BSP - Last Print (1 Viewer)

[ribaij]

Hi guys,

I've been away for a couple of years from the forum and Bukowski. Thought id humbly share (brag) that I'm back collecting and just received my long missed 1st print Soft Copy of Hollywood (BSP 1989) today (Had to pay $22 for the book and $44 in freight... ugh). Still looking for a 1st soft of Women....

I have a question Krumhansl doesn't attempt to answer:

For each of the 6 novels printed by Black Sparrow Press:
What was the last print number and when was it printed?


1.Nh3 d5 2.g3 e5 3.f4 Bxh3 4.Bxh3 exf4 5.0-0 fxg3 6.e4

 

[jordan]

that's a really good question, and one that's oh-so-difficult to answer. i would think you would need to have access to black sparrow's purchase order records to find out for sure, since later printings aren't of much use to the type of people who document that kind of thing. any particular reason you're looking? i don't think the last printing is particularly collectible, unless it has some sort of neat association, like the copy of fred smith's book that has "last copy printed for black sparrow press" written on the colophon by the printer.

 

[mjp]

I suppose that information could be crowd sourced, but my question would be along the same lines as Jordan's, and that is; what good is the information?

It doesn't tell you anything about the production numbers because the printings were all different sizes, depending on the title. So the "popularity" of a title couldn't be judged based only on the number of printings. A title with 25 printings could have lower overall production numbers than a title with 10 printings.

As for it being "a question Krumhansl doesn't attempt to answer," well, yeah. Considering bibliographies don't exist to address that question, and the fact that Krumhansl was published while Black Sparrow was still releasing "new" Bukowski titles.

I would be interested in seeing production figures broken down by title, but that's not information anyone is ever likely to be able to gather in one place. Well, there is one guy who may have them all in one place, but I don't anticipate that he will ever hand those numbers over to anyone that would make them public (I would assume they are in a filing cabinet at HarperCollins somewhere, since they bought the titles and would have had a vested interest in knowing those numbers as part of their offer).

Ultimately, a collection of the "last Black Sparrow printings" of all of the Bukowski titles (or even just the novels) would be of little interest to anyone. And certainly of no increased value over a stack of random printing numbers.

 

[Rekrab]

That's a good question. Only the first few printings of any book seem to be of interest to bibliographers. While later printings don't tell you anything about the total number printed (as mjp explains), they do say something about the long term popularity of a book. It can be hard to know for sure what the last printing of a book actually was. If sales dwindled, later printings could be smaller and thus rarer. If records are available, they might have that information. Or, as mjp says, it could be "crowd sourced". That would be a cool, if perhaps useless project: having people report on their high number printings on various Buk BSP titles, to see what the last printing might be on any given title.