It's shipping!

Any knowledge of the print run of this one? I'm hoping it's on the generous side, because I can't see me having the money to do it this side of February/March at the earliest... Also, will it be available via Amazon et al of just via Hippo. Press?

EDIT: No need to answer my last question (or maybe not any of them) - I see it is available in three separate orders on Amazon, which is nice as I can more easily justify getting it a volume at a time!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2 Jan 13 | 01:59PM by The English Assassin.

Well, I just got my copy! The Fugitive Poems seem to be there. What a wealth of poetry! Too bad, really, that the Poems in prose are not included, as it is a small body of work, they could have been...

The first two volumes are CAS own work, while the third tome consists of translations from the French and the Spanish. (I don't think I ever noticed his Beaudelaire translations in book form before, though.)

All in all, a worthy upgrade to the Arkham 'Selected Poems'... Recommended!

I've finally got them... only dipped in, but first impressions are very good - of course! I still wish I got the hardbacks when they came out, but these little beauties will do nicely. Hats off to Hippocampus for getting these out!

The English Assassin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've finally got them... only dipped in, but first
> impressions are very good - of course! I still
> wish I got the hardbacks when they came out, but
> these little beauties will do nicely. Hats off to
> Hippocampus for getting these out!

The pb's have more in them, so I got them both...

Wish I could do the same, but finances have gone into the sub-sub-sub-basement of late, so it simply isn't feasible for me.... dammit!

jdworth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Wish I could do the same, but finances have gone
> into the sub-sub-sub-basement of late, so it
> simply isn't feasible for me.... dammit!

You sounded so very busy earlier. Hope it stabilizes upwards.

...also, you can get them one at the time at Amazon or from Hyppocampus... Easier on the wallet!
Cheers!

I've picked up copies of both the hardbacks and the paperbacks, but then I feel it's safe to say that I'm in the opening stages of a concordance of Smith's poetry. The only thing currently stopping work on it is the Lovecraft poetry concordance, which has been worked on on and off for a fair while now, and that I hope to have camera-ready (so to speak) sometime in 2014 at the latest.

The Smith concordance will be followed by a Howard poetry concordance.

I'm only just getting round to ordering these, money has been tight. Are the paperbacks an actual print run, or print on demand?

I'm not sure if the paperbacks are print on demand or not. I know the Wandrei concordance is print on demand, largely because there is such a small audience for it, but if the paperbacks are print on demand then (like with the concordance) the production standards are high.

Personally, while print on demand books have higher prices, due to a lack of discounts due to volume (one reason why the Penguin Classics have been, historically, affordable and almost ubiquitous), I find that, if the production standards are good there is no lessening of quality.

If its POD, they usually say 'Lighting Source' or some such on the last page, with a little barcode.

Personally I'm just not a fan of POD, in fact, in the vast majority of cases I strongly dislike them. Theres something cheaper about the feel, the paper seems different, it can be thin and goes wavey over time.. basically it feels like reading an assembled photocopy. I must own close to 30 POD books, some I never realised would be POD until they arrived in the post, to my disappointment.

Maybe thats just me. I have seen some decent ones that I was fairly happy with, and some presses are doing a good job with it, but even in those that are good, the same characteristics are there, albeit with much reduced symptoms. On the other hand, many books would be out of print without it and I have obtained some rare books this way, I appreciate that.

I admit I'm quite OCD about books, and should probably be ignored by those of a healthy disposition. Another example is that I won't buy the Night Shade 'Collected Fantasies' of CAS that are in print, because V1&2 are out of print. I would want the set. Having volume 3,4,5 on the shelf without 1 & 2 would be intolerable. So I stick to my much loved and battered Panther paperbacks for now.

POD books are mostly laser printed and I believe the process limits the choice of paper stock. Yes, I've got a few... I'm never hugely disappointed in their quality, but they're rarely objects of beauty either. I'm pretty sure all the Hippocampus Press paperback I own are POD. On the plus side they're usually well bound and durable.

Yes: the Hippocampus paperbacks are POD. It does mean there is less wastage, and less of a need for warehousing print runs, since the costs of storing books in a warehouse are one cost that has driven up book prices in the past, and have also historically resulted in publishers concentrating of quick-moving bestsellers over midlist titles (particularly recently, with the rise of the mentality that every title must make a profit).

What a good POD list can do, as with small presses like Hippocampus, is open up markets for niche titles which can find their own audiences with good, positive amounts of effort from authors and editors. It does mean, though, that the presses find it harder to afford both publicity and marketing, though the development of the internet has proved a leveller of sorts, allowing specific readers to be linked to specific titles in a way that I find fascinating and essential as an author of weird verse.