NACIS 2016 Presentation Mark Monmonier, Syracuse University While finishing up Volume Six of the History of Cartography, I wrote and self-published a personal history titled Adventures in Academic Cartography: A Memoir. This presentation describes the project with the aim of encouraging others to share their own experiences in book form. Topics covered include organizing the book's content into ten largely thematic chapters; using the family financial diary instead of budgeting, we slavishly record every expense to verify activities and dates; hiring an experienced copy editor to provide the much-needed second set of eyes; adding a picture gallery; coping with Microsoft Word's limitations for page layout, including its propensity to down-sample images; designing and creating my own cover; publishing with Amazon using my own imprint, Bar Scale Press; preparing files for uploading to CreateSpace, Amazon's print-on-demand subsidiary; pricing affordable print and Kindle editions; orchestrating a low-energy promotion that actually got some decent book reviews; and making minor revisions.

1. Adventures in Self-Publishing:
A Personal, Do-It-Yourself
History of Cartography
Mark Monmonier
Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs
Syracuse University

3. Memoir (Dictionary.com):
1. A record of events written
by a person having
intimate knowledge of
them and based on
personal observation;
2. Usually, memoirs. An
account of one’s personal
life and experiences;
autobiography.

4. Cover of Book 1
Cover of Book 2

5. In standard usage among historians, internal history is
the sort that focuses primarily or exclusively on the
professional activities of the members of a particular
scientific community: What theories do they hold?
What experiments do they perform? How do the two
interact to produce novelty. External history, on the
other hand, considers the relations between such
scientific communities and the larger culture.
—Thomas Kuhn, “Notes on Lakatos” (1970)

6. Organization and contents
Research and writing
Abortive attempts at finding a “real” publisher
Publishing with Amazon
Creating a cover
The obligatory photo gallery
Marketing, promotion, reviews
Revised edition
Brief outline of what follows

7. Chapter titles and other content
7. History
8. “Theory”
9. Map Collecting
10. Writing
11. Epilog
Bibliographic Essay
Index
Photo Gallery
Preface
1. Background
2. Cart Labs
3. Research Streams
4. Books
5. Service
6. Consulting

8. Annotated pages for
current project: a
book on patented
cartographic inventions

9. Record book entry for
8 – 11 May 1988,
visualization symposium at
Princeton; met John Tukey

12. No luck in finding a “real” publisher
• Turned down by a literary agent: would be a hard sell
because successful marketing would be too difficult
• Too small a market for a commercial publisher
• Syracuse University Press is no longer publishing
memoirs—looked at the manuscript but was
insufficiently impressed by the likely market
• Two other university presses not publishing memoirs
• Open-source publisher De Guyter Open had a
favorable review of the proposal but would require
a troublesome conversion to its own standard format.

15. Edward
Tufte,
self-publisher extraordinaire

16. Logo for the title page
and back cover
For the
spine

18. Alexis Sadoti,
Geo 381, Fall 2011

19. Size:
5.5" × 8.5"
Birch Std,
44-pt., regular
Chalkduster,
26-pt regular
Gills Sans, 13-pt.
regular + italic
Background:
12C, 0M, 8Y, 0K
Gills Sans, 12-pt.
regular
Corner mounts:
88C, 30M, 72Y,
16K

21. A matter of style

24. Thwarting default
downsampling in
Word by Adobe
PDF Conversion

25. Now on Kindle too, minus
the index

26. Out-of-pocket costs
$1,560.00
140.42
79.00
55.00
31.15
27.93
10.00
$1,903.50
copy editing
22 promotional copies of print book
Kindle conversion
copyright registration
3 proof copies + tax + shipping
7 Kindle licenses, proofing and promotion
ISBN registration for Bar Scale Press
TOTAL

27. Libraries with copies, according to WorldCat.org
10 in the United States:
Syracuse University University of Chicago
Cornell University The Newberry
New York Public Library University of Illinois
University of Pennsylvania University of Denver
Library of Congress UW—Milwaukee
1 in Canada: University of Alberta
6 in Europe:
Universiteit van Amsterdam Zentralbibliothek,
Badische Landesbibliothek, Karlsruhe Zürich
Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden Trinity College,
Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig Dublin

28. The no-go review
copies
list

29. “The cheeky take-off of the iconic 2008 Obama poster on
Adventures’ front cover places his own image above the
word MAP. What a fortunate juxtaposition for cartography,
and we are equally fortunate that he has shared the story
behind that juxtaposition.”
—Roger Downs, in Imago Mundi
“A remarkable clarity, punctilious copyediting and proofing
distinguish his books, including this one, reflecting a flair
for language that readers enjoy sampling.”
—Paul Starrs, in Geographical Review

30. Bad break: Alt | though, rather than Al | though
Overly gappy line
Befor
e
After

31. Patents and Cartographic Inventions:
A New Perspective for Map History
Forthcoming in 2017
from Palgrave Macmillan
Herman E. Schulse,
“Chronological Instrument,”
US Patent 1,959,601,
awarded 22 May 1934