My Las Vegas Book is Selling on Amazon for over $900!

A book I co-wrote about Las Vegas in 2008 is selling on Amazon for over $900 a copy – USED! I feel a bit cheated. But it was a great time and a wonderful story.

Back in 2007 I was doing a lot of travel writing. One of my best customers was Foulsham Press, an old time British travel publisher which was branching out into online ventures. I was contracted to write general travel features about cities like Barcelona and Milan. After I completed several of these projects the editor was so impressed he referred me to the paper publishing branch. They needed someone to write a travel guide to Las Vegas.

Yes!

This was actually part of a series of books – A Brit’s Guide to Los Angeles, A Brit’s Guide to Bermuda, and of course, A Brit’s Guide to Las Vegas. The writer who had been doing the series, Karen Marchbank, had been updating her books every two years. it was time for the next update but she had grown tired of the project and wanted to concentrate on other projects. Enter center stage me.

I got a 10-day expense covered sojourn in Vegas, staying free at a number of resorts while getting some cool behind-the-scenes tours of places like the Venetian, Planet Hollywood and the El Cortez. Even better I and my assistant (who just happened to be my wife Lisa) enjoyed a continuous stream of free shows and dazzling dinners. Our favorite time was an intensive “Chef’s Choice” 12- course dinner at the old Social House, overlooking Pirate’s Cove and watching the Siren’s show from the balcony in front of Treasure Island. Sushi and Saki, oh my.

I worked hard rewriting about 70% of the previous edition. For my troubles I received a flat fee – no royalties or anything. Just a magnificent time in Vegas and surroundings tied to a lot of fantastic memories. The fact it gave me a decent writing credit helped out too.

This morning I was checking some of my writing credit details for an updated C.V. and ran across my old book – selling for a dazzling $994.83.

That was the only update I did for the series. By that time Lisa and I had moved to Ecuador so my projects changed to South America. But it was nice to have such wonderful, pre-CoVid Vegas.