ON THE ROAD TO FIND OUT

I like to tell people it was an idea whose time had come.

Lucky me, I’m the one who had it.

After nearly forty years as a writer and editor, I came home one day in 2011 without a job. My position as senior editor in the books division at Krause Publications in Iola, Wisconsin, had been eliminated in a cost-cutting move. I had written more than twenty-five books on myriad antique and collectible categories, and edited many more titles, but the market for antiques guides had been steadily shrinking. Like many others in print media in the twenty-first century, I was a casualty of a changing market.

A big part of my job at Krause Publications was answering questions from folks who would call in asking what their