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

My Second and Third Books

Hi all,

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, my publisher received several letters asking when Bill Lorentz's next case would be. (Bill Lorentz is my bumbling detective). I was asked to write a second book, and I did.
The format of this book was changed drastically to make the book more suitable for a larger target audience. Lots of useful information was added (exercises, etc), to help the reader better his/her English skills. I personally believe that the story was a bit better too. In the book, my detective once again misses almost every clue there is, jumps to incorrect premature conclusions, and almost gets his balls bitten off by rottweilers. His maid once again solves the case.
The book was received well, and I received quite a few letters asking for more. One girl in Southern Bohemia even created the Bill Lorentz Fan Club. I'm proud to say that the club had five members. My publisher, however, concluded that the book was aimed at a very thin slice of the English-learning community, and sales - although good - were not good enough for a third case. The format of the book worked better than the original format in the first detective story, and they decided to republish the first book in the new format. Mistaken Identity thus became The Nosy neighbor, and was published about a year later.
I was able to improve the story a little, and I added all the extras mentioned above. The books sold relatively well, but I did receive a couple of letters from unhappy readers who had bought the book, thinking that it was a new case for Bill Lorentz. There were some new things in the case, but the case ended up solved in the same. way. I sent free copies of my other book to readers, hoping to console them.

Even though Bill Lorentz is no longer active, I've been thinking about creating more cases for him. If I get enough of them, I may publish a novel about him. Well see.

Well, I think I've written enough for today. I'll try to write a few words tomorrow, if I get some time. There's still a lot to write about.

Cheers!

--James

My First Published Book (1996)

My first book was published in 1996. I haven't talked about the story behind it, so here it is. The book began as a crazy idea. I had been teaching English and German in Prague since 1993, and although there were a lot of textbooks out there (and all in British English), there weren't many readers. So I decided to write one. I decided on a detective story as the format, thinking that it might succeed in maintaining the reader's interest throughout the book. Mistaken Identity was born.

The book is about a detective story writer who finds himself solving a crime (and is not as good at it as he had expected). I remember when I started writing the book. I made an outline that looked something like this:

1. Writer (Bill Lorentz) has writer's block, looks out of window and sees something suspicious.
   
2. Sees clues everywhere, but cannot interpret them. His maid, Agnes, has a crime-solving mind from reading detective stories, not writing them (Bill).
3. Crime is solved by maid, but writer takes credit for it.
   

The book sold relatively well for the size of the target audience at which it had been aimed. It was reprinted a couple of times (and re-issued later in another format). I wrote it using American English as a protest. There were too few American English textbooks around in the Czech Republic.

And now some trivial information. I wrote the book on a laptop that belonged to the Czech Ministry of the Interior. My girlfriend at the time, Marta, was a Ministry employee and brought the laptop home to me on weekends to use. If they only new... Marta also served as a test case for me as well. And I thank her for her input.

After writing the book, I took the book the Fragment, one of the largest textbook publishers in the Czech Republic. They gave it to several people for recommendations. To make a short story even shorter, about ten weeks later I received a phone call, informing me that they would like to publish the book.

This is how I got involved in publishing. I was also offered an English teaching job at Fragment, which provided me unbelievable opportunities later on.

One thing that surprised me is that the book developed a following, albeit a small one. The publisher received several letters asking when the next episode would be published.
This was enough motivation for me to write one.

--James