Lodestar Books

Tripp Under Sail — at last !

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:02:48 +0000

After some months of juggling the demands of quality and affordability, our new edition of H Alker Tripp’s evocative 1920s cruising trilogy (Shoalwater and Fairway, Suffolk Sea-Borders, and The Solent and the Southern Waters) is finally in the press and available to order, for early June publication — with any luck, in time for the Beale Park Boat Show. You can order the titles singly, but we hope you’ll be tempted by our ridiculous offer of all three volumes for little more than the price of two. Those familiar with the original editions will notice that we have departed radically from them as regards layout, feeling that a bit more space does greater justice to both words and drawings. You’ll also notice there are no charts; those in the original were of very poor quality and detracted, we think, from the overall impression of what are works of literature and art, rather than of pilotage.

A torn jacket is soon mended; but a new one is better.

admin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:43:52 +0000

With apologies to Longfellow. When ordering a print run we always request some spare jackets where the book employs one, but on a few occasions the printers have accidentally added a zero to the number requested. So we’re not exactly short of them, and if the one on your Lodestar book is a bit tatty, we’ll send you a replacement, rolled in a tube, for a modest charge to cover packing & postage. Just click here to request one.

“For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade”

admin — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:53:46 +0000

So said Raleigh — something to aspire to anyway. From this week our titles are at last available to the UK book trade, from our new distributor Central Books in London. Retailers can order direct from Central on normal trade terms, or from their usual wholesaler. And from next week Central will be shipping all our website sales, freeing up both time and space here at Lodestar Books, so we can do even more of what we do best. But your online orders will still be received and acknowledged by yours truly; personal contact is a key element of this enterprise.

Lodestar Library now “3 for 2”

admin — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:47:14 +0000

Why I didn’t think of this before I don’t know. We have quite a pipeline of titles for our bijou Library series, and to reinforce our contention that every self-respecting nautical bookshelf should have them, we offer you three for the price of two, that’s 3 for £30, post-free in the UK, or just £10 per book. To Europe that’s 3 for £32, and the rest of the world 3 for £38. Who could resist it? Our ordering system is not yet clever enough to implement this directly, so for now we’ll spot the quantity when you order and promptly refund to you what’s due, normally within one working day. And of course if you order more than 3 books from the series, you’ll get the same per-book price, so in the UK that’s just £10 per book for 3 or more; less than £11 per book to Europe, and under £13 to anywhere else.

Many a Slip ’twixt now and April

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 22:55:34 +0000

Well, The Lugworm Chronicles has gone to press, and now that I have advertised that the three volumes come in a protective sleeve (I hesitate to say ‘slipcase’ with all that implies), I have about four weeks to contrive one. It turns out that in our modest quantities, a proper slipcase in paper-covered millboard costs nearly as much as printing the books, so that option is out. What we’ll have is something engineered in stiff card, printed to match the books. It’s made necessary only because Lodestar Books now has trade distribution in the UK, and Lugworm is sold only as a set of three volumes. When its mission is completed it may cheerfully be recycled — we’re here to produce books, not boxes.

Just Unbelievable … Perfection on Legs

admin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:15:16 +0000

Not my words, but those of sailor, maritime author and now publisher of The Marine Quarterly, Sam Llewellyn in respect of our books: “These books are just unbelievable. Many, many congratulations on look, production quality, design… you name it. Perfection on legs.” Sentiments I heartily reciprocate regarding his wonderful new journal, of which No 5 is about to appear — I urge you to subscribe for a regular 112 pages of thoughtful and entertaining writing — both old and new — on all aspects of the sea, things that float on it, creatures that live in it, and people who enjoy it or make their living from it. Who Needs a Navy? by Lewis Page, from Issue 1, was a revelation to me as it may be for you also.

Lodestar in the City

admin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:06:05 +0000

For reasons explained elsewhere, Lodestar titles are not generally to be found in bookshops. But a happy exception, for those within reach of the City of London, is the excellent Daunt Books on Cheapside. They are across the street from my day-job (you didn’t think I made a living from Lodestar did you?) so the crippling cost of carriage is eliminated, and manager Ben kindly took a few trial copies today. The City being full of well-read sailors of classic boats, I think it’ll prove a good investment for the shop. Feel free to ask him to obtain any Lodestar title you’d like to look at, I can normally get them there within 24 hours, maybe even the same day.

Through a page, darkly

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:24:36 +0000

This will be a revelation to half of you, but blindingly obvious to the other half. When scanning a page from a book or journal, there is a risk that the matter on the reverse of the page, and even on the page after that, will show up in the image and make it unusable. The solution, at any rate for black & white or monochrome originals, is to place a sheet of black paper or card behind the page being scanned. This ‘drowns’ the offending material. Now, instead of text or other material showing through, you get a solid murky grey, which is easy to adjust back to white in any image editing software. A while back I paid a large sum for the British Library to supply a scan of a drawing from an old yachting journal. Because they did not take this precaution I received an unusable image bearing the clear text from the back of the page of interest. Happily they re-did the scan using the above trick, and vowed to standardise on it. We’ll see!

Red Sails

admin — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:56:53 +0000

I just found the time to watch Red Sails – a new DVD about Thames sailing barges, which weaves the story of the Cambria’s reconstruction into that of the barge trade as a whole. For those unfamiliar, Cambria was the last barge to trade under sail alone, decommissioned only in 1970 and recently restored from a very shabby state, relaunching in 2011. This is an absolutely cracking production which combines old and new film footage, interviews etc, including scenes of arch-rivals Cabby and Cambria racing once more in 2011 — and boy do they move. I have no connection with the producers, but wish it all the success it richly deserves. You can find it here. There is no Lodestar book on Thames barges yet — but a chance would be a fine thing, let me know if you have an idea for one.

The Tripp Conundrum

admin — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:29:18 +0000

Some of you will be familiar with the 1920s originals by The Bodley Head of three Alker Tripp books, which I am ‘doing’ in the Spring. They were reproduced in facsimile by Conway Press in the 1970s, but somehow I felt they deserved better. The writing and the illustration stand up well, and it would be good if the former flowed more comfortably with less interruption by the latter. This would require a different, larger page format, and here’s the conundrum: The sheer volume of illustration meant that, if I placed it within the notional text area of the book, displacing the text as required, I ran out of text before I had placed all the pictures. It seems the author was ‘in on’ the original edition’s layout and supplied drawings accordingly. My solution was to place the vertically-oriented drawings in a large side margin; this solved the problem, at the same time allowing a more continuous flow of the text, and giving everything in the book more room to breathe than it had in the original charming, but slightly hectic, edition. My aim is to create good new productions, not to slavishly reproduce the old (where’s the fun in that?) so I had no compunction in excluding a few minor and hurried tailpieces from a time when it was thought no space should be left unfilled. Sometimes, less is more.