1997 Twilight Of Pistons
First Published 1997
This edition published 2007
A4 128 pages staple bound card covers black and white illustrations
£9.99
ISBN 13: 978-1905477-93-7
It is with great pleasure that I publish this reprint of Malcolm's detailed and exhaustively researched book, my first aviation title.
The publication of this book illustrates how I can help solve a difficulty that many local book authors face, as it is almost impossible for most of them to get a commercial publisher to publish their book, many get it printed at their own expense and distribute it themselves. This usually works reasonably for the first printing the minimum number of copies you can get printed reasonably economically being about 500 the problem arises when the initial printing has run out and the book is only selling slowly, getting another large amount printed isn't an option.
The publication of this book was technically quite difficult as it involved fitting the contents of a £30 illustrated aviation book into our maxim size of publication, about 130 A 4 pages. The remit being to produce a sustainable edition without losing any of the text or illustrations and to keep the price under £10, I hope that you will agree that I have succeeded.
The aviation story in Thanet during the nineteen sixties was the setting up and operation of the rival airlines, Air Ferry and Invicta. `Twilight Of The Pistons' told the story of Air Ferry and was first published in 1997. This led, eventually, to the publication of the Invicta story, `Take-off To Touchdown,' in 2006.
Continuing interest in this era has led to this edition of `Twilight Of The Pistons,' a hoped for but unexpected event and which is entirely due to the keen interest in preserving local history by Michael Child who has published an extensive and exciting range of books about bygone years in this historic part of Kent.
The only changes made to this edition have been some typographical amendments and in Chapter 10 - Postscript where the details of the crew flying DC-6 HB-IBT, ex G-APNP, on the ill-fated mission to Uli in Biafra, have been corrected.
|