That's a great portrait of a glider pilot! I'd also like to add that I love the Raid series so far (I have copies of Sierra Leone, Cabanatuan, and Zeebrugge). Keep up the good work!
P.S.
It would be great to do a Raid on Operation Dingo, the 1977 Rhodesian "externals" on ZANLA camps in Mozambique.
Report this comment
Just got my copy of this book today and was very much looking forward to it. I've enjoyed all the Raid titles I've purchased so far and loved the subject matter of this one. On looking through this title I admit to feeling let down. The text looks good, the art work looks good but the photo selection, one of the things I usually enjoy in Osprey titles, disappoints me. A large selection of the pictures were obviously taken in the present day on site. 7 pictures of memorial plaques and monuments might be interesting in someone's holiday snaps but not for me in a history book. Ditto on a photo of a PIAT hanging in a museum, a beret in a display case or dummies dressed up as glider pilots. Over all I'd have prefered more historical images less contemporary ones. Fingers crossed the Bruneval book doesn't go the same route.
Report this comment
I's like to address MarkL's comment if I may.
I am an Osprey author, and have written two Raids. One (Grierson's Raid) will be out this month and I am in the process of packaging up the second (on Decatur's burning of the Philadelphia) to send to the merry elves that form Osprey's editorial staff.
Pictures are the joy and terror of every Osprey author. Each line requires a specific number of interior illustrations. Raids, for example require me to deliver only 35. (New Vanguard demands 40, Duel and Command -- shudder -- 50). You have to provide those on a strict budget. Osprey pays me up to 750 pounds sterling for the images. That is for everything: permissions from the image owner, reproduction costs, and shipping.
Let's do some simple math (every author does this, btw): £750 divided by 35 images = £21.43. That means I have to average no more than £21.43 on each image. I am a Yank, so I (typically) accrue expenses in US dollars. The exchange rate bobs between $1.38 per £1 to $2.04 per £1. (At least while I have been writing for Osprey. So I normally budget $1.50 per pound or $32.15 per image.
For example, I just received two pictures for my latest Raid today from the United States Naval Academy. The bill was $48 (US). Cool beans. I end up ahead. The US Naval Heritage and History Command charges $34 for an 8x10 color image. Ouch. I lose $1.85 per image before paying the cost to ship those images to me. Note that those examples are for images in the public domain. All I pay is the reproduction cost because the US Government has the enlightened view (well, authors find it enlightened) that placing Federal intellectual property in the public domain is good public policy. The UK crown, by contrast charges a use fee as well as charging a poor author for reproduction costs.
What really gets fun is trying to get images from American states or (worst of all generally) US education institutions or museums and libraries. These are not run by individuals interested in making money -- rather they are run by altruistic types that believe that all commercial writers are evil plutocrats who deserved to get soaked. The folks know they have monopolies on these images, and charge what they image are monopoly prices. But since they typically have the economic knowledge of a mayfly they believe that monopolists charge all the market can bear. (Actually they charge the revenue-maximizing price which is considerably lower, which is one reason I prefer commercial services to non-profits, but that's another story. . . ) Which means that if I get an image from one of these fonts of literacy I can expect to pay between $50 to $200 *per image* for the right to use it in an Osprey book. In addition I get to pay the reproduction costs. Ouch!!!.
Can't get many of those, unless you want to write for free -- and you know what Ben Jonson says about that. Sometimes I will get a few of these, but generally only one or two per book and that only if absolutely unavoidable.
Forget using a modern photo that you find in a book or magazine unless you can contact the copyright holder, too. There are some really draconian penalties you have to pay for copyright infringement. And the *author* pays those, not Osprey. Says so in the contract. And it can be surprisingly hard to find a copyright owner, unless you pay big buck for a search. Which goes against your picture budget.
So what's a poor author to do? Find images that are in the public domain (reader copies of illustrated books published in the 19th and early 20th centuries are pretty easy to find at cheap prices). Depend on US government sources. (I say a special prayer to the Library of Congress each night before I go to bed.) Make friends with people that own collections or have photos that they are willing to let you use. Take a *lot* of your own pictures.
That's one reason that the only book on a 20th century subject I have written has been on the Shuttle. (NASA loves giving away pictures.) And one reason I tend to write a lot about the US Civil War and US Navy topics. Some books I would absolutely *love* to write but cannot due to the costs of images would be a New Vanguard on the Texas Navy (at present I have 15 of the 40 images I need and the rest are locked up at "nail-the author prices in various Texas libraries), the Mexican Navy, or various British naval subjects (a New Vanguard on British or French frigates of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic or the American Revolution). I would love to do a Duel on British vs. French Frigates during the Napoleonic Wars, but the image costs are just too much.
It sounds like the author of Pegasus Bridge may have encountered the same types of difficulties. Finding directly-relevant images to which you can secure publication rights on a WWII topic is challenging. Or it may have been his judgment that the images he used were better than the period images available.
(With a very few exceptions the period images of the Federal Navy that I write about range from very bad to truly execrable. I like to think I get the few gems, but I have use a few images that make me wince in some of my books. There is a very famous "Death of Lawrence" image that I used in my Duel on Frigate battles that had the American sailors dressed in 1880s uniforms, and had long guns on the quarterdeck. Why did I use it? I needed something to illustrate that subject and it was the best that I could come up with, and it was well known. I try to avoid doing this, but one or two always seem to get included.)
Nor do I think there is anything particularly egregious about using an image of period equipment in a museum or park. In Grierson's Raid there is a photo of a Woodruff Gun in an Illinois park and a picture of a 1861 cavalry sword that is in a museum. There ain't no Civil War images of Woodruff Guns, so I either use the museum piece or do without. And the museum photo of the cavalry saber was the best one I could find. I use a lot of model photos in my naval New Vanguards -- and used several pictures of Shuttle models to illustrat early Shuttle concepts in that book. But I try and limit these to no more than four or so. (Although in my NV on the Revolutionary Navy there were seven pictures of models. Three of these were over 100 years old and one had been built by Joshua Humphries, however.)
Don't get me wrong. Writing for Osprey is lots of fun. But in some ways it is like writing a very specialized form of poetry. You have to stick to the rules, which serve as limits.
Report this comment