New Book: Caves and Karst of the Yorkshire Dales
- Thread starter DavidGibson
- Start date
georgenorth
Active member
I'm another happy customer. Essential reading for the Dales caver, and a bargain to boot!
jonnyrocketboots
New member
Grr! Wheres mine?? It's not fair! Sent me cheque ages ago! FFS!!
Come on Postman Splat.
Take in,
And that's me!
JRB
Come on Postman Splat.
Take in,
And that's me!
JRB
kay
Well-known member
Pitlamp said:
It's very well received by me, and I don't think I can claim my interest in the Dales is Serious
I note vol 2 is being published in instalments on the net and only when that is complete will it be published in book form - I really hope they don't change their mind about the publication as a book. Reading from paper is much easier than from a screen, and published quality is going to be better than anything I can achieve on my home printer.
langcliffe
Well-known member
Jon said:
Isn't it the top pool of the three between Fall Pot and Stake Pot?
jonnyrocketboots
New member
I've to wait until after Easter for more copies to be bound before I get mine.....
moorebooks
Active member
NigR said:
A book of this size and type I would use a proper cardboard bookfolder and probably bubble wrap - it does however bump up the postage costs
Mike
DavidGibson
Member
Thanks very much for all the feedback. Some comments...
Packaging: as someone here confirmed, the book is packaged using the standard type of "Amazon" book mailer. It is sent out via a courier.
Hardback: Apologies to anyone who is having to wait for delivery of a hardback version. To be honest, the demand for hardbacks has taken us totally by surprise. We kept some sets back for binding into a hard cover "as and when required" and we recently gave the printers an instruction to "bind the whole lot now" but its a slow process, apparently. (Some artisan in a shed somewhere, apparently, does a few per day). For the technically-minded: the process of binding has to work on un-cropped "raw" pages - you cannot take a previously softbound book and simply take the cover off to put a hard cover on. (Well you can, and we may have to, but it doesnt look quite the same as a hardback made "the proper way" from scratch, by this bloke in his shed. Or so Im led to believe).
Dust Jacket: If the demand for hardbacks was a surprise, the demand for a dust jacket was doubly so! Does anyone use dust jackets these days? It seems to me that the only reason for a dust jacket is if you cannot print on the cover itself (i.e. it is a traditionally blank cloth-covered card). This book has a printed card cover so it does not need a dust jacket. In fact, it does come with (literally) a "dust" jacket (i.e. a blank sheet of paper wrapped around it) but, for the avoidance of doubt - we have no present intention of producing a printed dust jacket.
Price Differential: Deciding how to price the book was difficult. We did actually produce a business plan, and spent some time looking at different options. The hardback was priced according to its intended market (naturally), which is libraries and academic institutions. For them ?70 is cheap. The softback was originally priced higher than its ?25 but we then decided on ?25 and an introductory offer of ?20, plus free postage and packing (which costs us about ?5). I hope that explains the large differential - the softback is cheaper than it should be, and the hardback was priced for customers who would pay a market rate. Clearly, with hindsight, we could have increased the price of the softback, and decreased the price of the hardback. Im sure we'll bear that in mind for volume 2.
General philosophy of pricing: Obviously with an introductory price of ?20 and free P&P our margins are very low. In fact, our business plan accepts that we will be subsidising the project from our reserves (although if we do, eventually, end up selling numbers over-and-above the estimated figures then we'll get that money back). Some of you will know that BCRA has received a number of legacies in the past - including a large one from Graham Balcombe - and it is these legacies that allow us to give out grants, run the caving library (which also receives a grant from BCA), hold down our membership fees and now, print the Yorkshire Dales book. We decided that it was better to subsidise the book and thereby ensure that plenty of people could get a copy than to price it to "make a profit" and then not sell many.
Production: Editors Tony Waltham and David Lowe, and the photo editor Jerry Wooldridge have put in a phenomenal amount of time - all unpaid of course; not to mention the work of the individual authors. The book has been four or five years in the planning and execution. The intention for volume 2 is that it will be published online, a chapter at a time, and published as a printed book when all the individual chapters have been published.
Packaging: as someone here confirmed, the book is packaged using the standard type of "Amazon" book mailer. It is sent out via a courier.
Hardback: Apologies to anyone who is having to wait for delivery of a hardback version. To be honest, the demand for hardbacks has taken us totally by surprise. We kept some sets back for binding into a hard cover "as and when required" and we recently gave the printers an instruction to "bind the whole lot now" but its a slow process, apparently. (Some artisan in a shed somewhere, apparently, does a few per day). For the technically-minded: the process of binding has to work on un-cropped "raw" pages - you cannot take a previously softbound book and simply take the cover off to put a hard cover on. (Well you can, and we may have to, but it doesnt look quite the same as a hardback made "the proper way" from scratch, by this bloke in his shed. Or so Im led to believe).
Dust Jacket: If the demand for hardbacks was a surprise, the demand for a dust jacket was doubly so! Does anyone use dust jackets these days? It seems to me that the only reason for a dust jacket is if you cannot print on the cover itself (i.e. it is a traditionally blank cloth-covered card). This book has a printed card cover so it does not need a dust jacket. In fact, it does come with (literally) a "dust" jacket (i.e. a blank sheet of paper wrapped around it) but, for the avoidance of doubt - we have no present intention of producing a printed dust jacket.
Price Differential: Deciding how to price the book was difficult. We did actually produce a business plan, and spent some time looking at different options. The hardback was priced according to its intended market (naturally), which is libraries and academic institutions. For them ?70 is cheap. The softback was originally priced higher than its ?25 but we then decided on ?25 and an introductory offer of ?20, plus free postage and packing (which costs us about ?5). I hope that explains the large differential - the softback is cheaper than it should be, and the hardback was priced for customers who would pay a market rate. Clearly, with hindsight, we could have increased the price of the softback, and decreased the price of the hardback. Im sure we'll bear that in mind for volume 2.
General philosophy of pricing: Obviously with an introductory price of ?20 and free P&P our margins are very low. In fact, our business plan accepts that we will be subsidising the project from our reserves (although if we do, eventually, end up selling numbers over-and-above the estimated figures then we'll get that money back). Some of you will know that BCRA has received a number of legacies in the past - including a large one from Graham Balcombe - and it is these legacies that allow us to give out grants, run the caving library (which also receives a grant from BCA), hold down our membership fees and now, print the Yorkshire Dales book. We decided that it was better to subsidise the book and thereby ensure that plenty of people could get a copy than to price it to "make a profit" and then not sell many.
Production: Editors Tony Waltham and David Lowe, and the photo editor Jerry Wooldridge have put in a phenomenal amount of time - all unpaid of course; not to mention the work of the individual authors. The book has been four or five years in the planning and execution. The intention for volume 2 is that it will be published online, a chapter at a time, and published as a printed book when all the individual chapters have been published.
