Help - frequently asked questions
Buying
Shipping
General
Buying
Can I
order your books from a high street bookstore?
In most cases, no. We used to sell Castle Hill Press editions
widely through the retail trade. Then the bookselling chains
started demanding ever bigger discounts, longer and longer
credit terms, and unlimited sale-or-return. To do that would
have meant setting much higher prices, and probably lowering production standards. So now we
mainly sell to customers direct.
That
said, you can usually see and buy some of our editions in central London
at Sotherans', the antiquarian booksellers in Sackville Street, just off
Piccadilly. You can also order single volumes in the T.E. Lawrence
Letters series through Blackwell's Rare Books in Oxford (NB
this is Blackwell's rare-books department, not its Library
Agency). Our editions are also available through most
antiquarian booksellers who specialise in books by and about T.E.
Lawrence.
If you are a librarian and wish to order
through a Library Agent, we have an account with Lindsay and Cox, part
of the Yankee Pedlar group. You may use other agents, but if
they don't have an account with us they will have to order on a
pro-forma payment basis. Remember also that on some of our
titles an
agent may receive
no trade discount, so they may charge a commission.
We
do not supply books on SOR (Sale Or Return).
What is the cheapest way I can buy volumes in the
T.E. Lawrence Letters series?
Advance subscription is always the cheapest way to buy a forthcoming volume
(see below: 'What is a subscription order?)
Multi-volume discounts for new subscribers
If you are new to the Letters series and wish to buy volumes that have
already been published, you can make big savings by placing a
new-subscriber's order for two or more volumes at
the same time (see Price List).
If you missed the
advance subscription period for a forthcoming volume, you can still save
money by including it
in a new-subscriber's multi-volume order.
Please note that multi-volume new-subscription orders must be
placed directly with Castle Hill Press. There is no trade
discount on subscription prices.
Example
If you wish to buy all four volumes
of the Lawrence-Shaw correspondence, the cheapest way to do it
is to order Vols I-III together at £240 (that's £95 rather than
£115 each). You will receive and pay for Vols I-III now. You cannot
yet order Vol. IV, but as you have ordered Vols I-III you will
receive notification of the subscription for Vol. IV.
Adding a previously published volume to your set
If you are an existing customer and wish to add a Letters
series volume you did not originally purchase, you may be
entitled to a discount of up to 20%. The amount saved depends
on the value of your previous orders from Castle Hill Press.
I am a bookseller. Can I place a trade order?
We do not list our books in trade reference sources. However, for
volumes in the T.E. Lawrence Letters series and some
other Castle Hill Press editions we do offer a trade discount on
our single-volume price.
If you have a
customer who wishes to buy one or more volumes in the Letters
series and would prefer to order it through you than directly
from us, we will supply you on a Pro Forma basis at 25% below
the single-volume price on our website.
There is no recommended retail price for our books. We believe that
retailers of books, like retailers of other products, should be
free to charge what they wish.
Why can't I find your titles in trade reference sources?
Because our books have no RRP. If
we list in trade reference sources we have to give an RRP, and
that is picked up by online retailers
who then offer the books for sale - often at a large discount
which they imagine we will finance! Trade reference sources
should list the publisher's selling price, not a recommended
retail price.
The prices shown on this website are our own
direct-sale prices. Booksellers and Library Agents who showcase our
books or obtain them for customers may charge what they wish.
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
sell more books overseas than we do in the UK. At present, we ship overseas
about once a week. You can
order via our online shop, or by mail, fax or phone (see
contact information).
What is
a subscription order?
For a limited period before
publication we offer Castle Hill Press books at an advance
subscription price. This is the lowest price at which we will
ever sell the book. It is sometimes calculated long in advance,
so if there
are later cost increases or specification upgrades the
subscription price may turn out to be a good bargain.
We don't take payment immediately
for pre-publication orders. If you subscribe, there is usually a
stage payment when the book goes into production (around 8 weeks before publication). The balance including
shipping cost is payable when we send you the book.
More details>>
What is a "Subscribers' Leaf"?
Books ordered before publication
(including copies ordered by Library Agents) usually contain an
extra Subscribers' Leaf. This might contain facsimiles or
illustrations. It is not present in copies ordered after publication.
We
do this to encourage customers to subscribe in advance. That helps us
pay our printers and binders.
What is a customer discount?
If you have bought books from Castle Hill Press and wish to buy a
volume you previously missed,
you may be entitled to a discount of up to 20%.
More>>
Can I
subscribe to the whole T. E. Lawrence Letters series?
If
you tell us that you wish to buy all volumes in the T.E. Lawrence Letters series, you will be entered automatically as an advance
subscriber.
Nevertheless, we need to contact you before each volume is published.
This is to ensure that we have your current shipping address and card
details. Also, we need your specific authorisation to make charges to
your card.
If we are unable to contact you, we will
not ship your book on publication and your subscription will
fail. If you subsequently contact us we will offer you a
discount based on the value of your previous purchases from
Castle Hill Press - but your copy will not contain
the Subscribers' Leaf. Please, therefore, make sure that we have your
current contact details.
