Old Man’s War Now Out in Mini Hardcover
Posted on October 17, 2017 Posted by John Scalzi 22 Comments
Today Tor Books is releasing Old Man’s War in a spiffy new “mini”-format hardcover edition: All the benefits of a hardcover book, miniaturized for your convenience! It’s available at your favorite bookstores in the US and Canada, and it’s no coincidence that it’s being released just prior to the holiday season. Stocking stuffer, my friends, and/or a nice little gift for, like, day four of Hanukkah. But you don’t need to wait for the holidays to get it. You can get it today. For yourself! And pick up several copies for friends! Distribute them like Pez! It’s the Covandu version of OMW, if you will, and if you get that joke, thank you for being a fan.
I’m delighted at this new mini hardcover of OMW because, among other things, the original hardcover run of the book, almost thirteen(!) years ago now, is actually pretty small: about 3,700 for the first printing, and about 7,700 overall. OMW really took off in the trade paperback edition a year after the initial release. As a result, the hardcovers have always been hard to find — great news for collectors, to be sure. Not so great for anyone else.
So, dear everyone else: This edition is for you. Enjoy!
Out of curiosity, is the font in a mini-hardcover smaller, or does the book just have more pages?
Hey, thanks for the Chanukah shout out!
For the record, I would fully appreciate this as a first night gift.
Brian Greenberg:
More pages, type about the same as the paperback.
Neat!
How big is a “mini” hardcover?
The first time I read OMW was from one of those first print hardcover copies from the library (with the different/wonderful cover). I have the ebook copy now. But this mini version sounds interesting.
Will the other books in the series also be released in the “mini-hardcover” version? I am just compulsive enough to want all of the books in the series to “match”, and filled with self-loathing when I forget the size differential between a paperback and a trade paperback.
Hmm, a half-pint of Jack in one pocket, and a mini-hardback book in the other. Hey, where am I going to put my phone?
Wow, do those tiny original-run numbers for the hardcover apply to the SFBC edition? Because, if so, OMW may be the only valuable book club book I own. And since I’m not a collector–just a fan and avid reader–I might be willing to trade it to someone in return for another, less valuable edition, plus cash.
(I still want to own it, since it’s a book I enjoy re-reading.)
Hooray! Can’t wait to step on mine!!
A few months ago the desire to reread OMW came to me late at night. I had a hard copy, so I had not gotten it free when Tor was offering the ebook; but when I went into my library to get my copy, I could not find it. Arghgh. I knew that if I waited a day or two, I could look through my library more carefully and find it; but being an American, I was not willing to wait. So I purchased the ebook.
Of course, the very next day I spotted it where it was hiding on the shelf.
So with respect, I think I’ll pass on buying this particular issue :D
Those used to be library editions. My local library had lots of paperback sized hardcovers.
The other mini-hardcovers I’ve seen have actually been the mass market paperback size (about 7 by 4 inches) wrapped in a hardcover. Looking at the description on Amazon, that’s what this appears to be too.
Bob Dye. Only half a pint? You need bigger pockets! Meanwhile, leave the phone at home…
…because physical media is dead. Nice!
The site ate my HTML /sarcasm, thinking it was actual HTML code. The leading sentence fragment is sarcasm. The “Nice!” is not.
i’m with mmug – hope the rest of the series get released in this format too….. pretty pretty please….
p.s. Covandu edition – love it!
@xtifr–Define “valuable.” Book club editions of OMW seem to be listing for $16-$175 depending largely on condition. (Also of note is that a seller’s asking price is not the same as a sale price.)
I’m an idiot. After actually reading the seller listings in my link above, it seems the major factor in adding a digit to the seller asking price is an author signature. This is why editors and fact-checkers get paid…
I’m with “mmug”. I collect my “favorite” authors in hardcover, so I can re-re-re-read without fear that the book will fall apart. (On some of my oldest paperbacks – 40+ years! – the glue has disintegrated and the pages fall out of the cover!) I just went to B&N.com and purchased OMW hardcover, and would be thrilled to also get “The Ghost Brigades”, “The Last Colony”, and “Zoe’s Tale” in hardcover too!
note to “xtifr” …
according to Goodreads site (https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/50700-old-man-s-war), the first English-language hardcover edition of OMW was “Published January 1st 2005 by Tor Books” (ISBN: 0765309408; ISBN13: 9780765309402). Search by ISBN13 sent me to AbeBooks.com, which lists a “new” copy of this book as a book club edition.
The only other English-language hardcover is the signed limited-edition from Subterranean Press on July 25th 2007 (ISBN: 1596061308; ISBN13: 9781596061309).
All other hardcovers on Goodreads site are foreign-language editions.
Heh, ok, thanks, folks. Sounds like it’s probably not worth it to try to convert my old bookclub hc into a newer edition, unless I went out and got John’s signature on it, which seems like a kind of skeevy thing to do. (“Please make it out to ‘Dear Ebay Purchaser’.”) So I guess I’ll just keep my existing copy. The mini version does sound cool, though.
Will we one day get more books from that universe, they are tremendous entertaining.