THe most complete car encyclopedia book series - My lifetime venture

Hello.

I'm looking to receive feedback about my work, so i have start ed chatting on my favorite websites, which are GTPlanet ( big fan of GT series), autopuzzles and of course this one.
I enjoyed very much here, reading good articles about some classic cars. Although i already had that information, it's good to read a good written article and Mr. Wouter Melissen does that very good, so "hatt off" !

My venture, for establishing "The most complete car encyclopedia", started years ago, in 1991 and after a continuous daily work i can say it is complete, right now.
Today, this car database, includes more than 10.000 car brands and 50.000 car manufacturers. I have said more, because somewhere on the way, i have stopped counting, because this was time consuming.
This database, covers all the car categories, including series production models, concepts and prototypes, race cars and coachbuilt. There are also included kit-cars, single-seater racers and also car replicas, only if they were built and sold under different names from the original model.
Any brand or model is included, only if i had some official photo or information of it.

Initially, i tried to put all the information on a website, but on the way, i changed my mind and decided to publish all the information in a series of volumes, called "The most complete car encyclopedia".

The first volume is already released, covering all the brand and their models, starting with letters from AA to AL and includes 362 car brands and 1353 car models.

All the other volumes will be released, with with a pace of a new volume, each every 2 or 3 months. As the database is complete, the release pace will be given by the time the information is getting in the "ready to print stage".

I'm waiting for your opinion about this. I dedicated a lot of time of my life on this and i will still do. So this is my lifetime project.

PS:
I hope this is not considered spam. I really need to get in contact with car enthusiasts, to get opinions and feedback about my venture and see how can i improve some aspects of my work.

Photos of the first volume, below, in attachment. If needed, i will upload more of them.
Thanks !

Hi and congratulation on your project.

I think the main aspect here would be the price, as I also think you moved away from the website project to try and get some reward for all your efforts, which I think is completely understandable.

How are you going to release the volumes? Is there an editor, publisher or some main channel? Say I'd want my copy, how does it work?

May I ask what is you nickname on autopuzzles? I used to post there every now and then, not so much recently.

[quote=md11;999985]Hi and congratulation on your project.

I think the main aspect here would be the price, as I also think you moved away from the website project to try and get some reward for all your efforts, which I think is completely understandable.

How are you going to release the volumes? Is there an editor, publisher or some main channel? Say I'd want my copy, how does it work?

May I ask what is you nickname on autopuzzles? I used to post there every now and then, not so much recently.[/quote]

Thanks !
I have the same ID as here, (only it has a ".com" at the end).

I have my own small publishing company, so i'm my own editor.
Regarding the price, each volume has a price of 120 USD, including worldwide free expedited shipping. The volume sizes will vary between 300 and 500 pages, but the price will remain constant.
If you calculate that a new volume is released each every 2 or 3 months, there's not such a big collector effort, financially speaking.
The volumes will be released one after the other, taking the database in alphabetical order.
Right now i do not have an online store, since my old car website is under reconstruction for becoming a store for the book series.
For now, as the first volume is already printed, i work on my facebook page and e-mail address and solve the payment through Western-Union or MoneyGram.
When the online store will be finished, the PayPal service will also be active.

PS:
My goal is not to get rich, but to have a monthly income, so i can go with this dream until the end.

This is indeed amazing.

As md11, main questions are now price and availability. Do you have any idea on those?

Anyway, congratulation and hope you are successful with the project.

EDIT Seems like questions have already been answered. Will purchasing the whole collection lower the cost?

[quote=Ferrer;999987]This is indeed amazing.

As md11, main questions are now price and availability. Do you have any idea on those?

Anyway, congratulation and hope you are successful with the project.[/quote]

Thank you for the good wishes.
I think you'll find the answer above. I have already answered.
Maybe you were righting while i answered.

[quote=all-car-brands;999988]Thank you for the good wishes.
I think you'll find the answer above. I have already answered.
Maybe you were righting while i answered.[/quote]
Yes I was too slow... ;)

Well, you have edited.
Yes, it will.
Each book bought directly from me, has inserted a unique code, which will be used when ordering the second volume. Doing this, the customer receive a 25% discount.
The second volume, will have a discount voucher, for the third and so on...

PS: This code must not be shown to anybody, as it can be used only once
Releasing the whole series, will take some time, few good years probably, so that's why i decided about this code. So you don't have to wait for the whole series to be released, for getting a 25% discount.

I have a few more questions.

Given the first volume covers only a small fraction of the whole publication, (AA-AL), I suppose there will be something like 50-ish volumes, and if each one is published every 2-3 month it could indeed take years (100/150 months = 8-12 years!).

