Bob Myers – Beer Can History
In 1960, Bob Myers and Will Anderson started beer can collecting as college fraternity brothers. Starting with what was consumed on campus, then driving around NY for different brands, getting as far as a Montreal road-trip. These two gentlemen were early pioneers of this hobby, knowing personally many early collecting legends, and either owning or at least holding many super rare beer cans.
In mid-2000’s Bob started http://www.beercanhistory.com, an amazing work discussing early collectors, old breweries, and provenance of many of the hobby’s tougher cans. His work is a “must read” for any collector with even the slightest bit of interest in our hobby’s past.
Beer Can History now available in FOUR formats, three digital, one printed book
Bob’s original work, simply point/click website with tons of information. Freely viewable from within any type of web browser.
With BMV 4.2, all Beer Can History plus some Randy edits are now bundled with the Beer Magazine Viewer, all pages digital, fully keyword searchable. Bob’s website is standard HTML, which means no “real pages”, essentially infinite width and height bounds. Adding this unbounded web site content to “structured pages” as part of BMV was surprisingly a non-trivial mini-project! Still a fun challenge, accepted and completed!
3) EBook - BCH/BCHBook.pdf
Structured page format hard enough, but making things more complicated, management of an index across those many physical pages. It took Randy over a week of try/fail before I finally came up with an acceptable software solution to automatically generate the six pages of book index, since no way I was going to manage this quantity of pages manually.
The above PDF is Beer Can History in “digital book form”, all 268 pages merged into an approximately 550 MB large document. This can be viewed as a digital book with any web browser, just might take a bit of time to download such a large PDF file.
4) Now available in hard-cover, physical book!
I have worked with many digital projects but never a real, physical published book. Reading a number of web articles on “book self-publishing”, Barnes & Nobles has a nice web site to upload information so what the heck, I experimented with the above digital book PDF.
Selected hard cover book, 250-300 pages, high quality color pages, heavy paper stock and total displayed cost of just $33.03? Of course, I was skeptical that I could get a real, hard cover, full color physical book, so many pages, published for just thirty dollars! My color printer cartridges cost more than that! Intrigued, now four weeks later I have sitting on my office desk a real hard-cover published book, even with an official ISBN number!!!
Bob and Randy are NOT going to print any advance book copies, only “publish on demand”
If you are interested in a 268-page, real physical book, your cost would be $33 + UPS ground shipping plus state taxes equals approximately $43 total and you can own one as well. Zero profit to be made here, educational only, you just pay exact publishing costs.
If real hard cover book interest, please read and follow this process:
·
Click here to fill out form and submit a purchase request.
UPS ground does not ship to P.O. boxes and a phone number is required. Please form
only, no direct email, no FB messenger, no RB forum. The form allows for simple
bookkeeping my end.
·
I will “Add to cart” a Barnes & Noble purchase for your
requested quantity and address. Taxes vary per state; shipping varies per state
and quantity. I will send you email with an invoice for exact costs and allows
you to confirm correct shipping address.
· If you agree to the invoice, send PayPal (friends and family) to randy@mbcinfo.com. By far the simplest my end, but if you need to send check or money order, indicate in your above email and I will respond with my USPS mailing information when I send the invoice.
·
Once payment is received, I simply complete the Barnes &
Noble purchase with YOUR shipping address, the book will be shipped
directly from B&N to your provided address.
· Please be patient. This is “publish on demand” only, no pre-printed books. The B&N website states ten business days, from experience estimate three calendar weeks (19-23 days)
·
Once your book is physically printed, I will receive B&N email
with UPS tracking number of which I will forward so you can track shipping. Experience
has been between 2-4 days.
· Sorry, no refunds. This is bare-bones, exact costs publishing, zero profit. I am happy with the physical book and thus far only positive comments from others!
The following are some random pictures of Bob’s book. These can be viewed in full resolution in either the EBook, BMV or website, or better yet, purchase a good old-fashioned book!
