Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I'll answer Howard #75 first, because it's easier, then do a separate
response for Robin's #74. 

The Chateau d'Herouville episode was a short, unusual, one-off event
that took place in June of 1971, and is chronicled in some detail in my
book - with photos. I'll summarize here.

I was working at Alembic in the city when I got a call from Jon
McIntire, the Dead's manager, asking me to find my passport and get
ready to go to France in a day or two. The band had been booked to play
a huge outdoor festival outside of Paris, and would be staying at the
Chateau d'Herouville, made famous by Elton John as "Honky Chateau".
They needed me as an interpreter.

Jon and I went ahead of the band; the festival was rained out and
cancelled while the band and crew were on the plane already. What
followed was a four-day band 'holiday', during which they: 1) played a
concert on the back lawn of the Chateau to the local villages, filmed
by a Paris TV station; 2) jammed in the Chateau's third floor recording
studio with some French musicians, with nothing coming of that
collaboration and 3) went sightseeing at the Eiffel Tower on a
beautiful sunny day. (A second car went to Notre Dame.)

Wonderful memories.

My
  

    
Now, to respond to Robin's more complicated question in Post #74.

First of all, yes, the appearance of the print edition WAS in response
to popular demand; but not as much from the success of the electronic
edition, as from a strong and persistent demand for a print edition
INSTEAD of the electronic one. Not that people didn't buy and enjoy the
e-book, and it's continuing to sell nicely and is available for all
devices including computers. But there was a definite chorus of voices,
saying, "I'll wait until it comes out in print."

Even among the people who were willing to buy the e-book when that's
all that was available, many, many of them thought they couldn't read
it if they didn't have a Kindle or iPad, and I spent an inordinate
amount of time doing tech support and education about that.

Fast forward to today, three months after I published the print
edition, and I am vindicated for listening to that chorus of voices,
and doing the work required to convert the e-book into a print edition,
one that would satisfy my basic quality criteria without costing me a
lot of money that I simply didn't have. The print edition is selling at
a rate of two-to-one vs. the e-book.

As for what I did and how I did it, there's enough there for me to
write another book! But with self-publishing options and technology
being the fast-moving target that they are, it wouldn't be worth the
time.

One important thing you should know about my project vs. how much
easier it would have been if I'd written a (text-only) novel: my book
has 200 photos in it, and from Day One, I wanted the photos to ride
along with the stories that they illustrate. Let's just say that
greatly complicated matters.

To anyone out there who is considering self-publishing, I say, "YES!"
But I also say that you should take your time; do a serious amount of
research; figure out what are the steps to get you from here to there,
then cross off the tasks you KNOW you can do yourself. The other tasks?
More research to figure out how much it'll cost you to pay someone
else to do those tasks for you - then, that's your pre-publication
budget, whether e-book or print book.

For the e-book, I paid for a professional editor (critical!); help
from a graphic artist on the cover I'd almost designed; and conversion
of the file with all those photos into the two e-book formats. For the
print book, I paid for professional "cleaning" of the worst of the
high-res images; printing of 5 successive "proof" books (cheap) to
verify the photos looked ok and of course, some marketing costs like a
mailing list management service, etc.

Don't let me deter you if you think it's too hard. But be careful, and
don't get sucked in by the dozens of vendors out there who are ready
to take your money so you can appear in print. Do the research, there's
no shortcut to that.
  

    
I'd also like to recommend a blogger-extraordinaire - Joel Friedlander
- at www.thebookdesigner.com. He is an amazing fount of always-current
information about self-publishing, not only from his own blog, but
from compiling links to the blogs of other experts. I have been reading
his blog and those he refers me to for well over a year, and I can't
tell you how much I've learned from him.
  

    
I haven't seen the print edition, but have to say that the extra
time/effort/money spent on the photos really paid off in the e-book
edition.  They look fantastic on my iPad!
  

    
Thanks, Gary. I too was happy with the photos on the iPad, Kindle Fire
and other e-readers, tablets or computer monitors, in a way surprising
considering the amount of compression required to make those 200
photos fit into the stringent specs required to keep e-book files down
to a manageable size.

In the interest of full disclosure: in order to self-publish a book
that was affordable to me to produce, and for readers to buy, I had to
convert the color photos to black and white for the 339-page print
edition. Same stories; same photos, but black and white except for
front and back covers.

Readers of the print edition that want to see the color photos have a
few options. Many people have opted to buy both editions, with the
e-book selling for $9.59 on the Amazon Kindle store, (free Kindle app
for iPad, Mac, PC, etc. downloadable). 

For a quick look at some of the color photos without buying anything,
here are a couple of links.

My online print sales gallery: http://www.rosiemcgee.smugmug.com; and
photo gallery on Rolling Stone online, posted when my e-book first
came out: http://rol.st/1c6wleo.

And finally, who knows? Maybe down the road, I will publish (or have
published) a full-color, hardbound edition of "Dancing with the Dead--A
Photographic Memoir". It would be expensive and time-consuming to
produce and to buy, and it's not in my plans right now. But as my
friends know, I never say never.
  

    
So much great info! Thank you!
  

    

I'd like to hear about your adventures as the band's translator. Any
interesting episodes come to mind?
  

    
Oh yeah!  Great question!
  

    
Would it be "cheating" if I pull in some direct excerpts from my book?
I do have a couple of favorite stories that are detailed in my book.
  

