Afton House Books

I wrote this one. Lachrymose? Maudlin? Nostalgic? Wordy? Dunno. Here ’tis:  JV Sketch 4

Shakespeare had advice for the players… Jack had advice to his publishers. Attached…Jack on Proofing

All but a handful of people have received their final volumes. If you think you are paid up, but haven’t gotten your last volumes, e-mail me. Someone dinged me this weekend: I was waiting for a payment that would never come because he’d already made it. (I make mistakes… at least, since I started this project. Before that, I hadn’t had the experience.)

Ah, I’m working on the shipping cost for slipcases. Shipping is a real fly in the ointment, let me tell you. My foreign language volumes don’t sell very well for a good reason: shipping is as much as I charge for the volumes. The engineer in me says: “ok, charge a lot more. After all, if you don’t sell any now because of the cost of shipping, and you don’t sell any later because of the cost of the volumes, how are you hurt?” Something about that argument doesn’t sit all that well with me.

A number of people want sets: there aren’t any left that are not already committed. I am pricing a second impression of the first printing. The books will cost more, of that I can assure you. They will not be sold via subscription, however. Interested parties will place their money on the barrelhead, and I will ship full sets.

I had mentioned the Library Edition some time ago. I am turning my attention to these books again. Covers hand-carved in fine wood by Paul Rhoads, a single volume sized at least 18″ by 24″ if not larger. Font near 14 points; a selection of stories set for the Library Edition alone. Still working on the costs and so on: figure in the thousands of dollars, not hundreds (nor tens of thousands). Edition strictly limited to whatever I can flog out of Paul. Shipping will be heart-stopping, since I will box these in a wooden crate, and ship via FedEx Special Services. Figure $200 just to get it to you. Maybe I’ll roll the shipping into the price, we’ll see. FedEx Special is a nice service, about the best I’ve seen for delivering one-of-a-kind objects.

I will keep you informed…