Wondering about merging groups

As activity has dropped off in recent years, I am thinking of reaching out to LT to see if there is a way to merge several groups into one and preserve all the threads of sol the groups

If so am thinking of reaching out to The Franklin Library administrator and the Castalia library administrator to see if they are interested. Seems like one group dedicated to the collection of these similar full leather bound books would be enough and would be fine.

Thoughts, suggestions, and criticism is welcome.

Shawm

Also welcome ideas on other groups we could reach out to if this is a possibility

I’ve never heard of Castalia. Who are they?

https://arkhavencomics.com/product-category/castalia-library/

https://youtu.be/FDPszn2V-YM?si=uQxWP1Hr3s3vRV9F

>3 jroger1:

i just recently heard of them and cont actually have one of their books myself yet, but plan on ordering one to judge for myself how they are.

Come to think of it, Gryphon sources its leather-bound books from the same binderies that Easton Press uses.

I’m torn on the idea of merging. I’d like for this group to have enough activity to self-sustain but if it’s dying then maybe a merger would help keep a bunch of groups alive.

>6 treereader: thanks for the comments

I wonder if the relative inactivity on this group is a sign that Easton Press itself is losing customers and interest, maybe it's on its last legs. Hopefully not, but that day is inevitably coming, as overall book readership for pleasure declines every year.

>6 treereader: >1 sdawson:
I have a few of Gryphon’s publications and they are nicely bound, but I don’t think they are in the same league with Easton and Franklin. They don’t have illustrations nor do they do original work. As far by as I can tell, they only reproduce previously published work.

Also, their selections have a decidedly conservative bent, whereas EP and FL are more even-handed. I would not want our forum to get a political reputation.

I guess my preference would be to leave it as is or possibly merge with Franklin Library. The FL forum is virtually dead but it does contain some excellent older threads that could be of interest to our members.

>8 Betelgeuse:
I have no idea how EP is doing financially because they don’t make that information public, but I have a few ideas about the reduced participation in this forum.

- First, I’m not altogether sure it’s a bad thing. Our discussions, though usually brief, are nonetheless meaningful. I find myself blocking many of the threads in the Folio Society forum, and increasingly in the Fine Press forum, because they so often descend into irrelevant chitchat.

- Although I don’t personally participate in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or any of the other social media of the week, many people do, leaving less time to participate in LibraryThing.

- Librarything itself is antiquated. I’ve been a member for 10 years or so but have never learned how to post photographs, for example, an activity that should be simple and intuitive.

Stay as we are.

I am thankful that this forum avoids political dogma, vitriol, backbiting and other superfluous nonsense.

Late summer 2023, Easton topped out at approximately (384) items.

A week ago EP listed (364) Easton Press products available.

At this moment the EP site has (338) items.

Within the last (2) months there have been many "Last Chance" listings as remaining stock from more recent years.

With Christmas fast approaching sales have quickened.

I prefer to keep it as is but will still participate if it merges.

>12 Neil_Luvs_Books: same on both points

On a personal level ... my participation has dropped off mainly due to getting involved in other hobbies.

I continue popping in here every few days to see what's new, if anything ... in both EP and FS forum ...

Over the last year or two ... I see hardly any posts here on EP ... while FS still has a good amount of posts.

However ... both seem to be lackluster in content (for me that is).

Used to be topics would have fun conversations about new titles being released. Or older titles and what people thought about them ... or if there were any options one had missed when acquiring a title.

Some of the lower amounts of post could be in part ... EP ... not releasing anything too exciting as of late (again, just my opinion). I've been waiting for a new Dickens or Twain release the last few years (seems like they were starting to release some nice versions of Nickleby and others ... but that seems to have stopped).

But I'm with >11 saintmelville: ... the lack of political arguing and other nonesense is how I would hope this stays ... even if it means keeping this forum from having more posts.

