What's In A Name?

When I started getting serious about writing a book on Alfred Cheney Johnston I felt I needed a working title to help keep me anchored to ACJ’s story as I researched and wrote the essays. I settled upon “The Line of Beauty”. The line of beauty is a classic principle historically taught in fine art schools. As I wrote in my essay about ACJ’s use of the line of beauty, “…this compositional theory based on the idea that curvilinear forms in nature, such as of an incoming wave or a nautilus shell, are more beautiful than non-curving forms.” Look at almost any photograph Alfred Cheney Johnston took and you will see his utilization of “the line of beauty”.
Shortly after signing my book contract my editor wanted us to brainstorm some title ideas for what the publisher had decided would be the definitive book on Alfred Cheney Johnston. Of course the “only” title I wanted was ‘The Line of Beauty”. I sensed immediately that this did not resonate with the publishing house. Besides, upon doing a search on my title idea it was discovered it had already been taken. A book had just come out with that exact title. It was on the Thatcher government in England. To this day I fail to understand the connection between “the line of beauty” and English government.
That’s not to say that we still couldn’t have gone ahead and used that title but the publisher feared from a marketing standpoint it would cause confusion amongst the buying public. Alas I had to say good-bye to the title I had my heart set upon, “The Line of Beauty”. Building a book, after all, is a communal process between publisher, editor, the marketing department and the author. You win some and you lose some but in the end everyone’s aim is to put out a beautiful book that catches the eye as well as the imagination of the public. And the title of a book is one of it’s most important calling cards.

A COLLECTOR'S GUIDE TO ALFRED CHENEY JOHNSTON

Long before I ever thought of approaching a "real" publisher about writing a book on Alfred Cheney Johnston, I decided I would try my hand at self-publishng a collector's guide on ACJ's incredible work. At the time I wasn't very computer savy so I in effect produced a handmade price guide. It was a labor of love so I didn't mind all the hands on work it entailed. When I finally had my "master" compiled I had about 100 pages. I would take those master sheets to a nearby copy center and xerox the pages setting it up so each sheet of paper was printed on both sides. No easy task to figure out how to do that but with a little experimentation I got the hang of it. I brought the pages home and using a binding machine I'd purchased I would spiral bind the individual hard copies of "A Collector's Guide To Alfred Cheney Johnston". Eventually and thankfully a friend told me about a new phonomena sweeping the Internet....EBOOKS! I was given a whirlwind explanation of how to create a digital ebook and before long I had translated all my information and images from my master hardcopy into an ebook that could be read off a CD-ROM. You can read more about this price guide with its 600 plus images organized into 6 distintive galleries at http://alfredcheneyjohnston.com/Catalog.htm