be one man's "labor of love."
Ken....I know this is a labor of love for you and I don't care if it's done on xerox paper and held together with paper clips it will be more than worth the money.
Posts: 4360 | Location: Sunny Southern California | Registered: 22 May 2002
Ken, I'd be honored if you'd consider this my purchase request. Let me know when to send a check, and for how much. I think I still have your address here somewhere from when I ordered the last book. Jerry Watkins Eagle River, Alaska jwatkins@customcpu.com
Ken --- I would like very much to have one of your new books. If you need more information than what is provided by that listed on AR, let me know. There is something new to learn each and every day. Good shooting.
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Good shooting.
