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    Re: Calls for pix, what's up? Archived Message

    Posted by Ed Muderlak on April 26, 2007, 3:04 pm, in reply to "Calls for pix, what's up?"

    As to pictures and books, I have some experience, and as an attorney/published author I have some credentials in copyright law. Typically everything created, even doodling on a napkin in a restaurant, is copyrighted to its creator for years long beyond his lifetime. But realistically, what's it worth? especially when crumpled up and disposed of for free.

    First and foremost, pictures posted on the Internet are not suitable for the print-published page. Various major auction houses have kindly supplied me gratis with disc images of their cataloged guns (including a Monogram LCS, A-2, and Deluxe grades) for my new book in process, tennatively entitled, "Shooting Flying: Parker Guns and the American Experience." The images are 6,000 to 7,000 kb, while a typical Internet posting is best at 50 to 65 kb. Points being that

    (1) anything scavenged off the internet is not going to resolve at sufficent pixels to be publishable in a book that anyone would be willing to pay for; (2) Anything posted on the internet had so little initial monetary value that it was given away for free in a format that does not lend itself to republishing for gain; and (3) High quality images suitable for publishing in the gun book/magazine genre typically go for $50 at the most: There is one paid for image in my book, "Parker Guns: The 'Old Reliable,'" which I just had to have, and that's what I paid to one of the DGJ's foremost photographic artists for the use of the one slide (which had to be returned).

    Secondly, the Internet has killed the printed word business. Nobody seems to read anymore. Newspapers and magazines are bleading $$$. In the gun book genre, my publisher, Safari Press, hasn't published a gun book for years; Krause was purchased by the Farmers and Writers group in Ohio, and their gun book business is in limbo. Countrysport Press is now in its third or fourth reincarnation with Down East (Shooting Sportsman magazine), but CS dosen't do our kind of informative picture books. I spoke to Stuart Mobery at Man at Arms Publishing at the January Vegas show, and his operation is strictly subsidy publishing.

    Tom Rowe is a good friend; he's doing contract subsidy publishing for those without profit motive. And the world record for lack of profit motive I think now is held by the gentleman who just published the new LCS book. Point being that gun book authoring and publishing has always been a labor of love. The idea that someone is going to download Internet images and publish a book for "profit" is purely specious. In today's market, even the best prospective manuscripts have little or no chance of being published for royalties.

    My first and second books received an up front advance on royalties of $5,000 (same as Tom Clancy got for "Hunt For Red October"), but that was before 24-hour cable news, a multitude of gun auction sites, numerous double gun Forums like this, Blackberrys, e-mail, instant messaging, personal blogs, and all the other non-written-word claims on one's free time.

    We have become an interactive computer based society. Anybody today who thinks they can add to the body of knowledge of LCS or Parker or the like by way of well thought and executed research plus decent quality illustrations--published at a profit!--well, have at it, and save $$$ by scavenging other people's pictures for free on the internet, and get back to me when the deal is done and the "profit" is in the bank. But most likely the story will be more like "The Parker Story" that pre-publication sold for less that the ultimate cost of publishing; or how about Semmer's seminal Remington book: His comment to me at Nashville a decade ago was, "Thank God for the Credit Union."

    In summary, the very existance of the internet has made available pictures, such as are the topic of this thread, and they look nice on the screen, but this medium itself has been the death of the printed-word book business, so much so that I predict that no gun book author will ever again get up front royalty advances (as I did in the 1990s), and all future gun-book manuscripts will be subsidy published (or not published at all). And using free pictures off the Internet: Ha!

    Parting shot: At the last CADA show in Chicago there were zero gun book sellers; Tom Rowe told me that he will be there in May, but only because he has other business in the area. He said that his same show sales dropped in half over the past several years, and he can hardly justify the on-the-road expense. If our "for profit" booksellers aren't selling, and our "for profit" publishers are not publishing, and our authors are paying to get their stuff published, then, really, what's an internet image worth? Shooting Sportsman magazine pays an extra $100 to use a complete well-illustrated article on their website, after its been in the print magazine. For the average guy to post a picture gratis in the internet and then think he has a copyright to protect...well, hope may spring eternal, but to mix metaphours, the "profit" bubble will break when he consults with a copyright attorney and finds his image to be worth the proverbial peppercorn. ED Muderlak

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