Castle Hill Press

After the first binding-batch, which is sufficient to meet advance orders plus a small margin, we keep only a small stock of bound copies. We store the remainder as unbound sheets. When we run out of bound copies we order more - but the bindery is often busy so it may be a while before a new batch arrives.
If you order a book that is not in stock we will tell you at once, and say when we expect to receive more bound copies. You can then decide whether you wish us to add your name to the waiting list.

Can I order your books from a high street bookstore?

Most of our sales are direct. If we sold a large part of our editions through booksellers, our prices would have to be at least 25% higher. After publication we will supply any bona-fide UK bookseller, although the retail price to the customer may work out higher than our direct-sale price. However, we do not currently list our publications in book-trade reference sources, so most booksellers wouldn't take the trouble to get in touch with us.
We do regularly supply books to a small number of specialist booksellers and library agents. These include Henry Sotherans' in London, Blackwell's Rare Books in Oxford, and Rikaro Books, a specialist in books by and about T.E. Lawrence, in Wakefield.
We take great care over handling and packing books we ship direct, but we cannot guarantee that mass-market retailers will do the same.

I am a librarian, can I order through our Library Agent?

Yes, you can order through a Library Agent. We have an account with Blackwells. You may also use other agents, but if they don't have an account with us they may be asked to pay prior to shipping.

Note that we do not normally supply books on SOR (sale or return) or circulate sample copies. If you are considering an order and would like more information, please contact us.

Are your books also published in the US?

Generally, no. The kind of short-run scholarly editions we publish are rarely issued in separate editions on both sides of the Atlantic.

We ship books overseas - in fact we send more books overseas than to the UK. You can order direct from our online shop, or by mail (see contact information).

Are your publications available as eBooks?

No. People expect eBooks to be cheap. To cover the large editorial costs of this scholarly edition, as well as retailers' margins, we might have to charge well over £50 for an eBook version. That does not seem realistic.
Note, however, that we have made many of Lawrence's previously published works and letters available completely free of charge on the T.E. Lawrence Studies website.

Who do you sell to?

We sell to researchers, collectors and libraries throughout the world - people who are sufficiently interested in Lawrence and/or fine-press publishing to appreciate and support our work.

Why do your prices not stay the same?

The Castle Hill Press edition of T.E. Lawrence's works and letters is only possible because of direct advance orders. In recognition of this support, we set an advance-order price that is usually well below the price after publication.
Sometimes, the final cost of producing a book turns out to be well above the cost estimated when we set the price for advance direct orders. As we cannot increase the price for orders already accepted, the post-publication price has to be correspondingly higher.
The price after publication reflects the cost of capital invested in the remaining stock and the cost of storing that stock. Because we bind in small batches, the unit binding cost for later batches is higher than for the large initial batch. Also, binding costs tend to increase over time. We regularly review these additional costs and amend the price of backlist stock accordingly.
More generally, we feel that the price of a book should reflect the "replacement" cost of producing a similar book today. Many of the costs we incur have been increasing by amounts well above the official rate of inflation.

Will your titles become available in cheaper editions?

We publish scholarly texts for a specialised market, which is correspondingly small.

Exceptionally, as in the case of the Oxford Text of Seven Pillars, we may also publish a cheaper edition. In other cases we may ultimately produce scaled-down paperback editions. For example, there is to be a selection from Lawrence's letters to Charlotte Shaw.

Do you ever sell-off books cheap, e.g., overstocks or shop-soiled copies?

We only publish texts with long-term interest. We aim to print enough copies to keep titles available for a while, but we carry only a small stock of bound copies. Without a large stock of bound copies, the 'overstock' situation cannot arise.

Occasionally, we find that a book has been damaged in handling. If the damage is only slight we may sell it through the second-hand (used-book) market.

What is the price in US$?

To find out the current equivalent price in US dollars or another currency, use the currency converter at www.oanda.com. If you fund your PayPal account from a credit card, use the drop-down to change the exchange rate from 'Interbank rate' to 'Typical credit card rate'.

How do I pay?

We currently accept payments via PayPal or sterling cheque drawn on a UK bank.

Shipping

What shipping options do you offer?

For private customers or libraries ordering from us directly, there is no charge for our standard insured UK postage, or for international shipping to the following countries:

UK
USA
Australia
Bahrain
Belgium
Canada
Cayman Islands
Channel Islands
China
Cyprus
Denmark

Finland
France
Germany
Gibraltar
Hong Kong
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jordan
Japan
Luxembourg

Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Portugal
Qatar
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan

Our standard shipping methods are:

Royal Mail Standard Parcels - which usually takes 3-5 working days. For certain weights, Royal Mail second-class post is now cheaper than Standard Parcels. Using this has enabled us to reduce some UK shipping costs.

