The Book Publisher
From James Donahue’s Journal
Retirement should have brought a dramatic change in my life style. As I am sure it has been with most people who fall into sudden retirement after a lifetime of jumping up to an alarm clock each day and then rushing off to an eight-hour job, adjusting to total freedom of movement is not as easy as it sounds. It is not like going on a week of vacation. This was a lasting change. The impact of this adjustment took some time to get used to. Doris will probably attest to the statement that, even to this day, I never really stopped working.
Old habits remained fixed. I could not sleep in but awoke as I have all my life with the sun. Now that I had a computer and an “office,” I found myself making coffee and then sitting down to write. The only difference now was that I was writing about things I wanted to write about instead of what my employer directed me to write about. I continued my shipwreck research and my weekly column, which I sold to various newspapers including the Times Herald. Also I started writing novels, just to see if I could.
Doris was still working so life in and around the house remained somewhat the same. Also Jennifer was still with us, although my departure from Port Huron redirected her sights for junior college to Saginaw Valley Community College. I had the little house to go to for my office, where I could work without interference, so I made the best of this period and it became a time of extreme creativity.
I wrote my second book dealing with Great Lakes shipwrecks, Steamers In Ice 1972, that I expected to be the second of a series of historical books dealing with the early years of shipping on the lakes.
To get this book published I founded my own publishing company which I named Lighthouse Publishing. I was still active in the church and thought the image of the lighthouse portrayed my position as a Christian lighthouse, and it also implied events on the water. I licensed the name with the county clerk and applied for a Michigan sales tax license. Steamers In Ice, Steaming Through Smoke and Fire, and a third book, Schooners In Peril all were published under the Lighthouse name.
After Altwerger & Mandel went out of business I republished Terrifying Steamboat Stories. Then when the Michigan Historical Society announced they were no longer interested in publishing Fiery Trial, I made a deal with Judge Lincoln and republished this book in paperback. It was not long before I had stacks of books piled up all over the little house.
I kept busy promoting all of my books. I used all of my connections with weekly and daily newspapers throughout the Thumb Area to announce new books and buy advertising space. I got invited to give talks to civic groups and made it a point to attend every historical gathering, museum event and shipwreck festival from Detroit north throughout the Thumb Area and west to Bay City and Saginaw to hawk, sell and sign my books. I established outlets for my books in stores everywhere. I had hardware stores, book stores, grocery stores and drug stores selling my books right off the counter. I found myself on the road almost every day filling orders for more and more books. My telephone was ringing off the hook.
Eventually I began getting orders for cases of my books from Thunder Bay Press, a Lansing based publishing and wholesaler. The owner, Sam Speigel, began ordering so many books at wholesale cost he stressed my little business. I paid something like $1.70 for each book because I published by volume, but buying 3000 books at a time pushed my budget to the limit. I sold my books for about $7 each, and sold them wholesale to stores at about $4 each.
I was a novice at the book publishing business and allowed myself to get caught up in Speigel’s scheme. When he first began ordering books I was thrilled to think I would have an outlet covering three or four states, and getting my books placed in book stores in every major city. But there was a catch. Speigel’s arrangement was to order the books by the case, with something like 70 to 100 books in the box, and then pay me the wholesale price if and when all of the books were sold. If books were damaged or not sold, they were returned without payment. If there were books that did not sell within a certain time, they sold at a discount price, sometimes below the wholesale price, so I received very little in the transaction. In this way Speigel scooped up my supply of books but did not send payment until weeks if not months after the books were shipped. Thunder Bay’s involvement threatened to put me out of business.
I was struggling with this problem when events in our lives came to a dramatic change and we made the decision to sell out and move to Arizona. It was at this time that Sam Speigel almost magically offered to buy my business. He called me to Lansing one day to have lunch and talk about his offer. In the end I accepted the deal, sold all of my books and turned the publishing rights over to Thunder Bay Press. Royalty checks were to be paid to me for what was to be an indefinite time. I saw this as a way to get extra money during our adventures in Arizona.
That worked well for the first year or two. Then there were some major changes at Thunder Bay. They hired a new manager who decided that books that were low volume sellers, that was less than something like 1,000 a year, would be dropped from further publication. My books were selling at levels of about 600 a year so all of my books were discontinued to get them off the shelves. I was in Arizona at the time and could do little about this. The royalty checks stopped coming but strangely my books continued to appear for sale on Amazon, Partners and other book sellers web sites on the Internet. Some of my books, like Fiery Trial, are bringing over $100 in used condition. I believe Thunder Bay either made a very big mistake cutting my books, or they continued publishing and stopped sending royalty payments. I could never find out just what it was that Spiegel did to me.
