Gavin Stairs on sat 28 mar 98
At the University of Toronto, there is a service which can reprint
out-of-print books at a somewhat reasonable price. These are facsimile
editions, monochrome, scanned, printed on a short-run, automatic book press
using acid-free paper, cut to original size, and bound. For example:
Lawrence, Ceramic Science for the Potter,
Cost in Canadian $* per book (taxes out):
Number of books Casebound Cerlox
1 185.40 176.13
2 126.69 114.33
5-9 71.07 58.71
10-49 61.80 49.44
* C$1.00 =~ US$0.70
I am interested in using this service in order to purchase some rare,
out-of-print books, including the Lawrence text. However, as you can see,
the advantage of a group purchase is substantial.
I would like to know if any of you have any interest in this. If you do,
please send me the following:
1. The title, author, ISBN or other citation information on the book(s)
you want.
2. The location of at least one, good quality, borrowable copy (if you
know of one).
3. Some idea of what you would regard as a fair price.
e.g.:
1. CALL NUMBER: TP/810/.5/L38/1982 SCAR
AUTHOR: Lawrence, W. G. (Willis Grant), 1916-
TITLE: Ceramic science for the potter / W.G. Lawrence & R.R.
West. --
EDITION: 2nd ed. --
PUBLISHED: Radnor, Pa. : Chilton Book Co., c1982.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: xii, 297 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
2. University of Toronto Library, Scarborough campus.
3. US$75 delivered for a single copy.
If there were sufficient interest, I would be interested in managing such a
deal. As this would be a not insignificant amount of work, I would charge
a little over the rates above. Any surplus would be donated to TISP
activities. For a run of 10 casebounds of the Lawrence book, I would have
to lay out about C$1000 for books, GST (7%) and packaging, and then play
shipping games. Shipping costs would be extra, and the cost per book would
end up around US75 net, but the final price cannot be guaranteed. The
initial delivery would be about 2-3 months after the decision to proceed.
I would require a 60%, non-refundable, advance payment. Please don't send
money now: If and when I have sufficient expressions of interest in a
particular volume, I will send around a formal offer, requesting an advance
cheque and giving a final price, payable on delivery and acceptance, and a
refund/return policy. The order will proceed when a sufficient number of
orders have been received. Cheques will not be cashed until then, and if
enough orders don't appear by one month from the formal offer, cheques will
be returned uncashed.
As an indication of the reasonableness of this service, I have actually
paid up to US$85 plus shipping for a very ordinary, out-of-print book
through a book search firm. So US$55 plus shipping for a new facsimile
edition doesn't seem too bad.
Even better would be if some potter's bookseller wanted to buy a
substantial run of these. I would be willing to work out a volume deal for
that as well, and turn over the list of prospects for fufillment.
In case you are wondering, these are legal, royalty paid editions. The
copyright is respected.
Please reply to me off-list in order to keep the list traffic down. My
e-mail appears in my signature below.
Gavin
Technical Institute for Studio Potters (proposed)
c/o Gavin Stairs
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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