a suggestion for my new book

[Scott Fybush]

The suggestions here are great - but having dealt a bit with Arcadia 
Publishing myself, it should be noted that there is very little room for 
anything creative here on Donna's part.

Arcadia publishes literally thousands of local history titles a year, 
and it's a very formulaic operation: the author submits a whole bunch of 
photos (the rights to which have to be cleared by the author) and a 
little bit of text, it gets plugged into Arcadia's standard layout, and 
it gets a pretty decent distribution push online and in local bookstores 
in the area covered by the book.

My understanding from friends who've done books with Arcadia is that the 
contract doesn't give the author a very big cut of the sale...and that 
there's no working around the standard layout. So if Arcadia says "one 
picture on the cover," then one picture it is.

I don't mean to slight either Arcadia or Donna here; Arcadia's brought a 
lot of local history into print (and into national availability) that 
would never see print otherwise except maybe as something privately 
published locally, and of course Donna's material is bound to be 
fascinating.

But I like to think of this as perhaps just the appetizer to test the 
market for a much more elaborate coffee-table book on Boston broadcast 
history someday...

s