Re: Creative Industries of Detroit book

Posted by Leeedy On 2017/3/9 10:23:44
Quote:

DaveB845 wrote:
My copy of this major work arrived a few days ago and all I need is a few hours of bad weather and a lack of car projects to devote to an organized reading of it. First impressions are that it's a fascinating look at the people and projects that attracted our attention many years ago. I specifically remember my reaction as a ten year old to the Ford Mystere photos in the mid-Fifties. Later came the Packard Predictor fascination...something that continues to this day. The author seems to take us behind the curtain to reveal the combination of magic and muscle that produced these tantalizing idea cars. All is not perfect, and I intend to take him up on his offer to produce an Errata Sheet and get it back to him for his consideration for changes to a second edition. From what I have seen, it will be a very short list. Every Packard fan of the last ten or so years of the marque ought to be familiar with this work. The pictures alone are worth the price of admission.


No written work that is published is perfect. If it is, it wouldn't be done by human beings-or any power on this planet. One of the things about the writing business that people who read these things never know is that the author who writes the words for a publishing company or magazine or a car company or whatever, never has total control over what you end up seeing on paper. It may seem that way, but it just seems that way. Unless a book is being self-published, the author is limited in what he or she can do to prevent things ending up in the book that were not intended to be there.

In this case, this is not a self-published book. And just like the party game known as "telephone," something may be said one way and after filtering through several others, it comes out another way. Incredible as it may seem. There are these people called editors and art directors and a whole cast of others whose hands are in the mix. Thus the entire reason why the author offered an errata sheet prior to the time books hit the street (which the publisher did not want to include in outgoing books) to reel this all in. Author already anticipated folks would be sticking pins in their author dolls, for instance once some photo captions got swapped around and typos somehow managed to sneak into print. This is why the author wrote the errata sheet.

More than likely, whatever points one may be imagining are shortcomings of the author's knowledge or "Geeeezz! This guy is wrong!" kind of things are most likely covered in the errata sheet. Either way, there isn't anyone still breathing who knows this subject better than the author.

The very first history of Creative Industries of Detroit was published in Car Classics magazine in 1978. The editor of that publication at the time was the late, great Dean Batchelor who was a good friend. Even that article had one point that needed correcting-but again it was completely beyond the control of the author. Frankly, it was even beyond the control of the CC editor as well.

Now, that's over 41 years ago... enough for most internet sources and books etc. to acquire amnesia. Yet... no other publication has ever done such a history before or since on Creative. Ever. And certainly not with photos. The CC article was written by me-even if no one remembers it. And to this day you'll find bits of that original article (even whole sentences that I wrote back then) sprinkled and repeated all over the internet... and in various publications-usually without acknowledging the author. This is also another part of the business. Authors and creative people (no pun intended) live with these kinds of things-painful and even costly to the writer... largely oblivious to others.


"All is not perfect" in an imperfect world. But the author spent many, many years accumulating information and images no one has ever shown readers before. Ever. We all want perfection, most of all, the author. After all, it is the author's name on the cover of the book... and in the end, this is all most people looking at the book will ever see. So that's where the arrows get pointed. But when it comes to this business, it is what it is. Doing one's best as an author still can result in not being "perfect"... but this is an occupational hazard in books, magazines, movies, the music business and the car business. Heaven knows, yours truly has been involved in all of the above.

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