We generally send parcels valued at £100 or more by First Class Recorded Delivery.

If required, we will send books by Royal Mail Special Delivery at additional cost. Note, however, that this can be expensive.

Overseas

We use the Spring Global Mail premium service. Packages go from the UK to the overseas country by air freight and are then transferred to the national postal service for delivery. Shipping times are usually around three weeks to most destinations, but there are sometimes delays

If required, we will quote the additional cost for sending books by standard airmail or faster specialist services

We no longer use international surface mail.

How fast is shipping to the US, Australasia and the Far East?

Spring Global Mail's premium service is generally good. To judge by customer feedback, most shipments reach destinations in the US, Australasia and the Far East within about three weeks. Occasionally, shipments take longer (exceptionally, up to about 12 weeks). This may be due to import customs delays, or possibly a routing error.

Such delays are outside our control, but if your package takes longer than four weeks to arrive, please tell us. Spring Global Mail depends on customer feedback to identify bottlenecks or other problems in the system.

How do you pack books for shipping?

We pack books in cardboard book-mailers or double-walled cartons. We always include an inner plastic wrapping, to help keep the contents dry if the parcel is left out in the rain. More >>

Are shipments insured?

All our shipments are insured for damage or loss in transit. Because of possible shipping delays we will not claim for non-delivery until at least 13 weeks (3 months) after dispatch, nor will we submit a claim for a loss reported later than 26 weeks (6 months) after dispatch. In the unlikely event that your book does not arrive, please make sure that you tell us before six months have passed. After that date we are unable to offer compensation.

Can I return a book purchased from you direct?

Yes. You can send back a book that is in undamaged condition within fourteen days of receipt for any reason and we will refund the purchase invoice. Please let us know at once if you are returning a book.
Until we receive the returned book it is your responsibility. We therefore advise you to pack it carefully and use an insured postage service. We will only issue a full refund if we receive the book in good condition.

What do I do if my book is damaged in transit?

When damage occurs in transit it is extremely disappointing, both for you and for us. However, the shipment is insured. Provided the book is in stock we will replace it. If we cannot replace it we will refund the cost.

All books we send out are carefully inspected before shipping.
Any book that arrives damaged must be returned to us for replacement. We never offer a partial refund on the basis of claims that a book has arrived damaged.
We cannot accept a claim for compensation, or replacement of a damaged book, unless you tell us about it as soon as you receive it and send the damaged book back to us within two weeks.
To enable us to make an insurance claim, please send a signed letter with the book, stating the address to which the parcel was delivered and the date of delivery, and indicating the kind of damage found on delivery.
Do not handle a damaged book more than you need before returning it: it should reach us in the condition it was in when it reached you. The insurers may reject a claim if the book has obviously been read before return.

Fortunately, while outer packaging sometimes takes a battering, we very rarely hear of damage to our books during shipment. If a parcel is severely damaged on arrival - to the extent that you think the book must certainly be affected - it may be best to refuse delivery. The damaged parcel should then be returned to us at the shipper's expense, not yours. Please let us know what has happened.

Severe damage is rare. It is usually caused by mechanised handling equipment. No form of packaging short of armoured steel could protect a book against the forces such equipment can exert.

What if my book does not arrive?

Since 1997 we have shipped thousands of books to customers around the world. Loss in transit is very rare indeed. An added factor is that the kind of books we publish rarely appear on the second-hand market - and are readily identifiable if they do.

If your parcel is not delivered, the first place to check is the local delivery office of your national mail service.

If an overseas shipment weighs over 2kg, it will have been sent by the M-bag service. It may therefore be contained in its own mail sack. We have had cases where customers enquired unsuccessfully about a "parcel", only to discover weeks later that delivery office staff had been ignoring a mailbag that was there all along.

If you are concerned about the time a shipment is taking to arrive, by all means contact us. However, we cannot claim on the insurance before 13 weeks. Even delayed parcels almost invariably arrive before that.

We cannot currently provide you with a tracking number for standard shipments.
If a book has not arrived after 13 weeks, you should tell us immediately. The longer you leave it after that, the less chance there is of recovering it.

Please note: We cannot accept a claim for compensation or replacement for an undelivered package unless you tell us about non-delivery within 6 months of dispatch.

General

What is a 'fine-press' book?

