Are you disagreeing with the fact ("marginally") or the justification ("production problem")? Either way, I don't see how these books should have differed from any other three book set to be housed in a slipcase. GA&U produced a five book slipcased release with The Tolkien Library; a nice set of which sold for, a more reasonable (the last set I saw go for £400 odd!), £130 on eBay the other day --& they weren't originally produced to sit in a slipcase together in the first place. I presume he simply meant that they weren't quite as uniform as they had planned (& understandably hoped) for. So who has one?

BH

Guess there is a mistake being made here.. I know that HC was planning to release the Deluxe set of HoMe in slipcase, but as we all know they vary in size too much. The 12 volume edition could easily be fit in a slipcase, but I know that it turned out too big and the test was fast abandoned. I believe the remark by David Brawn was about the Deluxe editions.

No mistake Beren. We're talking about both. Brawn is referring specifically to a deluxe slipcase --& there was a copy on eBay in 2007. I have the original email, with item number, that I sent Deagol. Yes, it may have been a customised slipcase --but if I recall, the seller said they'd bought the three editions in the slipcase. It was black cloth, matching the single slipcases. And, to be honest, I don't recall them looking a poor fit.

BH

ok then we talk about the same thing... indeed I saw the deluxe slipcase as well... don't have one anymore but sold two of those in the past

Well!? Do you have any pictures?
(Might have known one had passed through your hands...)

BH

Trotter wrote:

I can't agree with David Brawn's comments that "a production problem resulted in the heights of the three volumes being marginally different". The books vary considerably in width and height between the three editions. It would have been very difficult to make a slipcase that housed the three books, you would have needed some sort of padding to stop the books falling out.

Actually the books themselves only differ in height quite marginally. I think my volume and 1,2 and 3 only differ in height by 1-1.5mm or so (from shortest to tallest). The real issue in height on these volumes is all down to the different construction of the slipcases, which exaggerates the differences hugely. It would be quite easy to make a slipcase housing all three that would look "OK", but not great (especially when also taking into account the different profiles of the spines). This is evidently what HC found, so they decided not to bother.

Stu.

Hello everyone,

I'm currently considering purchasing the HarperCollins POD reissue of the last three volumes of HoMe (I do have the Houghton Mifflin editions for these volumes, but the pages are just glued together , and the black covers tend to get moldy in no time--partly due to the tropical climate where I live, but then again, I have no such problems at all with vols. 1-9 of my HoMe collection, which are all UK copies [different cover material]).

ANYWAY, I'm just curious if anyone who has purchased the HC POD reissues of Morgoth's Ring, War of the Jewels or Peoples of Middle-earth (or any book in the series really) could tell me how the BINDING is: are these reissues properly sewn (like the first nine volumes of the originial UK release--I've never seen the last three volumes of the original UK edition, but I assume they were also sewn ), OR are they just glued together? If the latter is the case, I'm not interested in buying them, since the price seems a bit steep for copies that are really just glorified paperbacks (as so many hardcovers today, alas!)

Also, I assume the pagination is the same as in the original volumes?

And what exact material are the covers made of? Similar to that of the original issue? (I'd prefer that to something fancy like linen, etc, since I tend to have problems with that (mold and such, see above).

Last not least, do these reissues contain the original frontispieces for vols. 10 and 12?

Mostly, though, I'm concerned about the binding...

Thanks in advance for any replies!

felagund

I bought a copy of "Sauron Defeated", here are my comments from earlier in the post.

I bought a copy of the POD version of Sauron Defeated and am able to compare it with the first edition. The dust jacket is a different colour to the original (the original cover is a burgundy, the new cover is brown and is lighter in colour than the cover of BOLT2). This is probably due to the new printing process. The barcode on the rear of the cover is about twice as big on this copy. I don't understand why these books have barcodes on them as they are printed to order, and I can't see any purpose that they serve The colour plates in the book are darker in the new book, but the quality of the reproduction is just as good as the original book. The copyright information shows This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010 1 I can't imagine that the number line would ever change with these books. The most obvious difference between the books are that the binding of the book is now black (the original binding is the same colour as the dust jacket). This is the same as the POD Index and I am assuming that all the POD History of Middle-Earth books have black bindings. Overall though I am very impressed with these books.

I didn't mention but they are glued and not sewn, I think all print on demand books would be glued. The covers are paper not cloth and as mentioned above the covers would appear to be same colour for every POD volume (brown). The page numbering is the same as the originals. If you buy the Index you will see it is identical to the other POD copies.

Trotter wrote:

The covers are paper not cloth and as mentioned above the covers would appear to be same colour for every POD volume (brown).

Aren't the covers black? My Index is certainly black.

Stu

Aren't the covers black? My Index is certainly black.

You are right, it is the same colour as the index (black).