[Horst Weber]

Good evening MP !

About twenty years ago, I started the same task as you. My books about the air-war events in WW II over the area Bitburg - Prüm (West Germany) including the touched areas in the neigbourhood like Luxemburg Trier, Wittlich, Daun and East Belgium. The books were released in 2001 and 2003 and I had similar questions.

- If you have images or reports, which were are an original source of the USAAF and you gained it from an official archive, are these images/written stuff like op-reps, op-summaries e.g. PUBLIC DOMAIN. This means, anyone can use it in a printed publication, but showing this source in a footnote.

- Private images depend on the particular Countries laws. Here in Germany, the law is as follows: If a privat photo hasn't been published within 50 years after it's creation officially (newspaper e.g.) and no particular copyright had been established, will this photo also fall under the public domain. Anyone can use and publish it with the source in a footnote.

- Unfortunately, I have no idea, how this German example for private images is handled in U.S., U.K., France or Italy.

- There are some different ways to publish the book. You go to a publisher with your manuscript. Gaining profit, he will tell you, that you have to get him atleast one-thousand subscrpters, and he will print about 1000-1200 copies. But the forework has to be done by you.

-In my example, my history club had the printing and publishing costs, whilst I got a percentage of each sold book. After a while, the costs had equalized and they made a little profit. But by thousand copies for each issue, no big amountd coming around.

- Do not believe, please, that you become rich with such a project !

- Undoubtfully, you are enriching the local scene of enthusiats/historians/veteran-orgs. with new facts.

If you are further interested, send me a PN, please.

Good luck and all the best !

Horst Weber