Diving With Legends Book Preview... Modem Burner

[Flying Doctor]

Chaps, I have to appologise how this thread turned out. What I thought would be a simple posting which would be quickly and quietly forgotten apparently seems to have turned into everything from a sales pitch and viral marketing campaign to a maths lesson. Please indulge me a moment of your time to clear up a few things......

John, many thanks for linking to the Dive Book site. I'm glad you did it as I'm sure if I had it would have been seen as a sales pitch. Also thanks for showing one of the covers for the book as I designed it. I think it shows perfectly how the colours of the cover I sent don't match with what was printed and how I don't think that if I have to publish it myself, print on demand will do it justice.

Thanks also for linking to other postings. I see what you are trying to do. It's called reinforcement and it is brilliant marketing. You are being a real help to me. I can just see those sales figures climbing now. You are a lot sharper than I gave you credit for. You were a great help with the watch book and here you are again. "watching my back". YODAHMAN !!!!

Also thanks for linking to the Watch book addendum. You beat me to it. If you read the addendum, you would see that John G sent me the watch in question. Well 2 days ago I managed to restore it and it was a heck of a job. I took pics and was going to do a photo shoot story of the restoration and link to the article. I've been traveling yesterday and today so couldn't get it finished and here you are beating me to the punchline. But nothing like a little bit of advanced publicity, eh?

The "book" I gave away on the other forum, wasn't actually a book. If you take the time to dig around a bit you will see that it is a black and white printer output of a manuscript of about 90 pages which I had finished with. As is customary when I write something I print it out and edit it in pen, then make corrections on the computer. Normally I just bin them when finished, but I thought someone might like it as a souvenir or whetever. I will print several more over the course of the next year as new contributions come in and I edit them. I don't know if anyone here would be interested but I'll certainly run a competition here if people want me to. So should I offer the competition on 3T and the Dive watch forum and Timezone and........... etc etc incase they get bent out of shape too? Remember these are just stapled printed sheets. They represent at best 1/3 of the completed book and are positively tatty.

Your razer sharp deductive reasoning slipped a bit again I'm afraid. Kind of like the 3 or 4 thing, but hey, why let facts get in the way of a good bitchfest :wink: If you had taken a wee bit more time you would have seen that yes I thought I did have Doxa sponsorship for the book, but unfortunately 2 months ago they pulled the plug. Left me a bit high and dry I can tell you. So what I did was make 3 previews. Basically they are all the same but the introduction is different. All 3 talk about a brief history of dive watches. All mention Omega, Blancpain, Rolex and Doxa but one has a photo of the Conquistador and HRV, one shows the Sea-Dweller and HRV and Piccard's Rolex on the Trieste and one is neutral with no watch photo. I also did 2 covers. One neutral and one with Presented by Doxa S.A. I was going to make 3 books up. One to send to Doxa as a last ditch attempt to see if "the powers that be" could be persuaded to sponsor it, one to Rolex and one for sending to agents. However at 40 bucks a pop I decided to do one first and send it to Doxa. It will go tomorrow. Most people have seen the watch book. Even you would admit, I'm sure, that the production qualities are first rate. Well that's obviously what I would like for the dive book. I'm not in a position to give the contributors anything except a signed copy of the book. If I publish it myself, it will cost me 1500 bucks, but I'm more than happy to do that because of what they did for me. Would it not be nicer if I could give them something of the quality of the watch book or even more? Bit of a no brainer I think. So keep your fingers crossed for me that they see the potential and get on board. If not then I think I'm going to struggle to get it published.

John, once again thanks for keeping the thread alive. You are just aces, kid. The reinforcing thing seems to be working as you seem to be positively gaging for a read of it. I hope everyone else is. Don't worry if it does come to fruition, you will be among the first to know so you can whip out the big fat cheque book and buy one to slide in beside the Doxa book on your shelf.

Again, sorry folks. I never thought I'd have to burden you all with this lot and I'm sure most people are now almost comatose with the damn thing. I know I am :drunken:

Pete

[John Vargas]

Hey Pete,

As my friends in Australia say, “No Worries Mate”!

And, if the book comes to fruition...and, I hope it does for your sake, no need to worry about me whipping out my big fat checkbook.

I have no problem spending money on books, I do it all the time, and you can see the $1000.00’s I spend monthly, on ebay, for antique historical books.

Getting back to whipping out my big fat checkbook, as I said, I do love to spend on books…

There is one catch; I only buy history, and NON-FICTION HISTORY books at that.

I am not afraid to say this…but that means that it leaves your book of my shelf!

Cheers, and have a good one!

John

P.S., I will give your book a little “boost”, as you know, one of my dear friends is director of sales for ROLEX, I will call him and give him a heads up about the book.

[usmike]

I don't know either of you, but it seems to me there is some 'history' here; perhaps it would be better for you to resolve this outside of the public arena?

Totally agree.

Rich

Well said!

Both gentlemen involved are valuable contributors to the forum over time and this reminds me of the Clinton/Obama crap I read and hear about all day here. Do I recall correctly that John came over here after his tiff with Doxa?

John and Pete, take it off-line and let the rest of us add our comments to what we can see of the preview. John, thanks for posting the links! Makes it easy to keep track of the various points-of-view about the book.

Doc, looking forward to the next preview and then to the final version. Good luck!

[JCJM]

:sleepy2:

[patrick]

Watch Talk
Primarily for discussion of watches and accessories but no hard and fast rules :)