A major project finished

I've been a bit lax on blogging this month. That always happens when I'm caught up in a major project. I've learned to do many things during my lifetime but being able to relax isn't one of them. That may be why I've always hated holidays and volunteered to work on all of them during my newspaper days. If I'm not working I'm not happy or content.

The latest project that ended about 6:30 yesterday evening was getting three sports books we did years ago in shape to be available again. The first, a history of basketball at Muncie Central High School in Indiana, dates back twenty years. The second, a history of football at Cuyahoga Falls High from 1893 though 1996, was published twelve years ago. The second edition is updated through 2005. That left the biggest of them all, a complete history of high school football in Akron from 1892 through 1999. Included are the scores of every game played by more than a dozen schools, coaches records and all-city teams. All three of the books contain many thousands of words of text.
Why make them available again? For one thing, people still want them. For another, at least three years of full-time research were required to complete the trio. Hundreds of miles were driven to examine microfilm files of old newspapers in more than forty cities. Jackie put in countless hours assisting with all that. Then came the job of getting each of them in book form. It was a labor of love and one helluva job.

Obviously books of this sort are of local interest only. The lone way to make them available is by self-publishing. That was a huge physical job when the original editions were put on the market. Today it is greatly simplified by online firms such as Lulu. Instead of having to find local printers, you merely get everything ready and upload it to Lulu. That includes covers that had to be updated for the two football books. Lulu did a fabulous job, particularly on the Falls High cover. The books are "perfect" bound, meaning they look like all 6x9 trade paperback books you see in stores. All you pay for are proof copies of the books. Everything else is free.

So now the books are not only available again, they look much nicer than the original editions. You can't beat that, yet it was a time consuming job with little left over for blogging.

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