Tag Archives: books

Great Loop 2021: The Log Books

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I create a custom log book to track my time on the water.

One of my goals as I head into my “golden years” is to get charter boat captain certification. The endorsement I’m interested in is commonly known as a “six pack,” meaning that I can take up to six passengers for hire on a boat. While I don’t expect to make charter boating my fourth (or fifth?) career, I’d like the ability to be able to cover my boating costs by occasionally taking paying passengers on day or overnight trips.

(And yes, I know I don’t have an appropriate boat yet. I’m working on that, too.)

About the Six Pack

The official name for the captain’s certification I’m looking for is National Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessel (OUPV) of Less Than 100 GRT. The common abbreviation is OUPV 6-pack. According to the US Coast Guard, which oversees these certifications:

This officer endorsement is most appropriate for uninspected passenger vessels which by law are limited to six or less passengers for hire. These are usually smaller vessels and normally engage in charter fishing, whale watching, SCUBA diving, and tour cruises.

OUPV Near Coastal endorsements may be limited to 100 miles offshore, Inland or Great Lakes in accordance with 46 CFR 11.467 and the service provided. No OUPV endorsement is valid for International voyages.

There are a number of requirements to get this certification. Here’s a simplified list; you can download a more detailed list here:

  • U.S. Citizienship
  • 18 Years or age or older
  • Medical certificate
  • Drug testing compliance
  • Mariner fees paid
  • Sea service accumulated – 360 days
  • Sea service recency – 90 days in past 3 years
  • First aid course
  • CPR course
  • Exam or course completion certificate

Sea Service

The sea service requirement will be the toughest to meet and since it must be documented on the application, I’m motivated to keep track of it.

I’ve spoken to numerous people who have told me a variety of things about what constitutes “sea service.” One person I spoke to said that because he’d grown up boating with his family, all of those day trips could be logged as sea service. He said that even though he didn’t have a record of all of those days, he could make a reasonable estimate.

I’m in the same boat — no pun intended. My family had a boat that we’d often take on day trips on the Hudson River near New York City. In fact, a common outing would be a ride around Manhattan Island or down to the Statue of Liberty or up as far north as West Point. Later, when my family moved to Long Island, my family boated out in Long Island Sound. I have no idea how many outings we did as I was growing up, but I don’t think that 50 is an unreasonable estimate.

I also have boating experience as an adult on a variety of inland bodies of water including Lake George, Lake Powell, Lake Mead, Lake Pleasant, the Colorado River, the Columbia River, Lake Chelan, and Lake Roosevelt (in WA). Some of these trips involved overnight stays on the boat. Added up, I’m sure that would account for another 50 days.

And then there’s the Learn to Navigate the Inside Passage cruise that I went on back in 2019. This was the real deal: I was one of four people on a 65-foot, 90-year-old wooden boat that cruised at the breakneck speed of 6 knots up the Inside Passage between Bellingham, WA and Ketchikan, AK. For 12 days, I was a “crew member” while we learned about navigation and piloting from Captains Jeffrey and Christine. The following year, I joined them again for another 4 days on the water in the San Juan Islands. According to Captain Jeffrey, all this time could be logged.

David B at Garrison Bay
The David B at anchor in Garrison Bay.

It’s that time that was most valuable given that of the 360 days I needed on the water, 90 days of service had to be on Ocean, Near Coastal, or Great Lakes waters, depending on the kind of charter services I wanted to offer. Because I wanted to offer Near Coastal charter services in the San Juan Islands and possibly on portions of the Great Loop, I needed that Near Coastal time.

And my upcoming trip would be a huge addition to my sea service time. After all, I expected to be on the boat for about two months. That’s a lot of days of near coastal and Great Lakes time.

Finding a Book to Log Time

Of course, the best way to keep track of the time I could include in my sea service submission to the Coast Guard was to log it — much like I already log the time I fly to maintain a record of currency for my pilot certificate. With that in mind, I started looking for a “captain’s log” or “crew log” book.

And I found a lot of books that I just couldn’t see working for me.

The trouble is, most books were designed for either commercial boat captains or pleasure boaters:

  • The commercial captains’ logs had lots of form fields for entering daily boat and engine check information, weather, departure, destination, and miscellaneous paperwork information. This is the information you’d expect to be part of a legal record of every single day or trip on a commercial vessel. I simply didn’t need all of those form fields.
  • The pleasure boaters captains’ logs had less detailed forms but not much space for including a narrative of the trip. They didn’t seem concerned with logging time as much as logging where the boat went and who was on board.

I wanted something that combined features from both flavors of books, something where I could log each day of the journey and take notes for blog posts or other written accounts. And rather than enter detailed vessel information on each page — after all, I expected to be on the same handful of boats as I built my time — I wanted vessel details listed separately. I also wanted pages that summarized the days logged by month and by vessel.

So I designed my own book.

