My Fourth Book

There are a few interesting things about my fourth published book. Here are a couple:

• This book is the only book written for a flat fee
• This book is the book you can't buy in bookstores
• This book was written for Czech Railways

Let's start from the beginning. After the publication of my first book, I was approached by the owner/director of Fragment Publishing. I was asked to write a book for learning English for the employees of Czech Railways. Specialized vocabulary was to be used, as well as certain situations that a Czech Railways employee might be exposed to.

I was offered 40,000 Czech Crowns to write the book ($2,334 at today's exchange rate). I said no. This was a not enough for a book that was supposed to have a least 360 pages. I suggested 160,000 Czech Crowns ($9, 357) for the book which would take at least 8 months to write. The director of Fragment returned to Czech Railways with my offer. They agreed, and I got to work writing.

Months later, after I had turned in the manuscript, I was notified that the book had gone through editing and was soon to be published. Only one page was not seen by the editor. This was a title chapter page, and shouldn't have had any errors, so editing was deemed not necessary by the publisher. Well, guess what. There is a major type in the title of the chapter. They spelled Eurorail E-u-r-o-r-i-a-l.

I was heartbroken. So much work had gone into the book, and the publisher had dropped the ball ... again. You see, I haven't mentioned that in my third book, the cover says The Nosy Neighbor, by the inside cover page says Mistaken Identity.

That's the way the cookie crumbles.

Oh, by the way, I'm writing about these books out of chronological order. Rather than blog about a single book in a blog entry, it's easier to group some books together. You'll see what I mean in my next blog entry where I'll talk about the books Easy English with Beautiful Music, Volumes 1-4 which were published over a period of six years.

That's it for today.

Cheers!

--James