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New Making of TMP book

For the Life of me, I cannot understand (Given Limited Run and Printing Costs, not to mention shipping from Hong Kong and the resultant delays) why this book was not distributed Digitally. A project like this seemingly SCREAMS to be done in that format, and you could still charge the same price.....
Why charge the same price? The costs of printing and distribution would be negligible!

But that's a small part of the cost of creating a book. Most of the cost is labour, the person-hours invested by the writer, editor, copy-editors, proofreaders, typesetters, designers, cover artist, etc. After all, you're not paying for the paper, since you could buy a ream of paper for a few bucks. You're paying for the content. And the content is the same in either medium. So the cost in electronic form might be a little cheaper, but not immensely so.
Very true. But the difference between having a physical copy and a virtual one should still give rise to some discount in price shouldn't it? In contrast to the initial statement, anyway.

Regardless, I am also waiting eagerly for my copy! Sadly, being in the UK I suspect I will have to wait a while longer.
 
Why charge the same price? The costs of printing and distribution would be negligible!

But that's a small part of the cost of creating a book. Most of the cost is labour, the person-hours invested by the writer, editor, copy-editors, proofreaders, typesetters, designers, cover artist, etc. After all, you're not paying for the paper, since you could buy a ream of paper for a few bucks. You're paying for the content. And the content is the same in either medium. So the cost in electronic form might be a little cheaper, but not immensely so.
Very true. But the difference between having a physical copy and a virtual one should still give rise to some discount in price shouldn't it? In contrast to the initial statement, anyway.

Regardless, I am also waiting eagerly for my copy! Sadly, being in the UK I suspect I will have to wait a while longer.

The problem with that is that to some people, having a physical copy is a boon over virtual that's worth extra price, while to others, having a virtual copy is a boon over physical that's worth extra price. There is no clear economic "better" or "worse" that would come into play price-wise; some people prefer the physical sensations and permanency, others prefer the lessened space and increased portability.
 
There is no clear economic "better" or "worse" that would come into play price-wise; some people prefer the physical sensations and permanency, others prefer the lessened space and increased portability.
In this case, since it's being sold direct from the publisher, there isn't.

For books sold via the general distribution channels, the publisher gets a bigger cut of the ebook price from the retailer. (70%, versus 65% or less of the print copy.) And they don't need to deal with warehousing/returns.

All in all, assuming identical royalty amounts for the author, the publisher needs to charge less in order to make the same amount of money; unfortunately few of them actually do so, at least for "mass market" titles.
 
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There is no clear economic "better" or "worse" that would come into play price-wise; some people prefer the physical sensations and permanency, others prefer the lessened space and increased portability.
In this case, since it's being sold direct from the publisher, there isn't.

For books sold via the general distribution channels, the publisher gets a bigger cut of the ebook price from the retailer. (70%, versus 65% or less of the print copy.) And they don't need to deal with warehousing/returns.

All in all, assuming identical royalty amounts for the author, the publisher needs to charge less in order to make the same amount of money; unfortunately few of them actually do so, at least for "mass market" titles.

Did you mean to reply to me or to Christopher? He was the one talking about publisher economic considerations towards price; I was talking about consumer economic considerations.
 
Is there any way we can contact the creators of this book and perhaps encourage them to put this up digitally as well? I mean, the book would already have to exist digitally in order for it to have been printed. That copy would just have to be exported to a computer friendly format. I would happily buy a digital copy.
 
Given the ease at which electronic files are subject to copying and piracy, I would expect that the athors would like to get the largest return on their efforts before considering a virtual version. It would be nice, though.

...to some people, having a physical copy is a boon over virtual that's worth extra price, while to others, having a virtual copy is a boon over physical that's worth extra price.

Quite true I suppose; the buyer always has the final say over what the "right" price is for a given item.
 
But if they make a digital version available doesn't that negate the value of the "limited to a 1000 copies"? The advertising marketed this as something special and of only a limited run and so for collectors that means "rare" and as time goes by the possibility if the book becoming more valuable having such a limited run.

Kevin
 
I don't see how. Only making more hard copies would seem to me to be the way to "negate" the value of the initial limited 1000 copies.

It could be worse. Anyone remember the debacle with Playmates' exclusive action figures? Ugh, no thanks.
 
And this was just shared by my friend and colleague, Lukas Kendall, on facebook:

"Hello friends, the oral history of ST:TMP is back from the printers and will start shipping on Monday. I want to give a little background on what this is, assuming this is the friendliest forum to do so...in 1979-80 Preston Jones interviewed just about everyone involved in the making of ST:TMP for what was supposed to be a cover story for Cinefantastique. It never got printed, and became a legendary unpublished book of Trek documentation. Flash forward some 35 years and I asked Preston if he had the manuscript, and in fact he did. It came to me in three Kinko's xerox boxes that I scanned at (appropriately) the Paramount music dept., then converted with an OCR reader, then spent a week manually fixing all the OCR boogers. Then a good half dozen of us systematically proofread it and tracked down some fact-checking matters. And our friend at Creature Features, Taylor White, took up the cause of publishing it. One heads up: there are no illustrations. Those were long ago misplaced—we don't have them—and this is being published without CBS approval. So we're allowed to publish text, but not copyrighted stills. That said, this is one of the most incredible accounts you'll ever read, with the entire cast and almost the entire crew. I look forward to reading people's reactions...!
http://creaturefeatures.com/shop/books/returntotomorrow/"

Neil
 
Shame it couldn't have been shipped out to people in time for the 35th anniversary, but I'll be glad to have it whenever it arrives.
 
Has anyone received a shipping notification yet? I believe today was supposed to be shipping day.
 
This has been posted on the publishers website...

UPDATE: The finished books have arrived at the Long Beach port in Southern CA. Due to delays at the port, it’s taking a little longer than expected to have them transferred ashore and to the shipping company trucks, but we’ve been assured that this is imminent. We expect them sometime during the week of December 8th-12th. Based on the high volume of pre-ordered copies, please bear in mind it may take a few weeks for us to process all of the orders, including the first 100 signed editions.
 
man this books journey to our homes is proving as laborious and frustrating as TMP itself! (would it be any other way?)
 
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