Jan C. Still Books
 

I am wondering why there are no more Jan C. Still books on the new market ?

It looks like the demand is very high for them.

And it makes perfect sense to print some more...

Any insider info on that ?

Is Jan C. Still ... still around ?

If one decides to reprint the book, are there royalties involved ?
And is there any one to collect them ?

Just thinking out-loud at this point ....

Jan is "still" very much around :). He has republished a couple of his volumes and his latest "Central Powers Pistols" is still available at a quite reasonable price (around $89 as I recall) the last time I heard. It is a wonderful compendium of several types of pistols of the WWI era. If you do not have a copy I highly recommend you seek one out. His books are indeed in high demand and the earlier works that are currently out of print can be costly. I suspect that anyone other than Jan that creates a reprint will be faced with far more expense (i.e. lawsuit) than royalties :).

Trouble with publishing..there are minimums to bring the cost down to a reasonable level. Let's say you want to do a 2nd printing of Jan Still's Weimar Lugers..I would suspect to keep the cost to around $100-150 per copy you would have to have 500 of them printed at a wholesale price of $50= $25,000. Even at half of that..250 copies..$12,500 That's a sizeable investment that might be 5-10 years to sell all the copies.
Most serious Luger collectors already have their own copy so it might be a long hard sell to get rid of a couple of hundred books. Not everyone on the Planet wants such a specialized reference work so your eligible base of buyers is VERY small.
A lot of money put out for a questionable return at this late stage of life IMO.

to make it worthwhile, a new book needs to be around 2500 copies, an exact reprint without changes or few changes, 500-1000 is the number

Eugene, you made a comment that you had very few luger books?

I suggest you read the book review section on Jan Still's forum or look in the new collectors area here for suggested books. There are many luger books not worthwhile in buying, but any collector should have more books than guns IMHO

This summer when I had a broken ankle besides phone calls from Ron and my few friends Debbie brought me eash of his books. it was equally great as I was buying a 1917 Artillery rig. Yes I was a proud father by George Anderson and Jans research helped fill in. NO ONE DOES IT BETTER!

Not only is Jan C. Still "around" he is an active member of this Lugerforum, in addtion to running his own forums. And we are proud to have him as a member!

I am just getting into the Luger arena, and I also would love to acquire a set of Still's books. I am aware of the high cost of publishing, but when I try to find various copies, I see prices near 1K for certain of these works. I just cannot justify that kind of money for reference books. I would hope that something could be done to make 'reasonably priced' versions available for the non-professional Luger enthusiasts.

I actually researched it a bit,
and yes, one is looking at about $25-$30 to print 200-250 pages for a small run.

But my point was, if books sell for $500+ that means there is demand for them, and if reprinted can be sold for $100 there will be much more takers in a new collector arena then at a $500 tag.

I can not see why not invest some money in the printing if there is a sure market for it.

But what do I know , i am not in a book printing business after all.

I would bite
the whole set except for axis wich I managed to find for 89 after 10 percent off. my 02

Well, basically, you can forget that. Remember that it takes years of work and research to assemble the data. The only revenue that an author gets for this work is through the sale of his books. Book sales for this kind of publications (limited number of buyers) will NEVER repay the investment made. So before you complain about book prices, think about that.

Many authors offered years of their spare time to get you a reasonably priced book, complaining about them costing $100 is a bit silly, especially if you consider the amount of money you can save on your gun purchases because of the information supplied in these very books!

Trying to leech off the work of a gun book author (or any author) by providing (illegal) copies is just too sad to think about. It's theft, but worse, it's also an insult.

If you have any doubts about the matter, try writing a book :)

From buyer's point of view, spending a few hundred dollars buying a book is not that bad, as long as the book keeps its value and can be sold at similar amount of money in case of need. So far, at least I can confirm Still's books keep value.

The worst scenario is you buy a book which cost you a few hundred dollars, and later on, some people print illegal copy of it, selling, say $30 (or free, some copiers upload PDFs on the internet). As a buyer of the original copy, you lose money.

So, please don't lend your copy to those people scanning the whole book into PDFs. I noticed making copies of books is not considered being an issue in some culture. As an owner of original copy, we don't have to fight that, but we don't have to help them either.

Alvin, my thoughts exactly. Over here and in most European countries copyright is seen as the right to make copies :)

In most countries the copyright on a work expires 70 years after the death of the author, with the possibility for the heirs to lengthen the period. Work created by an organization expires 70 years after publication.

So anyone is free to copy anything I wrote, 70 years after my death :D

The ROI for the creator of the book is understandable.
But author does not benefits when the book, that was originally sold for $100 now sells for a $500.
That is a benefit going to original buyer of the book...

Author does benefits if he reprints the book and sells it for
$150-200 ...
and market benefits as well.

That was my question... why he does not print them anymore, when there is clearly a demand for it.

If you can have the books printed on demand, when the orders come in, it would be worth doing. But in order to get a decent book for a decent price, you will need to order in bulk, usually from a foreign printing company, which adds (very costly) transport costs.

Speculating that perhaps a few customers may want to purchase an additional book is just not cost effective at all. You just end up with a large pile of expensive, unsold inventory.

Modern printing processes have helped to lower the price, but a good quality color print, with a good quality binding still costs more than is worth doing for a limited run. In Jan Still's case, he is currently rewriting one of his older books and it will be on the market in the near future. So it makes more sense for him to focus on producing an updated, extended new book than to republish his older work.

Unless you are writing best sellers, books don't make you rich. Unfortunately :)

Amen!

I have to chime in on this one...I would like to see 'Imperial Lugers' back into print.

I saw the book at amazon: used $600.00.

My 0.02USD...

I would post a want ad in both forums!

Essentially Central Powers took the place of Imperial lugers, not everything is in it, but most.

and folks, lets say it costs the author $35 to have it printed, that is if he has 2500 printed, now, that comes to (2500x$35)
$90,000 / yes, you read that right, 90K

Okay fella's, penny up 90K and send it to Jan, I bet he would reprint each copy you want.

Same with ebay, folks think like a buyer, and either don't know or care how it is being a seller (or in this case, the author).

It is just very expensive having it done, and as an author, I can tell you, you can't make a living off of it.

Ed

Listen to Ed's advice and get a copy of Central Powers Pistols. The book is the ultimate reference about this subject in my humble opinion. And, besides that, it is beautifully printed with most of the pictures in color!

Douglas

How many Books does Jan have out now ?

I think I have the whole set Imperial, Axis, Weimar, Third Reich, Central Powers, are there any I'm missing ?

Jim

The " Pistols of Germany and it's Allies in Two World Wars" is the other one.

Just the first one mentioned above, its a small paperback, would not add it unless you can get it cheap.

Jan then made corrections and started the series.


Ed

A complete set and Luger At Random thrown in for good measure!Thank You Jan for the excitement!! Eric