snail infomation needed

[rosanna123]

hi i would like to write a infomational book on land snails but i need some help, i need pictures and infomation on all species of land snails, and well as what illnesses they can get how to tell if they have it and how to cure it. i am hoping that this book will come in handy for all snail owners by telling them all they may need to know about land snails. i really hope that you can help
thank you

[coyote]

For photographs, you could look through the pics here and contact the person who posted to ask permission to use the image. You can also browse through stock photography websites such as istockphoto, which has over 4000 images of snails to choose from (you have to pay, though). Actually, you should pay anyone whose photo is used for publication. Whoever took the photograph owns the copyright to it, regardless of where it's posted. (DH is a professional photographer, so I know a little about image copyright.)

I don't know anyone who knows all the illnesses snails can get. I wish someone did, and that they joined the forum here and shared their knowledge with the rest of us. You may wind up having to spend a lot of time looking online or browsing through obscure research journals in libraries to collate all that is currently known about snail illness. I doubt much is known about how to cure snail illnesses because most research is done from the perspective of snails as pests and threats to human agriculture, so the only profitable research that gets done is regarding how to eradicate them, not heal them (sadly).

I wish you luck in your endeavor, and I hope you share whatever healing information you happen to run across. Sometimes it really breaks my heart when people post here about how they're struggling to help their sick snail and no one knows what to do to help.

[rosanna123]

thank you for the advice. this book is going to be about all land snails, i hope for it to be a refrence for not only beginers but expirenced snail people aswell, i will tell you about the care of snails and illnesses, pests ect. but also you can look up what species of snail you have and learn about them and what speacial requiaments they have. my problem is i dont have photos of most of these snails and dont no much about most of them e.g. vertigo gouldi
so any help would be much appricated

[wolf]

Hi,
obviously, you´re trying to cover a large field...... . Kind of challenge - best of luck! Concerning the determination of species, you should perhaps concentrate on the most common species found in captivity. Otherwise it will quickly become hell of a job. There are lots of books only dealing with the problem of species determination. If you are interested, I can give you some citations you can use in your literature section.
I can scan through my picture folders, perhaps I can give you some of them; I got some pictures of living snails and empty shells, as well.
Regards: wolf

[rosanna123]

thank you very much all help is much appreicated. i am not sure that all the snails i have on the list so far are all kept in captivity so a list of snails in captivity would also help

[wolf]

Hi,
excuse me: where does the list come from? There might be about 20000 species of terrestrial species, so which do you select and for which reasons? It´s a tremendous work to deal only with 50 species and to document them with pictures and descriptions....... .
Next week I will send you a short list of basic determination literature. But, we have to keep in mind that many questions can only be answered by using original papers in specialized journals and/or the original species description .
Ciao: wolf

[rosanna123]

i have been looking through the internet and have been making a list of snails that i have found i belive that i have all the the achatina and archachatina species and sub species and loads others including european species but as i said a list of snails in captivity would also help im also going to get in touch with zoos to see if they could give me infomation as well.
still any help is much appriciated
thank you for the help so far everyone
thanks again
rosanna

[Schnäggli]

Jun 20, 2010 9:06:01 GMT rosanna123 said:

thank you for the advice. this book is going to be about all land snails, i hope for it to be a refrence for not only beginers but expirenced snail people aswell, i will tell you about the care of snails and illnesses, pests ect. but also you can look up what species of snail you have and learn about them and what speacial requiaments they have. my problem is i dont have photos of most of these snails and dont no much about most of them e.g. vertigo gouldi
so any help would be much appricated

I don't mean to sound rude, but if this book is going to be targeted at experienced snail keepers as well as beginners, shouldn't it best be written by an actual expert on this field?

There are already hundreds of books about land snails in commerce, written by competent researchers, malacologists and snail farmers. Trying to put together a book with the little information collected on a web forum cannot compete with the years of dedicated studies those others put in their researchers. I think a good starting point for you would be, in fact, to do start doing a little bibliographical research on those books that have already been published.

