LOA #1 Melville

Hey there, I'm new to LOA and lovin what I see (bought the Hemingway Volume 1). I'm extremely interested in purchasing the whole set of Melville, but see that #1 (Typee, Omoo, Mardi) is out of print on LOA's website. Any idea on when/if a re-print is scheduled?

From my research, it was only printed in 1982 and again a few years later -- and not since!?

I see a few used copies for sale, but I would prefer a new copy. Abe books shows a few new copies, but the markup is pretty steep.

Happy to join the club!

Welcome to our forum. LOA volumes don’t stay out of print for long, especially ones as popular as Melville. You might try their website again. I just now added the volume to my cart as if I can order it : https://www.loa.org/books/101-typee-omoo-mardi

I tried that as well, and the cart says: "Currently out of stock. A reprint has not yet been scheduled, but you may reserve a copy now and your credit card will not be charged until the book is shipped to you." I suppose I can do that and wait and see how things transpire over the next few weeks.

Good to hear though on volumes not OOP for long, I was worried thinking there's no reprint in sight and I have to search out a 1982 copy!

I wonder if the relatively-recent industry issues with printers is affecting the reprint schedule. The LOA mission, of course, is to keep these in print ... so hopefully it's truly "not OOP for long".

I also prefer to buy new, but if you can find them on eBay still shrink wrapped in the slipcase, I’d go for that. Not my auction and I didn’t look around much, but this one fits the bill:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/193919264058?hash=item2d267d253a:g:OcoAAOSwNqNgOCa8

elenchus: I think that's a good guess. That, and other projects already in line. I just discovered, last night, that the Donald Barthelme book was pushed back by one month. Didn't know that till _after_ the website I ordered from -- Book Depository -- suddenly showedit "unavailable" on the day it was supposed to publish and ship. Took a look at Amazon, and it now shows the June pub. date.
So I imagine reprints might take a backseat to new publications.

>5 spauldingd: great find thank you, I suppose I’ll go for that/search for a deal on an “old-new” print. Interesting to see this #1 LOA has no dust jacket but is in a slipcase, I like it even if it won’t match the newer ones.

I much more prefer the slip cases over dust jackets but know not everyone does. All my LOA volumes have slip cases.

spauldingd: Gotta admit, I've never understood the function of a slipcase if the book didn't have a dustjacket (which needs far more protection -- even sliding up against another book or two) than does the plain, hardcover in which books are bound (especially so, regarding dustjackets that need protecting, if the DJ sports some beautiful art).

>9 Truett: Slip cases offer real protection to books. Dust covers are useless advertisements that soon get ripped and ugly. I don’t know what led to the mass delusion that dust covers serve any real function. Dust collects on top of books, not the parts covered by dust jackets. Rant over. Throw out your dust covers and admire how much better your shelves look.

Or put the books with their dust covers into the slip cases. No need to choose. You can buy with the cases and order jackets from LOA or vice versa.

Spaulding: My colloquial method of writing sometimes meanders, like a conversation. In the pursuit of clarity: I was scratching my head over what purpose a slipcase has with a plain book (well-made, but plain) of the sort published by LOA, when they are sold sans dustjacket. I understand, now, that you see them as a device to protect your books from getting beat up should they...what? get dropped, or something.

To my way of thinking, a slipcase protects a book which is 1) a little more than "just" a book (if that phrase can be justified): for me, they protect books that are limited editions, or -- in the case of Charnel House Publishing -- handmade. Also, they can protect some beautiful artwork; usually on the dust jackets, but oft-times embossed on the books themselves. As for the more "vanilla" (but still VERY sturdy, VERY well-made books like those from LOA), I tend to read just about anywhere: while on the can, when out walking, on a train, a plane, in a restaurant, you name it (life is short, and there are just a LOT of books). So trying to protect them from getting a bit dinged up, or even from a stained page, is fruitless where I'm concerned (I even had to replace copies of MOBY DICK, because the boards and cloth cover began to fall apart -- I reread it while doing 8-10 km walks with my "old boy" some years ago).

I've never been under the misconception that dustjackets protect books from dust. While DJs _have_ been mostly used as billboards for the book -- no shame in that -- they have also evolved over the years. Art books and over-sized books are often fitted with dustjackets that are embellished with an artists work (you should look around some time -- there are some beautiful DJs out there). And, for some authors, they are a chance to let loose with a bit of auctorial whimsy: Harlan Ellison was notorious for writing fictional bios that were printed on the jacket flap of some of his books (usually the limited edition volumes, but there was at least one printed by Houghton Mifflin.

>12 Truett: great reply!

