Getting History right! An Editorial

[NW Mailing List]

Jimmy, I'm sorry if the reply seemed flippant.  I was not the one who
"penned" that reply, and I'm not sure who did, however I am going to take
the liberty of replying to your editorial.

One of the things I have learned on the boards of two railroad historical
societies is that there are some very surprising costs in publishing
books.  Although there may be errors in the first edition of the Shenandoah
book, the cost to actually change the printing and do a revised second
edition is much higher than you might expect, especially considering the
number we can realistically expect to sell.

Now your other point, that we are a non-profit organization, is exactly
correct.  However, we can only afford to lose a certain amount of money, or
have individual projects that lose money, otherwise we threaten our
continued existence.  I'm currently in 4 railroad historical socieites, and
the NMRA, and I can tell you that they are almost all looking at flatlined
or even decreasing membership.  To continue our mission, and keep our
publications and our archives going, we have to watch out finances.  Also,
this Board actually takes seriously our duty as "stewards" of your (dues
paying members and/or other contributors)money.  We have to weigh the
possible financial benefit, or loss, on a reprint and the possible
cost/benefit of new projects or needs (such as a scanner for the
archives).  Yes, it's a guess.  I have been involved in book projects that
we thought would be good moneymakers--in addition to being valuable for
historians/modelers--that hung around on the shelves for years, and
projects that we thought we would be lucky to break even on that went out
of stock in weeks.  The point that I'm making, perhaps circularly, is that
while the organization is non-profit, we have to make money on some of our
projects to continue to carry out our missions.

Now with all that said, the NWHS does maintain this e mail list (actually
two of them)and you are encouraged to post any corrections; to the extent
possible we do want to get correct information out there.  That is part of
the reason why there are books and models we consider "below our threshold"
and won't carry, even if we could make a few bucks.

Frank Bongiovanni

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 4:55 PM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>wrote:


>      I must say that the reply to my question about not making

> corrections to the Shenandoah Di.v book struck a nerve in me. Why, some of

> you may ask? I guess in my naive mind it is because I thought we were FIRST

> a Historical Society! I thought we were a non-profit organization. I guess

> I was hoping that getting history right, or at least trying to, took

> precedence over stuffing money in our pockets. The flippant reply to my

> question, by who knows who, appears to have proved me wrong on all counts.

>     Did anyone even ask if any changes needed to be made? That begs a

> question for the bean counters, just how much extra would it cost to change

> a few letters? Would it cost as much as say a "Hardback" edition?

>     I am very disappointed in the direction the N&WHS has taken in this

> matter.

>

> Jimmy Lisle

>

> *On 1/2/2013 3:03 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:

> *

>

> * * *

> Due to the small printing with high costs, correction are not possible.

> This will be a direct reprint with the exception of having a soft cover.

> However corrections are welcome to be posted to this list.

>

>  NWHS Commissary

>

>

>   In a message dated 1/2/2013 12:10:09 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,

> nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org writes:

>

> Is it too late to correct some errors in book before it goes

> back into print?

>

>  ** *

>

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