Priority (1 Viewer)

[Daniel Philippe]

Please find attached a flyer for the (long-awaited) forthcoming book by Edward Dickinson et al. about the dating of scientific names in ornithology.

 

[Daniel Philippe]

Sample pages for you to better understand what this book is all about.

 

[pimpelmees]

Sample pages for you to better understand what this book is all about.

seems a boring book to me, not for everyone .

 

[MJB]

seems a boring book to me, not for everyone .

I almost entirely agree with you, except to substitute the word 'fascinating' for 'boring'.:-O

The detective work and patient research needed to tease out the history of bird names requires enquiring minds and near-infinite patience, but what is particularly intriguing is the light this publication will shine on the personalities of the time, their struggles for recognition, their ethics (or lack of them) and their success or otherwise. Without this history, we would not have the insight into how things came about at a time when handwritten correspondence between 'natural scientists' was the prime means of communication, dependent hugely upon the postal services of dozens of countries actually delivering the mail across continents.:t:
MJB

 

[fugl]

Looks to be very interesting. Too bad it's so expensive.

 

[Daniel Philippe]

Looks to be very interesting. Too bad it's so expensive.

This book is available to the book trade and the trade demands a margin of 40-50%; most copies not sold through the trade will be discounted and all contributors get 40% discount to thank them for their help, i.e. they get the same discount as the compilers do. Storage and order fulfilment handled professionally also cost money so the net income on an £80 book sold through the trade is below £30.

Out of that overheads such as cover design costs and setting up with potentially expensive desk-top publishing software are incurred on top of the fixed costs of printing, (which with a low print run implies digital printing at a higher unit cost than lithography) and replication of the CDs. Finally the compilers are also due a fee for what they have spent large parts of the last 7 years on. In this instance Aves Press directors donated the several weeks of time spent by them personally on desk top publishing software and saved the Company what might -- allowing for an iterative process -- have cost perhaps £10-15 per page if contracted out. The Aves Press website explains our business model which is designed to create a fairer relationship between author and publisher.

 

[fugl]

This book is available to the book trade and the trade demands a margin of 40-50%; most copies not sold through the trade will be discounted and all contributors get 40% discount to thank them for their help, i.e. they get the same discount as the compilers do. Storage and order fulfilment handled professionally also cost money so the net income on an £80 book sold through the trade is below £30.

Out of that overheads such as cover design costs and setting up with potentially expensive desk-top publishing software are incurred on top of the fixed costs of printing, (which with a low print run implies digital printing at a higher unit cost than lithography) and replication of the CDs. Finally the compilers are also due a fee for what they have spent large parts of the last 7 years on. In this instance Aves Press directors donated the several weeks of time spent by them personally on desk top publishing software and saved the Company what might -- allowing for an iterative process -- have cost perhaps £10-15 per page if contracted out. The Aves Press website explains our business model which is designed to create a fairer relationship between author and publisher.

Many thanks for the explanation & for the link to Aves. My reference to the book's cost was just a casual remark & I certainly didn't mean to imply that it was unduly high or that anyone was guilty of profiteering. I'm an historian by training & am very cognizant of the great scholarly value of such works.

 

[Daniel Philippe]

My reference to the book's cost was just a casual remark & I certainly didn't mean to imply that it was unduly high or that anyone was guilty of profiteering.

I am sure about that :t:

More from Edward Dickinson: The FREE CD being prepared for issue with Priority! will be the equivalent of at least 250 extra pages of text. In total there are 66 tables. The first 18 are related to books which are dealt with in chapter 3, the next 47 support the texts relating to periodicals examined in chapter 4. For example extensive tables deal with The Auk, the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, Condor, Emu, Ostrich and the Wilson Bulletin. Others deal with museum publications which hold content from more disciplines than just ornithology. For example considerable detail is provided on the Mémoires of the Academy of Science in St. Petersburg, the publications of the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Philippine Journal of Science, etc.

