If you guys want to get serious about this you have to consider a
professional approach. The 'co-operative effort - any volunteers' approach
is fine if you want to put out something like a club newsletter but if you
want a nice glossy, book with pretty pictures you may need to follow a
definite track -
1. A commissioning editor - preferable someone with publishing experience
who will then -
2. Find funding - a sponsor, publishing house, whoever to put up A LOT of
money to get the thing printed, assuming the text and pix are donated, and
then -
3. Appoint the most qualified people to contribute each section (whether
they are list members or not, and then -
4. Co-ordinate the actual writing and collection of the text and pix.
5. The commissioning editor should then commission a text editor to rewrite
the contributions as required to ensure a consistency of approach and style
and a designer to layout a consistent 'look.' And a translator for the
Japanese version.
This is a huge amount of work, very expensive and no-one is going to make a
cent except the publisher. Almost everyone will hate both editors and the
designer because thay will find flaws with the way their vision is
presented/adjusted. No-one will complete their contributions on time for a
myriad of very legitimate reasons. The commissioning editor will go slowly
mad.
This is why you need a professional publisher - this is what they get paid
for. Start by getting tacit approval from a publishing house and then give
them a few chapters to chew on. Sponsor? - Olympus may have enough residual
fondness for the system to fund it as a PR exercise but you'd have to be
VERY convincing.
AndrewF (who has been there!)(Well, sort of).
><< Any volunteers for other areas? >>
>
>Please, please, the chapter about 50mm lens variations!!! :-)
>
>Serious, I could provide a price guide as part of the book. At the risk
>of putting the cart way before the horse, you can keep a book title in
>ciculation for much longer by doing periodic editions. We can't count on
>Olympus providing any new equipment to justify a new edition, so
>annually or semi-annually updating a price guide would help sell books
>to those who had already bought one. It would also give authors a chance
>to polish their previous efforts, esp. if new information comes to
>light. Not to mention it draws in the collectable resellers who don't
>necessarily have a passion for Olympus, but need to identify stuff and
>know what it is worth, much less have some basic information available
>to describe what they have.
>
>Gary Reese
>Las Vegas, NV
>
>
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