Books Illustrated The Starless Sea

I just preordered the Standard edition of The Starless Sea. The info around it didn’t really sell it, but it’ll have a sewn binding and I expect it’ll be comparable to a Folio Society edition.

I bought the 95Pound voucher for the Collector's Edition. I like the option of securing a copy but being able to change my mind if it should not look as good as expected. But I'll likely stick to this edition, since I really love the book!

Would be interesting to know how well it sold so far

At this stage it is selling better than The Night Circus did and we have been very pleased with how The Night Circus performed. Thank you, to everyone who has supported us, our artists and craftsmen. It feels good to be keeping talented humans employed instead of AI technology.

>4 Books-Illustrated: that sounds very good. Iam happy for you. The Night Circus Deluxe Edition was an extraordinary piece of Craftsmanship.
Sometimes iam sad that it's hidden in the solander box . I love those boxes, but the downside is that you never see youre book until you open the box .

:) Yep, I know what you mean

Quite a lovely edition of a great book, I hope it sells well! Not too well though, I'm waiting for funds to be better aligned before ordering my copy. =)

I don't understand why this one is offset while The Night Circus was letterpress. I have The Night Circus and Warhorse from this publisher but I don't particularly want to spend $400 for a book that isn't letterpress.

>8 katielouise: I agree, I bought The Night Circus and Warhorse but skipped The Starless Sea for exactly that reason. I’m guessing costs rose and they had a price point and profit target that demanded concessions somewhere and they felt dumping letterpress printing was their best option. Maybe it was but they lost me as a customer. You can’t please everybody.

I didnt go for it aswell for that reason.

>8 katielouise: >9 kdweber: Seems like a huge disservice to both themselves and collectors not to wait for another author / run of books to make this change.

I had been under the impression The Night Circus was the more successful of their letterpress publications, so don’t know why they decided to risk losing collectors for the followup and leave these two books forever mismatched.

Sitting on $10k-$20k of unsold prestige editions after they easily sold out The Night Circus must be eating up most of the extra profit margin they eked out.

From what I remember, it wasn't about increasing profit margins, but about not having to raise prices considerably to keep the book letterpress. It wasn't the relevant aspect for me, for example, so I bought The Starless Sea. Unfortunately, it clearly is for others here.

>12 SF-72: Whether maintaining product margins for rising costs, or increasing them because the past books didn't bring in enough, they still seem to have shot themselves in the foot by making the change with this particular book.

There was an statement somewhere that explained why they did, what they did. Here it goes:

"Hello Everyone,

I know that many publishers do not always respond to tricky questions but I think some very valid points have be made. I would like to give you the reasons why The Starless Sea is being published as we have announced.
The first point is we are very pro letterpress and have titles planned that will be printed this way. However, we get more emails from people who really want a finely bound signed book that is beautifully illustrated but they are finding that the costs are too hard for them to bear in these current times. We opened the Pre-order for The Night Circus on 17 January 2022. General inflation since then has been between 6-7% annually and in our industry many costs have also increased greatly. So we decided to assist people the best way we can by keeping prices affordable, but still produce a stunning edition we can be proud of. Printing letterpress is about 8-10% of the costs and as we have published many fine litho limited editions in the past we decided this one would be litho. We also are offering people the chance to purchase a securing voucher so as to spread out the cost.
Businesses have to take customers concerns seriously and make the best decisions they can. I know that this may not suit your particular view but we are like most publishers that publish letterpress and Litho.
Best regards to all you book lovers; we love being part of this wonderful business full of passionate beliefs. "

I personally dont understand the decision, nor the statement. People that would have an hard time to spend 650 pound before, have an hard time now aswell. The prices did not change.
You could have printed the Lettered and Deluxe edition letterpress and all states below offset.
I wish Mike all the best and hope that to change the printing was an success, nevertheless.

The letterpress printing from Night Cricus was really nice and i would love to have an matching pair, but that includes the print aswell.
Letterpress printing for me has an very high value.

>14 Libri_mea_vita_sunt: Sounds like it was just the classic business flub of responding to the vocal minority instead of sense checking against the majority of their collectors.

Although I’m still not sure the reasoning adds up, since a 7% increase to 10% of their cost would have brought a $650 book up a whopping $4.55.

I hope that was more a math error than the actual numbers they made the decision on.

>15 NathanOv: I think your maths is a bit out there. You're forgetting about the impact of inflation on the 90-92% of the production cost not associated with letterpress, which the downgrade from letterpress was intended to offset (pun intended). I would be interested to know how much of the production costs offset printing now accounts for however, compared to letterpress. Something in the region of 3-4%?