What sort of guarantees can you provide to the buyers that the collection will surely be published so that he won't be left with half the volumes? Also, it may be difficult to keep the price steady for such a long period of time.

Have you considered a digital copy of the books? A protected pdf or something like that (I know there are some seriously encrypted formats)? That could speed up the release and perhaps lower the price as well?
I'm old fashioned so I love books, but I also came to appreciate the digital era. Also, 50 or so books, each about 300 pages, would take a lot of space :)

Now say I have $ 4.500 on hand (50 books at 25% off), could how long till I can buy the whole collection? Would I have to wait until the last release is out?
How much would it be for a digital-only copy?

I've been collecting some encyclopaedias over the years, and when I think of the overall price I sometimes wonder... but then I know it was worthy in almost all cases. Thing is they were all completed in at best 2-3 years, the most recent I did was over in a year with releases every two weeks.
The amount of work and material here is completely different but it's an awful lot of time and it may eventually result in people loosing interest and not completing the collection, a real shame.

I'm not trying to ruin your hopes in any way, I'm actually very happy that there are still people working hard on such projects without major publishing companies behind them (and often ruining the spirit of the project).

[quote=md11;1000007]I have a few more questions.

Given the first volume covers only a small fraction of the whole publication, (AA-AL), I suppose there will be something like 50-ish volumes, and if each one is published every 2-3 month it could indeed take years (100/150 months = 8-12 years!).

What sort of guarantees can you provide to the buyers that the collection will surely be published so that he won't be left with half the volumes? Also, it may be difficult to keep the price steady for such a long period of time.

Have you considered a digital copy of the books? A protected pdf or something like that (I know there are some seriously encrypted formats)? That could speed up the release and perhaps lower the price as well?
I'm old fashioned so I love books, but I also came to appreciate the digital era. Also, 50 or so books, each about 300 pages, would take a lot of space :)

Now say I have $ 4.500 on hand (50 books at 25% off), could how long till I can buy the whole collection? Would I have to wait until the last release is out?
How much would it be for a digital-only copy?

I've been collecting some encyclopaedias over the years, and when I think of the overall price I sometimes wonder... but then I know it was worthy in almost all cases. Thing is they were all completed in at best 2-3 years, the most recent I did was over in a year with releases every two weeks.
The amount of work and material here is completely different but it's an awful lot of time and it may eventually result in people loosing interest and not completing the collection, a real shame.

I'm not trying to ruin your hopes in any way, I'm actually very happy that there are still people working hard on such projects without major publishing companies behind them (and often ruining the spirit of the project).[/quote]

I will answer all your questions one by one:

Yes they will be published within few years time and there will probably be around 50 copies. I'm not sure about the exact number, as i cannot know precisely how the information fits on paper.

Keeping the price steady is not at all difficult. I live in Romania, life cost is a lot more cheap around here, so my monthly income does not have to be as high as in western country to have a good life standard. Also i have organized the business in such a manner, that many problems will not occur, since i do not have any employee, just collaborators, paying only for their service when necessary.

About the guaranties i can tell you this:
- i did not work daily, since 1991 to see this not completed. Imagine, that i have started with few hours a day and in the last 5 years i have reached an average of 12 hours daily, working on this. So i have absolutely no intention to stop this. If this is not finished, i have wasted my life, fro nothing, so it will never happen.
-i am a single father, so this kind of business suits me, because i need to stay home, to raise my kid
- i enjoy doing this, i want it forever, i'm like a kid eating candies or chocolate.
In conclusion, somebody with the determination and passion of working daily, from 1991 until now, will not stop until finishing the last volume.
PS: I'll give you one more reason. It's a dream to earn your money from your hobby and i intend to keep it this way forever.

Digital version is totally excluded, since there is not a way to secure it 100% and is very hard to trace the selling of copies.
And to be honest with you, i am a big fan of books and hate the gadgets.

To get the 25% discount you do not have to wait at all.
For a collector, the first volume is the only one that has the full price. All the others can be bought one by one with 25 % discount.
It works like this: The first volume has included a unique 10 digit code, written on the 25% discount voucher which is delivered inside the book. This voucher will be used to get a 25 % discount when you buy the second volume. The second volume, will have a discount voucher for the 3rd, the 3rd for the 4th and so on.
Don't show this code to anyone, as it can be used only a single time. Each copy of the book has a different code in the voucher.

