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A blog by Frank Adey

Wednesday, 9 June 2010

Deserts of Wiltshire

POD (print on demand) publishing is a wonderful thing. Provided a literary work exists in digital form, a marvellous machine invented by Xerox can input a CD of the work and spit out a bound paperback copy in under five minutes. From this, several benefits flow :
1. Books which had been unavailable for decades, if not centuries, are now back on sale.
2. Vast amounts of paper (and forest) are saved, as no more books are printed than have been asked for.
Supply and demand are exactly balanced.
3. Authors can get their books into print for as little as £100, at no risk to the publisher.
But there can be pitfalls. The appearance of the book may leave something to be desired. See, for instance, the catalogue of Kessinger Publishing - a marvellous collection of books, but all of them issued in the same, garish, custard yellow covers. And look at the  example below. It is a copy of John Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire, first printed in the 17th century. And what do we have on the cover? Stonehenge, perhaps? Salisbury cathedral? No, we have an eroded bluff in what is probably the Mojave Desert.
On the other hand, if that really is Wiltshire, then there may be more to this Global Warming lark than I thought.

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