Trotter wrote:

onthetrail wrote:

The general consensus among those who bought it (Twitter, FB, Reddit) is that the Lord of the Rings while very beautiful, was overpriced.

I bought it and I don't think that.

To be fair, onthetrail said "general consensus", not that every individual thought that. At the time, the majority of social media threads called out the pricing (with probably an equal amount of posts questioning the aesthetics, which are definitely "marmite").

The pricing of this one has come in around where I thought it would. I actually thought it might come in at £720, like Beowulf. Not because I think that is an appropriate price, but because I was expecting them to charge the most utterly over-the-top price they could get away with.

Price-wise, inflation-adjusted, this Hobbit is a fraction more than the super-deluxe Children of Hurin was at launch (£570 adjusted). Personally, I think the SD CoH is the better product (by quite a margin), but in that context the pricing of the new book makes vague sense.

The quality is similar to the Children Of Hurin but it is not full leather so the price of this new Hobbit is rather naughty.
1 LOTR vol=£333.
1 Hobbit=£600.

Olorin wrote:

The quality is similar to the Children Of Hurin but it is not full leather so the price of this new Hobbit is rather naughty.
1 LOTR vol=£333.
1 Hobbit=£600.

I'm not sure "naughty" is the right word. It's a discretionary product and they have specified a price. No one is forced to buy it.

Is it good value? Absolutely not, and neither was the LoTR. I personally would take the CoH over these Folio editions any day of the week. Sadly, I don't think we will see anything like that again.

The one thing I will say is that their website is abysmal, especially if you are trying to use the "Rest of World". Accounts from UK can't authenticate with ROW, they randomly lock out and much of the website actually breaks on Safari (though not consistently and repeatedly). I ended up having to switch to Chrome. I suspect they will have a lot of issues on the day just because of the bugs.

Trotter wrote:

Gerryt wrote:

600 quid for a book is very expensive for the normal punter like me. The HC editions were pushing it as it is

These Folio editions are not designed for the normal punter, but you can probably get the HC version in a couple of years when it comes out.

Looking forward to it, but William Morrow.

Do we know what 2 paintings Alan has reworked ?

Is there a possibility of Alan Lee illustrating the Silmarillion for a future edition of the Folio Society?

My guess is probably not. But who really knows maybe...?

Thráin II wrote:

Is there a possibility of Alan Lee illustrating the Silmarillion for a future edition of the Folio Society?

Time will tell on that one...

One would think it would a nice, enhanced/deluxed/whatevered edition of Ted Nasmith’s edition, as that’s HIS book to illustrate.

Am I reading correctly that these books (plus the same-style LOTR set) are 12" tall? That's a big book!