Regular Customer -- finally done

The long silence about my book was caused by three more months of flailing about followed by a very satisfactory launch of the finished book. The short version goes like this:

I went through it and changed all instances of "The Pike Place Market" to "The Market" -- that's ok by me; nearly everybody who has any interest it knows where The Market is. The director of the PDA had the gall to tell me that he "really didn't want me to have to do that" but wouldn't relent on the trademark license.

The 5th draft turned into the 6th draft and my friend Joe (a retired art director) went over that one with #000 sandpaper and turned it from pretty good to polished. Draft 7 went to Snohomish Publishing (good guys) for a proof and then 200 copies. It looks good -- not at the quality of Lenswork or the Vivian Maier book but still good.

The curator at MOHAI was enthusiastic about the finished product and did, indeed, want a copy of the 20 silver-print portfolio for their collection.

One of the first copies went to Lucy (daughter of Pinhas Almeleh to whom the book is dedicated) who helped me a lot with names and places. She is now on hospice care so I'm so glad that I got her a copy of the finished book while she could still enjoy it. Another early copy went to Sol at the fish market (his father opened the shop -- his grown grandson now is behind the counter.)  After I gave it to him he flipped it open and I could see tears welling up in his eyes. When I wandered by about 15 minutes later he was still leaning against the stairs up to the shop office going through it. Those two copies paid me back for the effort.

Between copies sold and given away the press run is about half gone. Since you only have to sell about 5 books to get your Lulu or Blurb book into the top 10% I'm going to consider it a best-seller. It's placed in a small local book shop where it is selling well. I've done two book signings and two show-and-tell programs. The copies keep dribbling out so pretty soon my out-of-pocket expenses will be paid and I'll stop even caring -- in fact I already have.

Now I need a new project.