>9 jroger1:

I forgot about Gryphon’s conservative collections. I’ve only ever bought their science classics. I could see some of their law books being interesting to anyone curious about old/famous cases, as well as doctors amusing themselves with original texts from the pioneers of their medical classics. Many of their ancient classics complement EP’s pretty well…I might have one or two of those, as well. Like EP’s extraneous coffee table books, I wonder if their heavy conservative slant (read: no liberal or counterbalanced series) similarly just brings in extra cash. Their ancient philosophy titles might be the closest thing they have to a counterpoint.

Through and through, the materials and the methods are the same: they employ the same binderies. I think you’re right that they don’t produce any original products (design, layout, typeset, illustrations - the whole package), but to be fair, when I look at 95% or more of my EP books, I see the same facsimile-with-a-leather-cover scheme. Few of my 800-1000 EPs have anything more than a frontispiece, illustration-wise.

>10 jroger1:

One financial observation; I’ve seen EP advertise very subtly many times over the years that for every dollar they make, something like half goes towards mental health charities. So right there, that tells us that their books have an incredible margin on them. If they sell a $100 book, it must have only cost them $25-35 to make it and sell it. Paper is cheap. Ink is cheap. No licensing. Few illustrations commissioned. Bonded pig leather is probably the biggest expense…right after shipping and marketing.

I think you hit the nail on the head with the social media thing. Most people just can’t be bothered with an old-fashioned newsgroup-style website. Do I recall correctly that the LT app doesn’t even support access to these groups?

>16 treereader: I don't believe EP uses bonded pig leather. Each of their books say "bound in genuine leather" on the title page, and sometimes they specify such things as "cowhide leather imported from Italy." I don't know that their paper is cheap, either -- it may not be the very finest quality, but it is advertised to be acid-neutral paper and their volumes are sewn, not glued. Yes, more than half their profits go to mental health research, but that doesn't necessarily mean their books have an incredible margin. They might operate on a very thin margin. If "over half" their profits go to mental health research, then they retain less than half their profits. We don't know how much that is, but with imported materials, genuine leather, sewn pages, and ribbon markers, I have a hard time believing it's an "incredible margin."

>17 Betelgeuse:

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that EP is using cheap paper. I meant that in the grand scheme of things, paper is a relatively inexpensive commodity, even the nicer paper in EP’s books.

The leather issue has been been one of concern for years. First, the leather choice definitely varies based on product line. The DLEs and illustrated series are almost certainly not pighide. EP was definitely predominantly, if not completely, cowhide in the early half of it’s existence but their modern standard/base products in the last ten years or so are questionably cowhide.

I stand by my theory that EP’s margins must be higher than intuition would admit. Given how little interest the world has in reading, the Venn diagram of people who read, read these kinds of books, can and will pay their prices, etc., I would never have imagined them surviving through the age of e-readers, a pandemic, elevated inflation, etc. I’ve literally never met anyone else in person who’s heard of or owns EP books (or Folio, LEC, Franklin, Gtyphon, etc.). We’re a small group. A very niche market in this digital age.

>18 treereader: As someone who manages publication printing professionally, I'd quibble at paper being a relatively inexpensive commodity! And the price has skyrocketed in the past five years. If Eaton is eking out any kind of profit margin, my hat is off to them. It's very hard to do in publishing given the cost of materials. It frankly wouldn't surprise me to learn they run at a loss some years.

>19 ambyrglow: I found this 2018 article about book publisher profits. "The big publishers aim to make a profit of 10% on sales; most only manage it in good years. Most independents dip into loss from time to time." Another website from 2023 says the profit margin is 10% - 15% for big publishers like Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, and Simon & Schuster. If that is an accurate range and EP is giving away, as they say on their website, "more than half of their profits," then EP is making not much at all, if anything. The big publishers referred to in these articles don't have to contend with imported materials or leather bindings (bonded or otherwise).

https://www.thebookseller.com/comment/the-profits-from-publishing-a-publishers-p...

https://finmodelslab.com/blogs/profitability/publishing-company-profitability

>20 Betelgeuse: Yes, 10% is generally the industry goal, and something the mid-sized press I used to work for (before I moved out of book publishing and into a job that deals more with brochures and pamphlets) rarely actually achieved.

