Pipe Smoking In The Civil War - A New Book By Benjamin Rapaport

[ssjones]

Excellent points, as always, MLC.
Specialty tobacciana books versus automobile books is a good comparison. I'm a big fan of the Can-Am era of motor racing. This large coffee table book came out 2002 and I balked at the then $50 hard-cover price tag. Cheapskate that I am, I opted to read a copy requested thru my local library, which didn't cost a time (well, taxes, er, never mind). I just searched for that book on Amazon and I can now pick up a used copy starting at $66, which is a paperback copy! New copies start at $120 and go up. I still have the $66 used copy page up contemplating and alternately kicking myself.
http://www.amazon.com/Can-Am-Peter-Lyons/dp/0760300178/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419688783&sr=1-2&keywords=Can+Am%2C+lyons
As far as I can tell, Ben's took is the cheapest book on Civil War tobacciana available. In that context, a real bargain.
I enjoyed that Scientific American article on e-books and I can agree completely. I made the switch to a Kindle Fire for fiction several years ago and never looked back. However, after subscribing to one newspaper and two Auto magazines (Car & Driver, Road & Track), I quickly became frustrated reading them on the e-book. Reading them was an exercise in frustration that I abandoned. I still get print editions of both magazines and have a subscription to our local paper.
This quote is also telling and my one complaint about reading fiction on an e-book:

"The implicit feel of where you are in a physical book turns out to be more important than we realized," says Abigail Sellen of Microsoft Research Cambridge in England and co-author of The Myth of the Paperless Office. "Only when you get an e-book do you start to miss it. I don't think e-book manufacturers have thought enough about how you might visualize where you are in a book."

 

[misterlowercase]

Thanks for weighing in Al.

::
Further ramblings about the internetz,

there are some very good resources out there.

One of my favorites is googlebooks - the clip ability available on many of the older books is a great feature.
Lots of good stuff to be found!
Examples:


Confederate Veteran magazine

(multiple issues archived there)
:
Not from the Civil War era, but interesting nonetheless,

A Sketch of the Tobacco Interests in North Carolina ...(1881)
:
...some clips and a quote:

War Talks of Confederate Veterans
:

Camp-fire Chats of the Civil War: Being the Incident, Adventure and Wayside ...

By Washington Davis
:

It is amusing to witness the demonstration with which our boys receive rebel deserters into the lines. When the armies are lying very close together, the disaffected rebels contrive to steal out unnoticed for a time, though they are generally discovered and fired upon before they reach our lines. As soon as the soldiers see them coming, they appreciate the situation at once, and cannot resist the temptation to jump up from behind their works, though at the imminent risk of their heads, waving their hats and shouting, "Good boy, good boy, come in out of the rain. You are our man. You are making good time," &c.
The first word of salutation is "Got any tobacco reb?"
The returned prodigal, just escaped from the husks of the rebellion, is then treated to the fatted calf, the hard tack and coffee, which latter is to him a luxury indeed.

The History of the Civil War in America: Comprising a Full and ...
:

Addresses Delivered Before the Confederate Veterans Association, of Savannah ..
:
Sometimes a bookseller will provide sizable excerpts, like this one, from a letter by George B. Carlton of Newburyport, Massachusetts, a member of Co. B of the 19th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers in the Civil War. :

1861 - 1864 ARCHIVE OF MANUSCRIPT LETTERS HANDWRITTEN BY A 19th REGIMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER

(10/20/1862: gererall hospitall Frederick, MD)

". I am wounded I was hit in the right thigh witch is broke but it is a geting along first rate now. I can get around the barrack and I Shall Soon be abell to come home and eat that dinner with you I was wounded in the battle of the 17th of September at antietam and I was hit early in the morning and was two days and one night in the hand of the Rebbell and they treated me first rate and give me every thing that they could get Such as water and bread and meat and tobacco and the Second night they went off and left me and about.

