Out of print books

Nothing amazes me more about how forums about model railroading can veer so far off track from the original subject. Went from out of print books to Christmas village structures

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LOL, ain’t that the truth, and I find myself contributing to such folly. I had to search back in this thread too see who is to blame. Fortunately, it was not me.

Rich

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That’s what makes it half the fun LOL the thought train jumps the tracks.

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I think that’s why I enjoy reading this forum so much. It’s interesting.

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Yeah, I have given up on getting irked with off topic remarks. After all, these threads are usually nothing more than conversations anyhow.

Rich

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This is true and the conversation it the best part.

BTW that’s interesting, since normally a first edition of any book is worth much more than a later printing.

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Yes I have seen greenbuerg’s American Flyer guide’s first’s go for $300 to $400 each.

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A signed copy even more so

David

Yeah I think it has to do with how many are in circulation. The first edition is from 1963 and I have a copy of the 5th printing in 1973. The 3rd edition is from 1998 and as far as I know only ever had one printing. My gut says when they sold out, they sold out and that was it. The cost seems to go up per edition, I got the 2nd for essentially the cover price and the 3rd was twice the cover price. Granted I paid $10 I think for the 1st edition, and it’s cover price is $3. LOL
I’m sure a signed copy of the 1st printing of the 1st edition would gather a good price, if you were patient to wait till someone came along who was willing to pay for it.

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Searching Abebooks and Alibris will usually turn up reasonably priced copies of just about anything. They have a very wide reach and insist on accurate descriptions of condition.

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I am familiar with Abebooks, and I agree with your assessment. I am not familiar with Alibris.

Rich

Atlantic–the rights of the books vary depending on the title. Some rights reverted back to the original author once it went out of print. Some rights stayed with Kalmbach (if they are railroad/model trains/toy trains or astronomy books, now owned by Firecrown). The other challenge with older books is that they need to be scanned.

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This is a timely post. I just found on old (out of print) book titled "easy to build Model Railroad structures I once own many years ago, This book was first published in 1958, but still has many great tips and know how on scratch building.

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Good point on the scanning of older books. But there are a significant number of books Kalbach published even in the last 20 years that out of print. I would assume those were all produced digitally, probably even more than 20 years ago. So those shouldn’t be all that much effort, other than legal rights. But I’m not a publisher, so… most things take more time than those unfamiliar with them think they would or should… :slight_smile:

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One problem is “how to” books tend to become obsolete. A scenery book written long ago wouldn’t have anything on stuff like static grass or resin water. Not many people now do “zip texturing” or use green dye to color sawdust to use as grass. That’s one reason I think publishers come up with new books with newer information…plus, they want you to buy the new book, not a used copy of an old one!

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I’ve got a color printer for that. Long run it’s cheaper if I need a printout than buying the paper book.

That’s a fair point. But most of the ones I am thinking of, like “Track Planning for Realistic Operation”, and several others are not about “how to” and are more about planning or operation or the history behind the way real railroads operated, etc.
Are there parts of those that are dated? Sure, but it’s not dated like my “How to Wire Your Layout” from Atlas in 1971. There are of course books that don’t really make all that much sense to publish any more.
But of course if you go back to my original post, I’m not talking about doing new printings. I’m talking about making them available as digital downloads. You have to sell a lot fewer copies to make them pay for the effort involved of putting them out. They take up no warehouse space or labor to sell them. And they don’t take up space on the reader’s shelves. Many of the downloads I have, I got for a less than $5. So even if it’s kind of out date, I got what I paid for. And it can be insightful to see how it used to be done. Once in a while you may find a gem.
A few weeks ago I read an issue of MR from the early 60s. In that issue it had an article about building your own Pulse Power Supply/Controller. I doubt many want to run out and build one of their own these days and most of the parts listed are likely unavailable. But it’s interesting to learn about and it’s interesting in what they were showing you how to build is what is happening internally in many of the DCC decoders and how they get better performance out of our small DC motors. It’s an interesting foot note. Was that information worth having old issues of MR kicking around? Not really, not to me anyway. But it’s worth the small subscription to Trains dot com to be able to dig through all the digital archives. Mostly what I’m saying, lets extend that to more of the out of print books.

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It’s been my experience that out of print books almost always seem to be still available. You just have to know where to look.

Rich

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I like items in print too. I miss the bound volumes of Model Railroader. Have them dating back to the 1970’s.

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