Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 26, 1995 TAG: 9501260075
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CYNTHIA BRIGGS ORLANDO SENTINEL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The 33-year-old has co-authored a book that's taking off from bookstores.
``The World Record Paper Airplane Book,'' which has been in stores nationwide since August, has sold all 150,000 copies. It has recently finished its third printing and is soon to start its fourth.
``It's sold out ... throughout the nation,'' said Tammy Blake, spokeswoman for Workman Publishing Co, the book's publisher.
To publishers, those statistics constitute a success, especially for first-time authors.
``Most people don't see that success right off the bat,'' Margot Herrera, editor for Workman.
Success didn't come that quickly, said Lammers, whose background doesn't include any writing credits. Trained in mechanical engineering, he worked at McDonnell Douglas Corp. in St. Louis building nuclear bombs and working on rockets. Five years ago he moved to Florida and now owns the World Record Airplane Co. in Palm Bay, which sells paper airplane kits.
He and co-author Ken Blackburn, a co-worker at McDonnell Douglas who still works there, first came up with the idea in 1991 while driving across Kansas to go skiing in Colorado.
Blackburn, the world record holder for the longest time aloft for a paper airplane, and Lammers were influenced by a paper airplane book they knew as children, ``The International Airplane Book,'' which Lammers said is still sold today.
That book, however, is outdated and sticks with simple designs, Lammers said.
Lammers said he first tried to market his book on his own, but to no avail.
He found he had neither the money nor the skills to effectively market his book. What he did have was a clever idea that eventually caught the eye of a publisher in an unconventional way.
The lucky break came when a North Carolina publisher bought an airplane kit in Lammers' store. Impressed with the idea, the publisher flew Lammers to North Carolina to discuss publishing a book. Although the publisher's company produced computer books, not novelty items, he knew a publisher in New York he thought might be interested.
The publisher introduced the kit to Peter Workman, president of Workman Publishing and the company immediately contacted Lammers. They negotiated a contract and six months later, the book was published, Lammers said.
What worked for Lammers was not his eloquent prose or skilled presentation, Herrera said. What sold the book was the novel idea, the right market and timing, she said.
``We knew there were other model airplane books out there but we felt there was room in the market for this type of book,'' she said. ``We just took their premise and ran with it,'' she said.
Herrera said when Workman received the original copy, what they saw was a thin black and white booklet - filled with loose-leaf pages and no illustration. There were only eight airplane models and the information provided was minimal, she said.
But, by using the combined efforts of the publisher's marketing knowledge and Lammers and Blackburn's airplane building skill, the book grew to 64 pages of background information and to more than 100 pages of full-colored airplane designs, maps and runways, she said.
Blake said the book was distributed to all the major book chains as well as department stores and catalogs such as Paragon, Johnson Smith and Miles Kimball.
by CNB