Writing is easy, selling is hard, Destin author says

People kept telling Destin’s Don Schroeder he should write his memories down in a book, and he finally did.

Then all he had to do was to sell it.

“There are 800 new books that come out every day,” Schroeder, 72, the author of “Air Raid Nights and Radio Days,” told The Log.

“Known authors and authors that have someone working for them all the time at the big publishers, their books get shown and marketed by bookstores; others can easily get lost in the shuffle. My book was published (but) not by a publisher with clout.”

“Air Raid Nights and Radio Days” recounts Schroeder’s memories of growing up in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s: Jumping onto ice trucks to snatch a chunk to suck on, making cootie catchers, staying home because of polio outbreaks and wondering if the Nazis or the Communists were on the brink of taking over the world.

Schroeder, a retired journalist and public relations professional, said he initially wrote the book in the early ’90s, looked at several subsidy publishers — companies that offer to print and market books for a fee — and settled on one out of Salt Lake City that offered the lowest rate to authors.

“After waiting and waiting and numerous phone calls,” Schroeder said, “I found out that the owner of the company had acquired a gambling addiction, took all the money and went to Las Vegas ... I lost interest in publishing the book at that point.”

To make matters worse, Schroeder realized that the word processor disc he’d saved his files on wasn’t compatible with computer word processing software. Ten years later, however, his wife, Helen, discovered a service that would translate the files into computer readable documents for only $35.

“Once I saw it on the computer,” Schroeder said, “I started updating, reworking it, adding things I’d thought of ...”

Then Paul Kummer, the Schroeders’ pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, suggested Tate Publishing, a Christian firm in Oklahoma. Schroeder submitted the manuscript and it finally saw print last year.

“It’s been hard work doing this, but what else have I got to do?” Schroeder said. “It’s been fun. We’ve enjoyed this — Helen’s worked as hard on it as I have.”

Schroeder said the biggest change he sees today compared to his youth is that “we were very grateful to the people, our parents and relatives and others who had fought and won World War II, and I don’t think young people now appreciate their parents and their elders as much as we did. That’s too bad. When you think about it, we’re called the Silent Generation. We didn’t have any huge demonstrations and complain about this that, and the other, though there were things we might have complained about. We were just grateful and thankful.

“To complain seemed the antithesis of being thankful to this generation that had done so much for us — they gave us life, they also protected our liberty and opened up all sorts of opportunities for the pursuit of happiness.”

The thing he misses most from his past, he said, is the way neighbors and friends came together to entertain themselves.

“It was the days before television and folks visited and came over not so much for meals but just to visit and to play cards and to share information,” Schroeder said. “You got to know your neighbors and that’s very different — right now people have too many other things going on to tie up their time.”

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Don Schroeder is scheduled to sign copies of “Air Raid Nights” at Sundog Books, July 22, 4 to 8 p.m.; Learning Express in Fort Walton Beach, July 25, 4 to 6 p.m.; and Learning Express in Destin, Aug. 1, 4 to 6 p.m.