New Author,

[chris collins]

Dear all, please bare with me :hmm: ,

I have over the years collated so many newspaper reports, records etc from
Post war air accidents ,(huge ring binder full http://www.pprune.org/images/smilies/biggrin.gif ) , that i thought if put in order would make a nice little book, so I am finally putting my mind to it,
Somerset military aviation accidents 1950 to 1970.

I would like to add, then and now photographs ,the stories from the air and the ground, news reports from the time,photos of aircraft and crews,and any aviation archaeology which has taken place , I allready have some photo's of the recovery of a Vampire VF300 ,when i was a young lad.

I would like to start by looking for the most recent air crew, or anyone who remembers any of these accidents from the time, especially air crew that
baled/banged out ,and may still be surviving to tell the tale .

I have about 40 aircraft partly researched, and a few of those fully researched, I intend to make the book starting with RD812 Beaufighter in 1951, and ending with Vixen XN686 in 1970,

each aircraft fully researched within those yearly chapters.

It is a delicate subject, bu I feel it warrants writing about, and with the passing years ,these stories are dwindling away ,and i would like to colate them, I do this for love ,not for money. and would like to show my findings in a book,for all to enjoy, if it takes there fancy.

firstly I would like to find 2 officers who originally lived in Salisbury , and worked at Boscombe down, at the Technology Ministry base,

a Flt Lt Richard Statham and Navigator Flt Lt David Allerdyce ,Now if still in the land of the living, both would be in there 60s/70s and were the crew of
Sea Vixen XN686 ,who had to eject over burnham on sea nr weston super mare 26th August 1970.

I dont know how it is going to go all this research, but I have so much allready collated it would be a shame NOT too.

Does anyone have any tips, any experienced Authors out there who could perhaps point me in the right direction.
many thanks
Chris Collins

[4Greens]

Check in with the FAA museum at Yeovilton - its all there Navy wise.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Chris... apart from technical stuff you need to seriously mug up on spelling, punctuation and grammar, and don't always trust spellcheckers!! If that's going to be a problem, get someone else to check your text every 10 pages or so to proof read. I'm saying this because a friend of mine wrote a book which ended up with lots of such errors which could have been sorted early in the process.

Good luck and keep us posted on progress..

[stepwilk]

My thought exactly, as a writer, when I saw "please bare with me." You can't do that and have people take you seriously.

[forget]

Good advise! Take it too heart.

...... both would be in there 60s/70s and were the ......

[XV490]

Chris... apart from technical stuff you need to seriously mug up on spelling, punctuation and grammarYes, that is essential if anything you write is to be taken seriously - especially now that the internet has made everyone a publisher and atrocious writing online is widespread. Sadly there are now also many short print-run aviation books that are just as badly written: because neither author nor publisher has thought to employ a text editor (or sub-editor, as they're called in the newspaper business) to check for errors and readability. It's an extra cost that's well worth it.

Take HD's advice: if you're serious about a book, have someone who's suitably skilled monitor your work every couple of thousand words.

[chris collins]

Thankyou all for your advice,

I do feel a little embarressed , I didnt do very well at school, but have been passionate on this subject since childhood, I am a Practical man,
and not very academic I am afraid, I enjoy the hunt, and collating the stories, but sometimes my spelling is little to be desired:uhoh:.

One thing I will say is I am quite a good detective, and I am serious about this.

Perhaps I should find a co author, who IS more academic than I am, I could find the information, photographs, visit the sites, record conversations , and pass this information to someone who is more qaulified
than I am in this field ?.

I have principly been a aviation archaeologist, since the age of 14. and as such have become a bit of a local historian regarding aircraft losses,

But as for my grammer and spelling, I will be honest , its not the best.:(.

My main thoughts were chiefly to make sure all this local information I have collated is not lost in the future, and is there for anyone who needs it in later years.

as is the sad case of much that has been investigated before with aviation archaeology groups of old , when the groups have split up, the information is lost , and scattered, which is such a shame after so many hours of investigating to find a crash site, and all the info ,stories, photos that go with it..

But thankyou for your comments, they are very much noted .:O

[forget]

Chris, After that - you may have just made a few valuable friends here. You provide the hours and the sweat - get someone else to cheek the spelling.

[XV490]

I reckon you've got what it takes to come up with some fascinating reading - best of luck! And leave the easy bit to a text editor...

[Mr_Grubby]

Chris.

Last year I managed to get my autobiography published.
There are 130,462 words, 15 chapters and 300 pages.

I proof read the manuscript 4 times and on each occasion I found spelling / grammar errors. The publisher proof read it twice and found errors.

But the final result is fine.

It’s not easy getting a book published these days. That is unless your name is J K Rawlings !!!!

It cost me £2K

I can recommend my lady publisher if required.

Good luck.

Clint.:ok::ok::ok:

[Planemike]

Chris...........

First things first, good luck with your project. I am not an author but have thought about writing and publishing.

My advice would be, go ahead write it yourself, it is then "your" work with your heart in it. By all means then have someone with good spelling and language skills go over it and remove the errors.

I admire good, well thought out written words. Personally I find obvious, blatant spelling mistakes more irritating than some slight problems with grammar. My English is far from perfect. I know I can improve anything I have written by reading it through myself and making corrections. Just need the discipline to do it and be self critical!!!

Planemike

[Orange Poodle]

Good luck with the project, the material sounds well worth preserving and persevering with.

I have to echo what people have said about spelling and grammar, you do need to get some help as there is nothing, apart from poor photographs, to put people off.