So how are they going to stay alive? I don't want to see them sink but surely the cost of everything due to inflation could just as easily be called a knockout punch if they occasionally finish some years in the red.

Qualitatively speaking, though, let's think about how everything has skyrocketed in price. EP's prices have gone up but barely by double what they were 20 years ago when I first started collecting. 100 Greatest was maybe $50/ book but for the bulk of that series I think it was closer to $60/book for me. What is it now, $90? I wouldn't call that skyrocketing. So there must have been a decent margin to eat into, right?

>22 treereader: The cumulative rate of inflation in the US since 2003 is +67%. Look at the first website below. Enter in $57 for an EP book in the year 2003, the cost would be $95 today. Pretty close to what you recollect. Judging from the 2nd website below, Easton's target profit margin as a percentage of sales was probably about the same back then in 2000 -- roughly 10%, if we assume the cost of production has gone up by the same rate of inflation. They may have a harder time hitting that target now, if the cost of production has gone up higher than overall inflation, in which case their days may be numbered. What I don't know is whether they've always given "more than half their profits" to charity, or if that amount has changed over time. They may get some type of tax write-off for their charitable contributions, which may help their financial picture.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20010910/29168-publishers-profits-lagg...

BTW, I guess we should congratulate ourselves on resurrecting the moribund EP forum on LT with a digressive topic! Guilty as charged!

>23 Betelgeuse:

Yeah, I've wondered what their actual charity ratio is, too. All lot of individuals like to say they contribute to charities. It's a little harder for a company to say it and not do it but it's not impossible. To put half of everything you make towards a cause is noble and all but it doesn't leave a lot of room for error, though. Well, not unless they have a huge profit margin, which does seem unlikely.

I'm impressed that so many people in this group started posting in this thread. Maybe we're still an active group, after all?

When a company says they put half of what they make toward charity, they mean half of their profits, not half of their gross revenue. It doesn’t take a big profit margin to do that.

Thanks for all the opinions on merging. Seems like most prefer we remain independent. In lieu of a merger, we could create some obvious threads dedicated to talking about specific publishers other than Easton in here. Something like "Franklin Library Discussion", "Gryphon Press", "Castalia Library" perhaps. Not sure if they should be pinned or what, but something to let folks who like those libraries know they are welcome to disccuss them here, and link back to their Newsgroup as well.

You could create the threads (like Fine Press has done for Suntup) and then pin them if they generate sufficient interest. They are unlikely to generate more interest than EP itself, though.

>25 ambyrglow:

Thanks for the clarification - that makes a lot more sense, too.

We have no objection to merging groups, so long as members of the expanded group wouldn't object to our posting book-specific information relevant to our subscribers once or twice per month.

We are 100-percent massive fans of Franklin Library and it is our long-term objective to reliably provide the same kind of quality that Franklin did, particularly with its Oxford line, although presently our Library quality is more akin to that of Easton Press. Our Libraria line is considerably more deluxe, but it is also much more expensive, being a) Italian goatskin b) real gold, and c) print runs under 100 copies.

For those unfamiliar with Castalia Library, it is perhaps worth pointing out that we bind at the same bindery Easton does, although we also have our own leather bindery in Europe which does special runs for custom clients.

If you'd like to see what our books look like, visit castalialibrary.com, which will be our retail site once our bindery is fully operational.

For those concerned about Easton Press books being available going forward, it is our understanding that Easton WAS in some danger for various reasons but the post-Covid price hikes last year were sufficiently well-received by the supporters that they're in sound condition. Also, they seem to have a very smart executive who reined in the less-business-focused editors and is forcing them to produce books that appeal to the traditional collectors. They stopped doing Kobe Bryant and Maya Angelou books and snaked the rest of the Landmark series from us after they heard we were doing Thucydides. #comeonnow #respect

PS: It costs Easton WAY more than $25-35 to produce their books. The printed interior alone can cost that much, especially if it's an odd size. They didn't jack their prices up out of greed.

