Stu I'd be interested to hear a review from someone who has purchased a volume containing colour plates.

I bought a copy of the POD version of Sauron Defeated and am able to compare it with the first edition.

The dust jacket is a different colour to the original (the original cover is a burgundy, the new cover is brown and is lighter in colour than the cover of BOLT2). This is probably due to the new printing process.

The barcode on the rear of the cover is about twice as big on this copy. I don't understand why these books have barcodes on them as they are printed to order, and I can't see any purpose that they serve

The colour plates in the book are darker in the new book, but the quality of the reproduction is just as good as the original book.

The copyright information shows

This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010
1

I can't imagine that the number line would ever change with these books.

The most obvious difference between the books are that the binding of the book is now black (the original binding is the same colour as the dust jacket). This is the same as the POD Index and I am assuming that all the POD History of Middle-Earth books have black bindings.

Overall though I am very impressed with these books.

This will be an expensive set of books and I'd like to know before purchasing if they plan to bring out a box-set as I'd rather buy that than the individual books. Trotter

What kind of horrific boxset would it be, with 12 volumes? *chuckle* Khamul

Something like this from David Miller and no way is it horrific.

http://www.tolkienbookshelf.com/?page ... 6653512ecb0e4404f50efc49b

I was going to come back with 'yeh, but the price is still horrific' --but it actually isn't that bad. The slipcases are quite good too; they'll serve their function at least.

Does anyone remember, (I'll go back and find the original post), that a slipcased deluxe set of HoME came up on eBay in 2007?! Has anyone any recollection of this, or any pictures saved?

I emailed David Brawn, and he had the follwing to add:-

We had planned a slipcased set, but unfortunately a production problem resulted in the heights of the three volumes being marginally different, which meant the slipcases didn't really look good enough. A few prototype empty slipcases were produced, and I think that as we had them we sent a couple out to people who wrote in at the time specifically asking for one, but as far as I can remember we never did a production run. We ended up producing a much more successful trilogy of combined volumes without the anguish of Bible paper, leather binding, and all the production headaches those things entailed! We did release that set in a slipcase for a while.

-David Brawn (Private email 9th July 2010)

Interesting...

BH

Ok, will the collectors who asked for the HarperCollins boxed sets please step forward and identify themselves! And perhaps some images would be very very nice. Thanks!

I can't agree with David Brawn's comments that "a production problem resulted in the heights of the three volumes being marginally different". The books vary considerably in width and height between the three editions.

It would have been very difficult to make a slipcase that housed the three books, you would have needed some sort of padding to stop the books falling out.

I love to see some examples of these.

Are you disagreeing with the fact ("marginally") or the justification ("production problem")? Either way, I don't see how these books should have differed from any other three book set to be housed in a slipcase. GA&U produced a five book slipcased release with The Tolkien Library; a nice set of which sold for, a more reasonable (the last set I saw go for £400 odd!), £130 on eBay the other day --& they weren't originally produced to sit in a slipcase together in the first place. I presume he simply meant that they weren't quite as uniform as they had planned (& understandably hoped) for. So who has one?

BH

Guess there is a mistake being made here.. I know that HC was planning to release the Deluxe set of HoMe in slipcase, but as we all know they vary in size too much. The 12 volume edition could easily be fit in a slipcase, but I know that it turned out too big and the test was fast abandoned. I believe the remark by David Brawn was about the Deluxe editions.

No mistake Beren. We're talking about both. Brawn is referring specifically to a deluxe slipcase --& there was a copy on eBay in 2007. I have the original email, with item number, that I sent Deagol. Yes, it may have been a customised slipcase --but if I recall, the seller said they'd bought the three editions in the slipcase. It was black cloth, matching the single slipcases. And, to be honest, I don't recall them looking a poor fit.

BH

ok then we talk about the same thing... indeed I saw the deluxe slipcase as well... don't have one anymore but sold two of those in the past

Well!? Do you have any pictures?
(Might have known one had passed through your hands...)

BH