Will
your titles become available in cheaper editions?
We publish scholarly texts for a
specialised market. Cheaper reprint editions would require far
bigger print-runs, i.e., a much larger market than exists for most of
the books we publish.
Exceptionally, as in the case of the Oxford Text of
Seven
Pillars, we may also publish a trade edition. In other cases, we may
publish abridged texts for the general market. For example, there is
a proposal for a one-volume selection from Lawrence's correspondence with
Bernard and Charlotte Shaw.
Do you
ever sell-off books cheap, e.g., overstocks and shop-soiled copies?
We only publish
texts with long-term interest. We aim to print enough copies to
keep titles available for several years, but we don't bind the
whole edition at once. We only carry a small stock of
finished books. Because we don't have large stocks of bound copies, the
'overstock' situation can never arise. So you will not find out
publications at "overstock" or "remainder" prices.
Occasionally, copies are slightly damaged in handling. For example, there might be a small scratch on the gilt top-edge. We sell these through the
second-hand (used-book) market.
What is
the price in US$ and other currencies?
When we update our online price list
we calculate and show the equivalents in US$ and Euros at that date. However,
this is only an approximate guideline because exchange rates vary all the time.
For
current equivalents in US$ or other currencies, enter the amount and the
currency in the online conversion calculator at www.oanda.com. If you
are paying by card, use the drop-down to change the rate from 'Interbank
rate' to 'Typical credit card rate'.
How do I
pay?
-
Cards - We
prefer payment by card. We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express,
and major European debit cards such as Maestro. You can pay by card
using our online shop, or you can send us your card details by phone, or
call us (see contact
details). You are advised never to send card details by e-mail.
-
PayPal - we
accept payment by PayPal for books in stock. If you ordered in advance using PayPal, the money would be debited from your
account immediately - but we couldn't ship the book. If there is no PayPal button beside the book you wish to buy, please e-mail and
we will send you a PayPal invoice.
-
UK cheque - many UK
businesses, e.g., some of the major supermarkets and petrol
retailers, no longer accept cheques. We still
accept sterling cheques drawn on a UK bank, but because of the
costs and administration involved we charge a £2 handling fee if the
amount is less than £300.
-
Other cheques - exceptionally, if the amount is above £500, we will accept cheques in
US$ or Euros. However, books will not be shipped until payment has
cleared, which usually takes about six weeks.
Shipping
What
shipping options do you offer?
Our standard
shipping methods are:
UK
-
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.
-
If required, we
will send books by Royal Mail Special Delivery. Note, however, that
this is expensive for a package weighing more than 2kg.
Overseas
-
We use Spring Global Mail's
premium service. Spring Global Mail
is a joint venture between Royal Mail, TNT and Singapore
Post. Packages go from the UK to the overseas destination 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 in import
customs
-
If required, we will send books by standard airmail. However, the
cost is usually at least twice the cost of dispatch via Spring
-
We no longer use surface mail,
which is not significantly cheaper than
Spring
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 depend
on customer feedback to identify bottlenecks or other problems in the system.
How do
you pack books for shipping?
We
pack books in heavy-duty 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.
What do I do if my book is damaged in transit?
We
rarely hear of damage to our books during shipment. If that happens,
please return the book. If a parcel is obviously damaged on arrival - to
the extent that the contents must be affected - it is 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.
Very
occasionally parcels are severely damaged in transit - usually by
powered handling equipment. No form of packaging short of armoured steel
could protect a book against that. When it happens it is extremely
disappointing, both for you and for us. However, the shipment is insured
and if we have the book in stock we will replace it.
Please note:
We cannot accept a claim for compensation or replacement of a
damaged book unless you tell us about this within two weeks of receipt
and return the damaged item to us.
What if I wish to return the book?
Under EU distance-selling law, you
may return a book received from us - you don't even have to give
a reason. You must, however, notify us at once and
send the book back within 14 days of receiving it. Please pack
the book carefully and insure it against loss or damage in
transit. We will refund your purchase invoice as soon as we receive the book,
provided it is in good condition.
What if
my book does not arrive?
Since 1997 we have shipped thousands of books to customers around
the world. Loss in transit is extremely rare.
If
your parcel is not delivered, the first place to check is the local
delivery office of your national mail service.
If
the shipment weighed over 2kg, it will have been sent by the Mailbag
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 your shipment.
If a
book has not arrived after 13 weeks, you must tell is immediately. The
longer you leave it after that, the less likely we are to be able to
recover 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 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 'specials'?
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.
More>>
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 quite expensive.
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 running 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 much higher than
the running cost.
The cost of materials is part of
the running cost. In a short run, you can make only modest
overall savings by using cheaper materials. The reason that some
trade editions are cheap - especially paperbacks - is that they
have very big print-runs, so each copy carries a far smaller
fraction of the origination cost. In a shorter print-run the
identical book would cost far 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 editions (if reasonably cared for) should
retain far more value than a cheaper edition. The cost of buying
them is much less
than visiting libraries to see original letters - and then researching
all the topics referred to.
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. Some years later
a Nazi apologist began issuing books using a similar name. 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 Castle Hill Press. 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.
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