# Sticker Shock



## martinus_scriblerus (Sep 29, 2008)

We're all fans of Rene Rondeau on this forum. His book, the Watch of the Future, is my bible. It so happens that Rene wrote another book about Hamiltons watches. I bought one from Rene a few years back, and it's a darn good thing. It's now out of print.

Here's a picture of the book in question:










Now check out a recent ebay auction of this book here:

The selling price? *$308.12!!!!!* :jawdrop:

Now I love you Rene, but for $308 I think I'd take 8 copies of the Watch of the Future.

*Incidentally, if you don't have a copy of the Watch of the Future, this is an indispensible book for any follower of this forum. You can buy a copy *[B]here[/B]* and Rene will even sign it for you.*


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## Kutusov (Apr 19, 2010)

Rip-off alert!!! You can get it for Â£20:

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?an=Rene+Rondeau&bt.x=0&bt.y=0&kn=future

Cheers!


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## martinus_scriblerus (Sep 29, 2008)

Kutusov said:


> Rip-off alert!!! You can get it for Â£20:
> 
> http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?an=Rene+Rondeau&bt.x=0&bt.y=0&kn=future
> 
> Cheers!


The book you can get for Â£20 is the "Watch of the Future". The book that sold for $308 is Hamilton Wristwatches. These are not the same thing.


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## Kutusov (Apr 19, 2010)

martinus_scriblerus said:


> The book you can get for Â£20 is the "Watch of the Future". The book that sold for $308 is Hamilton Wristwatches. These are not the same thing.


Oh, sorry! Could only find one copy of that one and it's a bit more than US$308

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=3027418162&searchurl=bt.x%3D62%26bt.y%3D15%26sts%3Dt%26tn%3DHamilton%2BWristwatches


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## Sisyphus (Jun 3, 2009)

Now that on-demand publishing is relatively simple through such companies as iUniverse or CreateSpace (the latter is a part of Amazon.com), perhaps Rene could be talked into putting out a reprint of his "Hamilton Wristwatches" book. I've bought two paperback books of this type, one a straightforward non-fiction work ($35 or so) and the other a nicely done book of color photographs (about $75). I have no idea what a reprint of Rene's book would sell for, but it would most likely be far less than $308!


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## JonW (Mar 23, 2005)

I can assure you that self publishing even with on the print on demand publishing websites is never cheap to do and the time it takes you to create the book can be long and arduous, even if you already have the original to crib from. If he just scanned it and did it on cheap paper in softback it would be cheaper than the ebay book by quite a way, but to do it properly in full colour on thick paper (no bleed thru etc) and hardback is never what i would call 'cheap', but you do get a nice product. The on demand guys are onto a good thing really with their business model but printing books one by one even from digital media is never going to be as cheap as having a bunch printed in one go, but for the writer its sometimes the only way forward.

Its a fact of life that once a book goes out of print it can rocket in price, even when the remaindering shops can have them on their shelves you can see the ebay prices climb and its not just watchbooks, it applies to almost any subject. Watchbooks are never cheap if theyre beyond the '1000 best watches' type of book, and ive got used to paying serious money for the books I wanted/need to gen up. Omega Journey Thru Time is over 300quid and most rolex books are round 100 these days, even used books that were freebies can command huge money, Omega's Speedy book is over 100quid when in English and it's softback and falls apart when you read it!


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## martinus_scriblerus (Sep 29, 2008)

Another!

You can buy it here:

This time "buy it now" for $275.00!

A bargain!

Rene: when are you going to re-print?


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

The "kudos" of having an original copy of any sought after book is another factor also! :yes:

In the dance world, Walter Laird is recognised as one of the "greats" of Latin style dance. His textbook on Latin technique originally sold for around Â£20 or $30 when first published - currently if you can find an original one you'll pay at least ten times that - and so it's been reprinted in limited numbers for about Â£50 - say $65 - but the price of originals is still climbing! :yes:

AND! the newer re-print includesthe revisions by the author of small errors not in the original publication, which are well nigh impossible to find in the separate small errata booklet that came out. 

So folks are willing to pay that bit extra for what they perceive as the real deal


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