[Book] The Voynich Manuscript: Past, Present, and Future (ARC Humanities Press, 2027)

[LisaFaginDavis]

Coming soon! The Voynich Manuscript: Past, Present, and Future (Lisa Fagin Davis and Colin Layfield, eds.), with contributions from Claire Bowern, John Abela, Michael Rosner, and Lonneke van der Plas. 

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[DG97EEB]

Very cool.. will there be a Voynich Ninja discount code? 

[Pierre Dumont Himself]

I tihink a non-Voynich Ninja discount code is more likely.

[Rafal]

The price is a bit steep. I'll wait for someone sharing his impressions after reading that 

[asteckley]

The price is a bit steep. I'll wait for someone sharing his impressions after reading that 

"The medium is the message”
Marshall McLuhan

[bi3mw]

There's a term for this: “economic gatekeeping.”

Economic gatekeeping: Hiding knowledge behind extremely high prices (e.g., specialized books costing €150 or expensive journal subscriptions), so that, for example, only university libraries can afford them.

[DG97EEB]

I doubt Lisa or Colin set the price or see much of that directly... It's a shame that these journals have such poor business models that they need to do this .. open access ftw

[Koen G]

The price is normal for this kind of publication, at least when you look at other books from the publisher. I've seen a preview, and I'll just say, of all the books that have been published about the VM, this is the first one I'd recommend buying. (Okay, also the non-theorist part of Curse, but that's probably a bit outdated and no longer available.) If your book budget allows, of course. In all fairness, I would be economically gatekept myself by books at this price point, but others have more disposable income.

[N._N.]

This looks great, glad to see more serious works to hopefully counterbalance, to some degree, all the questionable online publications popping up. Unfortunately, the price tag is the reality of academic publishing. Books are expensive, and as an author, you are usually unpaid or even have to contribute financially from project funds, grants etc. In the end, mostly public libraries buy the books which were already paid for twice before. The whole situation is quite absurd, but the alternatives are limited. 

The best way to deal with this, in my opinion, is to collect memberships of public libraries. At least in Germany, many are free or cost just a few euros a month. You get access to journals and ebooks (sometimes only on the premises, which kind of defeats the purpose, so you have to pick the right ones), additionally, you can suggest new books for the library to buy or get them through interlibrary loan. Since this is a well-credentialed book from a serious publisher, the chances of accessing it this way are quite decent. Particularly the feature of suggesting books to buy seems somewhat underused from my experience, although libraries and the humanities in general are of course in a bit of a budget crunch at the moment, so there might be less and less money available. In any case, there is no harm in asking the libraries to buy publications you are interested in.

[bi3mw]

you can suggest new books for the library to buy or get them through interlibrary loan.

I'm going to go down this path. After all, my university library had already purchased "The Voynich Manuscript" by Raymond Clemens and Deborah E. Harkness back then. So the odds aren't too bad.