Lessons Learned On Publishing Research About Canadian Varieties

Nobody asked me but, as I am now coming up on twenty years since I published the first of my six books on Canadian varieties, I thought a few of you might appreciate my lessons learned. I originally (in 2007) thought it was possible to create a small profit margin on my books in order to reimburse myself some of my sunk research costs, which were significant. Personally, I have found that not to be possible.

For my first and third books, 1858 Vol. 1 and Dies and Diadems (both hardcovers), I went the garage full of books route. That is, paying to print and bind the books, then mailing them yourself. You have to print, bind, and store books, then pack, mail, and absorb Paypal fees when they are ordered. You lose money doing all this. Mailing a single book to Canada is now $60 USD or so, which nobody will pay, so I charge $20 and eat the rest out of the book price. I printed 200 of each book and still have about three dozen books in my garage 15-20 years later.

My soft covers, 1858 Vol. II and the 1890H/1892 book, I printed to order on my color laser and bound them at Kinko's. With this method, you still lose money on them (toner, paper, wear and tear, binding, Paypal fees, packing, postage) but avoid the storage issues.

My last two books, Past & Nearly Perfect and Dominion Decimals, I sought grants for the printing costs from the Ferguson Foundation, then donated both books to the RCNA. The RCNA stores and mails the books (from Toronto, so lower postage) and, since they paid no printing cost, they actually make a small profit that benefits the RCNA. The Ferguson grant process is slow because they only meet once each year in July, but it is valuable and worthwhile. I recommend it. Ferguson gets 50 copies for their grant money, and they donate them to various libraries. I receive no money with this method, but I am happy with it because it is a win-win-win scenario. If I publish any more physical books in the future, I will again try to go this route.

There are several constraints to publishing research on Canadian varieties. To begin with, there really are not that many variety collectors. I would estimate maybe 200-300 in total, and perhaps less than 75 of them are serious about it. There are even less that will spend actual money to buy knowledge. They would rather buy a coin that interests them, post it on the chat rooms, and have somebody who may have read the book tell them about their coin for free. Many want to find something nobody has yet found, and they lose interest in anything that has been published. These are my personal observations, and I state them while passing no judgments as this is just normal human nature. So, if you are going to write and publish paper books on Canadian varieties, print an absolute max of 200 copies. When it comes to variety books, even well received ones, I have found that the first 50 copies sell quickly. Another 100 will bleed out over ten or fifteen years as new variety collectors emerge.

Posting a book on a website, or some form of e-book, could work well. Jim Haxby and others have gone this route and could speak to it better than I. With this method, there is ongoing website maintenance, e-book publishing fees, web hosting fees, and domain fees to consider. The permanence of the work could also be an issue. I suspect that trying to monetize these methods, although possible, would not bring much success. That said, I may be wrong, since I have not tried it.

Rather than publishing some of my work as another book, I have sometimes broken it up into articles and submitted them for publication in the CN Journal. That is what I have done with my current series of Uncommon Cents articles and some other previous articles, and I think it has worked out well. I like helping the RCNA. It also helps fill out the Journal and perhaps helps them gain a few members. Along with several other collectors, that was what motivated my participation in the 2011 Charlton one-cent variety section.

I have also considered donating a pdf copy of a book to the RCNA and letting them publish it in the member's section of their website. Their membership is about 1,200 or so at the moment, so such a book would get some exposure. So far, I have not pursued this method, but I might in the future.

In short, the small critical mass of serious collectors means I know of no great answers for publishing research on Canadian varieties. If you are pursuing it with a profit motive in mind, my advice is to forget it. In my opinion, successful authors must eat the research expenses, and publishing must simply be done as a labor of love and through a desire to give back to the hobby.

All JMHO, and I will now dismount the soapbox.

Full disclosure - I used to be on the RCNA board of directors, and I am currently on the Ferguson board of directors. I did not and do not vote on either organization's decision making about my books.