Jul30

Reduced Price!

by Jonathan on July 30, 2021 at 11:49 pm
Posted In: Publishing

Now that the book has been on the market for a while and the initial costs have been covered I’ve decided to reduce the price of the book to make it more affordable.

eBook: The price for the eBook I was able to cut in half. Considering massive volume of content in the book it is quite a good deal. I love the perks of having the book in digital form. It is so handy to be able to click and find whatever you need in an instant. Copy and paste into journals and blogs can be handy as well.

Printed book:I know most people prefer a printed book with physical pages to turn and the print edition is still available. Production cost continue to keep the price higher than I’d like, but the luxury of having a hard copy will still be well worth it for many of us book lovers. I was able to knock $15.00 off the printed version.

Leather edition: I’ve had some inquiry on the leather edition. I wish I could say I had a cost effective way to get it printed, but so far I have been unable to come up with anything. The only method I am aware of is to have the Student Edition rebound…and that isn’t cheap. I love my personal copy, but it is more of a novelty than a necessity. It does make quite and extravagant gift for someone who loves John Wesley and historic Methodism. Other than that I think the Student Edition is quite adequate for study and reference needs.

The only way I imagine that I could bring the price down any farther would be if a large publisher were to take up the project. Then maybe our dream of a leather bound edition could be reasonable. If anyone has connections I am open to suggestions.

Aug10

Two Versions of the First Edition

by Jonathan on August 10, 2019 at 8:17 am
Posted In: Research

Mystery! Controversy! Conspiracy?

When I was researching John Wesley’s BCP I found a bit of a controversy. I didn’t think much of it, yet in the past there may have been some heated discussion.

The challenge comes from this: There are several variations in the bindings of the first edition. The main cause of controversy were the “Cancels” or substitute pages. The page differences are found in the original on pages 135-36, 141-44. The first pertains to the manual acts in communion. The second the sign of the cross (signation) in infant baptism. The variation is included in the Appendix of John Wesley’s The BCP.

Who changed what? Did Wesley initiate these changes? Should these pages be there or not?

The opportunity for flexibility in the binding was there because the pages were printed in London and bound in the US. The advantage of this was that each book could be customized to the need of the individual parson. Most likely this was the intent, much like in more recent times a parish ordering custom hymnals. The volumes could be an Order of Service, a Hymnal, and Discipline (with inclusion of the Minutes from the first conference). There are all different variations in bindings of the first edition. One book even had the original pages and the cancels bound in the same book.

Another good question would be “What do subsequent editions do with these pages?”

I love uncovering a mystery so I’m not going to spoil the ending for you. Instead I’ll give you a couple links to some articles covering the matter.

The first link comes from the UMC Archives & History page: The Two Versions of the First Edition of John Wesley’s The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. [ LINK ][ Download ]

The second link comes from the BiblicalStudies.org.uk Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society Vols. 31 – 35 (1957 – 1966) go down to issue 32.5 [LINK][Download]

Feb08

Student Edition Returns

by Jonathan on February 8, 2019 at 7:13 pm
Posted In: Publishing

The Student Edition is back in print!

We are hoping to begin promotion early this spring!

The Kindle Edition is still available as well.

Kindle
Jan02

Editing Continues

by Jonathan on January 2, 2019 at 10:19 am
Posted In: Publishing

We are still working to edit the print edition. The proofing was completed but several paragraphs of content were omitted/displaced in formatting. The pages have been adjusted and resubmitted. All that remains is a recheck to ensure everything is intact. Hopefully it will be ready this spring 2019 so that we can start promotion this fall.

 

The formatting errors did not effect Kindle edition and it is still available on Amazon.

Kindle

I am working with the binder to print and bind future leather editions. But this won’t be available until soon after the print edition is finished.

 

To see the latest breaking news stop by our FaceBook Page.

Jan26

Formatting Errors

by Jonathan on January 26, 2018 at 12:09 pm
Posted In: Publishing

A new day, a new challenge. I have suspended sales of the Printed Third Edition due to some unexpected formatting errors.

When I edited content to improve readability, especially in the responsive readings, I added spacing which threw off the page lengths. As a result I had to reset the pages. Somewhere in the process at least two known pages went MIA. One page is in the Morning Prayer, the other is in the LITANY.

The missing content in The Morning Prayer is between page 10 and 11.

Here is the missing page: Page-10-point-5

The missing content in The LITANY is on page 24 right below where it says “That it may please thee to have mercy upon all men;”

Here is the missing page: Missing Litany Content

Here is a picture showing where the content belongs : 

Finding these errors means that there may be more errors of this nature. The material will have to be systematically proofed again. Then the book will be reprinted and re-proofed. The last proofing took over a year to complete, that was a word for word comparison with the original. I’m optimistic and hope it will be ready this fall? But that means a lot of overtime.

Why is all this so worth all the work? That is a question I have asked myself from time to time. Then I remind myself, when I discovered John Wesley’s version of the BCP and found how important it was to him, I knew it had to be recovered from the past and brought into the 21st Century. So many of us from the Wesleyan tradition have been divided for far too long. I hope that in some way this book can help bring us back together.