I had a look at the page and it seems they're offering a whopping 4 editions of this book: lettered, deluxe, collectors and standard. Seems a bit optimistic. Probably they should have printed the standard offset and the rest letterpress.

Hello Everyone,

It is very good to hear everyone's views and, believe me, we have considered everything that has been mentioned.
One point raised was: why not print letterpress for Deluxe & Prestige and print offset for collectors and below? It seems on the face of it an option, however it is not. It would add even more costs to all books, which has been our main concern in these days.
We considered long and hard as to what people would prefer, a newly illustrated and signed book, beautifully printed and bound or a 10% plus increase in prices. We have been delighted with the response as it has been selling faster than The Night Circus did at this point. Everyone must decide what is important to them and we understand this. We would love everyone to be happy but this seems impossible, but it doesn't mean we will not continue to do our best.

Have a great weekend

Mike

Good news, the INKHEART Collectors Edition will be ready this Friday and so we will start couriering them early next week. I should have the prototypes of THE STARLESS SEA and some copies of INKHEART with me at the PBFA London Book Fair that we will be attending this coming Saturday, 2 Dec.

I hope I get to meet some of you there:

London Christmas Book Fair
Holiday Inn London - Bloomsbury
Coram Street, London, WC1N 1HT
£2 entry 10am-4pm

We now have a short video of The Starless Sea which can be viewed on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8oBlXr88dJ4?si=RL9kMHDGA5ku0wVw
We will be posting a video of the craftsmanship that has been applied to this edition later. I hope you enjoy it. Mike

PS: we will be showing at the Fine Press Book Fair in Oxford this weekend (9-10 December) I hope we might see you there.

Oxford University Examination Schools
75-81 High Street, Oxford, OX1 4BG
TIME & DATE
9th December 2023, 12:00 - 17:00
10th December 2023, 11:00 - 16:00
Adult Ticket (includes catalogue): £ 5.00

Please take a look at our short video of The Starless Sea which can be viewed on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8oBlXr88dJ4?si=RL9kMHDGA5ku0wVw
We will be posting a video of the craftsmanship that has been applied to this edition later. I hope you enjoy it. Mike

PS: we will be showing at the Fine Press Book Fair in Oxford this weekend (9-10 December) I hope we might see you there.

Oxford University Examination Schools
75-81 High Street, Oxford, OX1 4BG
TIME & DATE
9th December 2023, 12:00 - 17:00
10th December 2023, 11:00 - 16:00
Adult Ticket (includes catalogue): £ 5.00

>19 Books-Illustrated: WOooW
Those Books look really fantastic.
So far I have only ordered an Inkheart-Collectors Edition.

Books Illustrated has teased their next title with this illustration. Any guesses?

>22 A.Nobody:

Looks like Interview with a Vampire to me.

>24 Pax_Romana: "An lavishly illustrated and probably letterpress printed Interview with a Vampire . . ."

I guess we can hope, but even the Prestige Lettered Edition of The Starless Sea is printed offset...

>23 SF-72: Finally!

Even a nice edition printed offset would be appreciated given the current lack.

Existing editions are either poor taste levels (the Easton DLE and, was it Subterranean?).

Oddly enough, the older Easton is probably the current best (and I am no general fan of the Easton aesthetic), but that one is so expensive on the secondary market it would never be worth it to me.

(The Books Illustrated style is perfect for Rice as well.)

>27 abysswalker:

This illustration is really beautiful.

It most certainly does look like Interview! I will be in. :-)

It is indeed Interview with the Vampire:

Interview with the Vampire
by Anne Rice

Pre-order date - Saturday, 18 May
Time: 14:00 United Kingdom

We are proud to announce our next illustrated limited edition

The edition will consist of 900 copies with only 666 being published with the first release; the balance will be released when we publish book two: The Vampire Lestat and book three: Queen of the Damned.

Interview with the Vampire will comprise:
26 Prestige Lettered - 180 Deluxe - 344 Collectors - 350 Artist Editions

We are thrilled to announce that Christopher Rice, Anne's son, has penned a unique foreword for us. Additionally, Christopher will be signing the Collectors, Deluxe, and Prestige Editions.
The talented illustrator Anne Yvonne Gilbert, will sign all the editions.

Orders placed before 1 June will be priced as follows:
Prestige £1,995 - Deluxe £650 - Collectors £295 - Artist £95