This term for finely-produced books makes no distinction between printing processes such as letterpress and offset-litho. Broadly speaking, fine-press books are produced to higher standards than are usual in book-trade publications. Fine-press publishers pay close attention to details of design, typesetting, materials, printing, illustration, and binding.

As a result, fine-press books have artistic merit as physical objects, regardless of their content. In the best examples, content and appearance work together.

High production standards mean that fine-press books are relatively expensive. They are usually produced in small, often limited, editions.

What are Castle Hill Press 'special issues'?

In common with other fine-press publishers, we issue a small number of copies of our publications in quarter goatskin or full goatskin bindings, usually with additional content such as a section of facsimiles.

Why not publish Lawrence's writings in a cheaper format?

Our editions of T.E. Lawrence's writings involve two types of cost.

The first, editorial research, is often very large. For many other twentieth-century writers, the editorial cost of preparing such editions might be covered by university salaries or grants. In the case of T.E. Lawrence, most research costs have to be recovered from the sale of the edition - and these costs are unavoidable. Therefore, however cheap the publishing format, our books would be expensive compared to a mass-market trade edition or a work that has benefited from subsidised research.

If we produced the editions cheaply as paperbacks, the price including research costs would still have to be £40-50 each. Yet the physical books would be almost worthless and they would quickly deteriorate. It is more reasonable to recover the research costs through fine-press editions, where buyers know that what they buy is likely to have long-term value.

We believe that high-quality content and high-quality production are a good combination. This is especially appropriate in Lawrence's case, since he loved fine printing and disliked badly produced books.

The second cost element is production, which in turn has two elements: origination cost and run-on cost. For a short print-run, the origination cost - the cost of making plates, setting up the press and printing the first copy - is usually far higher than the run-on cost.

In fact, in an edition of a few hundred copies the cost of materials (part of the run-on cost) is dwarfed by the origination cost. The savings you could make by using cheaper materials are therefore relatively small. The reason that some trade editions are cheap - especially paperbacks - is that they have very big print-runs, so that each copy carries a very small fraction of the origination cost. In a shorter print-run the identical book would cost much more to produce.

To summarise, we produce our scholarly editions of Lawrence's writings in short-run fine-press editions because this offers the best value for money. No alternative would be viable.

From the buyer's point of view, our fine-press editions (if reasonably cared for) should retain value in a way that most cheap editions do not. Moreover, for our Letters series editions the cost of buying the books is much less than the cost of visiting libraries to see the originals - and then researching the topics referred to, providing a scholarly index, and so on.

Do you publish other subjects than Lawrence?

In principle, we may. At present, however, we have no spare capacity beyond our T.E. Lawrence publishing programme.

Are you connected with any other publisher or printer whose name includes 'Castle Hill'?

No. We first published under this imprint in 1989 - there is a landmark called Castle Hill near our house.

Some years after we founded Castle Hill Press a Nazi apologist began issuing books using a similar imprint. We have no connection with that imprint nor any sympathy with its aims.

Do you send out spam?

Never, but someone occasionally mass-mails spam messages with a falsified header that purports to come from an e-mail address at castlehillpress.com.

People who do this are criminals. Their mailings have nothing to do with us. You should never buy any products they offer. Some ISPs now block e-mail messages with falsified headers. Most spam filters should successfully detect and suppress them.

NEWS

For prices see our Online Shop

For progress reports on our current projects, please check our News page.

For more general comments about our projects, publishing and T.E. Lawrence see Jeremy Wilson's blog.

Customer feedback

Some comments from the customer feedback page on our old website:

. . . I couldn't be more pleased. The attention to detail, and conception of this edition, are wonderful . . .

I cannot praise too highly the quality of the production, with exceptional clarity and beauty of print, the erudition of editing, and the excellent on-line service. Important correspondence in beautiful books - the perfect combination.

. . .Excellence in research and editing, and magnificently produced books in superb bindings. Last but not least, efficient and friendly service, with books posted in rock solid packaging.

. . . These books are a pleasure to own and read . . .

. . . a quite invaluable job in publishing (very beautifully . . .) many of the writings of TEL which hitherto have been available only in manuscript form in museums, libraries or private collections, or in out-of-print books which are very hard to obtain.

An excellent set of publications that are beautifully edited and produced. A wonderful addition to my library and to any library.

Castle Hill Press

Scholarly editions of T. E. Lawrence's works and letters

CATALOGUE

Works

The Mint, 1928 text

Military Report on the Sinai Peninsula

Translation

The Forest Giant

Letters

T. E. Lawrence Letters series

Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw

Correspondence with E. M. Forster and F.L. Lucas

Correspondence with Henry Williamson

Help - frequently asked questions

NEWS