GreatCreators

Well, I have been working a bit on the layout of some of the GreatCreators books. Particularly some Jules Verne. I find the history of his novels very interesting. His work started out in French and was published during a time when there was a big push to increase literacy in France. Well, even those people that were somewhat literate didn't have a complete mastery of reading so editors tended to include far more illustrations in their books than were seen in English or even Spanish books of that time. The more illustrations one had, the wider the appeal, and therefore, the greater the number of sales.

What does this mean? Well, the original French versions of Jules Verne's books are pretty heavily illustrated, sometimes having as many as one illustration every 5 pages. The English translations, well, some translations included some of the illustrations, but must didn't, or included only a few. Why? That is an interesting question. I am not certain of the "real" answer but I am guessing it had to do with ownership of the artwork/engravings at that point in time. You can find some of the illustrations online, but most of those scans are lower resolution and don't really compare with some of the original artwork. If your public library has a large, central branch with foreign language books you might be able to see some better illustrations. Some university libraries have copies as well. Often they are in archival sections of the library and you can look at them but not check them out. The first releases we do of Jules Verne won't have illustrations (sorry) due to the work scanning, doing the layout, etc. I hope to be able to offer the illustrated versions sometime as well. Those might cost a bit more due to the time and effort involved. I might even have those as print versions available through Amazon but that is a tale for another day.

One of the reasons I set up this company was to learn new things. Not only do I get to learn new things about doing layout, playing with photoshop and other programs, but I also get to learn about some of the earliest "science fiction" and "fantasy" authors and stories. I know, boring to some, but the history of some of these things is truly interesting to me.

Okay, so far we know that I'll be doing stories from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. Yes, there are more. Yes, I'll talk about some of them soon. The truth is, I have had some huge help with this product line, help that makes it even possible. I am hoping to have that help (JTJ) post to the message boards (JTJ) when they are up and going (JTJ) even though he refuses to post to message boards (JTJ) or blogs (JTJ). Hey, I didn't mention any names, exactly ...