OK. The primary thrust of this post is the book brought out this month by member, Modernhoglegs. The promotiona material makes it look like an interesting reference for fans of the early revolvers and copies. The publishers of Gun Digest see merit in it and this is a sound recommendation.
It is interesting to me because, in 2005 we self-published a book on percussion pistols and revolvers. -Actually through a firm that does that sort of thing. It developed a following and it became apparent that the readers were more interested in revolvers than the full array of percussion handguns. There were also glaring editing errors and the pictures were small. So, in 2007 we put out a sequel that was much more into revolvers and we hoped for better production values as the pictures were bigger and we paid for a number of editorial services to correct such things as spelling, punctuation etc. The company was simply not up to the task so we did not promote the second book though the publisher ignored our order to cancel and has been selling it in small numbers ever since. Both of these books contain information not found elsewhere -or at least, not in the same place. and quite a few people like them BUT I strongly discourage anybody who considers himself a gramarian or who is psychically wounded by less than perfect production values from even picking them up.
Skyhorse Publications saw the second-unpromoted book and purchased the rights to it. It is due out to go to print in March 2015 with color pictures, hopefully, professional editiing. If it lives up to other books I have seen from Skyhorse, I will be happy to promote it. The state of the industry/marketplace is such that the book is still relevent even though the economic downturn has made some items less obtainable than they were a decade ago.