My Captain/Crew Log Book

Creating my own book pages wasn’t a big deal once I knew what I wanted on each page. After all, from about 1995 to 2012, I did layout of about half the books I wrote using a variety (over the years) of desktop publishing software: QuarkExpress, PageMaker, FrameMaker, and InDesign.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with desktop publishing software for a while now. In my later days of writing books, I used Adobe InDesign to do page layout and then to generate PDFs and ebook format files for publishing. But when InDesign went from a pay once software package to a subscription software package, I simply stopped using it. I couldn’t see paying monthly for a software package that I only used a few times a year.

Just before I began tackling this design project, however, I got my hands on Affinity Publisher, a desktop publishing package that was inexpensive and didn’t require a subscription to use. I decided to try my hand at using it while doing this project.

It went remarkably well. Affinity Publisher was similar enough to InDesign that the learning curve was relatively easy for me. When I got stumped, I used its online help feature to figure out how to do what I needed to do. Little by little, I built up the master page styles that would make up my book. Then it was just a matter of adding pages.

Some of the design choices I made include:

  • 8.5 x 5.5 page size. This is half a standard “letter size” sheet of paper. It makes the book relatively small.
  • Spiral binding. This makes it easy to lay the book open and, if necessary, to remove pages.
  • Double sided log pages. The recto (right side) page has the form to detail the entry and it’s followed by half a page of lines for notes. The back of each page has more room for notes. Again, I wanted to be able to include a lot of notes for each logged day. I chose this format instead of spreads — where the start of each entry would be on the verso (left) side and the rest on the recto side — because I wanted to be able to remove pages if necessary. I’m still not 100% sure about this decision; I think it would work either way.

    Log Book Pages
    A log page spread. The entry starts on the recto page and ends on the following verso page.

  • Simple summaries at the beginning of the book. I could add entries here as time went on.

  • Vessel Info
    There are three double-sided Vessel Info pages that I can use to enter details about up to 12 boats.

    Vessel details at the beginning of the book. Each vessel could be listed on a half-page form at the beginning of the book. This keeps those details off the log pages. I write the vessel name in the log page and then can cross reference it to details in the vessel list.

Log Book Cover
Here’s the book’s cover, with a nice photo of Nano on it.

I got a high-res photo of the boat I’ll be on this summer, Nano, to put on the cover.

I used a service called Printivity to print my books. I submitted a properly prepared PDF, made my payment, and waited. At my request, a representative got back to me to answer some questions and, with the information she provided, I fine-tuned some options.

Although the books were affordable to print, shipping was costly. To get the most bang for my buck, I ordered four copies. I figured I’d give the extras away to my fellow crew members, if they’re interested.

The books arrived two weeks after I submitted the PDF and paid for them. They looked pretty darn good for a first effort. I’m looking forward to making entries in mine during the trip.

Great Loop 2021: Doing My Homework

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I research my part of the route.

The Girl Scout motto is “be prepared,” and it’s something I’ve taken to heart ever since I was a scout. The best way to ensure a smooth endeavor is to be prepared for what may come up along the way. While I wanted my two-month boat trip to be smooth, I also wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Of course, I am limited in what I can see and do on the trip. After all, I am not the captain of the boat and the captain — like an aircraft pilot in command — makes all the decisions. I assumed I’d have some kind of input, but I couldn’t be sure. Still, I wanted to know all of the options — or as many as I could discover through research — so I could share an educated opinion when one was requested.

That meant hitting the books.

What I’d Already Done

If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series, let me recap my early research.

AGLCA
I had discovered and explored the American Great Loop Cruisers’ Association (AGLCA) website where there is lots of basic information for non-members. I wound up joining the association and ponying up even more money to attend a web-based Rendezvous which was very informative. (I blogged my thoughts about the AGLCA and Rendezvous here.) I’ve been back to the website, which has since been revised, to see if I could learn more, but stopped short at paying to watch narrated slide shows, wading through forum questions and answers, and participating in the new social networking features. I have a budget and limited time; I need to spend both time and money wisely. While I believe that the forums can be a valuable resource to get specific questions answered, I don’t see them being very helpful until I have a specific question. As for social networking — well, until I actually start my cruise, I really don’t have anything to network about.

Crossing The Wake
Here’s the book I read first about motoring the Great Loop. I keep looking at that photo and imagining all the salt water corrosion on that poor bicycle.

Crossing the Wake
I read Crossing the Wake: One Woman’s Great Loop Adventure by Tanya Binford, which I reviewed briefly in the first blog post of this series. The only thing I learned from the book was that a barely prepared middle-aged woman could do the trip “solo” in a 25-foot boat. (I put “solo” in quotes because apparently there are so many people doing this trip that it’s common to join up with one or more boats and do lengths of it together.) The book was more of a personal memoir than a useful travelogue because it lacked most of the details a cruiser would need to plan and execute this trip.

