15th and 16th year anthologies in the works
While Massachusetts was up to important business the last couple of weeks, I have been also by preparing several new BHM anthologies for the printer. In the upcoming issue, we’re advertising the 15th and 16th year anthologies by offering them for presale for $30 for both. The idea is to raise some of the money to pay for the printing of the big books.
Annie is now working on the technical part of turning the 15th and 16th anthologies into the format the printer requires, and we expect to send them to the printer next week. That means we should get back the completed shipments of the books by the middle of February, which means that readers who take advantage of the preorder offer will not have to wait very long at all to get the new anthologies. (Update on Jan 23: Lenie said this is far too optimistic, that the ship date from our office will be more like the middle of March.)
My job is to pick the article chronology for the new anthologies, which can be tricky because I’m deleting ads, Letters to the Editor, and the few articles that don’t fit for one reason or another. I’m leaving in 95% of the articles, mainly in their original formats, which is the tricky part.
Today I completed the chronology for the 17th year anthology, which we hadn’t advertised in the upcoming issue but which I am thinking of sending to the printer anyway. Many of our readers own anthologies 1 through 14, having bought The Whole Sheebang, so the new anthologies will be a very welcome set of books for them.
Anyway, I’m not just playing golf and fishing all the time. I’m working!
January 21st, 2010 at 8:13 pm
I know you make the anthologies so you don’t have to reprint the old sold out issues but I like to read every bit of the magazines. All the ads and letters to the editor and every thing. I am missing 17 of the old magazines and have looked for them on line. No luck. Any ideas where I might get them? I would have to order 5 anthologies but only need one in one of them. For instance I need #80 so would need to order full anthologies for one magazine. Would prefer to have just #80 if possible.
Thank you.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:03 am
Nancy, it comes to cost. Printing individual issues is cost prohibitive, while printing anthologies is expensive but affordable. If we printed the entire magazine, including ads and letters, we’d end up with a 600 plus-page anthology and have to sell it for $35, which would depress sales so much it would cause the whole project to lose money. The way we do it works: We get a 360-page anthology out of six issues and sell it for an affordable $21.95.
We have back issues 105 thru 107, and 115 thru 121. We have plenty of them right now, but judging from the demand of past years we’ll be out of half of these back issues by this time next year, and all of them by the year after. Surely someone out there must have some back issues.
Anyone want to help us search for some? Some libraries, of course, have some back issues.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:18 am
Sorry to hear you are being forced to work. I checked with AARP to see if there was anything I could do to stop this insanity but they said Annie had permission to do all the elder abuse she could heap on you. Sorry, I tried. The weather has warmed up enough here in Tennessee that I will be forced to run right out and do some pond fishing for bass. I’ll let you know how good it was…
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:49 am
Eric, while putting together the 17th year anthology I saw your photo on page 9 holding the wonderful scroll saw-carved wooden likeness you did of my Marine Corps brother Jim. That carving still hangs on my office wall on the flag that came from Jim’s coffin. Is the Scroll Saw Portraits Club still offering this service to servicemen killed in action? (Jim was not killed in action, by the way, but you did one for him anyway.)
A quick Net search turned up this site, which has the article we did on you on it.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Is Annie’s column gone for good? I will miss the updates on her sweet family.
January 23rd, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Annie’s blog, Bramblestitches, will have a link in the blogroll at the right of each blog. Annie has wanted to move her blog back onto her own site for quite some time. She has her plate full with managing the editorial content of the magazine, working on anthologies, etc., and she wants to get back to using her own blog to relax by posting about her sewing projects at her own leisurely pace.
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Thanks for the reply. Glad to know that her blog will still be around.
January 24th, 2010 at 9:14 am
Dave I would like to help Nancy Foster In her quest for the old issues of BHM that she talks about needing in your blog responses section on the web. I have most of the anthologies and love them. But like BHM and others out there I need money coming in to let money go out. If you can find out from her the exact issue numbers she needs to complete her collection I will look to see if I have them and let her have them for the cover price plus shipping. So I can continue my collection of anthology ordering of BHM which in my humble opinion are like modern day Fire fox books that were around years ago. Let me know if I can help.
January 24th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Paul, I emailed your email to Nancy.