I just found that VJ Books apparently has the limited edition of The Five for $129, which is almost list price.
The Five limited edition @ VJ Books
They also have the Mister Slaughter limited.
Hunter
I just found that VJ Books apparently has the limited edition of The Five for $129, which is almost list price.
The Five limited edition @ VJ Books
They also have the Mister Slaughter limited.
Hunter
Last edited by goathunter; 09-15-2011 at 07:00 PM. Reason: Add info about Mister Slaughter
28 in 23 (?)!!!!
63 in '23!!!!!!!!!!
My Collection: https://www.thedarktower.org/palaver...ion-Merlin1958
The Houston Astros cheated Major League Baseball from 2017-18!!!! Is that how we teach our kids to play the game now?????
I started reading Robert McCammon's books thanks to this thread and i have enjoyed all of the books so far. I really enjoyed the Matthew Corbertt series and was glad to hear another book will be coming out next year.
My question to those you collect his books is why is it so had to find a hardcover copy of "The Queen of Bedlam"? I was able to find a hardcover copy, signed, of the first book "Speaks the Nighbird" for a very reasonable price. The second book is very hard to come by.
That is a very good question. I pre-ordered a signed copy in 2007 from an Alabama bookstore where McCammon was doing a signing and have never really thought about it since. I did a quick search on ABE and found that hardcover editions were listed at $100 and up. From looking at the other listings it appears that Pocket Books issued a hardcover edition and a trade paperback simultaneously. Both editions carry the number line on the copyright page that goes down to "1." In my experience when publishers do that they print large amounts of the trade paperback and relatively few of the hardcovers. I'm not sure of the reasoning behind issuing the dual editions but it appears that the hardcover print run was relatively small. Thanks for bring that up. Maybe Hunter Goatley has some more insight into this and will add his thoughts.
Sorry for my delay in replying. I'm not sure how I missed the last few posts here.
Regarding the hardcover of The Queen of Bedlam: Pocket Books intended to publish the book as a trade paperback, but I was told they were going to publish a "limited number" (not a limited edition, just a smaller print run) of hardcovers "for the collectors." Both books were published at the same time. The ARC they published was an extremely nice trade paperback with high-quality paper. Unfortunately, when the actual book was published, the hardcover turned out to be one of the cheapest-looking hardcovers I've ever seen. It was ridiculous. The paper was incredibly cheap---cheaper, even, than the paper used in the trade paperback (and both many grades below the paper used for the ARCs). In fact, the hardcover actually weighed less than the trade paperback. It was embarrassing how cheaply-produced the hardcover was.
Even the dustjacket was made as cheaply as possible, without the raised-lettering or shiny gold paint of the title on the trade paperback edition. The dustjacket looks like a bad scan of the trade paperback cover (and for all I know, may well be).
On top of that, for reasons known only to Pocket, about one month after the book's release, Pocket dumped the entire unsold hardcover stock to a discount book wholesaler. Those hardbacks were sold as remainders via overstock.com and a couple of other places and disappeared within days.
My understanding is that they printed about 3,000 hardcover copies of The Queen of Bedlam, and about 2,000 of those were dumped as remainders (again, only one month after the book was released). To make matters worse, Pocket lied about what they had done. When booksellers initially tried to re-order the books, Pocket told them they were sold out. But that was actually before they showed up on the remaindered-book sites. To this day, we have no idea why they dumped the books so quickly after the release or why they went as cheaply as they could (for hardcovers priced at around $30).
The low print-run and the subsequent dumping has resulted in exorbitant prices for the hardcover edition, if you can even find one.
Needless to say, this experience is one of many reasons that McCammon moved away from Pocket for a second time. Unfortunately, the initial contracts for several of the books means that Pocket still has control and is still doing screwed-up things, like not releasing Speaks the Nightbird as an ebook, even though they released The Queen of Bedlam as an ebook; refusing to record unabridged versions or sublicense audio rights to Boy's Life and Gone South and instead re-releasing their 3-hour abridged audio versions originally released in 1991 and 1992; reprinting several of the books in new trade paperback editions, but doing nothing to ensure that they made it to bookstores....