Needing — or maybe just wanting? — more detailed information about the trip from Jersey City, where Captain Paul, first mate Dianne, and the Motor Vessel Nano would pick me up, to Chicago, where I’d leave them, I started digging deeper

Waterway Guide

I learned about Waterway Guide at one of the “Lunch and Learn” sessions at AGLCA’s Rendezvous. Lunch and Learn sessions basically give an AGLCA sponsor time in front of members to sell their product. They are informative and can be helpful, especially if they’re selling something you’re interested in. Waterway Guide was definitely something that interested me. It’s an online service that provides a wealth of navigation, marina, anchorage, service center, and points of interest information for east coast waterways, including the entire length of the Great Loop. (They do have a database of west coast marinas and some other services, but it is not maintained anywhere to the level of the east coast information; they apparently focus on the east coast, leaving me to wonder if another organization fills the void out west.) Of course, membership is required to get access to all of the information they have online and, of course, I joined to get that information. (My AGLCA membership got me a discount, which was nice.)

Waterway Guide Online
Waterway Guide’s website showing New York Harbor. I love the fact that it displays charts and plots various features on it. Zooming in provides more detail. If I turned on location tracking in my browser, it would put an icon near my position.

Waterway Guide Cover
The printed Waterway Guides offer detailed information about various east coast waterways.

The membership level I chose also came with two of their printed guides. I chose Northern, which would take me up the Hudson River, and Great Lakes Volume 1, which would take me through the Erie Canal and into Lake Erie. These books, which are revised annually, include all of the information that’s on the website in a handy spiral bound format that’s easy to leave open and consult while traveling. (Sadly, they are not small so I won’t be bringing them with me on the trip; there’s limited space on the Nano. I hope Captain Paul will have his copies with him.)

I have a love-hate relationship with these books. First, I love the amount of detail that’s included. Reading through them makes me want to go ashore and explore every place they talk about. But what drives me nuts is the way the book is organized. Each section is broken down into segments that can be 5 to 25 miles in length. Within each segment are subsections:

  • An overview or notes section discusses the segment of waterway in terms of geography, geology, and points of interest.
  • Navigation tells you more about navigating each part of the segment, including which chart(s) to use. This has some more points of interest information.
  • Dockage/Moorings tells you where you can find marinas or other places to tie up. This information is repeated in chart format for the section.
  • Anchorage suggests places to drop anchor and provides useful information about each place such as how it is protected and whether there is noise.

Sounds great, right? Well, it is and isn’t. The information is great but the presentation isn’t presented logically. For example, in the “Tappan Zee Bridge to Bear Mountain — Mile 27 to Mile 46.7” segment of the Northern guide, the overview takes you through that roughly 20 miles of Hudson River with a separate heading at the end for the Bear Mountain Bridge. Then Dockage/Moorings takes you back from the beginning of that stretch to the end. Then Anchorage takes you back again from the beginning to the end. So there’s a lot of back and forth in a 20-mile stretch of river. What I found, especially in the segments covering the Erie Canal, is that I couldn’t keep track of where a marina or anchorage was without trying to follow along on the online guide, which included charts and icons for many of the things they were talking about.

I think the guide would be a lot easier to follow if the Dockage/Moorings and Anchorage sections were combined and that information was presented together. Or, better yet, combine all information with a much shorter overview. Just take me up the river and tell me what I’ll find along the way without forcing me to go back and forth on a map to see where points of interest, navigation details, marinas/moorings, and anchorages are when moving forward.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the books could probably use a deep edit to remove repetition and better organize the data. Having more charts/maps and possibly fewer photos would be helpful. As for the photos, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to see a photo of an interesting or beautiful place that has neither caption nor label to identify where it is.

(Please keep in mind that I spent 20+ years in publishing where I wrote and laid out dozens of books. One of the series I wrote for — Peachpit Press’s Visual QuickStart Guide series — made extensive use of “spreads” where everything you needed to see for a task was either on one page or two facing pages (a spread). I laid out these books, so I know it’s possible to present information in a format that doesn’t require a lot of paging back and forth. It drives me nuts when information could be presented more logically for the reader and isn’t.)

But overall, the books are worth the money — about $50 each — if you need printed detailed information for a trip.

But wait! There’s more! Waterway Guide also has an app, which I downloaded for my iPad.

Waterway Guide App
The Waterway Guide app doesn’t even use nautical charts as the base map layer.

So far, I’m not impressed. In order to get the kind of detailed information the printed guide has, you have to subscribe to each chapter — even if you’re a member, logged in, and have already obtained the printed version of the book containing that chapter. I subscribed to the New York Harbor & the East River chapter for $2.99/year to give it a try. The content is the same as what you’d find in the book, including the organizational shortcomings I mentioned above. It’s basically an ebook that you pay for each chapter you want to read using a subscription format that hits you up for another fee every year. (I can only assume the old information becomes inaccessible if you cancel the subscription.) And yes, it does include ads — although I admit I didn’t see many (yet). I’m bummed out because I was hoping it would be an offline version of the website and it falls far short of that. It doesn’t even have real charts. I’d much rather use the web browser in my iPad to access the website, where I have all the information without having to pay more subscription fees.

Skipper Bob’s Guide

Skipper Bob's Guide
Skipper Bob’s guide, Cruising America’s Great Loop, is an excellent overview of the entire trip.

