I'll admit to struggling with the economic logic of these eye-wateringly expensive books. Even more so when it's approaching impossible to find any details of whats in it or where it can be bought from. 20 minutes of net searching merely produced a couple or three side references and a mention in a magazine. So, even though I could afford it, and having something (probably) approaching 1,000 books about the place implies that I'm not averse to dead tree information storage, marketing inefficiency means I won't.
The effective hourly rate for most ordinary authors is pretty pants at the best of times. Assuming all the records were not presented in one lump; nicely tied up with pink ribbon; the amount time spent tracking down information, scholarship and fact checking needed to produce a definitive work must have been huge. If handwaving guesses at likely sales are anywhere near correct it appears that slavery might have been more fiscally rewarding than authorship!!
I'd contrast this with a book of similarly limited appeal that I did buy recently. "The Secret Horsepower Race" WW2 western front fighter engine development by Calum E Douglas. £35 from Mortons for almost 500 pages of (apparently) carefully researched reporting covering what was going on with management behind the scenes of the major combatants from 1930 to 1945. But it still took several adverts and finding out that the author had a serious engineering background in engine design before I bit. Despite being close to my top price to buy unseen limit. Interesting but a heavy read. Plus a few engineering howlers that the author really should have known better than. Even at that price I'm still dubious about the economics. My copy of Setrights "The Power to Fly" was remaindered off. Stupidly I passed over Bristol Cars and Engines further down the same shelf.
I imagine I'm not the only person who places reasonable spending limits on the purchase of books that might be interesting.
Clive
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