Also, you mentioned you would like to include all species, but there are actually thousands of land snail species all over the world, many endemic of specific areas only and of which not much is known.

I'm not saying this to discourage you, just to give you some perspective and a little advice (I work in the publishing field).

What I think you could do instead of trying to write a book is creating a blog or a website. I think it would be a very interesting project on the web platform, because it would allow you to post/publish information whenever you wish, immediately (a book would take a very long time: there's preliminary research, actual writing, finding a publisher, editing, etc etc), and you can always make updates, corrections and add more information when you find it. A book is a static thing. A blog/website is "alive".
It would also be more easily available to readers, because it would be on the web. And readers could interact with you, provide you with valuable feedback that would help you improve and even give more information/photos, etc.

Just some food for thought:

- Here is a bibliography (you cannot seriously write a book without having a good knowledge of the other books on the same topic that have already been written
www.weichtiere.at/english/literature.html
weichtiere.at/literatur/haupt.html
www.petsnails.co.uk/noindex/books.html
www.gireaud.net/biblio.htm
www.conchbooks.de/
www.naturamediterraneo.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=15207
www.malacologia.it/libri.htm

- An example of an informational blog about snails from all over the world:
snailstales.blogspot.com

(Don't let the fact there's already a blog about snail discourage you, though. Blogs are very personal and the field is huge so there can't be two bloggers who cover the same topic in the same way)

Good luck with your project.

[rosanna123]

i have been speaking to someone else on here about the same thing and i didnt think it through 100% but i have now decided to only write about land snails that are kept in capivity at the moment. i now have a list of species kept and have sent e-mails to various zoos for help as well. i am still going to be doing a book as not everyone has the internet. i hope once i have written it and had it published that it will become a very useful referece and guide to all snail owners

[Schnäggli]

It's true that not everybody has the internet but definitely something published on the internet is available to a wider audience than books (especially books this specialistic).

Good luck!

[lee2211]

I'd certainly be interested in creating an online blog for people to read, but I wouldn't like to pay.
How could I go about this?

[crossless]

Hmmh.. There's some example "wikipedia" style pages where you can choose theme on it like example some specific animal and there could be articles about them. I just don't know do they cost to make you own "wikipedia page"

That could be option in that way that you make it as such like only one person would edit it and edit info to correct one if needed.

[rosanna123]

thank you for all the help so far guys

[lee2211]

I don't mean to be rude, but to be fair, you should only write a book on care when you know all the information you're putting in to it.
Either that or you should include the name of all the people who've given you the information.

You asking for all the information for this book seems to me like you shouldn't be writing it because you have to ask or find out the information. Books should be written from experiance, not taking it from other people.

[rosanna123]

this book is written from expirence but some snails i dont know much about all infomatonal book writers do research. that is what i am doing. any one who helps in any way where it be giving me some infomation, e.g. name of a book or webpage that could help me or even pictures. they will all be thanked and have their names in my book.

[crossless]

I think from experience you can write only from subjects about you really have experience of and on more harder and more rare species wrong information could be deadly.. You can always find information about something but if no experience when you can notice that is that information wrong or what?

It's easier just find some few things and write facts about it not try too much and then might get as good outcome as was hoping or enough information.

[coyote]

Jun 20, 2010 15:32:30 GMT Schnäggli said:

It's true that not everybody has the internet but definitely something published on the internet is available to a wider audience than books (especially books this specialistic).

Good luck!

The two are not mutually exclusive -- a blog could be established during the research for the book and kept going after publication. A lot of bloggers have had their blogs turned into books, too, so it doesn't have to be one or the other. It would take twice as much writing, though, to do both.

[rosanna123]

this is why i am researching the species i dont no much about and also asking people about their expirecnce with diffrent species as well. i am also buying snails so that i can add my own expirences aswell. this book is gonna take me a good thew years to write but i am gonna keep at it and make it as correct as i possibaly can.