[Books] "The Certain Sound" John Wyer

[Aysedasi]

A very quick heads up - there's a copy of "The Certain Sound" by John Wyer currently going on Ebay for £51 - dirt cheap in fact - but there's only about 4 minutes of the auction left.........

(I have it already, of course )

[Tim Falce]

........and it almost doubled in price in 60 seconds

[Aysedasi]

Is that right? I missed the end - what exactly did it go for?

[Tim Falce]

£97.77, is it a good book or just rare

[Aysedasi]

It is a good book. Not an easy read, but very detailed. I bought mine new from a book club I was a member of at the time. I didn't realise it had become quite rare until some time last year. I was told it was fetching £200+ a while back......

[HiRich]

I've been told that www.abebooks.com/ is a good source for those hard to find books.

[D-Type]

I can never understand this. It happens with several out of print titles. The high prices show there is still a demand for the book. So why don't they publish a second impression? Presumably they still have the printing blocks or plates or whatever they are called do there is no typesetting cost. Or will they have destroyed them after the print run was completed?

[TimD]

Trouble is, even with a reprint or second impression, the break-even for production will be in the thousands of copies. With the best will in the world, this will be more than the market can bear. Even the new Doug Nye BRM volume 2 is limited to 3000 numbered pieces. That's not an artificial figure. The publisher will have made a careful calculation and decided that 3k is a safe number so as not to have unsold stock cluttering the bookshelves.

The other thing is that a limited run can encourage a publisher to cut corners on the reprint, resulting in washy or darkened photographs, perhaps even inferior paper stock. A case in point is the recent reprint of Ronnie Spain's GT40 book. A fabulous title, but now available new at £26 as opposed to £140 plus for a first edition. I've got the new one and compared with the original, it's a second rate book.

So - "The Certain Sound" - maybe it'll be reprinted, maybe it won't. Sadly I suspect not, and I include myself as one of the frustrated would-be owners. I've looked at examples, I've ogled the pictures and I want to buy it, but right now I can't justify the cost. Even if the one on eBay made £100 today, someone still got a bargain.

[TimD]

Sorry - just been browsing Eoin Young's website. His "The Certain Sound" is listed at £320.00.

Makes you boggle, doesn't it? How's your home contents insurance, Ayse?

[Aysedasi]

Pretty good Tim. And my copy of "TCS" is pretty well mint, too....... Strange that I only bought it originally to honour an obligation to buy a book from the bookclub that month........

[Pete Fenelon]

Originally posted by falcemob
£97.77, is it a good book or just rare

It's both. The best book I've read about the "golden age" (50s-early 70s) of sports car racing, with excellent insight, great anecdotes, and good photography. Long, stylish and fascinating.

Sadly it never saw a reprint.

I kick myself now, I saw a remainedered copy in Liverpool in the early 80s for about a fiver, but I bought something about (then) contemporary F1 instead. So I finally ended up paying about $180 for a copy a while back.

Edita SA also published the superb Automobile Year Book of Sports Car Racing, which is full of excellent pictures from the same era, with trenchant captions from Denis Jenkinson and lots of data and results. Another "not to be missed".

Apart from this, a few other sports car books you need are Janos Wimpffen's monumental Time and Two Seats, which is............... staggering - 2300 pages of scholarship; Ian Briggs' Endurance Racing 1982-91, which is the definitive book on IMSA GTP and Group C; Bamsey et al's Super Sports - the 220mph Le Mans Cars which covers large-capacity coupes from the 60s to the late 80s with some good photos and some excellent in-depth techie articles. Oh and Chris Nixon's Sports Car Heaven, which I don't own yet.....

[Pete Fenelon]

Originally posted by TimD
A fabulous title, but now available new at £26 as opposed to £140 plus for a first edition. I've got the new one and compared with the original, it's a second rate book.

I paid less than that for the reprint of Spain's book - about 18 quid - and for the price it's excellent value. Sure, the repro isn't brilliant, but it's adequate for reference and reading, maybe not for the coffee table though!

(The Ford That Beat Ferrari needs a reprint, while we're at it, and so does The Cobra-Ferrari Wars).

The most awful reprint I've bought (as far as physical quality was concerned) is the SAE edition of Borgeson's The Golden Age of the American Racing Car - basically looks and feels like a pile of thermal FAXes bound together! - great book to read, though.

[Pete Fenelon]

Originally posted by TimD
Sorry - just been browsing Eoin Young's website. His "The Certain Sound" is listed at £320.00.

Makes you boggle, doesn't it? How's your home contents insurance, Ayse?

As they say about Eoin.... (parodying the John Lewis Partnership's slogan) - "never knowingly oversold"

[iucrmh]

Originally posted by Pete Fenelon
Apart from this, a few other sports car books you need are Janos Wimpffen's monumental Time and Two Seats, which is............... staggering - 2300 pages of scholarship; Ian Briggs' Endurance Racing 1982-91, which is the definitive book on IMSA GTP and Group C; Bamsey et al's Super Sports - the 220mph Le Mans Cars

Absolutely agree, and the SuperSports book can be had at very good prices I think, less than £20 anyway. The Automobile Year Book of Sports Car Racing has some superb photography, I managed to get an absolutely Mint condition copy last year (at a price mind) which I almost dare not open as it looks so good - it even still has a flyer for "That Certain Sound" at about £16.95 - I wish. Another fabulous book is the Le Mans bible, 1923-1992 (the two volume set in French) that has photos of 99.5% of all cars to have raced at Le Sarthe.

[TimD]

Originally posted by Pete Fenelon


(The Ford That Beat Ferrari needs a reprint, while we're at it...)

I've heard a whisper. That's all I'm really allowed to say right now. But let's just say I'm not trampling people underfoot for the chance to pay £300+ for one at the moment.

[Pete Fenelon]

I should also add Andrew Whyte's two-volume history of Jaguar sports racers to this list, a superb marque history.

[Vitesse]

Originally posted by Pete Fenelon
The most awful reprint I've bought (as far as physical quality was concerned) is the SAE edition of Borgeson's The Golden Age of the American Racing Car - basically looks and feels like a pile of thermal FAXes bound together! - great book to read, though.

Hee hee! I paid just 18 bucks for a copy of the original edition which I got from TE Warth a few weeks back! Slightly ropy jacket, but otherwise fine!

[Williamp]

You are going to hate me for saying this:

I bought my copy of the John Wyer book from a library book sale. Ok, so it had the ticket on the inside page, but it was very cheap. I wont tell you just how cheap...

Simmilarly, they had "Racing with the David Brown Aston Martins" volume 1 and 2 a few years later. I bought those as well for a silly price...

[bwatt]

Originally posted by Williamp

Simmilarly, they had "Racing with the David Brown Aston Martins" volume 1 and 2 a few years later. I bought those as well for a silly price...

I paid, IIRC, £7.95 for each volume at Chater's Silverstone branch in about 1982.

[TimD]

So did I! Same special offer!

And then my wallet got stolen, and had to get them to buy them back so that I could buy a train ticket home.

I now have "Racing With the David Brown Aston Martins" on my bookshelves, but I had to pay £100 the pair.

[Aysedasi]

Originally posted by TimD
So did I! Same special offer!

And then my wallet got stolen, and had to get them to buy them back so that I could buy a train ticket home.

I now have "Racing With the David Brown Aston Martins" on my bookshelves, but I had to pay £100 the pair.

Now that really is bad luck!