Yes, the encyclopedias you are talking about were completed in a shorter time, but, as far as i have seen, they presented only the important brands, with a little text and sometime a photo, probably few pages for the important brands. They did not cover all the brands and model like in my book. I'll give you an example: Alfa-Romeo has in this book, way more than 100 pages, with 68 series production models, 118 race cars, 87 concepts and prototypes and 123 coachbuilt models.
If people loose interest by the time, it means they are not true car fanatic. This book is for the ones with real passion.
There are a lot of brands and models in this book, that have never been in any other book before.
So it all depends of the passion for cars. It's like you would say, a Gran Turismo fan, who bought the whole series, will not be interested in GT6. If someone loses it's interest about this, it means in fact, that he lost interest in cars and lost his passion. If someone looses it's passion, it means he did not find his real one, yet...

Don't worry, you do not upset me in any way.

That's why i will not give my work to a big publisher. They will watch this from a different point of view (money making) so they will ruin it for the true car enthusiasts, by transforming it into a smaller one, like we have seen before.

PS: I hope i have answered all your questions.
If you have more, don't hesitate to ask , that's why i'm here, to get in contact with people.

wow, what a work! Great to hear you have succeeded on getting this far

PS:
There is one more calculation:
-a book is 120 USD, so with the 25% discount voucher it will cost 90 USD, except the first volume of course.
- this books are offered with FREE worldwide expedited shipping
- a new volume will be released each every two or three months.

So in conclusion, to get this volume series, a collector needs to save 30 USD/month. That's not much at all, even for Romanian (my county) wages.
As i also said on the other two forums, it all depends on the passion.

[quote=basman007;1000010]wow, what a work! Great to hear you have succeeded on getting this far[/quote]

Thanks.
It was a very long way and i still have to go, until publishing my last volume. But now, i am even more enthusiastic, as i have the finished product in my hand.

I'll tell you what, the idea is great and probably the content too, but I have two main concerns:

1- the time is just too much, by the time we've reached half the collection pretty much all previous volumes will be outdated. Alfa Romeo for example will have released at least 2 models in the next 4 years, while Audi may well be around 10 considering also concepts and race cars and that's true for many others. This is of course inevitable, but that's why it's so important to complete the collection in a comparatively short time.
However, as you mentioned that you don't know the exact number of volumes, it seems like the collection isn't actually finished already. So at which stage is the work? Do you need the 2-3 months between each volume to complete them?

2- the price is probably right considering the efforts and content, not questioning that right now, but it's a bit difficult to put down $ 120 just based on a few pictures and the idea of the whole project.
While a small pdf sample of say 10 pages could show the potential buyers the kind of content they are about to expect, the actual quality of the volumes (paper, pages, print, cover, etc) is important as well at that price, and that's something you can't get from a pdf of course, but a few more pictures of the volumes should help.

I'd really consider a digital version though. There are proprietary file formats that basically can't be copied (via DVDs or BRs) or cracked. I've used some for work and they would probably take so much effort to crack that you may as well pay the same price for the actual product. I think you'd attract more buyers but that's just my opinion.

[quote=md11;1000014]I'll tell you what, the idea is great and probably the content too, but I have two main concerns:

1- the time is just too much, by the time we've reached half the collection pretty much all previous volumes will be outdated. Alfa Romeo for example will have released at least 2 models in the next 4 years, while Audi may well be around 10 considering also concepts and race cars and that's true for many others. This is of course inevitable, but that's why it's so important to complete the collection in a comparatively short time.
However, as you mentioned that you don't know the exact number of volumes, it seems like the collection isn't actually finished already. So at which stage is the work? Do you need the 2-3 months between each volume to complete them?
THIS statement of yours,is like you are asking me to built the Chinese Wall in the same time others built a Castle. Their book series were only the tip of the iceberg of what i am doing...

2- the price is probably right considering the efforts and content, not questioning that right now, but it's a bit difficult to put down $ 120 just based on a few pictures and the idea of the whole project.
While a small pdf sample of say 10 pages could show the potential buyers the kind of content they are about to expect, the actual quality of the volumes (paper, pages, print, cover, etc) is important as well at that price, and that's something you can't get from a pdf of course, but a few more pictures of the volumes should help.

I'd really consider a digital version though. There are proprietary file formats that basically can't be copied (via DVDs or BRs) or cracked. I've used some for work and they would probably take so much effort to crack that you may as well pay the same price for the actual product. I think you'd attract more buyers but that's just my opinion.[/quote]

1. You do have your point.This type of car encyclopedia can't be published in a short period of time and until finished there will be new models of course.
After finishing the last volume, there will be a book with updates in alphabetical order, which will be released at a time interval.
Regarding the stage of my database. It is completed, there are only few things to finish:
- getting license agreement for the pictures that are not owned by the car companies (in some rare cases, this never happens so some models are left without a photo)
-making addnotations for the guy that lays the info "on paper" so it can be ready to print. This guy does not know cars as much as i do so, i give him guidelines to photo placement of facelifts or special models, to avoid mistakes.
- then he has to lay the info on paper, so this takes most of the specified time...

