I am happy to finally announce that our latest book “Treasures of a Lost Fleet II” has finally arrived. Last week I drove to Ashland, Ohio to personally take possession of the books to insure that they were not damaged in transit. The book looks really great. As with our first book, we endeavored to faithfully reproduce all of the treasures that we featured on the website, including text and images. Some of the text had to be updated to reflect changes regarding new information that we uncovered from the time that the initial text was written. The images in our latest effort are, in my opinion with a few exceptions, much better than the first book. This was due to lessons learned when we published our first book. We took better care to photograph our selected treasures using high-definition equipment. There were a few images that were provided to us by outside sources that were not as optimal as we would have liked and those were replaced where possible. However, some could not be replaced so we sharpened them up the best we could. Overall, I like the quality of this book and it will make a nice companion to the first publication.
Regarding the first publication, we are going to do a second edition of the first book. As many of you know, the first book was limited to an edition of 100. When it sold out, that was it. Many people who did not get a copy of the first book have requested that we consider a second edition to enable them to have not only a copy of our latest book but a companion first copy. So, after the first of the year, we will begin publishing the second edition of book one. This edition will not be identical to the first book. We will be making some changes to set it apart from the first book and to insure that the first edition maintains its value.
Those of you who have ordered a copy of book two are probably wondering when the book will be ready for distribution. The first time I mailed all of the books myself. I really don’t want to do that again! So, I have engaged the services of another person, Lenore Wetzel, to help me out. Some of you have already come into contact with Lenore during the run-up to the conference. She helped immensely with handling tickets and also taking book orders. She has already ordered packaging and special labels for the book shipment which should arrive next week. Once we have all of our material in hand we will begin the process of mailing the books. We are requesting that books be paid for by check to avoid a 3% fee for credit cards. We will publish payment instructions prior to the time that we are ready to mail out the books. We are trying to keep the postage and handling fees to a minimum. Some who have ordered books have indicated that they will pick them up at the FUN Show in Orlando in January (I will be maintaining a table there). So if any of you who have ordered a book would prefer to have the book delivered at the FUN Show in January in person, just let me know by e-mail.
Ben Costello
President, 1715 Fleet Society
