I've done some investigation on how to publish a book for Yoda and learned a few things that probably apply to The Golfing Machine.
The Golfing Machine is, and has always been self published. Meaning only the head office has any rights to the book. They are fully responsible for every aspect of the books creation, marketing, promotion, and channels of distribution. On the positive side, Joe and Co. have complete control over the look/feel/content/rights and shelf life of the book. On the negative side, the book is entirely self funded, not promoted by industry resources, not picked up by major retailers, and lacks professional inputs. But, once you get a publisher involved, you sell your rights to the book to them.
TGM would never survive with your basic NY publishers. The volumes are too low to make it after the first introduction to the market. Most books have a shelf life of one year. The test of a books success is whether or not it's still in demand after a year. If not, it's replaced by the next new thing. In sports books, Harvey Penicks Little Red Book is the most successful...ever.
Bagger
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Yes... TGM should maybe be handled more like a school text book, rather than one placed in stores to make a lot of money. Although, I think it could make money if the right things happen. There are a lot of biology text books out there!
While the folks over at Simon & Schuster would have us believe that Mr. Penick's book is numero uno (as also stated by the late Dave Marr in the "Little Green Video"), the New York Times might argue there case for Ben Hogan's Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf. Both continue to this day to be top sellers according to The Booklegger (golf's leading distributor in books and DVD's).
Is it just me or does anyone else find the photos in the new 7th edition to be fuzzier and less clear than those in the 6th?
The new computer drawn diagrams such as those showing the Impact Interval (2-C) and The Flail (2-K) are much clearer though.
I'm surprised. I was talking with Doug Doo-shet-toe(sp?) in Beaverton some weeks ago and he told me that they were having some graphics specialists work on the photos to clean them up for the next edition. He might have been talking about the 8th edition though because he also said that they were going to have a team of engineers from MIT examine the text for mechanical correctness of description. He added "..it won't be Homer any more, sadly..".
I was in touch with him because I have converted the 6th edition to HTML for personal use only and have found that scanning the photos in the book only made them worse (as one might expect) and as I did not have the technical savvy to clean the pictures up myself, asked if there were any other source of these pictures.
Would be interesting to hear from someone who has a 1st edition as to whether the pictures are clearer.
Linear Mode