From James Donahue’s Journal
Retirement should have brought a dramatic change in my life style. As I am sure it has been with most people who fall into sudden retirement after a lifetime of jumping up to an alarm clock each day and then rushing off to an eight-hour job, adjusting to total freedom of movement is not as easy as it sounds. It is not like going on a week of vacation. This was a lasting change. The impact of this adjustment took some time to get used to. Doris will probably attest to the statement that, even to this day, I never really stopped working.
Old habits remained fixed. I could not sleep in but awoke as I have all my life with the sun. Now that I had a computer and an “office,” I found myself making coffee and then sitting down to write. The only difference now was that I was writing about things I wanted to write about instead of what my employer directed me to write about. I continued my shipwreck research and my weekly column, which I sold to various newspapers including the Times Herald. Also I started writing novels, just to see if I could.
Doris was still working so life in and around the house remained somewhat the same. Also Jennifer was still with us, although my departure from Port Huron redirected her sights for junior college to Saginaw Valley Community College. I had the little house to go to for my office, where I could work without interference, so I made the best of this period and it became a time of extreme creativity.
I wrote my second book dealing with Great Lakes shipwrecks, Steamers In Ice 1972, that I expected to be the second of a series of historical books dealing with the early years of shipping on the lakes.
To get this book published I founded my own publishing company which I named Lighthouse Publishing. I was still active in the church and thought the image of the lighthouse portrayed my position as a Christian lighthouse, and it also implied events on the water. I licensed the name with the county clerk and applied for a Michigan sales tax license. Steamers In Ice, Steaming Through Smoke and Fire, and a third book, Schooners In Peril all were published under the Lighthouse name.
After Altwerger & Mandel went out of business I republished Terrifying Steamboat Stories. Then when the Michigan Historical Society announced they were no longer interested in publishing Fiery Trial, I made a deal with Judge Lincoln and republished this book in paperback. It was not long before I had stacks of books piled up all over the little house.
I kept busy promoting all of my books. I used all of my connections with weekly and daily newspapers throughout the Thumb Area to announce new books and buy advertising space. I got invited to give talks to civic groups and made it a point to attend every historical gathering, museum event and shipwreck festival from Detroit north throughout the Thumb Area and west to Bay City and Saginaw to hawk, sell and sign my books. I established outlets for my books in stores everywhere. I had hardware stores, book stores, grocery stores and drug stores selling my books right off the counter. I found myself on the road almost every day filling orders for more and more books. My telephone was ringing off the hook.
Eventually I began getting orders for cases of my books from Thunder Bay Press, a Lansing based publishing and wholesaler. The owner, Sam Speigel, began ordering so many books at wholesale cost he stressed my little business. I paid something like $1.70 for each book because I published by volume, but buying 3000 books at a time pushed my budget to the limit. I sold my books for about $7 each, and sold them wholesale to stores at about $4 each.
I was a novice at the book publishing business and allowed myself to get caught up in Speigel’s scheme. When he first began ordering books I was thrilled to think I would have an outlet covering three or four states, and getting my books placed in book stores in every major city. But there was a catch. Speigel’s arrangement was to order the books by the case, with something like 70 to 100 books in the box, and then pay me the wholesale price if and when all of the books were sold. If books were damaged or not sold, they were returned without payment. If there were books that did not sell within a certain time, they sold at a discount price, sometimes below the wholesale price, so I received very little in the transaction. In this way Speigel scooped up my supply of books but did not send payment until weeks if not months after the books were shipped. Thunder Bay’s involvement threatened to put me out of business.
I was struggling with this problem when events in our lives came to a dramatic change and we made the decision to sell out and move to Arizona. It was at this time that Sam Speigel almost magically offered to buy my business. He called me to Lansing one day to have lunch and talk about his offer. In the end I accepted the deal, sold all of my books and turned the publishing rights over to Thunder Bay Press. Royalty checks were to be paid to me for what was to be an indefinite time. I saw this as a way to get extra money during our adventures in Arizona.
That worked well for the first year or two. Then there were some major changes at Thunder Bay. They hired a new manager who decided that books that were low volume sellers, that was less than something like 1,000 a year, would be dropped from further publication. My books were selling at levels of about 600 a year so all of my books were discontinued to get them off the shelves. I was in Arizona at the time and could do little about this. The royalty checks stopped coming but strangely my books continued to appear for sale on Amazon, Partners and other book sellers web sites on the Internet. Some of my books, like Fiery Trial, are bringing over $100 in used condition. I believe Thunder Bay either made a very big mistake cutting my books, or they continued publishing and stopped sending royalty payments. I could never find out just what it was that Spiegel did to me.