I don't read military vehicle books per se, because I find them a bit boring. I prefer histories and accounts of peoples' lives; though as Tony illustrates in the review section, this doesn't automatically mean all are good books.
Jack has got a wad of book reviews to upload and the thing that worries me is the lack of "bad" books I've seen lately, because they are out there and I suppose I have chosen "wisely" as the old knight advised Indy. I am as much concerned with the boring as the innacurate and haven't found anything that helps me nod off lately. I'm just chunking through a big history of the Australian war in Vietnam which gives so much interesting and vivid information as well as making interesting judgements on all the associated ingredients of that terrible conflict (was there a good one?). I suppose the issue is whether any of you lads would get a book on the basis of a review on HMVF, I hope so. Our reviews are genuine consumer reports not advertorials (print trade term) for publishers like you
sometimes see elsewhere.
Of course Tony is asking how the publishers can afford to print so many bad books. The market is discerning and very knowledgeable. The bargain bin fighter planes of the world type books you used to see in railway station book stalls are something of a rarity these days. Good. But I remember during Gulf War 1 when we sent someone up to Smiths to buy a pile of this very sort of book for us to get illustrations for The Sun. We used these books for a while until the pix agencies cottoned on and started copying handouts or doing their own snaps. Nowadays we have specialist picture agencies doing this sort of thing and The Sun even has a defence editor. The days when I would be asked to thumb through a Salamander guide to "tanks" to find a colour picture of an MT-LB are long over.
Books have moved on a pace since then, but it is still pretty much hit and miss. I only hope the thing I'm working on doesn't turn out a pile of shyte.
MB