[VLM]

I'd like to buy the book related to the language, looks interesting, I am willing to pay list price, but fedex wants a mere $64 to ship it.

Meanwhile I'm an electronics experimenter kind of guy and I currently have some weird semiconductors arriving from China where the entire order including shipping was only about $45 (I believe the shipping portion was $8). Admittedly a very small and light packet compared to a textbook, but still...

In an online, ebook, internet world, something is wrong with $64 shipping charge from the UK yet only $8 from China. Maybe a helpful soul could have a pallet of books shipped to China, then send them around the world for the usual Chinese shipping "pocket change" cost.

[slackstation]

Why in 2015 are we flying paper half-way around the world?

Doesn't Amazon (and others) have a print-on-demand service that would be more cost effective and not waste the fuel of flying 20lbs of paper across an ocean?

[Sanddancer]

The amount of fuel used on that twenty pounds is trivial when factored in with all the tennis rackets, shirts, etc that are also in that plane. However, this doesn't get to the crux of the problem that print on demand is still an immature technology compared to offset printing, and provides an inferior good. Running a printing press is an artform, and pure digital doesn't offer the same quality tools quite yet.

[steveklabnik]

As someone who reads physical books almost exclusively, print on demand is getting better, but offset still reigns supreme.

[hga]

I really like books, although I'm comfortable with online/ebook reading, and I have to say that the company chosen for this book delivers superb quality compared to every US origin print on demand book I've looked at, at least for the first edition of this book. I can't tell it from offset (although some embedded links came our grey because I assume they were delivered in color and not caught in galleys). Even the color artwork looks great---ironically, it's the back corner where the company puts its standard ISBN/price/self-advertising rectangle that looks bad when looked at very closely and makes clear someone dropped the ball somewhere (maybe that's an artifact of the author choosing such a high quality for the cover).

[orbifold]

It has Books by Springer (an academic publisher) is are printed on demand by Amazon, I'm sure there are others.

[Sanddancer]

The amount of fuel used on that twenty pounds is trivial when factored in with all the tennis rackets, shirts, etc that are also in that plane. However, this doesn't get to the crux of the problem that print on demand is still immature technology compared to offset printing, and offers an inferior good. Running a printing press is an artform, and pure digital doesn't offer the same quality tools quite yet.

[Sanddancer]

The amount of fuel used on that twenty pounds is trivial when factored in with all the tennis rackets, shirts, etc that are also in that plane. However, this doesn't get to the crux of the problem that print on demand is still immature technology compared to offset printing, and offers an inferior good. Running a printing press is an artform, and pure digital doesn't offer the same quality tools quite yet.

[hga]

What problems do you have with 7 pounds for airmail and 20 pounds for tracked airmail? I've used the airmail option to the US for the first edition of The Book of Shen without problem.

There's also online resources for learning that if you have enough functional programming background ought to be able to get you started: http://www.shenlanguage.org/learn-shen/index.html

Added: it's a 400 page print on demand book, I don't have a scale that's suitable for its weight range but the first edition, which has its form factor, is well over a pound.

(http://www.fast-print.net/bookshop/1506/the-book-of-shen-sec...)

[VLM]

"What problems do you have with 7 pounds for airmail and 20 pounds for tracked airmail?"

That Amazon will ship me print on demand in two days for "free", lulu charges $4, my favorite electronic seller in China charges $2 per item (admittedly each item is lighter than a book) I mean, really, guys?

I'll buy the book, looks interesting, I'll just wait until distribution picks up. I thought about getting a unlicensed ebook copy from "the usual sources" and just donating about 25 bucks to the project, but I'll probably wait.

There's a business concept where you never say "no". If you don't want to do something, like, say, ship outside the UK, you just charge "F you money", or whatever the UK translation is, as a fee. "So how about you rewrite that backend in cobol?" "No problem, but that's going to be kinda expensive, like $750/hr, just so you know" "In that case, lets not do that" I see those kind of shipping charges and I hear this message being delivered. Its not that I can't afford it, its that I don't like being told to F off. Someone doesn't want to ship internationally, in 2015, well, ok, but then they should not be offended if they get made fun of a little bit.

[emidln]

I purchased the second edition some months ago and seem to remember the airmail taking only about a week to get to the US.

[jnbiche]

I agree, I'd also like to buy the book. Looks pretty good, kind of similar to "The Haskell Road to Logic". But it doesn't look like he's very interested in selling outside the UK. I'll wait and hope it shows up on Amazon.

[hga]

7 pounds, ~10.50 US$ as a maximum to ship it anywhere in the world, be it Pitcairn Island or the US, doesn't strike me as quite equaling not "very interested in selling outside the UK".

[jnbiche]

Yes, but that's without any type of guarantee that it will even arrive. For that, you have to pay significantly more.

Also, it's pretty trivial to get set up on Lulu and even Amazon and other distributors these days, all of whom can print and ship inside the U.S. and charge local shipping (and many other countries as well). If he's unhappy about the cut they take, he could raise his price by at least $10 (what is saved on shipping) and probably more.

I'd prefer to pay $30-$40 for a book on Amazon that I can use Prime for, than $15 + $10 shipping for a book that may or may not arrive from overseas, and will take a week or more to do so.