Sorry, James; "economies of scale involved in the people actually working on it" was my euphemism for clusterfuck. I guess I shoulda used Chinese fire drill, another favorite from my long past Jarhead days. Sigh.

Gotcha. I only speak Jarhead when I have my translator set to Mauldin.

I rather think so, if only because each volume in a given set is numbered by hand.
(Numbers are written in the designated space, i.e., "copy ___ of 2000"; for what it's worth, mine are numbered 128. I wonder who gets to write the numbers in?)

Yep, that was me. It surprised me too. A limited edition of 2000, and seven years on, it wasn't even 15% subscribed. Why?

IMHO, because it just hasn't been publicised.

I can't believe there aren't 2000 Heinlein fans, worldwide, willing to put up USD1500 for an edition like this.
Ten dollars a week for three years. I gave up smoking in 2010. I've almost saved that much already.

Deb Rule has posted a nice "sample" of the VE at http://www.virginiaedition.com/ve/TheVirginiaEdition-sample.pdf

The first image at the "Virginia Edition sample" link is the first of four "murals" that were to have been created by Donato Giancola for the Meisha Merlin version of the series. The edges of the slipcases of the six MM-produced volumes constitute about 45% (the left half) of this image. This first mural would have covered the first 13 or 14? volumes; I assume that he never began work on the other three.

[As has been mentioned: One reason for Meisha Merlin's failure was that it cost them more to have the slipcases produced (along with the dust jackets, which had the same edge artwork) than it cost to have the books printed, in part because of a failure to account for the need for two sizes of slipcase for each volume, one for cloth-bound and another for leather-bound (both were offered). Hiring Donato was surely a good idea in and of itself, but I wonder whether the decision to offer slipcases preceded or followed the idea of using him.]

Slipcases are ass-bustingly expensive to produce because it's all hand work. I've priced them out many times for publishing projects and have yet to move forward with a slipped product. They are indeed often more expensive than even finely-made hardcovers.

You'd think a midlist fantasy publisher would know that all too well.

Thanks for this notice, which I have duly blogged.

I think the free goodies, though they be mostly minor, may interest a lot of Heinlein readers. And maybe spreading the word will scare up a few more customers for the fancy edition.

Huh. The VE project is finished, the product is sitting in a warehouse, by most accounts only about 20% of the run has been sold*...

...and they're going to raise the price 25%?

Okay, then.


*Does ANYONE have a set numbered over 300?

I paid $2500 for mine, right after the convention. It's no fun to know that if I had been a little more patient, I could have saved $1,000.