The Mandolin - a history on Kickstarter

[Larry S Sherman]

Congrats on the KickStarter success!

Apparently I missed this...can I still pledge to get a copy?

Larry

[Franc Homier Lieu]

Congrats on the KickStarter success!

Apparently I missed this...can I still pledge to get a copy?

Larry

Even if you can still pledge, you should probably hold off and buy one of the copies that will be on offer in the classifieds. The last minute supporter who put this over the top will have nearly 70 copies to re-sell. I might start a Kickstarter campaign to help him/her liquidate these!

[vic-victor]

Great, Graham, congrats. I can't wait to get my copy.

[motojosh]

Although I'm new here, I'm glad that I was able to support this project! Looking forward to reading the book. Congratulations on the successful Kickstart!

[multidon]

I am happy for Graham that his book will now be published. Can't wait to get my copy into my hot little hands to devour it in November!

I am thankful that a kind soul came in at the last minute to scoop up 70 copies for later resale so that the project would not fail. But in my opinion only getting 347 backers from the mandolin community to get behind this is vey sad indeed. This forum alone has over 44,000 members alone and does not represent the sum total of mandolin players and enthusiasts.

This is a book that needed to be written. I am very interested in musical instrument history and development, and when I first got interested in the mandolin I was shocked that there was no authoritative work on its history. None. Most instruments have had several or more. You could fill a library with books about the history of the guitar.

I know we need to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. After all we will have our book. But I just can't help feeling sad that Graham did not have wider support.

[Marcus CA]

I am thankful that a kind soul came in at the last minute to scoop up 70 copies for later resale so that the project would not fail.

I second that emotion! And here he is:

http://www.mandolincafe.com/ads/89605

[objectsession]

I am thankful that a kind soul came in at the last minute to scoop up 70 copies for later resale so that the project would not fail. But in my opinion only getting 347 backers from the mandolin community to get behind this is vey sad indeed. This forum alone has over 44,000 members alone and does not represent the sum total of mandolin players and enthusiasts.

This is a book that needed to be written. I am very interested in musical instrument history and development, and when I first got interested in the mandolin I was shocked that there was no authoritative work on its history. None. Most instruments have had several or more. You could fill a library with books about the history of the guitar.

I know we need to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. After all we will have our book. But I just can't help feeling sad that Graham did not have wider support.

I'm definitely happy this Kickstarter succeeded. I agree that it has a lot of value to the community. But I don't think it's necessarily a book that everyone in the community would want to read or want to read at this time. Unless the book was not well represented, it seems to be a *very* in depth book, which is of course it's value, but with that depth comes a decreased audience. In addition to probably a large part of the community that is currently inactive, there's probably a large part of the community that is more interested in just learning how to play and the basic workings of the instrument (myself included) - they (and I) are reading books like Mandolin for Dummies.

. . But the positive side of that is that there are people that aren't interested in the book right now that will be interested in getting it in the future. So, hopefully, there will be enough interest in the future to justify keeping the book in print (or at least available in ebook).

[Ron McMillan]

I, too, hope that Martin (who stepped in to save the Kickstarter project) doesn't find himself with a lot of books that may be difficult to sell. But if thousands of Cafe members viewed the thread and didn't pledge to buy a copy, perhaps the demand was simply not there. I'm a mandolin enthusiast, but faced with a paperback book mostly about historic mandolins that don't really interest me, at a purchase price close to $100 including shipping, it simply wasn't an attractive proposition.

[David Lewis]

I kicked in for an e-book but will buy one of martins if he's having trouble selling.

[Graham McDonald]

I went into this fully aware that writing books on musical instrument history is a niche market, and a book on mandolin history is going to be a niche within that niche. It is not going to make it onto the New York Times bestseller lists (though I would be delighted if it did) and it isn't going to buy me a new BMW. I can only hope the readers will add a little to their knowledge and understanding of mandolins and enjoy looking at some interesting instruments.

Again, thank you to everyone who has supported the project, and if you are remorseful that you missed out on the Kickstarter, Martin is taking orders through the classifieds for the first publicly available copies.

Cheers

Graham

[Larry S Sherman]

I, too, hope that Martin (who stepped in to save the Kickstarter project) doesn't find himself with a lot of books that may be difficult to sell.

I bought two from Martin, so I'm hoping that over time he sells them all and this book stays in print through multiple printings and updated editions.

Thanks Graham for all of your hard work, and to Martin for the final push!

Larry

[Eric Foulke]

Excellent! I have been waiting for this book to come out and I cannot wait to read it.
Thanks to Graham for the hard work and the mandolin community for stepping up.
Martin is a boss.

[Mandolin Cafe]

Noting today is the second anniversary of the publication of The Mandolin.

Here's our vote for if or when there's a second printing that a little effort is put into color correcting the book cover.

Not a reflection on Graham's work, but note the original cover on the left, same image on the right with about 30 seconds of very basic color correction 101. The RGB original on the cover image is totally out of whack, easily corrected. Surprised the company that printed it didn't take the time. Maybe opinions vary, but a cover deserves better. I used to own this original postcard so noticed right off it wasn't handled correctly by the printer.

[Steve Ostrander]

It's possible that the designer was going for a look, but I definitely like the color corrected version better.

[Graham McDonald]

The colour may have been deliberate

But thank you for noticing the anniversary.