If you want the “Cliff’s Notes” version of Waterway Guide specifically for the Great Loop, try Cruising America’s Great Loop, a Skipper Bob publication. This $19 book provides 108 pages of information about cruising the Great Loop. It’s a good overview that tells you which charts to use, what you’ll see along the way, and things to watch out for.

My opinion: If you’re considering the Great Loop and want to learn more, start with this book. It really is a good overview to help you decide whether cruising the Great Loop is something you really want to do. It’s also a great visual aide when you’re trying to explain to friends and family members what the Great Loop is all about.

New York State Canal System Cruising Guide

Cruising Guide
I got my copy of the Cruising Guide for free from the New York State Canal Corporation, but I’m not sure how.

I think it was the Skipper Bob book that recommended getting a copy of The Cruising Guide to The New York State Canal System from the New York State Canal Corporation. I tracked it down online where I found a printable (!) order form. I filled it in, sent a check for $29.95, and waited. About two weeks later, I got a thick envelope with a spiral bound book, a bunch of other informative pamphlets and maps, a letter, and my check. The letter informed me that they were no longer accepting payment for the guide; it was free. For the life of me, now I can’t find a link on their website to order the book, but there’s some good navigation info here. I did find the same book on a website that is charging $29.95 for it.

The book breaks down the canal from west to east — the opposite direction I’ll be traveling in August — with charts, photos, and descriptions on full-page sections along the way. (This is the format I wished Waterway Guides would use.) It’s got a LOT of information specific to the canal, inlcuding the amount of time between points and the expected time to lock through each specific lock. It’s easy to see why the book is now free: there are ads throughout. But the ads don’t distract from the content and are strategically placed near where they apply. For example, an ad for a marina will be on the same or facing page as the map where it can be found.

This is a great book that I would definitely bring with me if Captain Paul hadn’t already assured me that he also had a copy and it would be on board.

Quimby’s Guides

The one book I bought that I really regret buying is Quimby’s Cruising Guide. This well-known resource for eastern U.S. boaters is nothing more than a listing of commercial establishments and locks on various inland waterways. While it might have a lot of value for folks doing the entire Great Loop, it didn’t provide any coverage for the area I’d be cruising: the Hudson River, the Erie Canal, and three of the five Great Lakes. I don’t know what made me think it would provide coverage; it’s my own damn fault that I didn’t read the description thoroughly. At $42, it was a costly lesson.

I should mention here that although the information it provides is extremely limited and the book has quite a few ads, I do like the way the information is presented: in order of river mile. There’s no bouncing back and forth in the text to get the big picture. Instead, it’s just a list, by river mile, of the facilities and related contact information.

Summing Up

I think one of the things that has me so excited about my trip is that there’s so much that I can learn along the way. I’m familiar with just a tiny stretch of this trip — from Jersey City to just beyond West Point, where my family took our small motorboat on outings when I was a kid. The rest is new and full of challenges and history. How can that not be exciting?

Preparing for the trip by researching it as much as possible can help me make the most of the journey. I’ll keep reading right up to the day I head east.

One Reason Independent Bookstores are Failing

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A quick story about a visit to a bookstore.

Yesterday, I spent much of the afternoon in Ellensburg, WA. Although less than 30 air miles from my home, it’s a 77-mile drive that takes about 90 minutes. Needless to say, I need to have a reason to go there when I do and I want to make the most of my time while I’m there.

Yesterday’s mission was to check out a gallery where I hope to show and sell my jewelry. That part of the trip went reasonably well, despite the fact that the person I needed to see was not there. It also led to me checking out a nearby museum that might also be a good place to sell my jewelry and two shops that I didn’t think were a good match at all.

I listen to NPR (National Public Radio). Say what you will about “liberal media” but NPR’s shows are intelligent, thoughtful, and informative. The local station, which goes by the name of Northwest Public Broadcasting (NWPB), is turned on in my kitchen almost all day every day. One of its sponsors is a bookstore in Ellensburg — the town apparently has at least three — and since I’m normally a bookstore lover and want to support NPR, I thought I’d go check it out.

I first went into the wrong bookstore, which was small but neatly stocked with new books, cards, journals, and gift items of interest to readers and writers. I wound up buying a book about vegetable gardening that basically provides a calendar-based schedule for garden tasks. (I hardly ever walk out of a bookstore empty-handed.)

I was actually leaving town when I caught sight of the bookstore that actually supported NWPB. I parked and went in.

Old Books
Browsing disorganized old books might be fun if you have an unlimited amount of time and the place is air conditioned. Or maybe not even then. (And no, this photo is not from the bookstore I visited. It’s a stock image from MorgueFile.)

This was not at all what I expected. The space was larger than the other shop but it was mostly full of dusty used books. I admit to flashing back to a used bookstore I used to visit in the 1980s way down near the financial district of Manhattan. That shop was smaller, more crammed, and dustier. Walking into this shop was like walking into the disorderly garage of someone who happened to collect old books. I realized immediately that there would be nothing of interest to me there, but I figured I’d give it a browse.

