The Online Photographer

Happy to report that systems are all "go" for our next photobook sale with the Nelson-Atkins Museum. The last one was a huge success, with just shy of 1,000 copies of An American Century of Photography by Keith F. Davis sold at a very nice price.

That was four tons of books, by the way.

The next sale will be quite different. We'll be offering a package of four outstanding books, together, for one price. And sorry to keep harping on this, but the price really is exceptionally low for what you'll be getting—it's a tremendous bargain by virtually anyone's definition.

Again, these are older but very high-quality photobooks that the museum has in storage. All are brand new. Naturally I'll tell you the titles and describe all the books before the sale starts. One is by far the definitive book on its subject, of especial interest to Civil War buffs and valued highly on the secondary market. Another is a superb sampling of the work of a woman who Keith calls "one of the absolute giants of photography"—a very pretty, well-made book, a great book to have if you only have one of hers.

And neither of those is even my favorite.

Putting together the package is a bit complex. There aren't as many copies of these books as there were with the first one. So the number of packages sold will be the number of whichever book the Museum has the least of. In one case—a fifth book—there are far fewer copies available than there are of the other four—hundreds less. The Museum just doesn't want to mess with the complexity that would be created by charging for that one, so that book will be added as a free bonus to about the first 250 orders.

There was little chance we were going to sell out of the first book we offered, although apparently we came close to doing that. This time I think it's likely that we will sell out.

Hard and soft
One more complication, and yet one more reason to order early:

In the case of one book, all the copies are softcover. In another, all the copies are hardcover. But with the other two, the books exist in both hardcover and softcover. The printed matter inside is exactly the same in both cases—same paper, same printing quality—so people who get the softcovers won't miss out on any content. But with both of those titles, there are different numbers of hardcovers available. So what will happen is that orders will be fulfilled in the order they're received, and all orders will be fulfilled with hardcovers until they run out, at which time we'll switch over to the softcover copies.

So what I'm saying is that you might get five or four books, and you might get three, two, or one in hardcover.

These books are good enough (I have all five right here in my office right now), and price low enough, that even if you end up with four books and three of the four are softcovers, it's still very well worth the small amount you'll be paying. Nobody loses. But early birds will get a bit extra.

For that reason, I'll be giving you plenty of advance notice about exactly when the sale will start. Right now we're looking at about four weeks out. But I'll keep you updated, and as soon as we get a date certain and a time I'll let you know.

Twit
I'm a twit about things like social media, but as I said yesterday, I'm making a strong effort to Tweet alerts to new posts, and I'll also Tweet just before the beginning of the sale, four weeks from now, so those who follow @TheOnlinePhotog will get an instant alert.

The last book sale with the Nelson-Atkins Museum was a lot of fun. You'll like the next one too.

Mike
(Thanks to Keith)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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