It’s been a good week for books here at the Ranch. I’ve had lovely new books from Subterranean Press arrive Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (plus a copy of the new issue of Subterranean’s magazine today). I had a SHOCKING SURPRISE arrival from another source (more below) early in the week.
First let’s look at the Subterranean stuff:
Monday brought me my traycased, lettered edition of Robert Silverberg‘s In The Beginning. Yes, that is a gorgeous leather traycase lined with suede. (At some point I will a whole writeup about loving stories and loving books as physical objects, and really loving the cases where they two loves come together, but for now suffice it to say that a well-produced edition of a good book is well nigh arousing for me.)
Normally I don’t spring for lettered editions–usually the limited is where my budget ends, and normally the content is identical to the limited, or very close to it, so the extra money seems kind of “conspicuous consumption”-y.
However, this is Robert Silverberg! I’m kind of happy to look down and see this, knowing that I have something that’s close to unique (icosahexique??):
Besides I have a lettered edition of the earlier career-spanning (and totally sold out) collection, Phases Of The Moon, so I needed this one to match.
The leather on the new traycase is much thicker, and the inner suede seems a bit swankier than the velvety stuff that lined the earlier traycase, so I’m guess that Bill switched to a new traycase manufacturer, and that he’s spending a little more on materials now. Yay for (relatively) small press success!
Tuesday brought the limited edition (also totally sold out) of Tim Powers‘ new book, Three Days To Never. As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I think it’s a pretty high probability that Powers might be my favourite living author, so this is very exciting for me–I’m actually doing something I’ve never done before and rationing the book. Two chapters a night, no more.
(Even with Powers being that high in my esteem, I’m not throwing down $600US for the lettered edition. That way lies madness
This will look lovely with the rest of the Powers on my shelf:
Wednesday brought the new Jonathan Lethem (excuse me, MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” winner Jonathan Lethem) chapbook.
At the time I ordered this, it was just supposed to be a little softcover chapbook–one of five such limited chapbooks that I bought for $60. There were chapbooks by Powers, Scalzi, Blaylock, and deLint. I figured since I was getting the Powers and Blaylock ones for sure, I might as well go for the package deal. I’m well disposed towards Scalzi and Lethem generally, so getting their books for $12 each was a pretty fine deal.
At some point in production though, the Lethem book got upgraded to a lovely slim hardcover volume. So now I am in the enviable position of having gotten a limited edition Lethem hardcover for $12. Sweet.
And, of course, there was the magazine today.
Now, what about my SHOCKING SURPRISE. Well, let me give away the punchline at the beginning:
Yes, that is Jeffrey Ford‘s first book Vanitas. I had been meaning to get a copy for some time, but whenever I found one on eBay or ABE it was always something like $75-100, and usually was described as “not a perfect copy, but OK for reading”. Also, it was only ever published as a trade paperback, as far as I can tell, and I am not spending a hundred bucks for a beat up trade, even for someone as good as Ford. (Also, you almost never see Vanitas mentioned in discussions of Ford‘s work, and it was his first book afterall, which combined in my mind to suggest it might not be as worth as the ones I have read.)
However, when looking at something else on Amazon back in early May I noticed that Vanitas is actually available for order there as a new book, albeit with the “Usually ships within 4 to 6 weeks.” notice that normally means “we don’t have any in stock, but as far as we know it’s still in print and we can get it from the source”. I’ve seen this lots of times with books I knew were long out of print (as I assumed Vanitas was, based on the astronomical secondary market prices, and the lack of discussion), and sometimes for my own amusement I order them–something about the idea of Amazon employees having to try to find out of business publishers, or contact publishers to find out books are OOP, or whatever, amuses me. It’s like I feel like they should be punished for having an out of date database, or something.
Anyway, there was Vanitas, with Amazon claiming they would (eventually) sell me a new copy for $7.95. So I ordered a copy, mostly for amusement value.
And damned if it didn’t show up at my door this week. I’m guessing that means Space & Time are still in operation, and still have copies of the first edition available to fill orders. If I hadn’t just assumed it was OOP in the first place I could have had this book ages ago. Even so my little prank on Amazon got me a book I wanted for a fraction of what it would have cost on the secondary market.
