Astrolearn astrology library progress report
– No. 15: 7th November, 2015
This past week, I have changed course in the current focus of my work. After making a small but useful start on overhauling the enhanced cataloguing of the first of the shelves of German books that I began on back in the Spring, I decided to pause cataloguing after working at it solidly for over two months in a row, and instead set in motion another task that I’d been meaning to get done at least since March, as I’ll go on to explain.
While the DVD compilations of scanned astrological texts from my private collection have met with considerable success and approval with a small number of dedicated researchers and students, the relatively high purchase price per disc for such large collections seems to have been a barrier to more people buying.
For that reason, I have launched a 20% discount on all titles that is temporarily active during the month of November. The coupon code is given on my home page. I have moved the mission statement previously on the home page to a new “About” page, also directly accessible from the main toolbar at the top of the home page.
This discount is a one-off and is unlikely to be repeated in the near future, if at all.
What I am instead doing to broaden the reach of these texts to more people is recompiling them in smaller selections on CDs. It’s a fairly well-known fact that whereas DVDs can store 4,700,000,000 bytes of data, CDs store only 650,000,000. This means that for scans of the same resolution, each CD can fit only a handful of books, or in some cases, for really long books, only one book. But this I think is what a lot of people want. Smaller selections at lower prices.
And so I am now announcing the launch of a new series of publications on CD, which will incorporate all the contents of those previously issued on DVD and others besides. Each CD will retail for just US $22.50 plus $4.35 shipping to a wide range of countries, direct from outsourced production facilities in Nevada, USA.
This past week, I have prepared the files and disc and cover designs for the first seventeen discs in the CD series, and have uploaded the first and got it ready for sale. You can browse it here now by clicking on “Rotate Case” several times from this page to show the inside view with the disc design.
You will see that this first CD features Henry Coley’s “Clavis Astrologiae Elimata”, John Middleton’s “Practical Astrology” and Joseph Blagrave’s “Introduction to Astrology” – three important Renaissance astrology texts, that between them cost me the equivalent of about US $5250 to buy as originals back in 2006-9; but now you can have excellent-quality scans of all three on your home computer for just under $20 plus delivery.
http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00DPV5PN&pp=1
The page is set up so that you can pay by Paypal direct to my Paypal account. I then pass on the manufacturing and shipping fees to the production facility in Nevada, and it gets the CD produced and shipped to you in its turn. It should be a very efficient, streamlined process.
It’s my intention to continue to upload as many of the first eighteen CDs in the series as I can in the next couple of weeks, and I expect to make further announcements on progress with that in the next few weeks’ weekly reports.
In the meantime, the DVD series continues to offer the best value-for-money to researchers who want to study large numbers of astrological texts from a given time period. And at November’s 20% discount prices, it’s really quite a bargain when you look at the price per book.
All remains quiet on the book acquisitions front of late, but I am still looking forward to concluding my deal for that oft-mentioned early 20th century academic book on astrology in the coming week, and to writing about it when it finally gets here – touch wood!
Cataloguing work will resume once the development of the CD series is well-established, probably within a month.
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