T206 Book?

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Posted By: WAW 

I may have missed a post on this, but has there been any news on this book yet? I was under the impression that it was supposed to be out no later than last years National?

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Posted By: Charlie

Not sure when but should be a great book when it does

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Posted By: Silas

Any more information on this book? I would greatly appreciate it.

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Posted By: julie

...

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Posted By: Hankron

It's a safe bet that the book isn't coming out in the near future. That MastroNet quit issuing books after one (baseball bat guide, which I bought and was a nice production all around), says that they find it is not financially worth their while.

Obviously, Mastronet's conscious or matter of fact stragedy is to offer a variety of new products, services and angles (proverbial test issues) and see which ones stick. Likely due to lack of popular demand and/or the financial return, the MastroNet guides went the way of the Weekly Aucitons, their little store and their online articles. If these things had been a big honking succsess they would still be with us.

I should also point that producing a full color book (which is what everyone apparently expects, and probably expect it to retail for $6.99) is a very expensive proposition, and if Doug isn't willing to toss his personal money down a hole I don't blame him.

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Posted By: MW

Can anyone here estimate how many copies the marketplace could absorb over a five year time period and what the unit cost would be for that print run?

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Posted By: leon

If this "T206" book is the one previously spoken about on the board, about a year ago, it was going to be a labor of love for Art M. and Doug A. I don't think it was going to be a thing to necessarily make a lot of money on. Last time I spoke to Doug about it (about a year ago) he said that he wanted to publish it internally as it would be cheaper and better. I am sure many factors involved it being either delayed or done away with altogether....best regards

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Posted By: Hankron

If the book is heavily illustrated, fully in color and, say, 200 pages, I would think it would cost minimally $15 per book. It's the fully illustrated/color that costs the money. Times that price by a print fun of 5,000, and you can see why it's a big leap of faith to produce a book like that. Personally, I think one could sell a few thousand over reasonable period of time (say a few years) and make a decent profit in the end. However, I wouldn't want to bet on a print run of 5,000, and certainly not 10,000.

Personally, I think they should skip the color part (we all know what they Ty Cobb Red back looks like in color), which would lower the cost many times and make everything easier. The profits would likely be higher as well.

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Posted By: Hankron

One point is that I'm not criticizing anyone in the matter. I support this and all other informational guides. I think it would be a shame if the project would disgarded altogether.

The second toughest in publishing thing is producing a book (except my little boolets, they were easy). The first toughest thing is getting people to buy the book. If you are a beginning writer/publisher who's first project has a print run of 10,000 with a retail price of $30 per book, I promise you that you will end up with a lot of book couches, book chairs in your house and maybe book doghouse in the back yard.

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Posted By: jay behrens

You could also limit it to just a few pages of color to be able to illustrate color variations, etc.

Jay

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Posted By: Wade

My original post was in regards to the T206 book that Leon mentioned above. Doug had written several times that the book was basically complete and that it would be ready for distribution at the 2002 National. Has anyone heard anything new about this?

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Posted By: Hankron

Your point is valid, Jay. The one thing is that I don't know if the book readership is intended to include beginners to the area (thus a gallery is more applicable) or to the type of folks on this board (where colore pictures are not neccesary, other than with strange variations or important color issues). At one point an intention was to release it at the time Topps T206 issue, which would suggest that, at least in part, it was to be marketed to beginners to the issue.

The one thing is if you have lots of pretty pictures coupled with academic text, you market it at both the beginner and advanced collector. A 10 year old kid can enjoy an illustrated T206 book without reading a single word.

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Posted By: Hankron

A practical condition that potential publishers/writers should take into account is that not everyone is willing to pay the same amount for the book. There are different thresholds where the book price is more than a person is willing to pay. For every person who is willing to pay $40 for the T206 book, there will be a more casual reader who's threshold price is $10. Meaning, the second person will say, "I'll buy it for $10, but I'm really so interested in it that I will pay $30. I'd rather save the money for 1956 Topps cards."

