I had several suggestions from Judy (the president of my Wisconsin fan club) and Cherie yesterday, so since Mark and I had this afternoon off we endeavored to check them out. In the process, I also did some initial research on a suggestion many of you have made.
I was showing Judy and Cherie a fabric idea I had gotten from the owner of Barn Door Quilts. She said that she can’t find fabric that says Door County on it and she gets lots of requests for that, so I took a picture of the Door County welcome sign:
Welcome to Door County
Judy and Cherie liked it, but they said I should also take pictures of various Door County town signs, so on our way home from church this morning Mark and I stopped for every sign we could find:
Egg Harbor
Juddville
Fish Creek
Ephraim
Sister Bay
Ellison Bay
Gills Rock
While we were out as far as Gills Rock, we followed another suggestion made by Judy. We stopped at Uncle Tom’s Candy:
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Uncle Tom’s Candy is in the lower level of the old Newport School.
There’s also a museum about the school and Uncle Tom Collis. I had never heard of this brand of sewing machine before.
This is what we bought. Almost everything they sell they make right at their store.
Further down the road was a park Judy told us to go to:
Liberty Grove Town Park
This was such a romantic shot I had to include it!
Using a very long telephoto I shot something I couldn’t really see. Turns out it’s a lighthouse.
The beach
The treetops
We were headed back through Ellison Bay when I noticed that a place I’ve never seen open before was open.
Wm Caxton Ltd: Bookseller & Publisher (This is a picture from the first time I saw it in May.)
I have had my eye on this place because so many of you have said I should write a book based on my blog. I went in and talked with the proprietor, Kubet Luchterhand, about what it would take to publish a book there. He asked me some tough questions: Who would buy my book? What would my book be about? How long would it be? Would it have pictures, and if so, would they be in color or black and white, and how many would it have? He gave me a lot of cold, hard facts about writing a book and discouraged me from doing so.
Kubet Luchterhand
On the other hand, he had been visiting with a woman named Dorothy Anderson Metzel who used to work with publishers of nonfiction, such as Collier’s Encyclopedias. For every disparaging statement Kubet made, Dorothy made an encouraging statement. She said the topic of Workamping sounded interesting to her and she suggested I could publish on Amazon (a subject that had Kubet up in arms) or get an agent and avoid some of the problems Kubet had brought up. She suggested, and he eventually concurred, that I write an intro and the first three chapters to show to publishers and agents.
Dorothy Anderson Metzel
I actually appreciated both points of view. Kubet’s hard questions helped me focus on what angle I’d want to write a book from, and he told me that using a lot of color photos would be expensive. He gave me a ballpark figure of how much such a book would cost even with just a few photos. (So much for my photo album idea!) He had me thinking in terms of where I could sell my book, if I write one, and who I might get to write blurbs for me.
I have worked with authors before and the two that are published have had great success selling their books as ebooks on Amazon, so while I might agree with Kubet that ebooks aren’t as good as having a print book in one’s hand, I think Dorothy might have been onto something with her suggestion.
Having laid all this out, I’d like to hear from those of you who have suggested I write a book. What would you be willing to pay for a book if I wrote one? Would you be interested in it even without all the pictures? If I focused more on Workamping from our perspective rather than our adventures as Workampers, would you still find it interesting? Do any of you know of an agent I might approach with some chapters?
It feels odd being on this side of the process after starting as a freelance editor!