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Writing and Printing
After my father passed away in 1982, I decided to make it into a
book. It took the next 8 years to make it into a book. I wrote parts
of the book on paper and other parts using Microsoft Word.
I used Adobe PageMaker to create the book layout. Cut and paste
between programs was not a sophisticated as it is today. Adobe
PageMaker and Microsoft Word did not "like to talk to each other"
very well. I had to redo much of the formatting in PageMaker. This
took a lot of time.
Once I had a manuscript, then I went on to the next step. Getting
the book printed and bound was the next problem. As I found out, the
cost per book depended upon the number printed. I finally settled on
printing 1,000 copies to get the cost per book down to be able to
make a profit at the retail price of $14.95 per copy.
After about a month at the printer, I had boxes of books stacked in
my storage room. There were several glitches in the printing process
and I had to have some copyright page stickers printed to manually
insert into every book.
Advertising and Marketing
I did a lot of advertising in local papers with small classified
ads. I put this book on the internet and advertised in user groups.
I did a lot of emailing to any group interested in water rights or
water conflicts. I put this book on Amazon.
I also did some mailing to cities, towns, libraries and interested
water groups. It was not as easy as it seemed to get out in front of
a target market.
Sales
Over the next 10 years, the majority of my original print run was
sold. When my partner, Diana Burg and I set up BurgYoung Publishing
in 2001, Understanding Water Rights and Conflicts was one of
the books that we decided to update and reprint.
I first put together a "supplement" booklet that would fit into the
back of the remainder of the first edition. This supplement was
about 50 pages long and could be inserted into a pocket in the back
of the book. We have a few of these left.
We decided to rewrite the first edition and reprint it as the second
edition. The book expanded from 106 pages to the current 325 pages.
The new edition expanded from a book solely centered on Colorado
water to a book that discusses Colorado as well as national and
global water issues.
BurgYoung Publishing is now able to order books in smaller
quantities for the same price per book that the original 1,000 first
edition copies. Technology has advanced a lot in 15 years. Our books
are now written in Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect, and
transferred into Adobe InDesign CS2. While some formatting problems
remain, the programs work much better together under Microsoft XP
operating system. The books are then converted to the Adobe PDF
format and uploaded electronically to our printer. We have the
option of having 10 to 1,000 books printed. Typically they arrive in
about 3 weeks. |