:puffpipe:

 

[benrapaport]

Rather than concur in the very convincing remarks from MLC and ssjones -- although I agree with both -- there are two factors they did not mention and the gentleman who questioned the retail price of my book failed to recognize. First, a self-published book, such as those from Hanna, Newcombe, Unger and a few others used their own illustrations and images. Tobacco and Smoking Among The Blue and Gray includes myriad images which belong to others -- their intellectual property -- and the cost of permissions, the written authorization to use that specific property is costly, particularly images from museums that are contained in this book. The process of crafting a book of this nature is not just writing and printing; to use the property of others in a commercial endeavor without the fear of a legal challenge requires "permissions," an inherent cost that must be taken into consideration in the calculation of the publisher's expenses. The second factor regarding cost is that industrial-sized, conventional publishing houses offering a mass-market book has a print run in the several thousands, while a vanity or small press has a print run of, say, 250 to 500 copies. And here's a perfect example to illustrate my point. One of my books, printed in Canada in 2005, was a run of 500; the unit cost was $47, and had I requested 1,000 copies, the unit cost would dramatically drop to $16/copy. Knowing the market for that book, 500 was all I believed I could sell.
Using professional printing, binding, a hard cover and a dust jacket (e.g., offset printing with a Heidelberg press), as Tobacco and Smoking Among The Blue and Gray, is more costly than digital publishing where the first and the last copy is the same cost! While I do not know the print run of this book, Gary Schrier knows the market intimately well. However, not knowing whether pipe smoker/pipe collector demand for this book would be large -- there is no sensing at this juncture as to the degree of interest -- he would be at great financial risk to invest in a large print run. These two critical considerations dictated the retail price. I am not defending the price of $65 so much as offering a factual and defensible rationale for why some books cost more than others, particularly the several aforementioned soft cover, digitally produced titles that are marketed to a very narrow, niche community.

 

[jguss]

I agree with everything Troy, Al and Ben have said on the subject of pricing, but would add one more generic thought.
When I started my business 25 years ago and was raising money I learned a valuable lesson: it's a helluva lot easier to convince people who are predisposed to accept what you have to say than it is to convince the inherently skeptical.
Sounds pretty obvious, I know, but for me it was a breakthrough since this insight has important implications about where to allocate scarce resources. Ever since then I've pretty much abandoned any attempts at the hard sell. At the margin my time and energy are always better spent finding and talking to people who are amenable to what I have to say. Or to put it colloquially, to fish where the fish are.
The application here is simple: if someone really thinks this book is too expensive, fine. That's the right conclusion for him. Rather than argue the point, the productive response is to move on and find the many others for whom it will be perceived as fairly priced, or a bargain.
This is purely a marketing observation, and no reflection on the many interesting points made in this thread.

 

[benrapaport]

Jon: no question that you are spot-on, but I don't believe that any of us is trying to convince that skeptical person of the reasonableness of the book's price. If he's solely, wholly, and totally someone who seeks his information on the Internet -- that is what I have concluded from what he wrote -- if he opts to gather what's contained in this book via the Web, he'll be investing more than $65 dollars' worth of labor to get an equivalent understanding about Civil War soldiers' pipes. He just happens to be a person who's reluctant to spend that kind of money, and I, for one, certainly understand his view. Having run Antiquarian Tobacciana, my mail-order book business, for more than 30 years, I certainly have felt the impact of a significant downward trend in book sales, and I can attribute some of that decline to the Internet, and a fraction to a lesser interest in books on the part of a younger crowd of smokers who, as I have observed through the years, are more interested in "wood" than in "word."
But, I've gone off message. All I meant to accomplish is to educate this gentleman on why some books are more expensive than others. Pricing is not an arbitrary decision by the publisher. It's based on much more than "what the market will bear." In a niche market such as we are, the publisher has to be sensitive to his cost and what pipe smokers might be willing to pay. You will agree that Gary Schrier is a niche publisher marketing and merchandising to a niche market: he is, indeed, sensitive to the price points of today's tobacco-related publications.

 

[jguss]

Ben:

Agreed on all points. Assuming enough publicity, the market will always tell you if your pricing is right.

And to repeat the important part of this thread, it's a great book and should be bought by anyone interested in either subject or the intersection between the two.

Jon

 

[jitterbugdude]

So what is the final cost of this book? I went to order a copy and was tallying up my order when I noticed the "add PayPal fees" notification. So far, I have $65.00 for the book, $5.00 for shipping and... ????? for PayPal fees

 

[jitterbugdude]

Never mind.. I found it..

