It’s a good thing that I don’t have to make my living writing books. Nonetheless, I am the author of two (both un-agented) and a card-carrying member of the Authors Guild, as well as of ASJA. The truth is I spent most of my career as a staff writer/reporter/editor at The Washington Post. For much of that time, my beat was Maryland, and my greatest goal was to become the Charles Kuralt of the state dubbed “America in Miniature.” My assignments, many of them self-generated, took me from the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay to the Appalachian Mountains of western Maryland. Out of these travels came my first book, Maryland Lost and Found: People and Places from Chesapeake to Appalachia, published in 1986 by the Johns Hopkins University Press. My Post colleague, Henry Allen, dubbed me “Mr. Maryland.” Life was sweet.
The book was, as they say, “critically acclaimed” by, among others, Anne Tyler in Washington Post BookWorld. “The state emerges entire: colorful and passionate and full of character,” she wrote. There were two printings in hardback before the book dropped off even the publisher’s backlist. Invoking my reversion of rights clause, I was able to find another publisher for an updated (and illustrated) paperback edition in 2000. It was renamed Maryland Lost and Found … Again, and its publisher was Woodholme, a small house affiliated with Bibelot, a Baltimore bookstore chain. When Bibelot/Woodholme folded, I purchased the remaining stock at a deep discount and retained the right to resell it. Tidewater, also known as Cornell Maritime Press, picked it up, and a slightly revised, second paperback edition appeared in 2003. As things went, Tidewater, along with all of its titles, was purchased by Schiffer, a Pennsylvania publishing house, small but spunky. To be honest, I haven’t done much to promote it, but, technically, it’s still in print and yields modest semi-annual royalty checks.
But Maryland Lost paid other unexpected dividends. Photographer Lucien Niemeyer had seen the hardback and asked me to write the text for a coffee table book about the bay he wanted to produce. We agreed on a title and signed a contract with Abbeville Press, a major New York publisher of art books. Chesapeake Country came out in the spring of 1990 and was well and widely reviewed. Niemeyer optimistically predicted long-term sales of 80,000 copies. And why not?
“This book is as fine a bay hors d’oeuvre as you could wish,” enthused Washington Post BookWorld. Crown Books, a now defunct chain, featured it in a full-page newspaper ad on May 20, 1990. Ironically, Harry N. Abrams, the other art book publisher founded by the father of Abbeville’s publisher Bob Abrams, came out with a black-and-white coffee table book, Chesapeake Bay, at the same time. The Abrams book contained an introduction by James A. Michener, but ours eclipsed it in sales. Indeed, our book sold more than 32,000 copies. In 1990, it was the tenth-best seller at Politics & Prose, Washington’s iconic independent bookstore.
There were five printings, the last in 2000. Then, years went by without another. It seemed the book was out of print. The Abbeville site said the book “is no longer available here” and referred purchasers to Amazon.com, which had no copies in stock. We had no reversion clause, but I suggested to Niemeyer that we request the rights and find another publisher. He was pessimistic about our chances. But I figured, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and so, in late June 2013, I wrote a letter to Bob Abrams, which I transmitted both by email and snail mail. Weeks went by without an answer.
Out of the blue, it seemed, I received a positive response, an email on Aug. 14 indicating Abrams’ interest in publishing a revised edition. A conference call followed a month later, an addendum to our original contract (from Aug. 22, 1988) was drawn up and we were back in business. I would write a new, 3,000-word introduction (which the publisher has called Chesapeake Country Revisited) and update captions and recommendations for additional reading. The body of the text, about 36,000 words, would remain intact, a snapshot in time of a timeless land and bay. The new intro would set the stage, updating readers on any tectonic changes (read: climate). Excited about our prospects, I easily met the assigned deadline.
But first I had to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. My initial draft tended toward the apocalyptic, noting all the dire forecasts for sea level rise and land subsidence that in 30 years or so will submerge wide swaths of terra-not-so-firma. My wife, Sandy, did not quibble with my facts but felt the tone was off-putting. She advised me to spend a night with friends on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to soak up some good bay karma. My one-night stand in the Land of Pleasant Living worked its charm, and I made revisions. I still do, as the special Maryland license plate says, “Treasure the Chesapeake.”
So, the twenty-fifth anniversary edition (or, as Abbeville prefers to call it, the Second Edition) of Chesapeake Country publishes on March 10, 2015, with some modest changes in price, in format (square, not rectangular) and with added potential for e-book sales and royalties. But my money’s on the hardback version. Really, who ever heard of a digital coffee table book? Then again, in the rapidly changing world of publishing, I suppose anything is possible.