Bruce, I know absolutely nothing about this business, but know one fellow who published his book himself.
Is that a possibility? Especially, if a hundred guys here would commit to a copy or two?
Ted
Ted, that idea has come up, but I have never thought seriously about it. Publishers are experts in their field and if they don't think it would attract enough readers, then who am I to disagree, or ignore them.
As we know, our country is so divided, between rural and urban life styles and this type of book would go over in a modern city like a lead balloon! Young people today, even country folk, just can't get their head wrapped around what it was like. My oldest son says modern young people couldn't stand to live like we did. No electricity, no running water, just go to the out door privy when the urge called, no telephone, no radio in the worst of the years, six or seven living in a house with one dim, kerosene lamp for light. When Mother was finished in the kitchen after supper she would bring the light into the front room and we could huddle around it to read something, play cards, or some other game. For my Dad it was reading the Winnipeg Free Press which came once a week.
You can tell modern kids about the one room country schools, with no more amenities than I described for homes, but the kids today will have no idea of what it was like to go to an outdoor outhouse at 30 or 40 below zero, or what the thing looked like before spring, or just what it smelled like to have to go there after the weather warmed and the flies were thick!
The one room log school house that I spent most of my academic life at, didn't even have a water well at the school. Two kids who lived half a mile away got paid a few cents a month to supply the school with drinking water. Every morning they brought a five gallon cream can full of water. In the winter they hauled it on a sleigh, pulled by their dog. When there was no snow on the ground they had a home made, two wheel cart hitched behind the dog, with the water can on the cart. We often drank all the water. If the water ran out before noon, the teacher would send the kids home to get another can of water. If it ran out much after noon hour, we were just out of luck for the rest of the day. In the hot weather of June or August we may have had nothing to drink from noon until we got home, usually about 4:30. I had to walk two miles, but some kids had three miles to walk.
As far as readers for a book, I think the actions of all the hunting and trapping influenced the publishers. Not politically correct you know. I told of how at twelve years old I shot squirrels for their fur, to make myself spending money. I told how bullet holes through the head did not deduct from the payment, but a bullet hole in the skin behind the ears would have the skin reduced by two cents, about 10%, for each hole.
I could have left all that kind of thing out and the book may have been published, but I would not do that. I have to tell it like it was.
Bruce