[Clayart] About writing clay books

[sumi]

Antoinette

My books were all with the American Ceramic Society and they gave me a 
year for each one from time of signing the contract to when I was 
supposed to deliver the manuscript. Then comes the editing and so on, 
which is another 6-9 months.

Sumi
> Just like many of you I wrote dozens of clay articles and had one book out,
> which was mostly a commentary about CM porcelain articles.
>
> I am however busy working on a book. I did not send out a query to any
> publisher yet since ai keep flip flopping between self publishing and
> finding a publisher.
>
> At age 66 I find myself busier than ever before, so I am curious to hear
> from you about time lines once you committed yourself to work with a
> publisher.
> Thanks.
> Antoinette.
>
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 2:29 PM Paul Lewing <pjlewing at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> I was out of town when this thread really started, so I’m not sure if I’m
>> commenting on what it was really originally about or not.  But I did see
>> Vince’s post about his experience of writing a book, and his saying that
>> Mel had said that no one writes a ceramics book, or really any text book,
>> to make money.
>> I made a fair amount of money the first year my book came out, but it’s of
>> course declined every year since.  And I got to do a lot of workshops as a
>> result of writing it, but no one does that to make money either.  You don’t
>> if you count the time for either of those things.  I spent pretty much all
>> my spare time for 3 1/2 years to write my book.
>> When ACerS first asked me to write a book, my thought was that that would
>> be a great thing to have done, but not a great thing to do.  I was really
>> right about that.
>> I would also say that one of the hardest parts of writing a ceramics book
>> is finding a topic or an angle that isn’t been covered extensively
>> already.  Vince did that.  But no one needs another book on surface
>> decoration or throwing.
>> The real reward is in passing on a helpful body of information and seeing
>> what other people do with that.
>> Paul Lewing
>> www.paullewingtile.com  <http://www.paullewingtile.com/>
>> www.paullewingart.com <http://www.paullewingart.com/>
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-- 
Sumi von Dassow
President, Beulah Valley Arts Council