The Acquired Wagons of British Railways by David Larkin

[melmoth]

1 hour ago, Not Jeremy said:

 

Certain sellers, no names no pack drill, seem intent on "racing to the bottom" - offering increasing discounts, bonus book offers etc. Which is fine for shifting on old stock, but is bloody insane when it comes to newly published books. This sort of thing, as Father Ted and Dougal had it, does not positively motivate publishers or authors.

 

 

I hear you @Not Jeremy. It brings back deep-buried memories of working for McWaterstones, where 'race to the bottom' discounting was continually lauded because it was 'all about the market share'. The implied outcome is that by hoovering up as much of the market share as possible, you will drive your competitors out of business, and at that point you will no longer need to discount because you'll have a monopoly. To be as fair as I can be to the Big W, this was a technique that Amazon had previously used to hammer the book trade in their early days. It is noticeable that Amazon discount far fewer books, and by far less, than they did 10/15 years ago.

[Gordon Connell]

1 hour ago, Not Jeremy said:

At the risk of making myself unpopular, I totally agree with C.J. and am really deeply fed up with he apparent endless obsessing over the price of books or what discount you can get.

 

 

 

I agree with you. I was not advocating the use of discounters, merely trying to point out that Amazon being unable to supply a copy at this time was not because they were a discounter.

 

Gordon

[John Isherwood]

2 hours ago, Gordon Connell said:

 

I agree with you. I was not advocating the use of discounters, merely trying to point out that Amazon being unable to supply a copy at this time was not because they were a discounter.

 

Gordon

 

How do you know that?

 

I'm pretty certain that it has been posted here that (some?) publishers do not supply Amazon etc. until a couple of months after the publication date.

 

Can anyone in the trade authoritively confirm or deny this?

 

CJI.

[Butler Henderson]

Interesting article on how authors get paid https://www2.societyofauthors.org/where-we-stand/special-sales/how-do-authors-get-paid/

 

"A typical royalty is 10% of the RRP on hardbacks and 7.5% on paperbacks: so, on a £16.99 hardback the author would receive around £1.70 for each copy sold and on an £8.99 paperback they would receive 67p. This royalty usually drops when retailers demand higher discounts. For instance, at a 52-55% retail discount the author gets four fifths the full royalties, with a further drop on sales at even higher discounts."

 

The Speedy Hen price is  a 31% discount which would imply from the above there is liittle to no impact on the royalty paid.

[New Haven Neil]

7 hours ago, Not Jeremy said:

Doesn't anyone give a f*ck about quality?

 

Indeed I do and as such have just joined the HMRS.  Not for the discounts either!

 

I note the current railway read (not from you for once!) 'Little Giants' has a cover price of £60, and that's what I paid for it.

[melmoth]

45 minutes ago, Butler Henderson said:

Interesting article on how authors get paid https://www2.societyofauthors.org/where-we-stand/special-sales/how-do-authors-get-paid/

 

"A typical royalty is 10% of the RRP on hardbacks and 7.5% on paperbacks: so, on a £16.99 hardback the author would receive around £1.70 for each copy sold and on an £8.99 paperback they would receive 67p. This royalty usually drops when retailers demand higher discounts. For instance, at a 52-55% retail discount the author gets four fifths the full royalties, with a further drop on sales at even higher discounts."

 

The Speedy Hen price is  a 31% discount which would imply from the above there is liittle to no impact on the royalty paid.

 

Referring to the bit I've highlighted in bold. For Speedy Hen to discount a book by 31% and still make a profit on it, they are going to need a discount from the publisher of far more than 31%. They will have any number of other costs that they'll have to offset from any profit they make on a book- wages, storage, postage, utilities etc etc. I would therefore suggest that the discount given to Speedy Hen is going to be at least 50% in this case, quite possibly more.

[Compound2632]

Bring back the nett book agreement!

[Butler Henderson]

2 hours ago, melmoth said:

 

Referring to the bit I've highlighted in bold. For Speedy Hen to discount a book by 31% and still make a profit on it, they are going to need a discount from the publisher of far more than 31%. They will have any number of other costs that they'll have to offset from any profit they make on a book- wages, storage, postage, utilities etc etc. I would therefore suggest that the discount given to Speedy Hen is going to be at least 50% in this case, quite possibly more.

The quote refers to retail price - that being the price paid by the customer.

[Roy Langridge]

I look at it this way, it is in our interest for the author, publisher and retailer to make profit as we need all three. If heavy discounts are applied one or more are making less profit and that is not good in the long run. 
 

