www.castlehillpress.com

 

CATALOGUE

Untitled 1

Works

The Mint, 1928 text
Military Report on the Sinai Peninsula

Translation

The Forest Giant

Letters

T. E. Lawrence Letters series
Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw
Correspondence with E. M. Forster and F.L. Lucas
Correspondence with Henry Williamson

See our full catalogue

  Page updated
 12 November 2008

 

Help - frequently asked questions

Buying

Shipping

General

Buying

Do you hold stock of all the titles you list as available?

  • We try to keep as many of our titles as possible in stock in all available bindings. However, we have books bound in batches and sometimes we are waiting for a new batch of a particular edition.
  • If you order a book that is not in stock, we will tell you at once, and say when we expect to receive copies. If you order from our online shop, we will not charge your card until we send the book.

Can I order your books from a high street bookstore?

For most of our editions, yes. However:

  • We have issued a few ephemeral publications that are not available through the book trade. These are listed in our online shop.

  • When the remaining stock of a particular title or binding is very small we remove it from "books in print" listings, because these may take several weeks to filter through to all booksellers. If a title ordered has meanwhile gone out of print, there is wasted effort and disappointment. It is worth checking our online shop, however, since books may still be listed there after the listing has been withdrawn from book-trade directories.    

I am a librarian, can I order through our Library Agent?

  • Yes, you can order through a Library Agent. We have an account with Blackwells. You may also use other agents, but if they don't have an account with us they may be asked to send payment with order.
  • Note that we do not supply books on SOR (sale or return) or circulate copies for examination. If you are considering an order and would like more information please contact us.

I am a bookseller. How can I place a trade order?

  • If you order direct from us and do not hold an account, we will send you a pro-forma invoice. You may prefer to order through Gardners Books, with whom we have an account.
  • Please note that we only exceptionally agree to open an account, and then only on terms that we can accept (notably, timely settlement of our invoices). We do not currently supply on account to any British high-street bookselling chain except Blackwells.  

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.
  • Some overseas booksellers will order foreign publications for you. We also ship books overseas - in fact we send more books to customers overseas than to customers in the UK. You can order direct from our online shop, or by mail or telephone (see contact information).

Who are your subscribers?

  • The Castle Hill Press edition of T.E. Lawrence's works and letters is only possible because it is supported by a number of direct subscribers (individuals and institutions) who are sufficiently interested in Lawrence and/or fine-press publishing to appreciate the value of our work. Subscribers commit to ordering our books at an early stage, before details are announced to the public.
  • In recognition of this support, we give subscribers the best possible price, invariably below the price following publication. This sometimes turns out to be a considerable bargain, because later enhancements in production-spend were not identified when we calculated the subscription price. If you would like find out more about supporting this edition by subscribing, please contact us.

 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 cheaper edition. In other cases, there may subsequently be an abridged print-on-demand paperback edition. For example, there is to be a selection from Lawrence's correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw.

Do you ever sell-off books cheap, e.g., overstocks or shop-soiled copies?

  • We only publish texts with long-term interest. We aim to print enough copies to keep titles available for a while, but we store backlist stock in sheets and carry only a small stock of bound copies. Without a large stock of bound copies, the 'overstock' situation cannot arise.
  • Occasionally, we find that a copy has been damaged in handling. If the damage is only slight we sell the book through the second-hand (used-book) market.

What is the price in US$?

  • To find out the current equivalent price in US dollars or another currency, use the currency converter 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?

  • We prefer payment by card, both for private and trade sales. 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 should never send your card details in a single e-mail
  • We accept PayPal payments from private customers for books in stock. If you wish to pay using PayPal, please e-mail and we will confirm that a copy is available before sending you a PayPal invoice.

 

Shipping

What shipping options do you offer?

There is no charge for our standard insured UK postage/international shipping to private customers or libraries ordering from us directly. 

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 at additional cost. Note, however, that this can be expensive.
  • We now generally send books priced at £100 or more by First Class Recorded Delivery.

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 quote the additional cost for sending books by standard airmail.
  • We no longer use international surface mail.

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 Global Mail depends on customer feedback to identify bottlenecks or other problems in the system.

How do you pack books for shipping?

  • We pack books in 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. After that date we are unable to offer compensation.

Can I return a book purchased from you direct?

  • Yes. You can send back a book that is in undamaged condition within fourteen days of receipt for any reason and we will refund the purchase invoice. Please let us know at once if you are returning a book.
  • Until we receive the returned book it is your responsibility. We therefore advise you to pack it carefully and use a tracked and insured postage service. We will only issue a refund if we receive the book in good condition.

What do I do if my book is damaged in transit?

When damage occurs in transit it is extremely disappointing, both for you and for us. However, the shipment is insured. Provided the book is in stock we will replace it.

  • All books we send out are carefully inspected before shipping.
  • Any book that arrives damaged must be returned to us for replacement. We never offer a partial refund on the basis of claims that a book has arrived damaged.
  • We cannot accept a claim for compensation, or replacement of a damaged book, unless you tell us about it as soon as you receive it and send the damaged book back to us within two weeks.
  • To enable us to make an insurance claim, please send a signed letter with the book stating the address to which the parcel was delivered and the date of delivery, and indicating the kind of damage found on delivery. 
  • Do not handle a damaged book more than you need before returning it: it should reach us in the condition it was in when it reached you. The insurers may reject a claim if the book has obviously been read before return.

Fortunately, while outer packaging sometimes takes a battering, we very rarely hear of damage to our books during shipment. If a parcel is severely damaged on arrival - to the extent that you think the book must certainly be affected - it may be 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.

Severe damage is rare. It is usually caused by powered handling equipment. No form of packaging short of armoured steel could protect a book against the forces such equipment can exert.

What if my book does not arrive?

Since 1997 we have shipped thousands of books to customers around the world. Loss in transit is very rare indeed.

  • 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 should tell us 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 artistic 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 'special issues'?

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 run-on 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 far higher than the run-on cost.

In fact, in an edition of a few hundred copies the cost of materials (part of the run-on cost) is usually dwarfed by the origination cost. You can make only small 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 that each copy carries a very small fraction of the origination cost. In a shorter print-run the identical book would cost much 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 fine-press editions (if reasonably cared for) should retain value in a way that most cheap editions do not. Moreover, the cost of buying them is much less than the cost of visiting libraries to see original letters - and then researching the topics referred to, providing a scholarly index, and so on.

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 - there is a landmark called Castle Hill near our house.

Some years after we founded Castle Hill Press a Nazi apologist began issuing books using a similar imprint. 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 us. 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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