The guy behind the counter looked exactly like a stereotypical gamer or computer hacker. Perhaps in his 30s, he looked as if he might live in his mother’s basement, where he spent way too much time interacting with a computer screen. He asked me if I was looking for anything in particular and I told him I was just checking the place out because I’d heard about it on NPR.

“I remember when the lady from NPR came over,” he said. “The bookstore across the street used to be a sponsor. She came over here and told us he didn’t want to support the liberal media anymore. So she asked if we’d take his spot and my dad was here and said we would.”

I hadn’t seen the bookstore he referred to. The one I’d gone to was on another block.

As I looked at the old books, I got a bit of a brainstorm. Years ago, for my birthday or Christmas or some other gift-giving occasion, my wasband had bought me two Mark Twain first editions. He’d remembered me saying that I wanted to build a library of “nice quality books,” and thought (for some reason) that meant expensive first editions. So he’d gone to a bookstore probably a lot like the one I knew in lower Manhattan, and had bought two books that may have cost him hundreds of dollars. Book that looked just as old and dusty as the ones all around me that afternoon in Ellensburg, books I was afraid to open because I might damage them.

I wanted very badly to sell them but didn’t know of any bookstores that bought and sold collectors items.

This one might. So I asked if they ever bought first editions.

The shop guy seemed to search the database in his head for an answer. “Well, it depends on the topic and whether it’s in demand and — ”

“Mark Twain,” I said, trying to cut to the chase.

“You want to buy them?” he asked, obviously not understanding what I was getting at.

“No, I want to sell them.”

He looked uncomfortable.

“I don’t have them with me,” I said.

He relaxed.

“How about if I send you more information about them and you let me know. I can send titles and dates and photos of the covers and title pages. Just give me your card and an email address.”

“Okay,” he said. And he went back to his desk. I assumed he was getting a card.

I browsed. The book sections did have labels on them, but the books within each section were not in any order at all. So, for example, when I checked out the Art section, topics bounced from photography to painting to crafts to photography to architecture to painting… You get the idea.

It was taking a long time and the shop was hot. There was no air conditioning and it was nearly 100°F outside. When I left a little while later, I realized that it was cooler outside than inside.

I wandered back to the desk. He was writing something at the bottom of a sheet of notebook paper. It was taking a long time.

“All I need is your email address,” I said.

“Well, I’m just trying to redo the website right now,” he said. “I want to set it up so I can update it and it won’t cost so much money. So I’m putting in these forums and I want to use that for company communication.”

“You don’t have an email address?”

“Well, I do but on GoDaddy, I have to go through all these screens to get to it and they keep trying to sell me stuff and it takes a really long time.”

“Can’t you just set up Outlook or Apple Mail to access your email account?”

He looked up as if I’d just told him that it was possible to use a microwave to boil water right in a coffee cup. “Maybe I could,” he said slowly. I could see the dim lightbulb over his head getting slightly brighter.

Meanwhile, although I was wearing a thin cotton dress I was sweating like a pig. I wanted out of there but I didn’t want to be rude. “Just give me your website address,” I said, holding out my hand.

He went back to writing. About a minute later, he ripped off the bottom of the page and handed it to me. There were five lines: the bookstore’s name, the bookstore’s phone number, the bookstore’s complete street address (minus zip code), an email address, and the complete URL for the bookstore. He had basically hand-written a business card.

I took it, thanked him, and headed for the door otherwise empty-handed. “I just gave out my last business card,” he said to my retreating figure.

“I’ll email you with the book information,” I told him. And I walked out into the relief of a hot breeze.

Much later — this morning, in fact, as I looked over the torn-off notebook sheet I took out of my pocket — I thought about the death of bookstores. Unless this one had a solid client base, it wasn’t long for this world. How could it be? Not only did it have to compete against Amazon, the bane of all bookstores, but it had to compete against bookstores that actually had a clue about how to draw shoppers in, display a variety of interesting products, and sell things other than dusty old books.

Will I email him about my Mark Twain books? Heck, why not? You never know. I sure hope he tries Outlook for email because there’s no way in hell I’m going to participate in one of his forums.

—

Postscript: In searching the web for a public domain image I could use with this blog post, I stumbled across this article on Narratively: “Dear Dusty Old Bookstore.” If you have a greater love for old bookstores than I apparently do, you owe it to yourself to read it.

Snowbirding 2018: Reader’s Oasis Books

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A visit to one of the “must see” destinations in Quartzsite.

Years ago, when I first visited Quartzsite, I stopped at the local bookstore. That’s when I discovered that the owner was a nudist.

Or as much of a nudist as he could be in public without getting arrested.

The only item of clothing he wore back then was a sort of sack that covered his penis and balls. And maybe a hat, but I can’t say I remember that for sure. All I remember was that he was very thin, relatively old, and had a very even, very brown tan.

On that first visit, I was with my wasband and his cousin. We didn’t stay long. I love bookstores, but I was more accustomed to the kind with lots of new books. This bookstore was old and dusty and disorganized. And it was run by a nearly naked man old enough to be my father. Which was weird. I know it was seriously weirding out my future ex and/or his cousin, so we left after being there only a few minutes.