The practical point is that if a new writer/publisher is gung ho and 'just has to have' the book hard cover and in full color and all the bells and whistles, the book is going to cost, for example, $30 each to make. The effect of this is that the writer/publisher has, off the bat, lopped off at least half of his potential buyers .... While making a smaller, softcover, black & white book is often initially unappealing to the writer/publisher, the book will cost perhaps $5 to make and he can sell it to everyone who wants it.

Last point is that most readers are ignorant to the cost of producing a book, especially a color versus black and white book. The person who complains that that $9.99 book is not in color, is often the person who complains that the second in-color edition costs $30.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I have been working on a boxing card book for over a year. It is basically done and I have been exploring how to get it published.

There are a number of ways to cut costs and get a product out there (forgive me if I step on printers' toes here--my goal is simply to get the information out there in a usable format and not create a coffee table masterpiece that will cost $40 to buy and that requires a hefty financial commitment to produce).

Going at it as inexpensively as possible, it is unrealistic to expect to pay less than $20 for a solid 150 page illustrated book. The absolute cheapest way to do it is as follows:

Forget color; it is cost-prohibitive. In this day and age, it is also not necessary. You can easily produce a CD-ROM of the images in color for a buck. I plan to offer all of the book images on CD for a couple of bucks.

Forget fancy layouts and photography: I created my opus on Microsoft Publisher, embedding the best scans I could find for the illustrations. Since I have some graphic arts background from my days of part time jobs, conceptualizing and laying out the book was no big deal. I did it as I went along. After a few pages I settled on a format and the rest was easy.

Forget about high quality glossy papers and fancy covers: I am going to issue the book on regular paper either printed out with a laser printer or copied by a high-grade photocopier. That costs $0.07 per side. 150 pages = $10.50. Binding and cover stock will run another $5 or so per copy to generate a completed product with tape binding, a heavy stock cover and regular (20#) paper insides. Roughly this format seems to work for many hobby publications. In terms of materials, the Encyclopedia of Baseball Cards reprint that VCBC offered was pretty much like this, except for a nice full color cover. Another idea I had was to issue the book in looseleaf format so that I could issue updated pages as new cards were added to checklists, pricing changed, etc. My legal publications all do things this way--you get a basic book which goes into a looseleaf and then every year or so you receive updates on a subscription basis.

Forget printing runs of thousands of books then trying to retail them: By going the route I have chosen, you eliminate the need to set up printing and run thousands of copies. I plan to print 10 copies, put them out there for sale, and print more as I need them. I also plan to offer the book in alternative formats at cheaper rates. The book has three sections: 19th century, 20th century and exhibit cards. If a collector wants only one section, I will produce it and sell it for a lesser amount than the cost of all three sections.

I don't plan on making a living on the book--I wrote it to add knowledge to the hobby, make a little money, and have fun. My point is that if you want to publish for the "love of the sport" you can figure out how to do it without breaking the bank in this high tech age.

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Posted By: Hankron

Adam has the correct idea.

Biggest mistakes for self-publishers: overestimating how many books they will sell (too big a print run), producing a book that neccesitates too high of a sale price, and feeling they must emulate the big New York City publishers (have book stores stock them, have them at amazon.com, etc). As most big New York publishers are losing money and are the first to admit that their book distribution systems suck, they are the last people you want to emulate not the first.

Self publishers who have a reasonable print run, or print on demand, have reasonable cost per book and aren't so tied up in the largely irrelevant stuff like color pictures and color over cover or style of binding, can make a profit. This is, of course, assuming they have a great book that meets a demand in the market (A bad book with no demand is a band book with no demand no matter what you do).

There are lots of people in this world who judge a book because of it's cover, but that's because they're shallow. I'm not shy enough to admit that I wrote not only the best book but the only book in the world on the authentication of prints. When someone would complain complain about the book because, of all things, the binding wasn't like the kind you find in Barnes & Noble, I would think, "You don't deserve the book."

Personally, I would rather have a great guide to boxing cards that is written on toilet paper, than an useless book that is bound like the latest Harry Potter. So, as a self-publisher, if someone complains about lack of color or a ring binding, realize that this person is shallow and doesn't deserve the vital information inside.

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Posted By: Brian Weisner

I can tell you that the book is finished and ready to be printed. When will it actually be printed? Who knows, but trust me, you won't be disappointed.

Be well to all Brian