Private publication of personal war diary 1915 to 1918 Help required

[Julianw]

I am not sure where I should post this request for help.

 

I am planning to privatly publish the diary of my grandfather, Major F J Nugee of the 1/4th Bn Leicestershire Regt of his second tour at the front.  The diary covers the time he spent at the western front from 17 Nov 1915 to 22 Feb 2018.

 

Interestingly the diary contians all the names, addresses and nok of all the officers and men that served in C Company during this time.

 

I attach a few examples of the diary into which I will place photos he took while at the front as well as a pictures of a few of his souveners. The diary will be for distribution to family members and perhaps a few our institutions who may have an interest in a copy such as the regimental museum.

 

So my question is:      Has anyone had experience of publishing private papers?

                                    Can anyone recommed a suitable publisher?

                                    Also could anyone advise on a suitbable illustrator than can draw maps /plans of the events/battles he particiapted in? 

 

Any help amd advice would be greatly appreciated

 

Julian 

[GraemeClarke]

Hi,

 

I have done this several times but have printed the book off on a printer and then had it bound by a book binder.

 

I used a couple of book binders but I made sure they were used to binding dissertations.

 

I have not done this for at least 10 years and at that time the binding cost £20 each.

 

A couple of examples below.

 

Just a thought,

 

Regards,

 

Graeme

 

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

Hi JulianW, I joined this forum about a month ago, and, as I explained in my first post,  https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/281198-accidental-shooting-of-an-officer/ , I have been typing, editing and abridging my grandfather's WW1 diary (5 chunky handwritten notebooks now in the IWM for safe-keeping) for some 2.5 years, with a view to publication later this year for charity.

I can't pretend to be an expert in this, as I have no background in either publishing or military matters, so I can only tell you about my own experience.

I began by typing the whole diary just as it stands, which, while it means that I have typed quite a lot of material that won't appear in the published version, has made the task of editing much easier.

I am lucky in that my grandfather himself illustrated his diary, not only by pasting in photographs, newspaper cuttings, postcards, maps etc, but also drawing beautifully detailed coloured sketch plans of the layout of trenches where he spent any length of time. He has also occasionally drawn diagrams to illustrate the latest equipment and/or explain new tactical ideas. The book, which is to be published in paperback, is just under 350 pages and will have about 170 illustrations.

Like you, my initial motivation was to provide an attractive accessible volume mainly for my grandfather's great-grandchildren, and from that the idea developed that it could be sold in the Lancashire Fusiliers Museum in Bury, and then that it could be sold a little more widely to benefit an ex-serviceman’s charity. 

After my typing and editing I have had the diary typeset by someone who runs a small publishing business producing - mainly - local walking guides and local history books. I am sure that some people do this bit themselves with publishing software, but for me publishing is something that I have never done before and will probably never do again, so it has been helpful to have an experienced publisher giving me useful tips such as how best to arrange the colour pages to keep the printing costs as low as possible etc. It has also been good to have someone who knows the correct language to use for getting a quote from a printer.

Graeme Clarke’s hardbound books are obviously extremely attractive and durable, which inevitably comes at a price, so it depends on your objectives as to whether the price is worth paying. My books will have cost nothing like £20.00 each to produce even at today’s prices, in part because they will be paperback.

I know that many people who self-publish books these days go down the print on demand route mentioned by Graeme, and I recognize that one important advantage of that is that you don't end up with a huge number of unsold volumes for which you have incurred the printing costs upfront, and which simply take up storage space. For my sins, I am opting for a fixed print run, so all my fingers are crossed ...

[RaySearching]

7 minutes ago, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

I began by typing the whole diary just as it stands, which, while it means that I have typed quite a lot of material that won't appear in the published version, has made the task of editing much easier.

 

Should an historical document such as this not be published in its entirety ?

 

Ray

[seaJane]

On 15/06/2020 at 21:13, RaySearching said:

 

Should an historical document such as this not be published in its entirety ?

 

Ray

Consider the cost, though. As long as the whole text is kept and/or recorded, such as in the IWM as mentioned above, it seems to me that the diary's previous owner should be at liberty to publish the most interesting parts.

sJ

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

Hi RaySearching, I completely agree that the originals of  historical documents should whenever possible be made available in their entirety for research, which is why my cousins and I decided to place the original diary in the IWM when my uncle died about 8 years ago. In the IWM it is freely available in its entirety for research by appointment (or at least would be but for covid).

 

However, the purpose of the published diary is slightly different, as indicated by the word used in my last post, “accessible”. Another objective was to produce something that would be attractive to people like me who still like to read from a physical book. Unfortunately, to have sought to include a complete transcript of the diary in the published version would have produced a result which would have been neither accessible nor attractive to the average reader, as well as being prohibitively expensive to print, with little prospect of recovering even the initial outlay, let alone producing any surplus for charitable purposes.

 

I hope that the paperback version as published will appeal to a wide readership, to include amateur historians, and also those who don’t really class themselves as historians at all, but would simply like to know more about the experiences of an ordinary middle-ranking officer on the Western Front in WW1, or maybe (if they come from Lancashire) about what their own relatives experienced if they enlisted with the Territorial Battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers.

 

Having said that, I hope that professional historians who are members of this forum will not dismiss it out of hand, so I should perhaps say a little more about my approach as editor, in case anyone thinks that the published version will distort the facts.

 

Essentially my grandfather’s complete manuscript diary falls into two halves, the period when my grandfather was with the 2/5^th Lancashire Fusiliers from September 1914 to September 1916, when he was wounded on the Somme, and the period from September 1916 to when he was demobilized in January 1919.

To keep it to a manageable 350 pages the published version of the diary focuses on the period from September 1914 to September 1916, and contains an almost complete transcript of that period, with only a very small amount of abridgment (eg summarizing periods spent on leave visiting relatives etc. rather than setting them out in full). I should be very surprised if even the most ardent historian thought that I had cut out anything of interest from this period.

 

The second part of the original diary is then summarised in an “Afterword”. It’s quite a lengthy Afterword, but here I must plead guilty to cherry-picking the “best bits”.

Maybe there is scope for a second published volume in due course dealing with the period from September 1916 onwards, who knows?!

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

Thank you also SeaJane for your reply, which was posted after I had begun to type mine. There is clearly room for debate here, but I hope that in the end what I have done will not offend too many people too badly.

[RaySearching]

 L. F by Proxy Thank you for your comprehensive reply

good luck with your project

 

Julian sorry for the small hijack of your thread 

I also wish you all the best with your project

I am sure your grandfather's diary will be of interest to many of the members of this forum

and military historians in general  

kind regards Ray