Fast forward 20 or so years. I’m back in Quartzsite again — heck, I’ve been coming here nearly annually for the past 20 years. I never got around to visiting the bookstore again. Frankly, I thought it had closed. It wasn’t where I remembered it being. And surely that guy had to be dead by now.

Bookstore Ad
Here’s an ad for the bookstore in the local tourist information booklet. It’s definitely “must see.”

But I was getting some work done on my rig the other day at Solar Bill’s and got into a conversation with one of the women who work there. The bookstore came up in conversation. Did it still exist? I asked. Yes, I was told. But where? She told me it had moved to the east end of town. Then she told me that she’d recently sat next to the owner of the place at some sort of event in town and hadn’t recognized him because he was wearing clothes.

Oddly enough, the bookstore and its owner came up on Twitter yesterday. One of the folks who follows me (who I follow back) suggested I visit the bookstore. I don’t think he thought I knew about the owner’s eccentricities. We then tweeted back and forth about it; I’ll let you click the tweet to follow our conversation if you want to.

Later that afternoon, with nothing much else to do, I tucked Penny into my backpack, hopped on my bike, and rode over to Main Street. I turned right, heading east, and pedaled until I saw the bookstore on the north side of the road. I pulled in.

It was surprisingly busy for 4 PM on a Sunday afternoon. There was a bookmobile bus parked outside and a table covered with books by a local author who was sitting there for a signing — more about those in a minute. The owner of the bookstore was sitting on a chair on the porch. I was almost disappointed to see him wearing a colorful sweater, but then realized he wasn’t wearing brown leggings. Those were his legs. And when he got up to greet me, I could see he was wearing the same kind of penis bag — what the hell would you call that thing anyway? — I remembered. It was knitted or crocheted and as colorful as his sweater. I like to think it wasn’t the same one.

He had aged. Obviously. And although he was a lot thinner with a lot less muscle tone than I remember, he was still spry.

I let Penny out of the bag and put her on a leash since there was a loose cat around. Then I went inside to look at the books. He followed me in, pointing out that all used books, including audio books, were 50% off. Then some other folks came in and he went to greet them, leaving me to browse.

Although the bookstore was in a new (to me) location, it was a lot like I remembered it. There were a ton of used books — 200,000 of them, according to the advertisement in the local tourist info rag. They were mostly organized by topic in the various rooms of the small building and, within each topic, grouped by author. There were a lot of books and authors I’d never heard of, along with a lot of old paperback bestsellers. Most of the books were wrapped in plastic — I think that was an attempt to keep them clean in this very dusty environment.

I’ve been wanting to get into some fiction — mostly to keep me from fixating on the latest from the “very stable genius” who is being roasted daily on Twitter — so that’s what I was looking for. I stumbled into the spy thriller area and found the Robert Ludlum collection. Back in the 1980s, when I took a subway to work in New York every day, I used to read Ludlum’s books. I’m a very fast reader and went through two or three of them in a week. After reading about a half dozen, I realized he had a formula and that kind of spoiled it for me. Later, he didn’t even write his books. But the one I found was very old and there’s a pretty good chance I haven’t read it.

There were a few other shoppers around, including a woman a little older than me looking for books by a specific author and a young couple who seemed very interested in older non-fiction books. I was browsing in the same room they were in — looking at some first edition youth books from 1914 for a gift for a friend’s son — when I realized that the music I was hearing was live. I wandered out into the main room in time to see the owner sitting at a grand piano I hadn’t even noticed — it was covered with books and other items — playing a kind of ragtime song with wild hand flourishes over the keys as he sang. I had never heard the song before. There were three people there — all retirees — standing nearby, listening and laughing at the lyrics. The refrain:

If you want an icy cold beer
Set the can next to my ex-wife’s heart.

I wanted so badly to capture it on video and even had my phone out, but I thought it would be rude. I was going to ask if I could for the next song, but when he finished that and we all applauded, he closed up the piano. When asked, he told the folks around him that he was 75 and that he’d been playing for a long time. He wrote his own songs, so that was an original.

At that point, a bunch of us were ready to check out so we lined up in the only area that looked as if it were set up to take money. The young couple bought quite a few books. As he checked them out, he told them about the music that was playing — an old blues song with a female vocalist I’d never heard of — he’d apparently put the music on when he was done playing.

While I was waiting, I saw an old Nero Wolfe paperback from 1966 and grabbed that, too. I’ll definitely need my readers to see the tiny print on the yellowed pages.

Bookmark Front Bookmark Back
Here’s the front and back of the bookmark I bought. Sadly, Paul doesn’t look nearly as hot as he does in this photo. But add a sweater and he was dressed the same.

He was selling bookmarks for 50¢ and everyone was buying them. When I saw the photo, I had to buy one, too. He autographed all of them, which was kind of cool.

As he checked out my two books — for a total of $3.00 with the bookmark — he told me about the song that came on, another blues number by another female vocalist. It was great music from the 1930s or 1940s.

