Re: Selling Railroad Books

I am 30. I have been working on my own railroad book project for almost 5 years now. Jerry is right, its a labor of love project, and one will never make money off of it. Not to mention the time, money, road trips, grey hairs, hours photoshopping (pushing 400 photos for my book) No question. But.....

I am using my own project as an example. Its extremely frustrating when you approach somebody on the subject, and frankly, its almost always older people of the hobby, I refrain from using a certain term here, that refuse to lift a finger to help, but have the information. Especially photos. I have approached several people on my topic that have vast collections, and its always the same bs..

"I have it, but no, I wont let anyone use it."
"I will do my own project on the subject one day."
"I have it, you can use it...but you have to come scan it." Ok, lets do it! "Well...…..*insert X excuse* here."
"I don't like your publisher"

...and the list goes on. I have seen it over and over. And then you do the project, and you get backlash because they were not included in it, or now they cant do their own, better version, etc...
...and this is not limited to people, but organizations also. Dealing with some archives (especially railroad historical society's), is like pulling teeth, and that's even if you can get a response.. ...and the reproduction fee's that some charge (and I am NOT insinuating a handout here, they should be entitled to something by all means) makes it not even worth bothering. It is insane to charge several hundred dollars to use one photo, in a book that will be less then 750 copies.

I really am beginning to wonder why we save these massive photo and documentation archives anymore, when it seems very well that some act as though they would rather be buried with the stuff, then share it. A friend is working on a book project, and approached one well known east coast museum, and they simply wont even allow access to the one collection he was looking to research anymore.