I typically pre-order books from the likes or Larkin, Longworth etc. paying “full price” is much better than paying “extortionate price” when they are out of print.
 

Roy

Edited July 10 by Roy Langridge
Typo

[fulton]

12 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

Interesting article on how authors get paid https://www2.societyofauthors.org/where-we-stand/special-sales/how-do-authors-get-paid/

 

 

Some years ago a friend wanted to publish a local shipping history book, he had seen the OPC and Wild Swan type books, quality paper, quality photos with extended captions, various publishers were offering quiet onerous terms and he would lose control on how it was presented, so four of us put the money up to publish it privately, I remember driving a van to Northampton to collect the 2000 copies, it was priced so we received our money back after 750 sales, the rest of the sale money was the authors, took a couple of years to sell the rest, but gave him a nice top up to his pension, mostly sold by mail order, all in all a very good experience.

[melmoth]

9 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

The quote refers to retail price - that being the price paid by the customer.

 

Apologies, yes I misread it.

[RichardLong]

On 09/07/2024 at 22:20, Butler Henderson said:

The quote refers to retail price - that being the price paid by the customer.

The next paragraph is worth reading as well: “It is also increasingly common for authors to be paid not on a percentage of the retail price but on a percentage of the ‘publisher’s receipts’ – the amount that wholesalers and retailers pay the publisher. In other words, the discount demanded by the retailer is deducted before the author gets a percentage of what remains. As the discount grows, the royalty shrinks.”

[Wuggie Norple]

On 09/07/2024 at 11:58, Not Jeremy said:

I have taken a few copies of David's new book into stock here in Bath, ready for Larkrail, and have to say that is a really interesting and well done book. It is well worth the £25.00 asking price and to fret about paying a few pounds less, thereby ensuring the author is paid less for all his work, is depressing and short sighted

 

 @Not Jeremy Simon, if there is an unsold copy left after Larkrail, I would like to buy one - can't see anything on the Titfield website.

 

Nick M.

Edited July 18 by Wuggie Norple
Edit

[Not Jeremy]

Hi Nick

 

Apologies, I am going to restock as it is such a good volume and I have other orders for it too. I will get it up on the website shortly, I have already written it up.

 

Just stuck at home waiting for roofers...

 

Simon

[Wuggie Norple]

2 hours ago, Not Jeremy said:

Hi Nick

 

Apologies, I am going to restock as it is such a good volume and I have other orders for it too. I will get it up on the website shortly, I have already written it up.

 

Just stuck at home waiting for roofers...

 

Simon

Simon, brill, thank you!

[Enterprisingwestern]

7 hours ago, Not Jeremy said:

Just stuck at home waiting for roofers...

 

This one?

 

 

Mike.

[Butler Henderson]

I've had a bit of a disaaster with my copy of Vol 6 - left it open below a wall with a self adhesve hook on it. Today I discovered the hook stuck fast to page 43. Eventually got it off with a couple of tears which will need the "invisible" tape put into use. It has also removed some of the non-photo related text on that page so I currently have a page where the left text column currently reads

 

....former Scottish private owned mineral wagon fleet,

... pooled in 1939 and subsequently became part

...-predixs wagons was a very mixed bag, very few

... English and Welsh standards and considered

... BR senior managers. The fleet was something

... with as soon as possible.

 

Woule be grateful if someone could let me known the missing bits.

 

Thanks in advance

Mike

[65179]

43 minutes ago, Butler Henderson said:

I've had a bit of a disaaster with my copy of Vol 6 - left it open below a wall with a self adhesve hook on it. Today I discovered the hook stuck fast to page 43. Eventually got it off with a couple of tears which will need the "invisible" tape put into use. It has also removed some of the non-photo related text on that page so I currently have a page where the left text column currently reads

 

....former Scottish private owned mineral wagon fleet,

... pooled in 1939 and subsequently became part

...-predixs wagons was a very mixed bag, very few

... English and Welsh standards and considered

... BR senior managers. The fleet was something

... with as soon as possible.

 

Woule be grateful if someone could let me known the missing bits.

 

Thanks in advance

Mike

 

"The former Scottish privately owned mineral wagon fleet, which was 'pooled' in 1939 and subsequently became part of the BR P-prefix wagons, was a very mixed bag, very few being up to English and Welsh standards and considered anathema to BR senior managers. The fleet was something to be dispensed with as soon as possible."