Hunter
Last edited by goathunter; 05-05-2014 at 03:15 PM.
BTW, these are hardly collectible, but just FYI, nine of Robert McCammon's backlist titles were released in ebook formats by Open Road Media a couple of weeks ago. Click on the image for easy ordering links. 8-)
The first four books will be released as ebooks by Subterranean Press in the coming months, with Baal due later this month, I think. With these releases, all of McCammon's books will be available in ebook format except for Speaks the Nightbird.
And on November 15, Audible will be releasing an unabridged audio recording of Swan Song, read by Tom Stechschulte.
Hunter
Pocket sounds like a PITA to deal with.
That's putting it mildly.... They've changed a lot over the years.
Hunter
Yes, they did, big time. And yes, it's been (and continues to be) very frustrating for us.... Thanks.
Hunter
Recent acquisitons....
Russian Mister Slaughter, Russian Stinger, Uncorrected Proof of Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! (which I finally won on eBay after losing a couple of copies to King collectors here! ), trade paperback of same, and hardcover of Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead.
I also recently received the handbound lettered edition of The Five from Subterranean Press. Sorry for the quality of the photos; I can't find my camera at the moment.
Hunter
Very nice Hunter! I really like the looks of the lettered The Five.
It's weird how things work out. For years, I thought I knew about all of the Russian editions of Robert McCammon's novels. Then, a couple of years ago, out of the blue, I discovered a 1994 translation of Gone South that I had not known about. All of the Russian sites I knew about had never made any mention of this book. And as of today, I actually own a copy of it.
So I went from not knowing about it for some 15 years, to knowing about it but assuming I'd never see one, to actually owning one.
Hunter
I like the cover! Congrats Hunter.
Wow. I can't wait to read that. May is so far away.
Congrats on both the Russian and the ARC, Hunter.
Thanks, Patrick!
This 2007 Russian hardcover of Speaks the Nightbird arrived a couple of days ago:
Hunter
Hunter your the Mccammon expert, do you know if any of the upcoming Subpress reprints are going to feature extra content other than artwork ala Wolfs Hour? Also does Mccammon have any plans for any sequels to his previous horror novels?
The answer to both questions is: No, not as far as I know. The main reason for doing the limiteds (aside from the fact that Bill wanted to do them) of those first four books is that they've never had limited editions before (well, They Thirst had the Dark Harvest limited, but the others didn't, and in fact, there were never U.S. hardcovers of any of the first three (Baal, Bethany's Sin, and The Night Boat).
As for sequels, McCammon didn't really plan to write a sequel to The Wolf's Hour. When Subterranean wanted to do the limited of the The Wolf's Hour, they wanted McCammon to write a new introduction for the book. He started to do so, but was bored by that, as he'd written a couple of introductions already. He thought it would be more fun for the reader if he wrote a new story featuring Michael Gallatin, and what he anticipated would be a 20- or 30-page short story became the much-longer "The Room at the Bottom of the Stairs." He had so much fun doing that, that he decided to write more short stories, and that's how The Hunter from the Woods was born. Back when The Wolf's Hour was first published, he had envisioned a series of books, but Pocket wasn't interested in a series, so he put the idea aside. The short stories in The Hunter from the Woods allowed him to explore some other facets of Michael's life.
In general, though, he's all about going forward, and he has numerous ideas for the Matthew Corbett books and contemporary novels (including the horror/sci-fi "hellzapoppin'" novel he's working on now) and has no interest (at this time) in writing a sequel to any of his other, earlier books.
Hunter
The Providence Rider is now available to buy on the SubPress website:
http://www.subterraneanpress.com/Mer...oduct_Count=22