

Pelican books take flight again - dang
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/25/pelican-books-take-flight-relaunch

======
kps

      “Who would have imagined that, even at 6d, there was a thirsty public
       anxious to buy thousands of copies of books on science, sociology, economics,
       archaeology, astronomy and other equally serious subjects?”
    
      [....]
    
      Editions of 50,000, even for not obvious bestsellers, were standard [....]
      (These days a publisher would be delighted if such a book made it to 2,000.) 
    

Sixpence in 1937 is about £1.50 (US$2.50) today. The new series sells for £8
($13.50).

~~~
rdl
I've been noticing a lot of kindle books in the 1.99 to 3.99 range recently. I
wonder how sales are different vs 9.99 to 15.99

~~~
danohuiginn
The kindle versions of these will be £3.99, half the price of the paper
edition. The lower price point makes good sense to me -- it encourages impulse
buys, and the e-books have no significant marginal costs.

------
sn41
The co-founder of Pelican books, V. K. Krishna Menon, was a very important
figure in Indian independence and a controversial diplomat and defence
minister afterwards. He split with Allen Lane, I have heard, over a dispute
over how commercial the venture should be - with Lane taking a more commercial
viewpoint.

This story is so obscure that I have never found any reliable source for this.
I am glad to see Guardian acknowledging the role of Krishna Menon in the
history of Penguin books and Pelican books - it seems vague even in the
Wikipedia article on Krishna Menon.

He also was pivotal in the non-aligned movement: what is now called the "third
world". Originally the term denoted countries allied neither to the West nor
to the Soviet Bloc, but now it has become synonymous with squalour.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_K_Krishna_Menon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_K_Krishna_Menon)

------
Zigurd
So the news is, despite this thing called the Internet happening, and
Wikipedia, and YouTube how-tos, and self-publishing becoming reputable and lo-
capex, and most non-fiction on a slow downward trend, Penguin is going to
reboot a non-fiction imprint, with conventional pricing and distribution, with
books on the sort of topics one gets in TED Talks and free online university
lectures. How does one pitch a business case for something like this?

~~~
uchi
Quite simple actually. These books contain big meaty subject matter. Not
fucking glossed over topics like a ted talk or wiki entry.

The laws of thermodynamics cannot be condensed down into a 14 minute video.

The internet has cheapened both the access and depth of knowledge. There are a
lot of internet commentators out there who barely grasp a briefly summarized
topic yet assume an expert position.

Many of them browse hacker news even ;-)

~~~
EliRivers
So true. The amount of dross one has to wade through on the internet to find
something worth the reading can be huge. Whilst being printed in paper format
at the end of a chain of editors, proof-readers, financial outlay and vast
amounts of effort on the part of the original author (generally quite
qualified, and even then you can double check this yourself before you read)
doesn't guarantee a good result, the odds are much better.

They picked some good authors to start with; Ha-Joon Chang's previous book for
the general audience was a good read from a good writer.

~~~
adestefan
After slogging through _A People's Tragedy_ I'm interested in Figes book on an
expanded time frame of Russian history.

------
bananas
I think those are all available for considerably less than £8. The non-
scarcity of books has pretty much hung them here and that's a good thing.

Publishers sell books.

I just want the words and they're virtually free to distribute.

