a "Writer's Tale" tale

[dbskyler]

So I finally went to buy RTD's "The Writer's Tale" (more because I'm interested in the writing process for Doctor Who than because I'm interested in how RTD writes), but after a long wait, Amazon.com has now informed me that they can't get the book! How hard can it be to get the book? I can get it myself from Amazon.co.uk -- well, assuming they'll mail overseas, but it looks like they will. Other American bookstores are having the same trouble. BBC America says the book is "unavailable" as well. Come on, guys, there's no "region 1" vs. "region 2" issue with a book! The British version is fine! It's still in English! If things are occasionally spelled "ou" instead of "o," I think I can deal.

So now the question is, should I go ahead and order it from England, and pay the international shipping? Or should I wait until my upcoming trip to England and buy it there? Sometimes it's nice to have a book to read while you're traveling, but I don't want to be lugging around anything too heavy.

Comments

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm the exact opposite from persiflage - I wouldn't count my opinion because I'm hopelessly biased on the other direction and RTD is my television god! Haha, aren't we useful? :D But for what it's worth, I really enjoyed it, and found it really interesting and informative, not just about RTD's writing process, but about the Who process in general.

(as for the books, I think they didn't print a lot of them to begin with - there was a huge problem when the book was published even in the UK, no one had enough copies :|)

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear there's good stuff on the Who writing process in general! I also think RTD is pretty interesting in his interviews, so I think I'll enjoy reading about his personal writing process, too. I don't have to like the final product to find the process interesting.

The book had availability problems in the UK, too? Wow. I just assumed people would be tripping over copies there.

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Yup! and he definitely knows how to make the process interesting..

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that sounds like the publisher is being a bit hamfisted. I know the trend is to print not *too* many books, but where there's a massive amount of demand, you can have too much of a good thing in that respect. Probably there's some poor fellow racing to get more copies printed and shipped.

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I can sort of see how it happens, you don't expect a book like that to sell a huge number of copies - especially as half of it has already been published in hardback! But they completely miscalculated demand... The poor assistants who must have spent that entire week running from one place to the other :)