In my limited experience, selling one’s own books is not easy, especially in niche areas which are already very competitive. Just one of the stumbling blocks has been the quality of the photographs and two retailers have complained very directly that the photos were rubbish. They were right, of course.
As a thirteen-year-old schoolboy interested in trains, cash was a constant issue, even though my parents were as generous as they could be. In reality, it meant making a choice between train spotting trips, photography and railway modelling. I chose spotting, sold my train set [spending most of the £5 on sweets] and made do with some very basic cameras. My folks used this Ensign Ful-view for holiday snaps and I set forth in 1962 with a Kodak Brownie 127, fairly swiftly followed by a Kodak Coloursnap 3, itself rapidly replaced with a Halina Rolls. Don’t ask me why. None of them were any good - or maybe it was just me. It wasn’t until the 1970s that I began to make any noticeable progress [with an East German Practika] by which time it was too late to record the last years of steam in the way I would have liked to.
Being too “picky” about the “pic’s” in my books would be to miss the point, though. They recorded moments in time that help to tell a story. Indeed, they were an integral part of the story. I was born too late to take full advantage of the steam era, but I’m so glad I was born early enough to be there. As a special treat, I thought I’d include here one or two of the poorest railway photos ever to make it into print. Each one has something to say, even if I’m the only one who can make any sense of it.
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