Speaking as someone who has had a few titles published by Amberley, it was nice to be invited to have books published by them.
And several friends and members of my family are quite chuffed for me.
I am the first to admit that I'm never going to be in the same league as someone like, say, Matthew Wharmby, when it comes to having books published, but I am pleased to have left some sort of mark to show for my time on this planet. It is just a shame that all this happened just after my father died so he never got to see this happen.
Also it has laid to rest a little bit my concern about my photos going to landfill when I shuffle off this mortal coil.
They are what they are, unpretentious collections of photographs taken by enthusiasts who are not professional photographers, but still have potentially interesting images to share.
To answer a couple of specific criticisms, I understand Amberley are now cutting down on the number of new train and bus titles.
Also, while I cannot speak for anyone else obviously, I personally went to a lot of trouble to get the facts correct on the captions on my images, although inevitably the odd inaccuracy probably did creep through.
Regarding the quality of the images, when I was doubtful of the suitability of the image, either due to subject matter or quality I did check with Amberley before including it.
In a couple of books I did struggle to come up with 180 images I was entirely happy with so inevitably some not so good images were included.
But in one book I had over 300 images to choose from so it was very hard work to whittle it down to 180.
Inevitably of course I'm kicking myself now at a couple of images I included at the expense of ones that were better. but that's life.
I also like very much several books published by other people with some interesting images. Some of them are fast becoming interesting period images.
My experience with having books published with Amberley has whetted my appetite for self publishing one or two books through Blurb, so I may well do that next year.
So while I can certainly understand people's negative observations about them, a lot of people have jumped at the chance of getting their photography published.
