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Dear Granny,

I'm sorry but I could find no copies listed on any of the used book networks, and I don't have one either.

The best I could suggest (taking a past tip from Tom) would be for anyone here who wants to buy a copy to pledge to do so in a written petition for a reprint to the publisher! This showed signs of success a year ago when several of us at another forum were interested in a reprint of J. D. North's classic study from 1986 'Horoscopes and History' and separately contacted the Warburg Institute's publications division about it. The Warburg Institute's representative passed on the messages to those responsible for decisions, who were very enthusiastic about the idea of reprinting, but alas felt unable to take things further at that time while Dr. North himself was suffering from some ill-health. While I have no idea what the situation is presently, I'm sure I speak for many in wishing Dr. North a full recovery, and I'm sure he would be delighted to know that there was so much interest in this study.

Other institutions have been less helpful in my experience. The University of Manchester Press categorically responded that it had no plans for a reprint of Ann Geneva's ultra-scarce 'Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind: Mr. William Lilly and the Language of the Stars' when a message was forwarded after I contacted their European representative last summer.

For any of these institutions a decision to reprint a work that in the first place sold to most of its expected target customers in academia would be a significant risk in terms of the labour time costs and the production costs. They would have to expect to sell at the very least one hundred copies of a reprint, I imagine, and price it rather highly if this was the limit of production, for any such decision to be justified. But also to some extent I expect university publishers have procedural norms and habits which would be troublesome to break out of simply in terms of the additional amount of thought involved - they are accustomed to making a single print run of each academic title, and when that one sells out, that's where it ends unless they receive a great amount of interest in reprints afterwards.

Failing that, one can only wait for a small trickle of used copies to return to the market as the odd one or two of the few private purchasers of these books who have not placed them permanently in university libraries decide to sell them as they move on from the particular area of studies for which they used them, or in some cases eventually pass on, leaving unwanted books in their estate, which are then taken to a dealer or listed at auction.

I would personally doubt that a single copy of this particular title will hit the Internet used book listings (as compared with being passed around in private sales and gifts) more often than once or twice every five years, so it could be a long and somewhat competitive wait, but it looks like a very interesting book!

Philip

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This kind of thing is what really gets me excited about places like LULU.com where if they had the book there online, those that want it can get individual printings of it without the insane hassle of the publishing house world. This type of book obviously has a limited perview, so it would be perfect to publish on such a site, where it would easily be affordable and lend a few extra dollars to the author ( who chooses what kind of dollar intake they want, so they are not getting gipped and you can get a copy of the work you need)

sigh... thanks for all the info, I will pass it along, who knows, maybe she can take a trip to Helsinki! =) though I wouldn't hold my breath.

Granny

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This kind of thing is what really gets me excited about places like LULU.com where if they had the book there online, those that want it can get individual printings of it without the insane hassle of the publishing house world.

Granny


Lulu's a start, but you can do better. At their site a moment ago. They have open pricing, so you can easily check "what ifs". My what if was a 200 page book, 6x9 inches, 10 copies. Lulu was $8.53/copy. Add a royalty to the copyright holder & your retail price (before Amazon discounts it) is about $50.

Lightningsource.com - which prints a lot of books for the trade - charges .015 cents per page, plus .90 for the binding (US$) That makes a 200 page book $3.90. With royalty, that works out to a retail price of about $25.00. Amazon, of course, will have it for around $18.00.

There's two more advantages to Lightning Source for would-be publishers (which is what you would be). First, they're owned by Ingram, the biggest book distributor in the US. All the various printers claim they're distributed by Ingram, but, save for LS, none of them can make that claim convincingly. Second, they have a parallel plant in Milton Keynes, UK. Which makes shipping copies to your favourite UK bookstore (Midheaven, Wessex, etc.) a snap.

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LOL, I realize as I have a book of poetry on Lulu. (friends kept bugging me to put one out, I notice they havent' been so eager to go out and buy it. so this saved a great deal of cost to me! LOL)

incidently those interested in Linda Reids works can now find them there.

the lightning source thought would make my editing and printing some workbooks for astrology a more monetarily sound idea.

Granny