When I was finished, Penny and I wandered over to the bookmobile. It had been a school bus and had been painted black with the words The Road Virus painted on it. The front half was lined with shelves full of books in a variety of topics and genres. The back half was blocked with a temporary partition; it was the living space for a life on the road.

The owner of the bookmobile sat in the driver’s seat, turned around to chat with that young couple and me. She looked to be in her 30s maybe — I’m terrible with ages — and had hair partly dyed blue. She said that she and her partner had been on the road with the bus selling books for exactly a year. They’d been all over the country. They usually partnered with local bookstores or wax museums or other attractions and stayed for a short time before moving on. It was all about local — not chain — establishments. She probably had about 1,000 books on board and I found one — a mystery by an author I’d never heard of — to buy. I really like to support small businesses, especially when they’re run by folks with an alternative lifestyle.

A Young Cowboy's Adventures
Here’s the book I bought for my friend’s son. You can find it on Amazon for less — but not autographed.

Penny and I walked back to the bike. I had to stop at the table where the older gentleman was sitting with his books spread out in front of them. His name was Stu Campbell, he wore a cowboy hat and vest, and he looked to be in his early 70s. He told me that most of the books had been written based on his own experiences. One of them caught my eye: A Young Cowboy’s Adventures. I asked him if it would be good for a boy about 12 years old and he said it would be perfect. So I bought a copy for a friend’s son who has been helping me with a few things at home. I even had it autographed.

With a bag half full of books, Penny had to jog most of the way back. But when I realized she was getting tired, I managed to stuff her into the backpack with the books for the remainder of the ride. I could see her over my shoulder when I turned my head; she was riding high in the bag with her head sticking out into the wind. I knew she was uncomfortable, but it was a short ride back to our home on the road.

If you’re ever in the Quartzsite area — especially in January when it’s so crazy busy with winter visitors — I highly recommend a visit to Reader’s Oasis Books. You won’t find anything like it anywhere else.

It’s Not That Simple

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7

A response to a reader’s request.

The other day, I got the following email message in my In Box with the subject line “Quicken 2017 for Mac”:

As I write these words your “Quicken 2002 Deluxe for Macintosh” book sits in front of me. The time has come, whether I like it or not, to update to Quicken 2017 for Mac from Quicken 2007 for Mac. Sadly, thee’s no good documentation to use. In fact, I haven’t found any good material since your 2002 book! For all I know, you’ve moved on and no longer write books such as the one published back then. That being said, I’d like to request you consider writing a new Guide similar to the one your wrote way back then. All the best to you whatever your future ventures may be.

First, I want to thank the sender for phrasing his request so politely and understanding that I might not be writing books like that one any more. A lot of the email messages I get regarding my writing work is a lot less polite and a lot more demanding, which partially explains why the Contact page on this blog seems to discourage communication from readers. (It’s actually toned down a lot more than it used to be.)

Now let me tell you a little bit about the rise and fall of tech publishing.

The “Old Days” of Tech Publishing

Dvorak's Inside Track
This is the first book I was involved in; I was a ghost writer on 4 chapters and am mentioned in the acknowledgements.

I got into the world of computer how-to book publishing way back in 1991. I’d left my last full-time job as a Financial Analyst at a Fortune 100 Corporation the year before and was trying my hand at freelance writing. Through an odd series of events, I wound up ghost writing four chapters of a book by John C. Dvorak, Bernard J. David (who I worked with directly), and others. That led to a book that Bernard and I co-authored, which led to another 80+ books that I mostly authored alone.

Back in those days, the Internet was in its infancy. Hardly anyone had a website — I didn’t have my first one until 1995 — and services like Google, which was founded in 1996 and wouldn’t become the powerhouse it is for years, didn’t exist. When people wanted to learn, they turned to books.

Software developers knew this. They provided printed manuals with their software products. Manuals for some software could be voluminous — I remember the one I had for a version of FrameMaker that had to be at least 800 pages. But despite the availability of these reference guides, users wanted something easier to read and understand. So computer how-to books were born. I happened to be at the right place at the right time to write them.

And I was very good at it. I had a knack for learning how to use software, breaking it down into simple tasks that built progressively through the book to more complex tasks, and writing it in a way that readers found helpful.

With a lot of competition, however, not many readers got to see my books and there wasn’t much money in writing them. No problem: I’ll just write more books. My publishers — especially Peachpit Press — really liked my work and my ability to meet deadlines. They kept me busy. I once signed six book contracts in a single day. One year, I wrote 10 books.

I wasn’t the only one cranking out books. Numerous publishers had tech imprints and dozens of new titles appeared every month. Bookstores — and there were a lot more of them in those days — had trouble keeping up, but they did. Publishers published these books and bookstores stocked them for one reason: they sold.

Demand only got higher as software developers stopped including lengthy manuals with their software, favoring Quick Start books instead. And then switching to digital only manuals that they might or might not include on the software CD.

Thus began the glory days of computer how-to book authors and publishers, a period that lasted from around 1995 through 2010.

