Mike
The mystery of missing books
January 28, 2009 12:00 AM
I have been meaning to write a quick blog on this subject for a while,
but it kept on slipping my mind, until the forum post by Adam C
reminded me that I should really let you all know what is happening
with this.
Over the last couple of years, I have
been lucky enough to go to most of the events that Osprey attend in the
UK, and at every single one of these events the same questions crop up.
But the single most asked question relates to the strange gaps that
crop up in a couple of our series - where series numbers have been
allocated, but the book has never
materialized.
There are a few usual suspects -
Campaign 144 New York
Campaign 173
Taranto
Campaign 171 River Plate
Elite 99 Warrior
Women of Northern Europe
Elite 100 American Civil War
Vivandiers
Elite 119 US Naval Commandos of World War
2
Elite 129 US Naval Commandos of Korea
Combat
Aircraft 63 Aichi Val Units
Warrior 107 Scottish Medieval
Knight
There are a wide range of reasons behind the
'disappearance' of these books. Some have been firmly cancelled ( Elite
99, 100, 119, 129). Some are still pending - notably COM 63, CAM 171 and CAM 173, and some
have already been replaced (Cam 144 with Cam 192 New York). But for anyone who collects the full series of any Osprey books, these gaps are annoying.
For the last couple of years I have been campaigning hard for these numbers to be replaced by a new title, and I am glad to announce that I have finally succeeded.
With the help of my fellow blogger Kate, we have been able to convince the number crunchers that launching a new book with an older series number than usual will not adversely affect that sales of the book - and so welcome to the new Elite 100, World War II Axis Booby Traps and Sabotage Tactics , which is available to pre-order now!
Now it's just up to you all to go out and buy the book, so that Kate and I can continue our crusade to replace all of these book numbers - so you can truly have a complete 'set' of books!
As you can probably tell - Elite 100 is also going to be one of the first Elite titles to take the new cover style - and this one looks particularly vibrant with some fabulous Peter Dennis artwork on the front. Kate, who has overseen the new designs for the Elite series is going to post up some bits and pieces about the new covers shortly - so keep your eyes open.
COMMENTS
I just wish you would reprint New Vanguard 32: The Long Range Desert Group 1940-1945. It's been listed on the site for years, but always as out of stock.
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I never heard of the Elite 99, 100, 119 and Warrior 107 titles before and I would be interested in them, even though they're not in my usual fields of interest. My son would really the Warrior title as that is his favorite time period. The cover of Elite 100 is extremely attractive and if the material is good, I would buy it. I hope you and Kate will keep up the good work as history is too important to lose because someone thinks otherwise. Thank you, Jerry
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Mike:
While I do like the new cover illustration of Elite 100, I have to say I also liked the black& white/colour photos in the past booklets. These give both an immediacy as well as reminder to the younger generation that such conflicts and units actually existed.
I hope that you'll continue with the photos for the Warrior, Campaigns and Elite booklets whenever appropriate
xavier
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The new Elite Series cover looks great.
Sorry to read that the US Naval Commando books have been firmly cancelled. Hopefully somebody in the future will write an Elite titles about the Beach Jumpers and UDT's in WWII and Korea, and the SEALS in Vietnam.
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Here's a real mystery...I have to wonder who is making design decisions over there on covers. When you redesigned all your covers back in 2001 or so to go with the (In the Campaign series for example) red & white covers with the nice photo or drawing on the front to replace the older ones with the map and the soldier I was really pleased. All of your series had a nice much more professional look to them. In addition, part of the appeal of your books is that people who buy a lot of them like the way they all look nice together on a shelf. As a collector of your books, I even got rid of a few of my original cover versions to get some of the ones that were reprinted with the new covers. Now that I own 164 of just the Campaign series what do you do? Redesign the cover AGAIN. Sure the new fronts are nicer but the LEAST you could have done for all of us who buy lots of your books is leave the spine alone. In fact I even emailed to ask if the spine would be the same and was told that they would be exactly the same on the spine. So I order 2 (Vienna and Poitiers) and what do I see? The font on the spine is different, it’s smaller, and in all caps. I cannot not for the life of me figure out how such a silly decision to change the font could be made when everything else on the spine matches the previous books. Now I have 164 nice Campaign volumes with nice decent size fonts on the spine and the new ones with silly tiny fonts that don’t match.
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I am glade to hear that you will be printing the missing Campaign books. I have been woundering for some time what happend to them. I hope you guys get them printed. Thanks for looking out for your custumers.
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