[PRCo] Re: [Fwd: Pittsburgh Rwy Cars]

[Fred W. Schneider III]

OK, I'll change that.  It hasn't been done because people want to have a
life.  It is perfectly easy to write books on small town trolley
companies.  Big cities take work ... that is basically why New York,
Philadelphia, Montreal and Pittsburgh have never been done.  A decent
book on Pittsburgh would take AT LEAST 10 years of effort and maybe more
times 2080 hours per year times times $30 per hour = $624,000 worth of
labor for a book that probably won't even pay a dime on royalties to the
author.  
Now add in the expenses.  Friend, you're talking a Million Dollar
Project.  And you would need to sell 225,000 copies of the book to pay
the author that money ... that's more than 100 times more books than we
can project will sell.  (The 225,000 copies is based on a 10% royalty on
publishers net sales on a book with a jacket price of $75. ... I'm
probably way off because ten years from now that will be a $125 book.)

I've only done two books and several years worth of a magazine.  I don't
know everything.  Maybe I'm dumb.  But I do remember my co-author on the
PCC books remarking that he had put more effort into them than he did on
his doctorate degree.  I never had to pay any income tax on the
royalties on those books because I never even got the expenses back.  

Put it another way, those who can do it WANT A LIFE.  At 61 I don't plan
to commit myself to every available hour until I'm 71.   

Derrick J Brashear wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Fred W. Schneider III wrote:
> 
> >
> > Because you didn't write it.
> 
> Wrong continent makes it hard to do research, almost certainly making the
> book less useful than if someone on this continent, preferably in the
> area, and more preferably someone with a background in the system did it.
> 
> But being far from the actual data sources would be somewhat of a problem,
> or have you solved the "matter transferrence" thing? If so, you could be
> very rich.
> 
> > Greg King wrote:
> 
> [stuff]
> 
> > >
> > > I would anty up for a copy of such a work.
> > >
> 
> -D
> -smartass