The success of Visualizing Middle-earth soon led to calls by Michael's readers for a sequel. Although sales of the first book were encouraging, Michael felt he had made some serious mistakes with the book. "I should not have rushed through it," he admits. "When Xlibris sent me the proofs, they told me I would be able to make a limited number of corrections. I found dozens of typos and errors throughout the book. I corrected as many as I was allowed to and had to do some triage. Proofing one's work is extremely important, and I knew that before I put the book together. I was just not as careful as I should have been."
A sequel to Visualizing Middle-earth needed to be better than the first book, Michael decided. Readers wanted more essays about Tolkien's Middle-earth. The commentaries on the movies seemed dated even a few months after Visualizing Middle-earth was published. But with nearly all the essays available for free on the Suite101 Web site, a sequel did not seem like a worthwhile endeavor. "Too many people were writing to me, saying they had downloaded and printed out the essays," Michael says. "It was a bit discouraging. On the one hand, Suite101 was paying me for those essays, so I didn't mind. But what did that do to the long-term value of the work? That question remains unanswered."
Matt Tinaglia prompted Michael to action by asking what projects Michael was working on which prevented him from publishing a sequel. Michael mentioned an eBook idea he had been mulling over. After a few email exchanges, Matt offered to edit the eBook, and Parma Endorion was born. The eBook project required several months' effort from both Michael and Matt. "We learned a great deal," Michael says. "I began to sense there might be an actual market out there for a Tolkien eBook. So, at one point, we began discussing the sequel to VME, and Matt said, 'Why not do it as an eBook?'"
With many contacts in the online publishing industry, Michael could offer many arguments against publishing an eBook for sale. Such projects work best with established markets. The VME sequel was going to be better than the first book. Michael did not want to release it into a vacuum.
"After we published Parma Endorion, and everyone saw what a success it was, Matt brought up the idea of publishing an eBook sequel again," Michael relates. "I began to think the idea might be workable, especially after we hit the 50,000 mark. I thought, 'That might translate into 2500 eBook sales. Hmmm....'"
But as Michael and Matt negotiated a contract to publish Understanding Middle-earth themselves, Chris Thurtle, a long-time Tolkien reader and someone who had been familiar with Michael's research for years, contacted Michael about publishing his next book. Chris worked for Vivisphere, an imprint of Netpub. Michael had decided against using Xlibris again even though sales of Visualizing Middle-earth were consistent.