    
Well, you know, I'm going to answer my own question and say, no, it's
not cheating. Why paraphrase myself to answer a question? So, here's
one of the stories of translating for the Dead in France. This was
about trying to get home from the Herouville episode in 1971:

"The next day, after four fairly sleepless nights, we were back at the
airport. It was an hour to flight time and our equipment was on the
plane, but we were not—our tickets were held hostage waiting for a
missing freight document.

It was fifteen minutes to departure and still no document. Six
supervisors, representing two airlines, the airport and the French
government, surrounded me. They were all arguing at once—the airlines
over who would nab these pre-paid customers, the government agents
trying to ensure that we’d have time to pass through the drug
checkpoint, and airport security trying to calm everyone down—while
waiting 20 yards away, the guys were about to lose it completely. They
were exhausted and just wanted to go home!

Exasperated from at least an hour of harassment, I zeroed in on the
stubborn twit who was holding the tickets and shouted over the din in
French, “Monsieur, look at those guys over there,” (as I pointed to the
band and crew). I can’t imagine what they’ll do if they don’t get on
some airplane immediately. The freight is already on the plane and you
have their prepaid tickets in your hand. Do you want to be personally
responsible for an international incident, right here and right now?”

The man looked over, and the guys, ready to explode anyway, picked up
on my cue. One or two gave the well-known American one-digit salutation
while roaring like lions, and the rest merely projected visions of
Hell to Pay. The poor man broke down completely and weakly handed me
the tickets. A sprint through the airport, a quick stop at a security
check, and we collapsed in our seats."

From Chapter Eight, "Dancing with the Dead--A Photographic Memoir" (c)
Rosie McGee
  

    
QUoting the book is just fine, of course!!
  

    
GREAT story!!
  

    

That is a great story. And hey, this is *your* topic, so there can't be 
any worries about cheating....quote away!
  

    

Rosie, please post a few more excerpts from the book. I love the 710 bust
story, for example!
  

    
I haven't had the chance to read the book yet, but do you touch upon
the time when Pig and Bobby was supposedly fired from the band?  Did
that actually happen or was it just a rumor?
  

    
David - I will post excerpts as they apply to questions asked, but I
think the 710 bust story is pretty long, and I think I'd prefer that
people encounter it in context when they're reading my book.

Tim - I can't really speak to that, as I don't have personal knowledge
of it or I simply don't remember. Although I attended many, many
rehearsals and recording sessions, I didn't attend band meetings, even
when other women in the family might have. And during the years that I
lived with Phil, I don't recall having all that many discussions with
him about band politics or business matters.

Dennis McNally does tell that story in his book, citing a recording of
the band meeting where that happened as his source.
  

    

> the 710 bust story is pretty long, and I think I'd prefer that people en-
> counter it in context when they're reading my book.

Fair enough!
  

    

Hey, Inkwell readers/posters--

Just a quick word to let you know we have passed the two-week mark in this
interview/discussion.

Huge thank yous to <jera>/Gary for facilitating the discussion, and of
course to Rosie for giving us her time and attention. Additional thanks to
<tnf>/David for helping us put this whole thing together.

So, the "official" interview is over, but Rosie has graciously agreed to
stick around, and she will continue the discussion through Sunday, after
which some busy-time will take her away from us for a while.

If you have a couple more questions burning a hole in your... um. Don't make
me mix metaphors. Anyway, ask away for a couple more days!

And please feel free to continue the discussion amongst yourselves.

And to keep up with Rosie, you can LIKE her FB page:

https://www.facebook.com/rosiemcgeephotographer

and you can follow her on twitter: @rosiemcgee12

Thanks so much, all of you, and I look forward to the next couple days of
discussion!
  

    
And I add my thanks, first to David for putting this together, and
then to Gary and Brady for making it so easy for me to participate and
have some fun.

As Brady said, I'm still going to be available until Sunday, so please
feel free to ask me more questions. And after Sunday, I'll be
occasionally lurking to see what turns the discussion might take.

Thanks so much for your interest, and I hope to see you or hear from
you via some other venue. My website is www.rosiemcgee.com.


Rosie
  

    
Nice conversation!  

I'm having a bit of trouble connecting to your website.  Anybody else
seeing that?
  

    
Thanks so much for the great conversation, Rosie!
  

    
Thanks, Rosie.

I can't recommend 'Dancing with the Dead' highly enough. It is
entertaining and enlightening, with lots of great photos.
  

    
And now I'm on your site -- your website looks terrific, too, Rosie!
  

    
Thanks, everybody, and remember, I'm still here, ready to answer more
questions until Sunday night.

If you take your time scrolling down the home page of my website,
you'll see links to interviews and other stuff.

BUT ALSO, on the left of the site is some stuff that's kind of
"legacy" - hasn't been updated in a long time, but no reason to remove
it. Most notable that you might enjoy are the photo 'slide shows' that
I have there, including dozens of photos from the 7 years I lived in
Grand Canyon National Park South Rim; plus some travel photos and ...
well, just check it out.

And if you're curious about where you might have seen some of the
Grateful Dead photos that are in my book, check out my Credits. 

Hope to hear from more of you before Sunday!

Rosie
  

    
Are you doing anything now with any of the band members?
If not, can you share your departure?
If so, can you share what you are doing now?

Thanks