Success Comes with Sales

Quicken 99 Official Guide
This was one of my first bestsellers. Revised annually until I gave it up after the 2009 edition, it was a major source of income for me.

My financial success as the author of computer how-to books didn’t come from writing a lot of books with average sales. It came from writing two particular books, revised often, that were bestsellers. My Quicken 1999: The Official Guide was one of these bestsellers.

Quicken 2002 Mac
I was very happy to be able to write about Quicken for Mac, since I was a long-time user.

The success of one book often spurs a series of books. Quicken Press (later Intuit Press), an imprint of Osborne-McGraw-Hill, soon began publishing other Quicken and QuickBooks books. That’s how I wound up authoring Quicken 2002 Deluxe for the Macintosh: The Official Guide, the book referred to in the email message above.

I was pretty happy about this. Truth is, I’m a Mac user and had been writing Windows books only because there were more Windows users so the sales potential was higher. I’d been using Quicken on my Mac for years and knew it better than the Windows version I’d been writing about since 1998.

But my Quicken Mac book didn’t take off the way we’d hoped — there were a lot fewer Quicken Mac users and Intuit still had viable competition to Quicken on the Mac OS platform. To complicate matters, Intuit didn’t revise Quicken for Mac as often as it revised Quicken for Windows. When the next version, Quicken 2007, was released, neither Intuit nor my publisher saw a sufficient market for a book about it. So I was never asked to revise my book for future editions.

Google and the Death of Tech Publishing

Meanwhile, as publishers and authors were churning out computer books as fast as we could, the Web was growing. People were writing how-to articles and publishing them on blogs, on software support websites, on user group websites, and in online magazines. Even I did this for a long while, mostly to help promote my existing titles. These articles were free and available immediately. When search engines like Google proved to be extremely effective in helping readers find the content they sought, people started thinking twice about buying computer how-to books.

After all, why go to a bookstore or go online at Amazon to find a book that may or may not answer your specific question when you could spend a few minutes searching with Google and find the answer you need? Why wait for a book you ordered online to arrive when you could find the information you needed immediately? Why depend on the voice of one author when you could access information provided by dozens or hundreds of them?

Book sales dropped off dramatically in the late 2000s. I could see it in my royalty statements; my income peaked in 2004 and 2005 and then began a steady decline. Books about software staples like Word and Excel, that I’d revise with every new version, were dropped one after another. Publishers who had once agreed to a contract for nearly every title I proposed now declined, saying they didn’t think there was a sufficient market for the book. There were fewer and fewer new software-related titles being published. Editors who’d worked on dozens of titles a year suddenly found themselves unemployed. Publishers or imprints merged or disappeared. The few brick and mortar bookstores that managed to survive the rise of Amazon reduced or even eliminated their computer book shelf space.

By 2013, all of my book titles were officially dead — not scheduled for revision. And I know I’m not the only tech author who lived and thrived through the computer book glory days to find myself without a book market for my expertise. There are lots of us out there. The ones like me who saw it coming had a safety net to fall into; others weren’t so lucky and find themselves struggling to stay relevant and earn a living writing words few seem willing to pay for.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying that computer how-to books no longer exist. They do. There just aren’t many of them. And rather than appeal to the beginner to intermediate user I wrote for, they’re mostly written for a much higher level of user about far more complex topics. Or very narrow markets that are easy to sell to.

This Reader’s Request

Fast forward to today.

The very politely worded email request from a reader quoted in full above is asking me to revise my Quicken 2002 for Mac book for Quicken 2017 for Mac. If you’ve been reading carefully, you know why this is unlikely to happen.

There is not a sufficient market for such a book.

And that’s what it’s all about: being able to publish a book that will sell enough copies for the publisher to make a profit. It has nothing to do with the author; publishers really don’t care what authors make. Their contracts routinely minimize author royalties to help the book’s bottom line. That’s all that matters. They have spreadsheets that calculate breakeven and if a title can’t break even with a decent profit, they won’t publish it. Simple as that.

Would I write and self-publish a book about Quicken 2017 for Mac? Probably not. Even self-publishing such a book doesn’t mean I’ll earn enough money to make such a project worthwhile. Let’s do the math. It would take me a good 400 hours of time over two months to write the book and prepare the manuscript for publishing. Say I need to make a minimum of $25/hour. That means the project would have to net me $10,000. Even if I managed to net $5/book after fees paid to Amazon, Apple iBooks store, Nook, etc., I’d still have to sell 2,000 copies. Are there 2,000 people out there willing to buy a book about Quicken 2017 for Mac? I seriously doubt it.

And I’ll share a secret with you: I still use Quicken 2007 for Mac. I bought but decided I didn’t like the 2015 version and I haven’t even bothered to buy the 2017 version.

So if I — a loyal Quicken user since the early 1990s — haven’t bothered to upgrade, how many other people have? And how many of them want a book about it?

The answer is simple: Not enough for me or apparently anyone else to write a book about it.

This Explains It

And this pretty much explains why I don’t write books about how to use computers and software anymore. I can’t make a living doing it.

But I’m lucky: at least I’ve found something else to make a living at.