The Adventures of Tom Bombadil [Blue "A&U" sticker]

The printed price was £1.75

I have seen similar blank A&U labels on copies of The Silmarillion.

I guess they are just blanking out the price to make copies similar to the unpriced History of Middle-earth books.

Deagol,

Thanks for that, extremely helpful as always.

Does anyone know the UK price that this impression (9th) was sold at?

I still have a few problems with the sticker.

Any UK bookshop at the time could not set the price, it was set by the publisher, so it should be on the book

Is this label and The Silmarillion labels you mentioned possibly for export or was another sticker also on the book?

I've got the stickered Silmarillion copy Deagol may be referring to (unless, of course, Deagol has a copy also!).

Its just a big blue sticker (not dark; quite light) with 'A&U' at the top; leaving a space underneath.

No UK bookseller up to ~1995 could vary book prices though (as you state). GA&U was signed up to the Net Book Agreement (some publishers were not), therefore all books carried the 'Net UK Price' blurb regarding book prices.

To add to this oddity, is the information Deagol had passed on to him from a former employee at GA&U, regarding stickers generally. It seems that these were probably illegal too, as they were clearly able to be removed i.e. were not permanent.

All the same, the blank labels (as you have now confirmed a totally different book with one present) do seem a slight puzzle. The most likely explanation is that they were for a market that did not require a UK price i.e. Book Club, or for Export.

BH

I forgot to post this before but the sticker is light not dark blue. I think I must have a problem with colours, see my post on the jacket of The Silmarillion. This looks to be the same as the sticker on Khamul's Silmarillion (see scan)

Exactly the same as the sticker on my Silmarillion Trotter!

BH

I am trying to find out any more information on these blue stickers that I can.

Can you check your books (seems to be 1975-1978 UK editions) and if you do have any with the same Blue A & U stickers can you post the edition name and printed date?

Thanks

Andrew

Can't add much more than before, Trotter.

The Silmarillion 1977, 2nd imp. Distribution date unknown. Original (covered over) price: £4.95, as with all early Silmarillions.

Since GA&U regularly re-priced books (& this would have been fairly inexpensive), I can only assume that the use of this sticker (as mentioned previously) was to remove the presence of any price, without any thoughts of re-pricing i.e. for non-trade market.

BH

Just to say Trotter, I bought a copy of TB which also has the sticker --again 9th impression 1975 (DJ & book).

BH

Still no clearer as to what they were for, but it does seem that quite a lot of these stickers were used in the late 1970's and they are not particularly rare. Thanks all for help with this.