 

[xrundog]

When searching the internet for old photos of specific things, one must sift, sift and sift some more. And many sites that host these things often go dormant and die a slow death. The resources are simply gone. Several of my favorite pipe reference sites have gone that way. So an opportunity to own a hard copy reference with quality photos that will never go away, is for me, really priceless. Affording the gentleman who wrote the book, with a lot of effort I don't have to expend, a little profit, seems perfectly fair to me. The price for this book to an old pipe collector like me, is a good deal. Even if I don't collect Civil War era pipes, I can see the genesis of, and surmise the evolution of later pipes. Plus I get to read about the context that these pipes were used in. $72 seems like a pittance for the knowledge I'll gain. And the enjoyment I'll have while doing it. ::

 

[brian64]

If there is any doubt as to how small a niche of the market ANY Civil War book occupies (much less one focusing on pipe smoking in the war) consider the fact that there are actually college students in the USA who have never heard of the Civil War...boggles the mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRZZpk_9k8E

 

[jitterbugdude]

That's really sad! But what's even sadder is that these dumb shits probably vote.

 

[benrapaport]

I am saddened that this discussion among members about a book has drifted into a rant on college students' ignorance of history. I had hoped that we would stay on message about the pros and cons of this book's price and contribution to pipe lore.

 

[xrundog]

I received my book today. Flipping through and skimming some text, this looks really great. I thought I might see a chapter on GAR presentation pieces, but maybe there's another whole book in that. It's a good quality book, the photos are clear and helpful. I really like this book and feel that for what it is, the price is reasonable.

 

[benrapaport]

Hello! You got my attention with the comment about GAR-specific presentation pipes. I had not looked into this particular genre when crafting my book, but the single GAR pipe I found on the Web is an ordinary bent meerschaum that has an engraved inscription on the silver rim. There is nothing unusual about this pipe bowl, but perhaps you have encountered others that exhibit war-related inscriptions. I must admit that I paid little attention to meerschaums, because there is no evidence that soldiers in this war had access to the raw material or the appropriate tools to carve it, and hand-carving is the principal theme that flows through the book. Frankly, I do not believe that there would be sufficient illustrative substance about this specific subset of Civil War-related pipes to warrant an illustrated book about them, however many there might be in collections or in museums. But ... I have been wrong before.
Nonetheless, even with this shortcoming you have identified, I am pleased to know that you are enjoying this book. Thank you for purchasing it!

 

[jitterbugdude]

Does this book touch on the different types of tobaccos used such as Brightleaf (and the impact it had on the Northeners)? chewing tobacco used for pipe etc?

 

[xrundog]

Ben, I suspect the pipe you found with the engraved rim is mine as I have posted pics of it around. I agree that it's a fairly mundane example of that type of pipe. The engraving is what makes it unique. I thought there might be more and better examples of GAR presentation pipes. Seemed like a logical gift for the time. But maybe not. It's difficult to really know. Thanks for considering my comment.

 

[benrapaport]

Jitterbugdude: The best answer I can offer is to use your own words: It "touches on." I do discuss tobaccos, even mention a few companies that produced pipe and plug tobaccos, but the principal emphasis is on quoting what the soldiers wrote in letters home or discussed among fellow prisoners, and the operative words were most often generic "tobacco" or "'baccy," Chapter 2 is titled "Tobacco During the War Years: Commerce, Customs, and Consumption." But, I don't want to oversell the book to you. You'll have to decide, based on what other buyers say, not what I say, as to whether the book will be an interesting read worthy of your purchase. I have to remain neutral for fear of being called a self-aggrandizing pitchman. Hopefully, what I state herein will help you decide.

 

[philobeddoe]

I received my copy today and it is is quite beautiful and packed with photographs, it is quite the accomplishment Mr. Rapaport....well done!

 

[brian64]

I am saddened that this discussion among members about a book has drifted into a rant on college students' ignorance of history. I had hoped that we would stay on message about the pros and cons of this book's price and contribution to pipe lore.

My apologies...the intention was to make an observation that I considered to be on topic, but I can also see how it could lead to distraction.

 

[johnnyreb]

I've received my copy of Mr. Rapport's book and while I haven't been able to spend much time in it yet, I wanted to say how very pleased I am with it! He & Mr. Schrier have brought to us a splendid book. Judging by the pipe photographs alone some of these soldiers were incredibly artistic carvers and definitely produced what were to become some family heirlooms. A side benefit to the book for me is being able to see some Civil War photographs of what daily life was like for the soldier, that I haven't seen before.
Thanks Ben, for your efforts; it is educational for me. I know now when I next encounter an old pipe that I previously thought of as just some folk art I'll be paying closer attention to it!