German book on the Limes

[mcbishop]

But the crux is, I don't know any publishers, and bugger-all about the business.

Well these days that qualifies you to run a major publishing company; just make sure you don't actually like books... sorry, 'Product' ... ;-)

Anyone here know their way around? I'd be happy to do groundwork in Germany.

Pitch it to Oxbow. Anything Roman and military tends to sell better than My Favourite Flints vol.3 or Theoretical Approaches to Trowel Cleaning (hands up who's surprised). However, at a guess, there would probably be a license fee to pay the original publisher (who would then pay the author royalties from sales of such a foreign edition). There will probably also be repro fees on any illustrations (yes, many rights holders charge separately for each language edition) which may deter a publisher.

If you can make a good case for producing a translation (evidence of lots of demand from RATers, for instance) then that could only help your case, particularly if you can isolate and describe the competition and explain why this volume uniquely fits the bill.

Every now and then I admire the photos and try to figure out what they're doing.

That's an interesting perversion, Jim ;-) My favourite comes from one of his oeuvre (I think it may have been one of the Aalen booklets) where the legionaries are lined up taking a leak, entitled 'Pinkelpause'. Wouldn't take you long to guess that particular piece of onomatapoeia...

Mike Bishop