These 65 tables are printable and yield about 158 pages. Table 66 will compare dates of publication given in Peters' Check-list with those used in the 2003 edition of the Howard & Moore Checklist and the coming edition of that! Footnotes in that edition will be very brief and refer to this table! This has almost 1500 rows of content and if it were printed would require almost 100 pages. It is printable but is too wide for a landscape page so the implication is 50 pages with 50 more to take the extended data of each row. It may be possible to provide a version in small print that will not require more than the width of one landscape sheet (but no promises, except that if we are late with that we will offer it free from our website)! On top of that comes a file of explanatory notes regarding table 66 with references where required and that file is over 20 pages long.

 

[Daniel Philippe]

...This has almost 1500 rows of content and if it were printed would require almost 100 pages. It is printable but is too wide for a landscape page so the implication is 50 pages with 50 more to take the extended data of each row. It may be possible to provide a version in small print that will not require more than the width of one landscape sheet (but no promises, except that if we are late with that we will offer it free from our website)! On top of that comes a file of explanatory notes regarding table 66 with references where required and that file is over 20 pages long.

Changed to: ... This has almost 1500 rows of content and compressed to allow printing on landscape pages just wide enough to hold the content this table will print out at 34 pages. On top of that comes a file of explanatory notes regarding table 66 with references where required and that file is over 20 pages long. So after the compression of table 66 to make it more user-friendly the CD runs to about 220 pages not 250.

 

[Richard Klim]

British Birds

Reviewed by Andrew Harrop: BB 105(3): 160.

 

[cuckooroller]

Rather than a review, some rather obvious reflections on the rather arcane nature of the work. The "review" will not swing any needles. Those that were interested before in the subject were intentioned on buying the volume beforehand. I will be buying it shortly. Too bad it costs so much, but, when I think of all of the tedious background research involved, well, I'm not going to carp about it too much.

 

[Richard Klim]

Reviewed in BZN 69(1), allegedly.

 

[Daniel Philippe]

Special offer for 60 days

I will be buying it shortly. Too bad it costs so much, but, when I think of all of the tedious background research involved, well, I'm not going to carp about it too much.

The first 48 people asking [email protected] to purchase "Priority!" will get a 10% discount and a free copy of the Howard & Moore Checklist (2003). This means £72 plus postage £7.50 will get both books anywhere in the world. Orders must be proposed by e-mail as the website will do accept such discounted orders.

 

[Richard Klim]

Auk

Reviewed by Richard Banks in Auk 129(2) (allegedly).

 

[cuckooroller]

The first 48 people asking [email protected] to purchase "Priority!" will get a 10% discount and a free copy of the Howard & Moore Checklist (2003). This means £72 plus postage £7.50 will get both books anywhere in the world. Orders must be proposed by e-mail as the website will do accept such discounted orders.

I will wind up buying it separately, probably through Lynx. No inducement to me the HM 2003, which I have had since 2003! I have been waiting on the constantly post-poned, now for about four years, HM 4° Ed. Who knows if that will ever be published!

 

[MarcelHaas]

I have been waiting on the constantly post-poned, now for about four years, HM 4° Ed. Who knows if that will ever be published!

http://www.avespress.com/books/

Apparently, a pre-publication offer should be online in June with a publication date somewhere in August.

 

[Richard Klim]

Ibis

Reviewed by Alan Knox: Ibis 154(3): 643–644. [pdf]

 

[Daniel Philippe]

There is now a preview available from the website: http://www.avespress.com/books/

 

[cuckooroller]

Several booksellers are taking pre-publication orders. Other than avespress, I saw that NHBS was doing so about three months ago. I wrote Lynx about it, and after initially giving a mumbo jumbo answer about why they were not carrying it, they decided to do so. Happily, they are taking pre-orders for the HM 4th (both volumes together) and before the pre-publication offer for HBW-17 ran out. This is a convenience for those that make big book orders from Lynx coincident with their discount offers for the two Handbook series. I have ordered mine already.