 

Simon

[Compound2632]

12 hours ago, 65179 said:

"The former Scottish privately owned mineral wagon fleet, which was 'pooled' in 1939 and subsequently became part of the BR P-prefix wagons, was a very mixed bag, very few being up to English and Welsh standards and considered anathema to BR senior managers. The fleet was something to be dispensed with as soon as possible."

 

What does he mean here? The same RCH specifications applied throughout Great Britain. Does he mean that there were very few Scottish PO wagons built after 1923, or even after 1907? Which one can well imagine to have been the case; in which case would it not be simpler to say that they were, on average, older than wagons south of the border?

[65179]

On 28/07/2024 at 07:54, Compound2632 said:

 

What does he mean here? The same RCH specifications applied throughout Great Britain. Does he mean that there were very few Scottish PO wagons built after 1923, or even after 1907? Which one can well imagine to have been the case; in which case would it not be simpler to say that they were, on average, older than wagons south of the border?

 

I think you need to bear in mind that this is just an example of a brief bit of text by Larkin giving a bit of context to a series of photos of wagons that made it beyond nationalisation. It isn't supposed to be a rigorous appraisal of the state of the Scottish fleet or the reasons for it.

 

That said, together with a bit of text on page 45 and some of the wagons shown, it would appear that it is suggesting the Scottish fleet was older, rather than the operating authorities hating cupboard doors etc.

 

As an example, on page 50 there is a United Collieries (Bredisholm)  4 plank 8T wagon no.120 (HMRS ref AFC317 - I can't find this online) which apart from having buffers rather than dumb buffers shares many features with the one or more batches of wagons built (or just repainted and photographed?) in (if the HMRS  dates are correct) 1897-1898. See one example of a number of HMRS photos showing similar wagons here:

 

https://hmrs.org.uk/abn111-bredisholm-baillieston-8t-4-plank-s-e-100-op-1897-f3r-dumb-buffers-med-grey-body-white-lette.html

 

As an aside anyone care to hazard a guess at the wheelbase of this wagon?

 

Simon

Edited July 29 by 65179
To not spout nonsense

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, 65179 said:

As an example, on page 50 there is a United Collieries (Bredisholm)  4 plank 8T wagon no.120 (HMRS ref AFC317 - I can't find this online) which appears to my untutored eye be a buffered conversion from one or more batches of wagons of wagons built (or just repainted and photographed?) in 1897-1898. See photo as built here:

 

The photo shows an RCH-type registration plate...

[65179]

30 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The photo shows an RCH-type registration plate...

 

You're going to have to help me with the significance of that Stephen. I've altered what I wrote previously to something that fits with the information and avoids conjecture. I'm very much at the point of understanding that a far greater variety of minerals and opens survived to the early BR period than you'd believe from the average model railway, but not at the point of being able to recognise what I'm looking at or how to reproduce it!

 

Simon

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, 65179 said:

You're going to have to help me with the significance of that Stephen. I've altered what I wrote previously to something that fits with the information and avoids conjecture. I'm very much at the point of understanding that a far greater variety of minerals and opens survived to the early BR period than you'd believe from the average model railway, but not at the point of being able to recognise what I'm looking at or how to reproduce it!

 

Apologies, I was called to lunch!

 

The RCH registration plate on the solebar - the plate that looks like an underground sign (vide Prachett, Thud), Plimsoll line, or Nissan logo - indicates that the wagon has been built to the current RCH specification (which with dumb buffers, this wagon hasn't been) and inspected by a representative of the registering company. So this illustrates that the RCH system wasn't working as intended, north of the border. The idea was that a wagon registered under the RCH scheme by one railway company would be deemed suitable to run over the lines of all. I think I've seen something about the Scottish companies dissenting. I suppose there was very little cross-border mineral traffic, so such Scottish-registered wagons wouldn't have to get past the English wagon inspectors at Carlisle and Berwick.

[Embedded link to Great Central Railwayana Auctions. Pay no attention to the plate on the right.]

[Wuggie Norple]

On 18/07/2024 at 11:26, Not Jeremy said:

Hi Nick

 

Apologies, I am going to restock as it is such a good volume and I have other orders for it too. I will get it up on the website shortly, I have already written it up.

 

Just stuck at home waiting for roofers...

 

Simon

Just spotted that it is now available on the Titfield Thunderbolt Bookshop website.  A copy duly ordered together with Issue 117 of Voie Libre.

 

Nick M.

[41516]

Was someone looking for Vol1?

 

One on auction on eBay.