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Interest in pre-order of "The Index of Japanese Swordsmiths"


Would you be interested in purchasing the 2 volume: Index of Japanese Swordsmiths?  

90 members have voted

  1. 1. Would you be interested in purchasing the 2 volume: Index of Japanese Swordsmiths?

    • Yes, I would be willing to purchase a copy of the high quality, hard bound, offset printed books at $100 plus shipping.
      48
    • Yes, I would be willing to purchase 2 copies of the high quality, hard bound offset printed books at $100 plus shipping.
      15
    • Yes, I would be willing to purchase 3+ copies of the high quality offset printed books at $100 plus shipping.
      8
    • If the required number of copies of the offset prints isn't reached, I would be willing to purchase a good quality digitally printed set, hard bound, at $180 plus shipping.
      16
    • No thank you, I am happy to purchase the current versions available or already own this set.
      3
    • Books? I prefer to buy swords rather than read about them.
      0


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Thanks Brother Pete, I fully agree with you. In consequences, all non matter-of-fact post shall be deleted by my very goodself as I have just deleted a few.

 

This following sentence does not call for any reply:

 

Why can't you guys keep things under control, why so much hate? :laughabove: :laughabove: :laughabove:

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No further comments needed. We will now let the poll decide if this is viable. Only once that is done, will we iron out all the details, work out who will do what, and how. I also have queries out at a number of publishers/printers. IF this is done, (and it is a big if) we will make sure all the details are confirmed and everything works. There is a lot to work out, from payment methods to shipping to book details. So for now, we focus on viability. THEN we can sort out the rest. Who, what, where, when and of course...why.

 

Brian

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OK, since it looks like there is demand for 100 copies@ 100$ each let's see the result of the queries sent out by Brian at "a number of publishers/printer".

 

If he gets a similar (or even better) offer I think it would be better to let him run the whole thing, as some people on this board appear to totally dislike my activity here.

 

If not, well, I'm not the type who backs up from difficult projects :) . Provided of course that some people don't manage to make me lose the will to even open the main page of the forum :lol:

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You will need probably 200 interested votes to get 100 confirmed sales.

At $100 per set, with 30% for Markus (a bit low imho) that is $70 for the books. Minus Paypal fees, that is about $65 for both. So $32.50 per book, offset printed high quality, case bound or cloth. Is that the quote you have? I assume they are warehousing and shipping individually to buyers? (Fulfillment) That is about $250 per order plus a small fee per order plus overseas shipping.

If you have a quote like that, drop us the printers info and we can hash out the details.

 

Brian

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No.

 

The best quote I have at this moment is for the equivalent of 7337$ but these were preliminary negotiations and I'm fairly confident I will be able to haggle it down to 7000$. Obviously this doesn't include any paypal fees, bank fees and so on. This is for high quality acid-free paper, hard cover with sewn binding.

 

Speaking of the paypal fees and bank fees, since all the project would happen within the EU it would be much cheaper if the escrow officer would be an EU resident. I think Jean would be the obvious choice, of course if he wants to deal with this kind of time consuming effort.

 

This would help us keep the cost down on two levels:

1. The paypal fees for all the money received from other EU residents would be much smaller

 

and most important:

 

2. The bank fees for the payments made to the print company and the shipping company would be VERY small compared to fees for the same amount of money if the payment originates from South Africa.

 

Of course, if Jean cannot get himself involved in this, we will have to just suck it up on the paypal and bank fees, so to speak.

I suggest that in any case, the royalties should be paid directly to Markus by each buyer, as this would avoid another round of paypal fees.

 

P.S. I don't understand how you came up with the 250$ per order figure. It should be 100$ + bank and paypal fees + packing&shipping for each set of two volumes. And that's it.

 

P.P.S. Please understand that this is done based on personal relations as a personal project. Last thing I need now is to "drop us the printers info and we can hash out the details". The printer info and credentials will be disclosed by me to the escrow officer only and that will be AFTER every detail of the deal is negotiated with the printer and accepted by the buyer group.

During the kind of haggling that I'm doing these days I definitely don't want to see the printers receiving intercontinental calls about this project :lol: .

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Brian,

I am a little confused. How did a set of books for $100 jump to $250 for paypal and shipping ? Please tell me this is a typo.

 

I sent out a flyer regarding the books and so far have six sets spoken for, not counting the 3-4 I will buy myself.

 

However, I can not commit if i have to tell folks that their $100 set of books just jumped to $250.

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Ed, please refer to the following part of my message:

 

 

P.S. I don't understand how you came up with the 250$ per order figure. It should be 100$ + bank and paypal fees + packing&shipping for each set of two volumes. And that's it.