My feeling: DJs and SCs both do nothing for the reading experience. Can’t read with either (no one seriously reads trying to hold a DJ do they). So it’s just for storage purposes, and a SC wins over DJ there. Aesthetics differ, but hopefully the spine is beautiful in an SC.

I will say I never had issues reading without a DJ until I read my recent moby-dick copy. The cover and back attracted dog/cat hair like crazy. I should have DJd it each time I set it down but, too much work.

I seriously read. With dust jackets on. To each his own.

I'm a dust-jackets-off-when-reading guy. Yes! To each his own.

Sorry for the radio silence on my end. It has been a wild, unprecedented first half of the year at LOA, and I’ll spend the next couple of days answering a few unanswered questions here on Library Thing.

An answer to simbae’s comment at the top of this thread—how our Melville volume, LOA #1, is out of stock—is a good place to start because it allows me to describe the challenges facing LOA (and the printing industry as a whole).

On the one hand, sales of LOA books during the past year have been through the roof, as sales of print books across the industry have skyrocketed. During the past year several LOA titles have sold as many copies in six to eight months as they had in the previous three or four years.

On the flip side, we’ve run out of stock of more titles than we can possibly reprint in such a short time. We currently have more than seventy series titles out of stock and twenty more are so low on stock that they are basically sold out as well. The challenges for reprinting are multiple: so many printing firms have closed down or scaled back during the past few years (in part because of the rise of ebooks and corresponding decline in print sales), that book manufacturers were and are basically unprepared for the onslaught of orders, and they are overwhelmed. Plus, many of them are short-staffed because of retirements and layoffs during the pandemic, and some of the largest printers are in the middle of regions that continue to have COVID outbreaks. The current lead time for printing an LOA book is 14 to 16 weeks (compare that to the 6 to 7 weeks we were accustomed to in the past). Worse, because our previous manufacturer went bankrupt, nearly every title we sent to press is, to the new printer, a “new title” and must go through a full round of proofs, which takes time for both the printer and for LOA staff.

On top of everything else, the last paper mill in the U.S. able to produce paper conforming to LOA specs shut down unexpectedly and permanently at the beginning of this year. In the middle of a pandemic, then, we (and other publishers with similar paper needs) had to contact and negotiate with mills abroad to get paper. Our paper now comes from Finland--and, boy, that has been an interesting process--and I’m pleased to report that the new stock exceeds our expectations. But for about two months this past spring, we literally had no paper at all to print LOA books.

The final challenge facing the LOA and the printing industry as a whole is the uncertainty of the future. Book manufacturers are reluctant to scale back up, because it’s not clear whether the increased sales in books is a temporary effect of the pandemic or something more permanent. Similarly, we are faced with challenges on how many books to print of the titles currently out of stock: do we assume that the sales of the past year are an anomaly? Or might sales be expected to increase because LOA books have been introduced to new readers? The answer is certainly somewhere in between, but it’s a guessing game that can prove expensive and time-consuming if we’re significantly off.

These are only a few of the challenges and obstacles we’ve faced recently, and you can imagine their effect on a publisher with fewer than twenty staff members. We are in a much better place than we were six months ago, but it will take us a couple of years to get everything back in print, and we ask for your patience in the months ahead.

--David

>16 DCloyceSmith: Thanks for the update, David. That is very interesting, and the situation is more than a bit dismaying.

Out of curiosity, is part of the sales rush for titles having to do with writings of our founding fathers? This is just a wild ass guess (speculation may be better), but I wonder if the recent challenge to American democracy have revived peoples' interest in what was actually said during the establishment of our nation.

Sales have been across the board, across all topics, but particularly fiction (Hemingway, Jackson, Vonnegut, Le Guin, to name a few) and African American authors and subjects (especially Baldwin and Douglass). The Hofstadter also took us by surprise.

The Founders volumes have always sold strongly, so the increase this past year, while certainly noticeable, has been masked somewhat because we usually maintain a lot of stock of the major volumes (Debate on the Constitution, Jefferson, Paine). Nevertheless, we're out of stock of two John Adams volumes (the third is nearly out), Madison, and Washington, not because their sales were extraordinarily high but because we simply haven't been able to reprint them as we normally would have by now.

--David

Wow thank you for the in depth reply David, fascinating to hear an insider speak to the logistics. I ended up purchasing a used copy, and as expected, the quality is not to my liking. Here's to waiting the re-print out.

Also, I see LOA's adopt a book request on this exact title, for anyone that is interested:

https://loa.org/news-and-views/1854-adopt-this-book-_herman-melville-typee-omoo-...

