In my isolation on the most remote island in the Pacific Ocean, I found myself painting miniatures again. I am working on some French Dragoons circa 1810. I pulled out my trusty Osprey Men-at-Arms "Napoleon's Dragoons and Lancers" by Emir Bukhari, published in 1976. It is so old it does not even have a Men-at-Arms number and the cover is yellow with age. . . it was probably one of the first 30 Napoleonic books I bought. But I digress. . . So I flip the book over to see how much it cost. . . £1.75. . . which considering what wages were back then, it was not inexpensive. (As a second lieutenant I was making about $1200 a month before taxes.)
I checked the Osprey website and a current Men-at-Arms is £12.
£12 sounds like a total bargain compared to what Palgrave Macmillan charge for their titles £70-£100 for a single title? Ouch!
Almost the only way to buy them is when Palgrave have one of their periodic sales - sometimes only of e-Books, but once, not long ago of hard copies as well. And twitter (at least the part of twitter I see) went crazy about it! Otherwise get them from a university library (or find a friend who will do that for you).
It was a great moment, wasn't it? I bought myself £850 worth of books for under £100!
Bob thats reasonable compared to some publishers think the first book I bought was Seven shillings and six pence way back in 1965 the last one was considerably more
And let's not discuss the price of books that are older, and hard to find...
That is true but the you can still find used books fairly cheap.
The reprints of older books is a good thing, as is Google Books. And Abebooks is an excellent book service.
I remember back in the 1980s when academic monographs (books like Houlding's Fit for Service or Duffy's Soldiers, Sugar and Seapower) hit £45 which was eye-watering at the time; and trade books were often £25 or £30. And all these years later, the monographs have gone up by maybe 50%, while the trade books are the same price or even lower - think of the number of Pen & Sword or Helion titles published at around £20 or £25. Editions are smaller, I think, and technology has helped make short run printing cheaper. Meanwhile the internet (and sites like abebooks) has greatly lowered the price of most secondhand books (driving many secondhand booksellers out of business) while raising the price of rare and sought after books. It is also infinitely easier to get what you want when you want it - I bought hundreds of books, not because I had any immediate use for them, but because I thought I might need them in the future and that I wouldn't then be able to get them. Not that I'm complaining - they are constantly coming into use and hunting for them was great fun.
That's true, Rory ... I also buyed a lot of rather fair prized old books via zvab.com (one of the first internet marketplaces in Germany), e.g. the Thiebault manual of 1813 for 250€ (in a German antique book seller). Or just two weeks ago all 10 volumes of the reedition of Lienhart & Humbert for 350€ (which a British bookshop sells for over 1.000€).
Some "valuables" I got on figure markets and fairs like the Kulmbach tin soldier fair; I got all three volumes of the large coffeetable-books from Bleckwenn covering the Prussian army of 1753 to 1786, two of them for 50€. They costed about 800-900 DM each when published in the 70/80s - a collector who saw my books in Kulmbach asked me about the prize I paid and he nearly cried as he bought them right after publication.
Even worse it is with the old magazines like Uniformes or Tradition or Zeitschrift für Heereskunde; as I needed space for books I digitized the articles of interest into my "digital library" - and started to offer them to specialized book sellers. As I got only 15€ for the all numbers of the old "Campaigns" and 100 numbers for "Figurines" I continued to scan the articles ... and throw the old magazines into our garbage bin (like Uniforms, Tradition, etc.).
It is a pity but I accept that the market of interest is decreasing and so I'm happy to get some "treasures" rather cheap and don't cry for the money spent many years ago.
Greetings from Berlin
Markus Stein
I was talking with Donald Horward several months ago and he told he bought 600 books from Ken Trotman back in the 1980s to build the Florida State University Library. Books can be found fairly cheaply on Amazon. . . as Kevin Kiley pointed out there you get a reprint of almost any book that is on Google Books fairly inexpensively.
Hello, I joined about 20 minutes ago, so forgive me if I make a mistake (or you already know this). I've read the rules and think this is permissable.
I get books from Naval and Military Press here in the UK. They are brand new and eye-wateringly cheap. For example, books from the Naploneonic Library series which retail here at £25 each, can be bought from between £3.99 to £5.99, with P&P on top. I can highly recommend them. Their website is here.
https://www.naval-military-press.com/
Hi Carol, many thanks for your post, and welcome to the forum. This post is absolutely fine. Thank you for being so diligent in relation to the forum rules. One minor thing - I see that you have already editted your details so that your first name is displayed. Could I ask you to add in your surname in their too? Many thanks in advance Happy posting! Zack (Website Owner)
This is my first proper look at this admirable forum and it is so good to see many familiar names taking part. My own collecting of books on military uniforms started in my mid-teens and I pounced on the few books available at that time in Britain and have continued ever since, although this tends to be a mainly digital search now. My first treasure was 'Regiments at a glance' by Frank Wilson - mainly for the pictures followed by books by R Money Barnes again for the pictures rather than the script. The first two more scholarly books were WY Carmen's 'Military uniforms from contemporary sources', which still stands up well and Miller and Dawnay's ' Military paintings and drawings in the Royal Collection'. From an uninformed start, an interest in European uniforms was greatly encouraged when I bought for the then enormous sum of £5 the first edition of Anne S K Brown's ' The anatomy of glory' when it first came out followed by and also at a high price Paul Martin's 'Der bunte rock'.
As has been mentioned, abe books can provide bargains and I have also found a good source at Berliner Zinnfiguren.
With my best wishes
Richard Adlington
Edinburgh
Are you familiar with On Military Matters? I have found it an excellent source of material over the years.
http://onmilitarymatters.com/pages/dfindex.php