>29 CastaliaLibrary:

Thank you for your insights. Perhaps I will reach out to LT to see if ther is some path to joining groups and keep all the old threads from all the groups.

"I meant that in the grand scheme of things, paper is a relatively inexpensive commodity, even the nicer paper in EP’s books."

Believe it or not, paper is now the most expensive element of deluxe books. Paper costs are why paperback and hardcover prices are converging. For some reason, US paper prices are 2x UK paper prices. While cowhide prices have increased ~40 percent, paper prices have more than doubled in the last three years.

The good news is that demand for quality leather books is increasing. The ephemerality of ebooks, combined with the declining quality of them, is driving more interest in books that will last.

I reached out to Tim Spalding, to see if he could direct me to someone to discuss a merge. Want to keep all members and all threads from all groups.

The Franklin Library is in need of an adminstrator it seems, so I volunteered there.

But it is the Christmas season, so no responses yet

>37 sdawson:

All I hear in my head now are modified fragments from the wedding scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail...

This is supposed to be a 'appy occasion. Let's not bicker about 'hoo read 'hoo. ... here to witness the union of two (or more) newsgroups ... since the tragic death of Franklin Library -- 'ee's not quite dead! ... I feel sure that the merger -ah- the union between EP and ...

(sorry! ha ha)

>38 treereader:
heh heh

>38 treereader: 🤣

Update on this topic:

A formal merge will not be happening. However, I believe that some less formal link of the groups with similar books and similar customers would be a good thing. I think some 'pinned' message to cross link the groups would be a good thing, so that folks who visit our group are aware of the Franklin Library and the Castalia ibrary groups.

https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/9388/Franklin-Library-Collectors

https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/22493/Castalia-Library-Collectors

A slight concern is that too many pinned messages could be a bit cluttering. Also, not quite sure what the pinned message should look like, but I do want to promote more cross group activity and discussion.

-Shawn

Also, am I missing some other group which focuses on another publisher of similar books?

You can probably unpin pretty much anything up there, not sure that any of them get used much now. They can always be bumped as needed.

>43 Wootle:, the ones with all the work, all the photos and links are quite useful still, and I believe will be for a long time. The only one that is perhaps un-pinnable is the 'Masterpieces of Science Fiction" thread.

>43 Wootle:
I still refer to the two DLE threads a lot.

good input folks

Good Day Everyone,

Although not directly germane to the conversation, I thought my comment has a nexus to it: Folio Society just added a limited leather-bound edition of Casino Royale by Ian Fleming for $362USD, which is limited to 750 and signed by the artist Fay Dalton, to its 50% of sale.

Since I am stationed in North Africa, I tend to see such emails from Folio quite early in the morning and thought I would share with the group.

Cheers!

>48 LegatusRomano:

Thank you and dang!

I just put in my 1/2 price order yesterday. Seeing that added to the 1/2 price sale is very tempting. I'd have to pay for shipping again though, which is a consideration.

I have collected the non leather set of these Bond books already, still, that is a handsome book.

-Shawn

>49 sdawson: I know your pain when it comes to the shipping, but I used the code WMAG7, which was suggested in one of the Folio Reviews, and it worked. It took off 10% from my entire purchase earlier. So, that mitigated the cost of the shipping-something to consider!
Regards.

>49 sdawson:

You might contact them and ask them to combine orders. If you're fast enough, that might work. In my case, the first order had just shipped when I saw that Bond had gone on sale. I was less than happy about that, international shipping being what it is these days.

Someone in the Folio sale thread mentioned having successfully cancelled their first order and placed a second order - the trick was doing so before the first order was being processed for shipping.