2016 has been a terrible year in many respects, but finally there is some good news for everyone! Well, for everyone who wants to buy a copy of my book, anyway; because in January 2017 The Next War in the Air will be republished in a much cheaper (if not quite cheap) paperpack edition.
To backtrack a bit, in July 2015 Ashgate, my publisher, was acquired by Taylor & Francis. This caused a bit of angst at the time, not least because some good publishing people were going to lose their jobs, but also because nobody was sure what was going to happen to the various books and series published by Ashgate, now and in the future.
The dust has cleared a bit since then. Ashgate seems to no longer exist, even as an imprint. Some people did lose their jobs, though, happily, the ones I worked most closely with did not. My book was republished (I suspect just in ebook format) earlier this year by Routledge, the main humanities imprint of Taylor & Francis, which was nice (I've always liked Routledge). On the other hand, the price of the hardcover was put up to a whopping £100. Compare that with Ashgate's original price of £70, which was not exactly cheap either. As Ashgate rarely seemed to do paperback editions for their history monographs, and as The Next War in the Air was hardly a publishing sensation (ha!) I didn't think one was going happen (which was why I put the PhD thesis that formed the basis of the book online for free).
So I was pleasantly surprised when for some reason one day I clicked onto the Routledge page for my book and noticed a forthcoming paperback edition, scheduled for publication on 9 January 2017. Even better, the list price is only £34.99, just over a third the cost of the hardback and almost affordable. If you hunt around the usual sources (Booko is good for this), you might be able to find it for even less.1 Maybe this edition will even make it into real live physical bookshops? A boy can dream...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://airminded.org/copyright/.
- In fact, as I write Routledge is selling it for only £26.24, though I don't know how long that will last. [↩]
Kristen Alexander
Congratulations on the reprint Brett, she says, snarlingly as she recalled that she paid the 70 pound equivalent for the original edition! (Just joking; I was glad to pay the price because I wanted the book. I am very pleased others can get their hands on it for a much more attractive price.) Hope 2017 is a happier year for you.
Alan Allport
Pleased to hear this. Publishers asking for 100 quid for a monograph are just taking the p*ss, in my opinion. Thirty-five pounds is not exactly cheap for a paperback, but it's not outrageous either.
Brett Holman
Post authorKristen:
Thanks! I hope it was worth what you paid for it, at any rate...
Alan:
Yeah, I assume they know their market but I don't see how a price that high can be viable. Academic libraries are no doubt the main customers, but they're under great budgetary pressures already, and at this price and on this subject most are surely going to pass. (And my royalty cheques bear that out!)
Pingback:
Acquisitions – Airminded