OP

[John Farley]

Writing a non-fiction book is very hard work because the world is full of people who know something (or a lot) about your subject. They can and will be very critical of the result unless you really do your homework on the topic. (In contrast anybody can write a sex novel with no effort and in no time ‘cos it is just a matter of typing what it is their imagination. Money for old rope and all you need is a good pseudonym.)

I have only written one non-fiction book and so am only just ahead of you. It recently went to a second edition so I must have got it reasonably right.

With that background may I offer some thoughts?

The first thing you must do is write the contents to your complete satisfaction. By this I mean all of the words, diagrams and pictures as appropriate. Don’t even think of turning these contents into a book until you have them finalised so far as you are concerned. Do not worry about the grammar, spelling or whatever as polishing all that is part of the process of turning the contents into a book.

With the contents sorted you have two options – publish it yourself or get it published.

Publishing it yourself.

These days for the price of a laser colour printer, a few boxes of paper and some simple plastic binding kit you can turn out an A4 book that will likely more than satisfy a specialist topic reader.

However if you go this route you will need to get help with polishing the contents – how much help depends on your starting point. Initially you should try and tidy it up yourself with the help of a spelling and grammar checker (as in MS Word) and after this I would recommend reading the text out loud to yourself which for me makes problems easier to spot.

After that I was fortunate to know a retired widow lady who thanks to a Grammar School education in the 50s knew more about correcting my text than many of today’s Fleet Street editors. Your proof reader does not need to know anything about the topic as YOU are responsible for the accuracy of that.

Getting somebody to publish it.

Some very good people with a real story to tell have failed to interest a publisher. As an example I had a friend who was an RAF pilot in WWII, a scientist at the RAE from the end of the war and rose to become Director of RAE. He could not find a publisher for a book about his life's work so was forced to do it himself.

May I suggest that until you have your book ready to publish yourself, albeit perhaps in a lever arch loose leaf file format, then you have nothing that a publisher will take seriously.

If you decide to do this go round bookshops, decide what size and shape of book you want (almost certainly smaller than A4) and print your contents out in that form.

Sorry I have banged on a bit and PPRuNe WOULD NOT type laser no matter how I tried!

[XV490]

John - what splendid advice from such a seasoned, but modest, aviator!

[2 sheds]

...who is thinking of writing a sex novel?

[John Farley]

You don't need to think you just type. With one hand if that helps.

[Centaurus]

I write occasional flying articles for aviation magazines based upon personal flying experiences both in the Royal Australian Air Force in the old days (1951 on) and civilian airline flying. I decided to put them together in a book. I remain grateful to Chris Brady who wrote that excellent manual The Boeing 737 Technical Guide, for his advice on publishing.

My inquiries to various local publishers in Australia got the not interested treatment. I wasn't interested in making money out of the book but wrote it for personal satisfaction and for relatives. Chris suggested publishing through the internet publishing site Self Publishing and Book Printing Solutions - Books, EBooks, Photo books and Calendars at Lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com) which is free. It operates from Louisiana USA. An internet search produced many complaints of poor service from lulu.com but I gave it a go anyway.

You have to design the book yourself and send the finished version to Self Publishing and Book Printing Solutions - Books, EBooks, Photo books and Calendars at Lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com). Mine was a 12.5 MB file of 420 pages (30 chapters and included black and white photos). Advice on how to go about publishing on lulu is readily available on the website (book size, type of binding etc)

Within a few days a picture of the book front page appeared on the website and with a price of only $20 USD I was never going to make a killing. The $20 is split between $5 for your book which goes to you, Around $5 to lulu for their trouble and $10 goes for the printing. From what I glean, lulu have specialised print on demand printing companies in most big cities and in my case Melbourne the printer was only five miles away. I ordered 20 copies of my own book from Self Publishing and Book Printing Solutions - Books, EBooks, Photo books and Calendars at Lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com) and they all arrived within two weeks. The binding and paper quality was excellent. I then gave them all to my friends.

Next move is to send your book to various aviation magazines of your choosing and ask for a review. I was fortunate that these magazines had previously published some of my stories and advertised the book at no cost to myself. I stress that you will make very little money - unless you find a real publisher who is interested. It is called vanity publishing. A little harsh perhaps but understandable.

But the beauty of the whole project it did not cost me a cent apart from beer money to a friend who was good on computers and helped with layouts etc. But the pleasure of writing a book was all mine. To my delight I received emails from former RAAF colleagues who had bought the book on the internet and who were now in the eighties and they said it gave them quite a thrill to see their names mentioned or their former Commanding Officers with whom they had served.

The so called one/off printing system is marvellous which means you don't spend thousands of dollars for printing and have a couple of hundred books sitting in the spare room unsold. My book was called "Tall Tails of the South Pacific". Google it. The spelling of 'tails" is deliberate.

Hope this helps so you don't fork out big bucks in producing and printing a book which may not get the return you hoped for.

Please note for Pprune Administrators this is not meant to be an advertising stunt but a pointer that worked for this scribe.

[Lightning Mate]

Chris,

I have written and illustrated (using computer graphics software) several technical manuals, all aviation related, to be used for professional study work.

I would be very happy to preaf rood for you with no charge.

Mind you, you have a task on your hands with the research.

Good luck.

[Dan Winterland]

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

[Lightning Mate]

:D:D........innit!

[Aero Mad]

When I decided to write a rather specialist book on the history of aviation in Alderney (Google it), I approached Amberley Publishing with little more than a book proposal. They accepted - so don't be put off 'normal' publishing. Incidentally, they only found out I was 14 once they had posted the contract :) The book was published in early August last year and 600 have sold so far (by the way, you are probably thinking I have pushy parents. On the contrary, they know not the front of a plane from the back, much to my frustration!) Good luck :)