Noughts and Crosses Signed on the Website for £75

If anyone's interested. Cheaper than I might have predicted, to be fair.

Looks kind of... tacky. As in, having the author sign a scrap of paper which they paste in. Couldn't they sign it directly?

Hurry hurry hurry ... 13 left.

Wow, that went fast. At this point, FS basically has a license to print money.

>2 adriano77: Easier to pop to Waterstones, pick up a signed paperback for £7.99 , cut the page out & stick it in myself & save £20 !

>2 adriano77:

A signed bookplate is an easy and cheap way of getting a signature into a book that's already been printed and bound. These days even signatures in books are usually done on signature sheets that are then bound into the book. It's much rarer that an author actually signs finished books, It's a pity, I always enjoy the idea of an author having handled my book. It still happens, though, and I enjoy it when it does.

Is it fair to assume that this another of the FS's inexplicably never-announced "singed edition" (not really, just a bookplate) that they listed on their website with no notice and that sold out immediately because people plan to list them for 3-4 times cost?

>7 astropi:

I actually got an email this time from FS, though I hadn't for the van Sandwyk. Not that I would have bought either considering how much shipping to the EU is these days due to the 'express only' rule after Brexit.

And yes, it's safe to say that a large number of these are bought by scalpers.

I snagged one of these in the morning right before walking into work and I'm excited about it! Luckily I'd received an email about this because I don't think I would've seen the FB post in time. I've eyed the book previously but never really wished to purchase it, but I'm actually in the mood for it now — I've been reading too many classics and too much popular fiction lately, so never-heard-of-outside-of-Folio-Society YA will be a nice change for me, plus the video featuring the illustrator and his call with the author was nice. While I don't care about signatures, I do like those FS labels a lot (weird, I know). This is no doubt odd, but while I'm happy to pay for and read this edition with the label, if I had missed it, I still wouldn't have been interested in the non-label version.

At the same time though, this isn't always the case, because I wasn't interested in Alice in Wonderland signed or unsigned, and with Love Poems, I definitely preferred the unsigned (although I didn't get this title because I wasn't interested in owning it).

Also, I love this current FS strategy of doing 1-2 things per month instead of just waiting for the seasonal releases! Very few things make me as happy as FS, and while seeing actual pictures of the Darwin LE really clarified to me that that is not my style of physical book - the Moonstone LE, on the other hand, absolutely grew on me; I love the look and feel of that book - and made me extremely relieved that I didn't spend so much money only to hate the book, it's nice to be excited about something else soon after instead of hearing nothing but crickets until the March release.

If anyone is interested in the signed book and missed it, you can enter to win a copy on Instagram (along with a few goodies from the British Library): https://www.instagram.com/p/C3FfQThNDqE/

How many were signed?

>11 wcarter: 100!

>7 astropi: You must be really jaded to think that’s the only reason they sold out. Why don’t you track eBay to see how many actually show up. Hint: it’s always a small percent.

But it does seem to soothe a lot of wounds around here to think that the only people buying Folio Society limited editions are people looking to flip them.

>9 BooksFriendsNotFood:

"Also, I love this current FS strategy of doing 1-2 things per month instead of just waiting for the seasonal releases!"

I know what you mean, but that's only great for people who have the luxury of not having to pay very steep shipping fees per order. (Or for whom about 30 Pounds for one book just for shipping aren't that relevant.)

I don’t see the huge problem with the book plate signature method. The only real boon would be if you had the author sign it for you in person and that’s a special memory. Getting the author to sign the actual editions is not as romantic as some would think as when you see the livestreams of them feverishly signing hundreds to thousands of copies doesn’t look like a great experience.

>14 SF-72: This obviously differs based on FS shipping fees to each specific country, but I find FS shipping fees to the US to be pretty reasonable. $18-32 max (excluding express shipping and most LE shipping) from the UK is a lot better than I see elsewhere. Shipping a single book (not a box) from Illumicrate in the UK in 2022 cost me £16.99 ($21.46). Goldsboro in the UK currently charges £9.95 ($12.57) for one book and an additional £7.00 ($8.85) for each additional book, which quickly becomes more expensive than FS shipping. I remember ordering a cotton shirt from the UK once and it cost me £15.99 ($20.21) in shipping, and when I attempted to return it back to them with the necessary tracking, USPS quoted me a fee of a bit more than $100, and through UPS it was even more expensive – needless to say, I kept the shirt.

Even Suntup in the US charges me $16 to ship a single book and SubPress charges me $11. Sending some snacks to a cousin in a different state in the US costs $30.

