Well, now I am not unhappy at all that my order was cancelled! Anyone else have a copy and a different opinion? Perhaps onthetrail just got a bad copy...?

Also I found my first impression of the Lord of the Rings Sketchbook, so I will probably just pick up a copy of The Hobbit Sketchbook instead of the slipcased pair.

Urulókë wrote:
Also I found my first impression of the Lord of the Rings Sketchbook, so I will probably just pick up a copy of The Hobbit Sketchbook instead of the slipcased pair.

You probably have a rare unsigned "first impression of the Lord of the Rings Sketchbook"

I had a rare unsigned "first impression of the Lord of the Rings Sketchbook until last week, when Alan Lee signed it for me ???

Looking further at the slipcase it really is a badly designed and executed product. The books are actually pleasantly nice, a far cry from their outer though.

The construction uses boards covered with the the outer paper but the boards are not aligned to edges and have air pockets where the triangular effect is created. It is just poor design and is already ripping, which I think will happen on all of them over time given the design.

Then the rear, the blurb that is on websites, the barcode and the price. On the rear of a 'deluxe' slipcase? Nothing screams deluxe like a price on can't remove. HarperCollins should hang their heads. They are not fit to publish a train timetable, never mind a 'deluxe' book.

onthetrail wrote:
Looking further at the slipcase it really is a badly designed and executed product. The books are actually pleasantly nice, a far cry from their outer though.

The construction uses boards covered with the the outer paper but the boards are not aligned to edges and have air pockets where the triangular effect is created. It is just poor design and is already ripping, which I think will happen on all of them over time given the design.

Then the rear, the blurb that is on websites, the barcode and the price. On the rear of a 'deluxe' slipcase? Nothing screams deluxe like a price on can't remove. HarperCollins should hang their heads. They are not fit to publish a train timetable, never mind a 'deluxe' book.

Yep, that slipcase looks pretty nasty. Looked OK from the front in the video posted earlier. At least the books are OK, but seems like a lot of money for books which are covered with material that a few years back would have just been counted as "completely normal", given that the slipcase is a turkey.

Stu wrote:

Yep, that slipcase looks pretty nasty. Looked OK from the front in the video posted earlier. At least the books are OK, but seems like a lot of money for books which are covered with material that a few years back would have just been counted as "completely normal".

It did look OK from that video and again I will admit I like the books themselves so not all is lost, but I would be no worse off if I had just opted cheap and bought the standard Hobbit sketchbook to match the Rings one.

Trotter: (sorry dunno how to do the 'quote reply' here) It is a first impression, however published by Houghton Mifflin, not HarperCollins. Living in Canada, we get a mix of UK and US editions, depending on the author. With Tolkien, it's MOSTLY HarperCollins however there have been a few Houghton Mifflin titles we've received.

In fact, my editions of The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, The Fall of Gondolin and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, despite being HarperCollins editions, and featuring the exact same ISBNs, were actually printed in the US!!

onthetrail:

Very unfortunate. that edition should be much less than 75 pound - the RRSP should be about 50 pounds, MAYBE 60 at the most (signed and limited, after all....)

insurrbution wrote:
Trotter: (sorry dunno how to do the 'quote reply' here) It is a first impression, however published by Houghton Mifflin, not HarperCollins. Living in Canada, we get a mix of UK and US editions, depending on the author. With Tolkien, it's MOSTLY HarperCollins however there have been a few Houghton Mifflin titles we've received.

In fact, my editions of The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, The Fall of Gondolin and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, despite being HarperCollins editions, and featuring the exact same ISBNs, were actually printed in the US!!

Yeah, have seen a few of the Canada-market US-printed HarperCollins editions over the years. Remember seeing a ragged-edge US-printed HC paperback set of LoTR in an airport bookshop here in NZ that had oddly ended up for sale here. Was quite nice compared to the regular HC paperback of the time.

insurrbution wrote:
onthetrail:

Very unfortunate. that edition should be much less than 75 pound - the RRSP should be about 50 pounds, MAYBE 60 at the most (signed and limited, after all....)

"Limited" is just a publisher trick to make people want something they wouldn't otherwise actually want. And we all know what limited often means to HarperCollins (often nothing at all - e.g. Limited to 1000 copies* or Available for a Limited time**).

* 'cept we might just print another 3 impressions that are identical but don't say they are limited.
* * Available forever.