If you’ve never written a book…oh, are you missing out on fun. I don’t mean it just from how you’ll spend so much of your life looking for source material, hunting down obscurities, lining up interviews, getting cooperation and all other manner of hilarity. I mean it in that if you’re writing non-fiction, especially history or biography, you’re going to need illustrations.
Sometimes you’ll be fortunate. I certainly was with my last book, because Ben Robertson’s papers at Clemson University included a reasonable selection of photos. Since my publisher put a limit on how many photos I could have, and since the photos in the Robertson papers were a decent cross-section of his life, it wasn’t difficult. Better still, since Clemson held the rights to the photos, getting permission was easy.
I wish the same could be true for Dave Garroway. Yes, the Garroway papers at Wyoming have some photos, and I have secured high-resolution scans of several of them. I have Wyoming’s permission to use them, and that will suffice for a few. Dave’s daughter Paris has also gone through the family photos and unearthed some treasures, and I’m having her get those scanned at the resolution I need for the book. That only takes me so far, though. Some of the Wyoming photos, and at least one of the photos Paris has, have their rights managed by others, and I need permission from them. I also have several very nice NBC press photos I would like to use.
The temptation may be there to say “Okay, it’s a small-run book…take your chances. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.” That’s not how I work, though, at least not in print. Here on the blog, I’ll use low-resolution images and claim fair-use. (I’m certainly not making any money off this, for one, and I also try to keep the images small and give credit as I can.) For one thing, copyright is something I often talk about with my students. How would it look if I got in trouble for something I admonish them against? I won’t even get into how much it would cost me in legal fees and penalties and all that. Yech.
I could go through the big image brokers. If I could afford Getty Images, that would be super, because Getty has dozens and dozens of Garroway photos. I don’t have Getty Images money, though. Shutterstock has a smaller selection, but they’re good and they’re mostly different, and while the cost is lower (and though I may go that route if I strike out with the other things), it’s still a trifle dear.
At the moment, photo clearances are the major thing that keeps me from sending the manuscript in and beginning the process with my publisher. I have a contact who is trying to assist on the NBC photos, for one. And I have had some unexpected successes: one photo I dearly wanted to use still had its rights held by the Associated Press. I contacted AP and a very kind representative took up the case and worked out a very affordable rate. On top of that, the AP still had the negative, so the image you will see in the book will look as good as the day it was made.
There’s one more surprise, and I negotiated it last week. I’m not going to spoil the fun just yet, but the book now has a cover image. It was one I had never seen before, and I loved it the moment I saw it. I think you will, too. And it’s all thanks to a friend who put me in touch with the right person, and that right person was very happy to work with me to make it happen.
So there you are. As with any project, it all comes down to the items on the punch list, and the help of good people along the way. And maybe that’s the real value of a project like this.