For me, I feel that these charges are just part of ordering online and/or shipping, and even more so when international delivery is involved (in fact, thanks to FS, I think the expensive US to US shipping irks me more nowadays). How I see it is that while it hurts a lot with buying regular books because the shipping is the price of a whole second book that I could've bought, at least with FS - because FS books are so painfully expensive - the shipping is only ever a portion of the price of one book. Those "spend $300 to get free shipping!" promotions used to make me go ??? because spending $300 to save $32 is not actually a great deal, but on the other hand, if you have FS books wishlisted and you're specifically waiting for the free shipping promo, then it absolutely becomes a good deal. So while I love that SEs in the seasonal releases can pretty much still be expected to be in stock at the end of the year for any bundling or mood-reading or wait let me finish my current TBR first needs, I absolutely love random, in-between releases as well.

That's just how I think about it though.

>16 BooksFriendsNotFood:

I know how expensive shipping from another continent can be, but I actually pay more for shipping to a much closer country / Germany than you're doing for shipping to the US. FS used to have good shipping fees here, too, but not anymore. The reason is the post-Brexit situation where customs have become a big issue. FS deal with that by using a relatively expensive shipping method with courier services that take care of customs for them. I can understand that, but it has certainly stopped me from making smaller purchases unless it's something I'm very eager on and can't risk waiting for until I've got more titles to buy. It certainly stops me from buying signed copies such as this one or the van Sandwyk in-between releases. In this case / with EU shipping it's really got nothing to do with distance, it's just the method they've chosen to avoid customs issues. By comparison, other UK sellers I buy from charge between 7 and about 9 Pounds for shipping a single book, and they also use the option of paying customs in advance. I've been asking myself if it's got something to do with a threshold above which customs get more complicated (everything above 150 Euros value is a lot more difficult to handle) and whether FS automatically chose a much more expensive version of this service because of that. But I don't know that, naturally. Suffice it to say, I do have a problem with these mini-releases and the very high shipping fees, but whether or not they buy under those conditions is everybody's own decision in the end.

>17 SF-72: Ah, that does sound horrible. I'm sorry to hear it. I hope that FS is willing and able to figure out a better EU shipping method soon!

>17 SF-72: I have a similar experience though not fixed at one rate for all single books like you. FS charge £25 postage to Ireland for one book below £100 and £31 for one book from £100 up. Customs here kicks in for items over €150.

>19 assemblyman:

Ouch, that's harsh considering you're in neighbouring countries. But I think that at least Ireland doesn't have VAT on books? Or does that still become an issue above 150 Euros? Here we haven't got any free threshold anymore and customs become involved as soon as at least 1 Euro in tax is due, which is basically everything, books included since there's VAT on those.

>18 BooksFriendsNotFood:

One can only hope, though I suspect that it's got something to do with the whole customs issue, which has become something of a bureaucratic nightmare. Their shipping fees are absolutely okay for larger orders, and the free-shipping discounts they sometimes have are great, of course. But smaller orders have become completely unappealing with the shipping situation since Brexit.

>20 SF-72: That’s true I don’t have to deal with VAT at all like you so don’t have it as bad. I’m the same regarding bulk orders. Most single book orders just aren’t worth it.

>20 SF-72: “But smaller orders have become completely unappealing with the shipping situation since Brexit.”

That makes complete sense. Shipping fees of nearly $40 for just 1-2 books is eye-wateringly expensive.

>20 SF-72: agreed about fees. Up until last year, I would have placed an FS order with every release and one for the summer sale. Last year, I waited for every second release and didn’t buy anything at the summer sale because the shipping cost for the books was > the amount saved by buying on sale!

>23 RRCBS:

It's exactly the same for me. Brexit is really a gift that keeps on giving in that regard, as are our ever-worsening customs rules, and it's worse for other things than books. I can completely forget about ordering marmalades from a small English company I used to order from because getting food through local customs has become pretty much impossible due to horrendous demands for paperwork. It can't be helped, but it is a pity.

>13 What_What: 'looking to flip them.'

I can only speak for myself but, as yet, I have never sold any of my LEs (or any of my other Folio volumes). I hope to keep them and enjoy them for as long as I am mentally and physically able to do so.

If it's any consolation to our European friends, the latest Office for Budget Responsibility figures estimate Brexit to be wiping at least 4% off of national product in the UK. For a mid-life middle class Folio collector, that's about £2-3k cast onto the bonfire of hubris per-year, to say nothing of the eye watering transition costs incurred in order to reach these sunlit uplands. That's a lot of lost books each year!

>26 ubiquitousuk:

It certainly hurt and still hurts both people and businesses in the EU and the UK. I'm really sorry for a lot of the smaller UK businesses that were severely affected by this, some of which I simply can't support anymore due to customs laws, as well as people like you.