Would YOU buy my book?

I have, for a fairly long time now, had the idea to publish a book of my creative works produced over the past 25 or 30 years. This might include poetry, or photography, or short stories, or columns, or essays, or maybe even artwork.

In the past year, I have been the publisher of two “chapbooks”:
—Blue Devils, a collection of poetry and stories by members of the (now defunct?) Toronto Dark Writers Group, published especially for Convergence VIII in Montreal;
—Buy My Chapbook …one more time by Timothy Carter, a collection of short stories and essays previously published in The Zero Card.

The struggle I’m having at the moment is trying to decide:
—A) what works to include;
—A) what type of book to produce… something small like a chapbook, or something large like a coffee table book, or something in between like a really nice trade paperback.

The Small Press Fair is coming up next month, and while there’s absolutely no way I could put something together in time for that, it might be nice to have a mock-up for a preview to see what kind of public response it would get.

We have a saying in the publishing game: “If your friends won’t buy your book, who will?”