The Renegade Writer Blog

Kayleen writes, “A couple of years ago in doing research for an article I ran across several photograph albums full of pics taken during the 1930s of an around-the-world trip that two very famous American composers took together. They were working on a musical during the trip. The photos were taken by a professional photographer hired by the two and are in excellent condition. (I don’t think the musical was a great hit). They are B&W of course. I loved looking at them – there are at least 75 pics of places like Burma and the South Seas. Several didn’t have the composers in them, but some did. Would this be something that a book publisher would be interested in? This was in the composer’s hometown so the museum there has much information on him, though not so much on the trip itself. I can’t get the pics out of my mind. It seems like other people would like to see them, but I’ve heard that to publish mostly photos and little text is costly. Thoughts?”

Kayleen, just reading your description of the photos piqued my interest. Why did the two composers hire a photographer? Why were they traveling around the world? Was it for fun, or had they hit a creative lull and were looking for inspiration? Were they good friends — or lovers? And why did the musical fail? It seems like there’s some kind of story here … whether it’s a magazine article or the subject of a book would depend on answers to questions like these. The fact that you can’t get the pictures out of your head is a good sign, but I don’t think pictures alone will sell this. (As for publishers not wanting to do books with lots of photos — it’s more because of photographer costs rather than printing costs. Here, the photos exist, so what you have to worry about are rights. But that’s putting the cart before the horse.)

At the very least, I think you can get an article out of this (”The Last Trip of X and Y”) and place it somewhere like the Smithsonian magazine or — gasp! — the New Yorker with the right angle. If your additional research unearths some really fascinating stuff about this trip, then start thinking about a book. Good luck, Kayleen — again, it sounds engrossing. I love stories like this.

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