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.

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.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

This way Paul he can claim to have "reinvented" the wheel!

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.

On Sep 7, 5:30 am, The Historian wrote:

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.

Like, duh!



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.

If you just shrink the text from full size down to 6x9
it seems to me that everything will get smaller, more
difficult for oldsters like me to read. That is, unless
you are using a text-recognition program and doing
a complete reformat, which increases the number of
pages significantly.



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.

Too easy. That would be like climbing Mt. Everest by
being dropped near the top via helicopter. OTOH, you
still need to get back down... scratch that analogy!



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.

I don't know, but aside from the negativity toward Mr.
Sloan himself there is the fact that these things are
just re-hashes of other people's work, where Mr. Sloan
gets his name on the cover as "editor", right?



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.

One of the things a self-publisher type can do is
get a print-on-demand service, which only cranks
out the books as needed. In that setup, if no books
sell you are not stuck with say, a thousand copies
which cost five bucks apiece to print. But the cost
is higher, so I would go with the normal, cheaper
method and just be a bit conservative in how many
you print.


-- help bot

On Sep 7, 9:25 am, help bot wrote:
On Sep 7, 5:30 am, The Historian wrote:



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.

Like, duh!

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.

If you just shrink the text from full size down to 6x9
it seems to me that everything will get smaller, more
difficult for oldsters like me to read. That is, unless
you are using a text-recognition program and doing
a complete reformat, which increases the number of
pages significantly.

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.

Too easy. That would be like climbing Mt. Everest by
being dropped near the top via helicopter. OTOH, you
still need to get back down... scratch that analogy!

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.

I don't know, but aside from the negativity toward Mr.
Sloan himself there is the fact that these things are
just re-hashes of other people's work, where Mr. Sloan
gets his name on the cover as "editor", right?

I don't know. None of the posters in this thread have seen the book.

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.

One of the things a self-publisher type can do is
get a print-on-demand service, which only cranks
out the books as needed. In that setup, if no books
sell you are not stuck with say, a thousand copies
which cost five bucks apiece to print. But the cost
is higher, so I would go with the normal, cheaper
method and just be a bit conservative in how many
you print.

-- help bot

On Sep 7, 6:30 am, The Historian wrote:
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.

I know that in the case of his reprint of a Russian book from the
Soviet era, there was a debate about whether or not Mr. Sloan was
violating a copyright. Sloan contended that Soviet copyrights are no
longer binding or something like that. I don't know the letter of the
law or all the details, but if you have to look for a loophole to
publish something, I'd say that you're definitely violating the spirit
of the law, if not the letter. I would think he should have talked to
the original writer/publisher before reprinting that one.

In this case, it sounds like GM Benko asked Mr. Sloan to publish these
books for him. This was probably because of Sloan's experience as a
publisher, knowledge of how to get books listed on amazon.com, etc.
Since this one is fully endorsed by the original author, I can only
imagine that everyone's complaining because they don't like Sloan, and
not because of the details of this particular book.

As for whether or not I own any of Sloan's books, I actually have his
"Chinese Chess for Beginners", which is one of the few books that he
wrote himself. The syntax is out of date, but it's a very good
introduction to the game of XiangQi for anyone who's interested.

--Richard

I'm getting a 50% cut from Benko's book so please buy 3 copies each.

On Sep 7, 9:35 am, The Historian wrote:
On Sep 7, 9:25 am, help bot wrote:





On Sep 7, 5:30 am, The Historian wrote:

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.

Like, duh!

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.

If you just shrink the text from full size down to 6x9
it seems to me that everything will get smaller, more
difficult for oldsters like me to read. That is, unless
you are using a text-recognition program and doing
a complete reformat, which increases the number of
pages significantly.

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.

Too easy. That would be like climbing Mt. Everest by
being dropped near the top via helicopter. OTOH, you
still need to get back down... scratch that analogy!

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.

I don't know, but aside from the negativity toward Mr.
Sloan himself there is the fact that these things are
just re-hashes of other people's work, where Mr. Sloan
gets his name on the cover as "editor", right?

I don't know. None of the posters in this thread have seen the book.



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.

One of the things a self-publisher type can do is
get a print-on-demand service, which only cranks
out the books as needed. In that setup, if no books
sell you are not stuck with say, a thousand copies
which cost five bucks apiece to print. But the cost
is higher, so I would go with the normal, cheaper
method and just be a bit conservative in how many
you print.

-- help bot- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Neil,
Doesn't the USCF and CHess Life own those articles since they were
work for hire? If they do, then isn't Sloan in violation of copyright?

Rob

On Sep 10, 4:34 pm, samsloan wrote:
I'm getting a 50% cut from Benko's book so please buy 3 copies each.

The above of course is by The Fake Sam Sloan, so please ignore it.

The Real Sam Sloan

On Sep 10, 4:44 pm, Rob wrote:
On Sep 7, 9:35 am, The Historian wrote:



On Sep 7, 9:25 am, help bot wrote:

On Sep 7, 5:30 am, The Historian wrote:

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.

Like, duh!

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.

If you just shrink the text from full size down to 6x9
it seems to me that everything will get smaller, more
difficult for oldsters like me to read. That is, unless
you are using a text-recognition program and doing
a complete reformat, which increases the number of
pages significantly.

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.

Too easy. That would be like climbing Mt. Everest by
being dropped near the top via helicopter. OTOH, you
still need to get back down... scratch that analogy!

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.

I don't know, but aside from the negativity toward Mr.
Sloan himself there is the fact that these things are
just re-hashes of other people's work, where Mr. Sloan
gets his name on the cover as "editor", right?

I don't know. None of the posters in this thread have seen the book.

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.

One of the things a self-publisher type can do is
get a print-on-demand service, which only cranks
out the books as needed. In that setup, if no books
sell you are not stuck with say, a thousand copies
which cost five bucks apiece to print. But the cost
is higher, so I would go with the normal, cheaper
method and just be a bit conservative in how many
you print.

-- help bot- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Neil,
Doesn't the USCF and CHess Life own those articles since they were
work for hire? If they do, then isn't Sloan in violation of copyright?

Rob

You know, when I saw that it was Chess Life material being reprinted,
I was thinking of asking about that possibility, but I thought better
of even bringing it up. I figured the flame wars around here didn't
need any more fuel. Mr. Sloan does claim to have the backing of the
original author on this project, so I can only hope that Mr. Benko has
already addressed this with USCF beforehand.

--Richard

Doesn't the USCF and CHess Life own those articles since they were
work for hire? If they do, then isn't Sloan in violation of copyright?

Rob,

Just curious -- what makes you think Benko's articles were "work for
hire" (a technical term regarding ownership of copyright of produced
work)?

As far as I know, during the time the "Endgame Laboratory" articles
were published in Chess Life, the usualy arrangement for magazines was
the publication of "first North American serial rights" or somesuch.
If so, Benko would have retained rights for further publication.

Or did CL columnists have a different kind of arrangement?

Chess Life occasionally published a story of mine (and School Mates, a
lot of stories, interviews and miscellanea) and republication was
never an issue.

If I recall correctly, a few (5?) years ago CL changed its acquisition
policy and began buying all rights. Still, I'd bet they'd ok
republication if asked to add something like "first published in Chess
Life on such-and-such a date".

Rick