On Sep 6, 12:15 pm, Paul Rubin wrote:
samsloan writes:
Benko used to sell these at his lectures which is probably where you
obtained yours.

Unfortunately, Benko sold out of these several years ago and the man
who made them for him has changed jobs and lacks the capacity to make
any more.

That guy had the only xerox machine in the world? I doubt it.

The "Gray Book" of Benko columns had 254 pages. Just to photocopy that
at five cents a page would cost $12.70. Plus it had a basic cover and
perfect binding but no introduction, no index, no table of contents,
no pictures, no biography of Benko, no ISBN number and no barcode.

Nowadays, most bookstores will not accept a book for sales without an
ISBN number and a barcode.

Benko gave all of his lectures in bookstores? I doubt that. Anyway,
photocopying would have been around 2 cents a page with the tiniest
bit of shopping, and even a dork like you has got the ISBN thing
figured out. There is even something called "teh Google" which finds

http://booksjustbooks.com/bookreques...stestimate.asp

in about 15 seconds. That quotes $6.93/copy for 500 copies, $4.03 for
1000 copies, 8.5" by 11", 256 pages perfect bound, 1-color cover. And
that's with no shopping or anything.

I don't think the goal here was to make a collection of photocopies,
Paul.

The Gray Book also did not have a very attractive appearance. My book
was created by scanning the original Chess Life articles with a very
high resolution 600 dpi scanner. It is also cheaper to produce as it
is mass produced.

However, it took a massive amount of work to get it done as every page
had to be re-formatted to get it onto 6x9. So the question of whether
I will do volume 2 which would cover the years 1987 through 1993 will
depend on the success of this volume.

Why not print it at full size then. Sheesh.

6 by 9 is a common size for books, Paul.

I don't understand the venom Mr. Sloan is drawing for his publishing
efforts. His chess books get attacked on the newsgroups without being
seen. I understand being leery of ordering one because of Sloan's
reputation, but he's publishing, or republishing, interesting titles
at reasonable prices.

Has anyone purchased any of Sloan's chess books? I believe there's
another collection of endgames and a Weaver Adams title. Comments by
someone who has seen the books are welcome.