Good for you John!!!

As to whether it will be a best seller is going to be up to the demand in your chosen market. I've just finished my book and, for the first time in my life, need glasses. OUCH. Long hours and too much coffee, but well worth it. I stumbled upon the Garden Web only by accident while doing my marketing research. I've enjoyed most of the postings and it took my mind off my work long enough to keep a fresh, creative attitude.

Good luck and cheers!!!!!

You DID ask so I would suggest you package a calendar along with your book and for the 12 months filled with gardening tips you have a photo of 6 men and 6 women in provocative stages of gardening. We all know sex sells so include it in your product. I might suggest the men be posed in the warmer months and the women in the colder months. I sometimes regret my mind works like this, or as Norm in the comic strip once said "I hate being me."

A calendar! Great idea! (Especially since I could illustrate it myself.) I had toyed -- for a very brief period -- with Nude Gardening as a working title, but I'm not sure it would fly in our rather prudish society.

Writing it will be the easiest part (since I've written more than a dozen --non-gardening -- books so far, and I've been taking and organizing notes for a decade), but keeping it fresh and interesting will take work. But I'm in no hurry, and I have enough material to branch out or even change course if the book demands it.

Thank you! I did want to know. I agree about editors.

So John, tell us. After reading your chosen heading of this thread, are we to infer that the title of this new garden tome will be John Bites!!! ?

Hmmm...

IronBelly

IB:
Working titles rarely translate into the title of the final book (at least for me). So -- unless I find something really luscious to bite into . . . . But I know it won't be a bullet. I don't like the taste (or, for that matter, the texture). No. I'm afraid the title will probably something utterly boring about gardening in the glorious Pacific Northwest, picked by some tyro editor.

But at least I got started!

John,
I've been waiting for someone from the PNW to write a book about gardens specific to that area.
PNW Regional Gardening.

There are so many incredibly talented gardeners up in your neck of the woods and it would be inspirational to have a book dedicated to this region.

There have been many books written on California gardening, Nantucket style, Subtropical style , Seaside Gardens, Woodland gardens , Thai gardens.... let's see some of that talent from the PNW in a comprehensive book.
The quirky,
The formal,
The arty,
The Bainbridge crowd,
Nooks and cranny
Grannys and hipsters
Community and the Secluded.
all al la PNW.

after all, you know that area well.

All of the above, except for the Bainbridge crowd, which bores me because it is too chi-chi. (Bainbridgers tend to garden for effect, not for fun.)

Hmmm. I was at Bainbridge Island a year ago with the garden writers and was duly impressed with what I saw. We visited Heronswood then the home of Lewis and Little, then we visited private gardens. The thing that had the most lasting effect on me was an in-ground hot tub that appeared to be made of stone which had a wonderful view of Seattle across the bay. In Seattle I noticed horsetail (equisedum) was quite an invasive pest.

Eddie:
But they were on their best behavior, because you were on a tour. . . .

As for horsetail -- yes, it is very "common" up here.

John, apropos of your comments about David Francko's book on hardy tropicals being too "Midwest-oriented", we hope your book will have coast-to-coast appeal (and no lacunae). ;)

Really though, best of luck, and I look forward to seeing it in print.

Eric:
Thanks!

I'm afraid it will be very parochially (and ethnocentrically) Pacific Northwest. But I'll say so in the title, so readers know what they get.
:)