I've been meaning to post information about the new(ish) Faber & Faber membership program. It's basically a collectibles book club, although they don't call it that, offered through Faber & Faber UK. And as for the number of books published in these editions, they don't really say.
What they do say:
We will publish one Faber Members Collectors' Edition each month. These are printed in Yorkshire by the traditional lithographic method on a sheetfed Heidelberg press. Each volume is sewn and bound by hand, using a quarter-bound case of real cloth, and finished with full color printed endpapers, head and tail bands and a ribbon marker.They've published 3 titles so far:
- The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (March 2015)
- New Selected Poems 1966-1987 by Seamus Heaney (April 2015)
- Cover Her Face by P.D. James (May 2015)
Upcoming titles include:
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (June 2015)
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Simon Armitage (no date listed, assumed July 2015)
Editions are priced at £50 each OR you can buy a year's subscription for £500.
Shipping in the UK is free, elsewhere there will be a charge. To the US and CA it's about £10/book, making the purchase price £60 each ($94 USD / $115 CAD). For the yearly subscription, total shipping is £70 to the U.S. and Canada; breaking down the cost to £47.50 per book ($75 USD / $91 CAD).
It would be nice to know the full line up before committing to a yearly subscription.
These don't come with slip cases or dust jackets, and, again, I couldn't find any edition / first run numbers, so it's safe to say that it's not actually a "limited" edition, although most certainly the print numbers are lower than the trade editions... and they are nicely printed and hand bound.
In checking for copies over on Abebooks.com I found a couple of listings for this edition of The Buried Giant. Apparently 30 copies of the edition were signed by the author. One such copy is listing for $400 USD. I also found an unsigned copy listing for $152 USD.
It will be interesting to see if they hold their value in the upcoming years or if the price is just elevated due to the excitement over this title / edition.
Faber (clearly hedging their bets) also released limited edition this year for The Buried Giant. The edition was limited to 205 copies (only 200 of which were released to the public). That edition was signed & numbered and is housed in a slipcase. Prices are generally in the $400 USD and up range.
