Tolkien Treasury

Berelach wrote:
Does anyone happen to know what the earliest impressions included in this boxed-set were?

Tolkien Treasury

I have Bombadil (6th), Giles (3rd), Roverandom (5th), and Smith (2nd) in mine, but I'm guessing there were earlier impressions in the first release.

I opted not to bother with it, but it wasn't realeased until a long time after the individual books were released, so quite possible your set represents the first state of it (as a set), especially as Smith is only 2nd.

Are those later prints all still by Clays?

Sadly no... they're all printed in China by RR Donnelley APS.

Quality OK? That's the same printers as the disastrous Kullervo Deluxe. To be honest, the quality of the Clays pocket editions is nothing to write home about.

They're not too bad... I notice nothing like the reports from the deluxe Kullervo. The paper and jacket seem a bit more lightweight and I notice some other very minor cost-cutting changes. I wouldn't have noticed anything without having compared them side by side.

Berelach, I have the same impressions as you and my set arrived on release day or shortly before that from what I remember so I suspect those are the earliest state.

Stu, I think the quality of these was good. A nice little set and is a pretty thing.

The odd thing about it is the content, a pocket book series with commentary, indexes, galleries, and bibliographies is overkill IMO and this suited being a slimmer story driven set. I think some thought and a little work could have produced a 'Treasury' that was a treasury rather than an expanded pocket deluxe 'Tales'.

The box is very well made, it is extremely solid for the size and the pictures are nice.

Berelach wrote:
They're not too bad... I notice nothing like the reports from the deluxe Kullervo. The paper and jacket seem a bit more lightweight and I notice some other very minor cost-cutting changes. I wouldn't have noticed anything without having compared them side by side.

I guess that is what they count on when switching to a Chinese printer. Lowering the quality and cutting costs in a way that is unnoticeable unless you do a side-by-side comparison. The problem is that often the Chinese prints turn out to be much worse than the originals.

In this case they did ok. I own this set and don't have any issues with it (aside from the fact that I would have preferred regular-sized versions, but that's not their fault).

Morinehtar wrote:

Berelach wrote:
They're not too bad... I notice nothing like the reports from the deluxe Kullervo. The paper and jacket seem a bit more lightweight and I notice some other very minor cost-cutting changes. I wouldn't have noticed anything without having compared them side by side.

I guess that is what they count on when switching to a Chinese printer. Lowering the quality and cutting costs in a way that is unnoticeable unless you do a side-by-side comparison. The problem is that often the Chinese prints turn out to be much worse than the originals.

In this case they did ok. I own this set and don't have any issues with it (aside from the fact that I would have preferred regular-sized versions, but that's not their fault).

One of my issues with the practice is that people will post reviews based on the first print and then others make buying decisions on that -- and end up getting a poorer product than they thought they would get. I guess a positive with the move to the first prints being Chinese is that when they turn out to rubbish (e.g. Kullervo), at least the reviews will generally be poor, so no one gets led astray by the bait and switch that HarperCollins has been indulging in thus far.

I didn't get a response to my (polite) email to HarperCollins describing the problems with Kullervo.