Editorial- Something Smells in Publishing

[John Treadaway]

Guy Farrish wrote:

John Treadaway wrote:

Wargaming’s great…

No doubt. Any insights, as an editor, on the OP – the state of military history and wargames publishing?

I was kinda ducking out on this one (perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything…).

So no: nothing I could say here would be helpful, I suspect. Having ejected myself from another online forum before being pushed by the owner (no names but I’m sure you can all join the unsavoury dots) after voicing my opinions, I now try desperately hard not to have an opinion (in writing) on these matters as – in my experiece – it usually decends in to a back and forth, ping-pong style diatribe that does no one any favours. So…

Wargaming is great: we should all do more!

Catch me at a show over a cup of tea and I may well say other things…

John Treadaway

www.hammers-slammers.com
http://www.hammers-slammers.com

"They don't have to like us, snake, they just have t' make the payment schedule" Lt Cooter - Hammer's Slammers

[Guy Farrish]

Sorry John. Just teasing.

I fully understand your circumspection under the circumstances.

Make mine a black coffee and it’s a deal.

[John Treadaway]

That’s okay Guy 🙂 Nowadays I do virtuallty no social media (tempted as I am to sign up for twitter in light of it having rececntly changed hands): so that’s no discource servers, no whatsapp, no facebook messenger or indeed anything else.People can email me (I’m not hard to find) so I leave it at that. Comparatively old school.

My time on “that other forum” (plus having had to trawl through some of the nonesence on Frothers) taught me that – even if I appreciated any if the (let’s call it) ‘cut and thrust’ involved – I largely don’t trust myself to keep my lip buttoned…

John Treadaway

www.hammers-slammers.com
http://www.hammers-slammers.com

"They don't have to like us, snake, they just have t' make the payment schedule" Lt Cooter - Hammer's Slammers

[Phil Dutré]

Book publishing ranges from “books for the masses” to “highly specialized academic books”. Books on military history are no different.

Any decent bookshop has a smallish section on “military history”, usually covering WW2 , and then some topics specifically for the local country, but of course marketed for a mass audience. As a teenager I bought many of these books, still reading up on many of the topics I knew nothing about. But these days, I don’t really bother. How many books about Waterloo can you read? How many books about Hitler? How many books about (insert local battle here)? Sooner or later, you know it all, and you’ve seen all the photographs. If I still buy one of these mass-produced books today, it has to be a very good one. BTW, over the years, I also have reduced my personal collection very aggressively, for the same reasons. Esp soft-covers go away quickly, no reason to keep them all, I’ll probably never read them again anyway.

So, do I still buy books? Yes, but mostly books that are on the other end of the spectrum. Might be a “definite” biography written by an academic who has spent a lifetime researching the subject, or a well-researched reference book. But yes, you pay money for those. Quality does cost something.

At some point, you know so much about a topic that any additional info will not be found in books, and you’ll have to primary research yourself: dig through archives, go see the stocks in museum collections that are not on display, check all the facts about a battlefield by walking it,  etc. That’s when you have become the authority ans should write the final book on the topic yourself  🙂

(It’s a similar feeling I had as an academic  a long time ago … at one point you realize you should be the one giving the courses at conferences or write the reference work outlining the current state-of-the-art … you have become the expert in your niche. And yes, I did write a book 😉 )

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