 

 

 

I'm not sure why Brian said that thing about 250$ but it's obviously a mistake. Paypal and bank fees shouldn't add too much if we do this right (I covered this part in my previous message too). As for shipping, individual shipping for such a large book set may get expensive but shouldn't raise over 30$ per set (for US shipping, Europe should be much cheaper) if regular post is used.

 

At this point I'm a bit tired of all these misunderstanding, errors and so on and I'm seriously considering the possibility to do this with my own money. Of course I'm not going to put money up front for free, but I won't be greedy either. (say 15$ per book set). I would still need NMB's support, of course.

 

This way, we could also get read of the suspicions that this could be some sort of elaborate hoax :rotfl:

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You guys need to read better. I wrote:

"I assume they are warehousing and shipping individually to buyers? (Fulfillment) That is about $250 per order plus a small fee per order plus overseas shipping.

Fulfillment is a printer/publisher term, where they store the books for you, and ship directly to each customer. That storage and shipping service usually costs around $250 per order (total order..all the books) and is very convenient. They also add about $1.30 to each book for handling.

Not all printing companies offer it, but it would be a very convenient way of getting the books to everyone.

However I assume Adrian is planning on using a shipping company. That is fine if all copies are pre-sold and have an address to go to, but fulfillment allows us to print extras and have them shipped as people pay.

It is just another option.

 

Brian

 

PS - No, I cannot do the escrow. Foreign exchange controls here prevent me from doing this, I would have to pay a fortune to accept the money. Plus a lot of questions to answer and a ton of fees. We need someone in Europe. Probably Markus himself...who can keep his share and forward the rest to the printers?

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For me it was even harder to understand :lol:

 

Unfortunately none of the printers that is willing to print such a tiny order in offset offers this type of service.

 

If everyone is OK with Markus acting as escrow officer I have absolutely nothing against it :)

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I think that is up to Markus.

Leave the poll running for another week. 150-200 interested votes should guarantee about 100 paying orders. By then you should have a confirmed price, shipping quote..fees etc. Then we can finalize escrow/shipping/qty etc etc.

For now...just keep voting all.

 

Brian

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I think that is up to Markus.

Leave the poll running for another week. 150-200 interested votes should guarantee about 100 paying orders. By then you should have a confirmed price, shipping quote..fees etc. Then we can finalize escrow/shipping/qty etc etc.

For now...just keep voting all.

 

 

Brian, in order to get a confirmed price I need to discuss very seriously with the printer that gives me the best preliminary offer and that's not going to happen until I have a very clear list of pre-orders. I'm not going to make a fool of myself with people that I know for quite some time and who helped me on various other cultural projects.

 

This being said, I propose the following course of action: if we hit 150 interested votes (including the numbers you, John and Ed mentioned in posts made on this topic and the precedent one) this topic should be closed and another one should be opened, where everyone should post his exact pre-order. And when we hit 100 copies on that one I'm going to visit the printer who made me the best preliminary offer, talk all the details, get paper samples, do the final haggling and so on.

 

 

In the meantime, if we can find volunteers in the USA and Australia, we could figure out if the solution proposed by Grey can work for these two countries (shipping from Europe to USA is expensive and to Australia is mighty expensive). If there's no volunteer it wouldn't make sense to discuss a bulk shipping solution with the shipping company and each order will be shipped individually using the postal service.

 

Maybe the JSSUS could act as a US hub for bulk shipping?

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I can act for bulk shipping in the US with the following understood. I think once a parcel exceeds certain weight and/or value it requires a customs agent, who will charge at least $200. There is no duty on books but the agent is required in any case. Whoever ships to me will have to keep weight and value below the limits. There will be other requirements on my part but they can be discussed when the time comes.

Grey

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According to my calculations (that include the posts where the authors mentioned the intention to purchase more then 3 copies ) we have now interest votes for 115 copies. ( I added the mentioned numbers for 10, 5 and 5 copies and removed 3 x3 votes form the poll)

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Well, we don't know how many copies those who chose "3 or more copies" will purchase, but if we are waiting for the magical "100" copies, I will purchase at least 7 to get us there. Thanks, Mike

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I had put in for three or more copies, since that time I have a list of individuals which have written and stated they would like a sets totaling to 15. Add 3 more for myself, as of today comes to a total of 18.

 

However, like Brian I realize individuals with good intentions today occasionally change their minds tomorrow.

Therefore, until payments have been received, I can commit to purchase no more than 10.

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