I agree with your point, but you look at the part of the glass half empty. There are other factors that are the full part of the glass, like this is the only one, that can have the word "complete" in it's title, which of course attracts it's technical drawbacks.
I'll have to spent 50.000 usd for 50 volumes, to be be set ready to print simultaneously. So i'm collaborating only with one guy. From 2014, i have requested him to find a partner, to speed up the pace a little.
If i want to print them all at once, i will probably need a 500.000 USD budget, so that's impossible. Only if i win the lottery.

2. About the print quality i can tell you this:
Hardcover, full color. It has the same printing quality as any other hardcover book.
Volume I has 314 pages, 362 car brands and 1353 car models.
I will upload few pages soon, from the ready to print format so people can better see the content and some more photos of the book. (here i can say i am not a good photographer as i do not know hoe to make a photo with more light or to hide the glow of the page).
PS: I have already received orders and delivered few copies. There were no complains until now.

Regarding the digital version, there will remain a big NO. I'll tell you this. In my country i have seen copied movies before their release. Look at the PlayStation and XBox, they struggle with the copied games and the only way to fight is blocking the hacked consoles to join the PS Network...

Some more photos in the attachment :

And few more:

Forgot the upload button::rolleyes:

Again: :rolleyes:

Some more photos in the attachment, as some of you requested:

As James May says: Good News:

[b]1.[/b]
Regarding the fact that there are many buyers who cannot afford the hardcover full color series, i have made a decision and there will also be available [B]a lower priced edition, paperback and black&white interior. [/B]This will cost around 35 to 40 USD/volume, including FREE shipping (shipping cost is half of the price, to be precise)

[b]2[/b]
There is also a modification in the strategy of the hardcover full color series.
Considering these facts:
-a low priced version
-my intention to keep the 120 USD price, steady for all the volumes
-shipping cost /volume, which adds to each volume
-intention to lower the number of volumes

I have decided to drop the 25% collector discount, but keeping the cost of the whole series, in the same value with the discount. To do this, each volume (except the first, which has been printed) will have a minimum of 400 pages.
The book delivery service from my first office, is placed in the 1 to 2 kg category. The first 314 pages volume has 1,264 kg so a 4-500 pages book will have the same shipping cost as the first volume, but the number of volumes is dropping by 25 to 30%, making the book series even more affordable than with the 300 pages and 25% discount.

I'm sorry, i was not able to anticipate this solution from the beginning as i had no idea what the book weight will precisely be.

[b]PS: The ones who already bought the first volume, will keep the 25% Discount, even if the minimum number of pages per volumes has been raised. i think this is correct to do, as they bought the book, knowing there is a 25% discount.[/b]

I'll be back in around two days, when the website is finished, with photos and exact price of the low-priced version of the book.

P PS: I have felt like a "killer", destroying people's dreams, who do not afford the color series and just imagined how thy felt, so that's why i decided to have two version of the books with two price ranges.

I received the book it is great. Thanks !

I see you have finished the website: [url="http://all-car-brands.com/"]Car enciclopedia [/url][URL="http://all-car-brands.com/"]http://all-car-brands.com/[/URL] It has a good design, but i think it can be better.

Where would this be available?

Erniech

This became a subscription website:
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKJ5fZEf_i8"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKJ5fZEf_i8[/ame]

[url="http://www.AllCarIndex.com"]allcarindex - Discover unknown[/url] - Absolutely free of any charges, 24/7h available - world's largest automobile encyclopedia:

Discover unknown 11.000+ marques, 4600 concept car models and more than 350 self-made cars only here!

Since 2010. Updated everyday!

Follow in [url="http://www.facebook.com/allcarindex"]http://www.facebook.com/allcarindex[/url]

Nice, but not sure other than a "coffee table" collector would want whole series as info is not very broad.
eg take A610, no mention it was available in RHD, the first Alpine to come from the factory that way. and the A710 was destroyed as Renault marketing asked Alpine to start adding air con, heated seats etc etc all weight and cost. and then missing the very important A500 without Dieppe efforts perhaps may never see Turbo in F1 :)

So as a potential buyer I then wonder what other info is maybe not included :(
How will you do addendums to the published works as information is updated / corrected / added ?

Finally, the menu doesn't have Argyll motors, what models and history covered of it ?

Wish you the best, I hope enough collectors or dealers will buy set to justify all the work you have put in.

My comments aren't a criticism, ( well missing out world renowned and successful Argyll might be - but that's my nationalism :) ) just an observation which may be present in other potential purchasers and hopefully answering these will prepare you to pitch in future and achieve higher sales.