It was pointed out to me yesterday that the PoD pages on the HarperCollins website had gone missing, so I reached out to see if there was an explanation. In short - yes, they are gone for the moment, but they will be back soon.



  • The printer we have been using for years to produce our print-on-demand hardbacks for both the History of Middle-earth and Collins’ famous New Naturalist series has stopped production of these kinds of books, and although we had hoped for a seamless transition to the new printer before residual copies ran out, it has taken a little longer than expected. Because our online shop takes payment at the time of ordering, we have therefore taken the titles down until the new production line is ready.

    The books are sold in very small quantities, of course. When we started doing them, the idea was to provide affordable copies in response to requests from fans who wanted to complete their collections and also obtain the index volume in hardback, and annual sales were mostly in single figures, but they have now grown to between about 10 and 40 copies of each volume per year. I thought Martins’ closure might mean we would have to stop offering this service, but we have found another supplier and are currently making sure that the materials and the quality will match the existing editions as closely as possible, as well as concluding negotiations over cost, which might affect the selling price of each volume. I hope that helps to explain.

    I’m sorry for the disruption - we are a very small team within the HarperCollins behemoth, and when it comes to publishing things like print-on-demand hardbacks, we are sometimes swimming against the tide!