I'm excited to see how the new paper from Finland is/how it compares to older prints from your previous paper supplier. I imagine you want as close to a match as possible, but what if it's just noticeably better? We'll be watching the prices as well I'm sure!

>19 simbae:

Our cream-white paper specs have changed slightly (*almost* imperceptibly) over the years, as we've moved from mill to mill. In order to maintain our standard opacity level between 86 and 88 (in other words, you can only see between 12% and 14% "tint" of whatever is printed on the page behind it), mills have cheated a little and made the paper slightly more cream than in the past. Adding color is one of the cheaper ways to improve opacity, but we've always resisted making the paper too yellow. Under certain lights, if you compare a book printed in the 1980s to one printed in the last few years, you'll notice that the later editions are more cream, less white.

What we did with Finland, since we were basically starting from scratch: we sent them sheets from 1984 and told them to match it. And, remarkably, they did, without fuss! It's the one good thing that has come out of this experience.

--David

Useless factoid #1: The LOA's original paper mill in North Carolina, by the way, produced mostly cigarette papers. They went bankrupt for obvious reasons.
Useless factoid #2: The primary use for the flexboard used for Library of America cases is in baseball caps.

>20 DCloyceSmith: thank you, David, for your in depth answers. I am eagerly waiting to subscribe from the United Kingdom and have been looking at the Hemingway volumes, Fitzgerald, and the Founding Fathers. In addition, I've heard someone on this forum mention that the paper has been too thin (translucent) that you can see the printed letters at the rear of the page (the backside) and they have used a blank white card or something similar to aid their reading. Is this something that was considered with the new paper manufacturer in Finland? Or do the new volumes suffer the same opaqueness?

>21 ironjaw: The opacity of LOA volumes using our thinner (30 lb.) paper has always ranged between 86 and 88, with the exception of a half dozen volumes reprinted a decade or so ago, when we got a bad batch of paper (with an opacity of 83.5) and the problem was noticed far too late. (We ended up returning about a hundred thousand pounds of paper to the mill.)

Some people find that that even 88 opacity is a little distracting; many others don't notice it at all. But a *completely* opaque thin cream-white sheet simply doesn't exist. In fact, the "normal" opacity range for 30 lb. paper is around 80 (see, for example: https://www.domtar.com/sites/default/files/2020-12/Guardian_Opaque_Spec_Sheet_EN.... That's not something we'd ever consider using. Similarly, using thicker paper with a higher opacity would result in books that are too thick for comfortable reading and would not lie flat as readily—particularly on our volumes that are over 1,100 pages.

Sometimes the show-thru seems slightly more dramatic not because of the paper but because of the density of the printing. In other words, if the type is thicker, there's more of it to show through. There's always ink density variation from one book to the next, and often even within a single printing. We work with the printers constantly to make sure they keep the foot off the gas, so to speak, when they're printing our books. One early mistake (before my time) is a good example of how ink density can be an issue: the drawings in the Thurber volume, with their thick lines, are so heavy that they proved to be a horrible distraction on the first printing. For subsequent reprints, then, we switched to our 40 lb. stock, which has an opacity of 92 and which we generally use on books that are 800 pages and under.

By the way, I'm simplifying the way opacity is measured; the number actually represents how much light shows through the paper (thus, 88 instead of 12). But I've found that thinking in opposite terms (how much black shows through) is easier for most people to grok.

--David

Love all the details and updates, DCLoyceSmith!

With all the problems, it's great to hear the demand for LOA titles is robust, at least for the present. I do hope a healthy number of "new readers" get the LOA bug, and become subscribers.

>16 DCloyceSmith:

Thanks for the detailed update, David. Very interesting to hear about the inner workings going on these days. And congratulations on the sales boom! While the supply chain issues are no doubt frustrating, the sales are a nice win. Like elenchus, I hope there's a good number of new readers there, to ensure continued success for LOA. And I hope both office and warehouse staff are keeping safe and well.

>22 DCloyceSmith: Thank you very much, David for your in-depth and thoughtful reply. I find it utterly fascinating to hear about the editorial and publication decisions and specifications that are going on to produce these books. I can’t wait to subscribe when international shipping is available. I just love slipcases.

>16 DCloyceSmith:
Thank you so much, David, for such detailed updates! I am one of recent subscribers, and I admit that I have gone a little crazy with my LOA purchases and thus made a nice contribution to the sales increases. :) I am glad to hear that other people felt enthusiastic about LOA last year, too!
The challenges you described in your posts are real; however, I hope that, in the end, this will all lead to a new good future for the company!

>22 DCloyceSmith: Thanks David for that informative description of your engineering of the titles.

I've never found these things to be an issue, but will check out Thurber.