I Am Actually Insulted By This Book...

[Sui-Generis]

I purchased a 'reprint' of The Palmer Method Of Business Writing, since I now know that is the format of penmanship I would like to practice rather than Spencerian.

 

While Spencerian is beautiful, I'm a long way off being able to use a pointed pen properly, can barely hold a straight line at this point! The monoline Palmer method seems to fit my goals better.

 

In any case, the book arrived today, I excitedly opened the package & thumbed the book only to be greeted with this...utter abhorrent insult to the eyes...and the wallet!

 

Be warned, you are better off finding the PDF version online than you are purchasing this particular book.

 

I would moan more but...honestly I'm too annoyed to bother at this stage.

[ardene]

They could have changed the orientation of the reproduced pages at least...

[PAKMAN]

That stinks!

[gyasko]

I've had worse. One reprint an Alibris dealer sold me was based on an illegible scan. Every page was 80% black. I had the feeling that i was dealing with bots. No doubt there is a person or two collecting the money at the end.

[inkstainedruth]

Where did you get the book through? If you got it on eBay you could file a dispute with the seller, and if from Amazon you should be able to get your money back by returning it. Or at the very least give feedback as to the "condition". Because that image you posted suggests "not as advertised...."

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

ETA: A while back I ordered a CD from a 3rd party seller, and they basically ignored my instructions, and told me that DHL didn't provide tracking info -- then when it arrived, it came via USPS and just left on my porch with the other mail stopped when we went away for Thanksgiving. My feedback on Amazon was left accordingly. Then the seller contacted me and offered a "partial" refund in return for my amending my feedback.... I don't think they liked the "amendment" -- but since (unbeknownst to the seller) I had some rewards points built up, I ended up paying 68¢ US for a $14 CD....

Every time someone like the OP gets annoyed but doesn't actually do more to rectify the situation, it just gives grounds for sellers like that to pull more BS like that.

Edited March 30, 2019 by inkstainedruth

[BaronWulfraed]

Obviously a facsimile/scan of what had been originally a landscape work book.

 

Look at it this way -- you now have lots of clear paper space to use for practice

[Sui-Generis]

I sent the publisher a...strongly worded, email about the abomination that is that book.

 

They were apparently largely unaware about it, stating that the majority of their publishing method is all automated and that they receive scans from libraries & private collectors that are just keen to preserve the texts for future generations.

 

After I pointed out the staggering flaw in this particular publication however, they have decided to make that particular book as 'faulty' and withdraw it from their library.

 

They also sent me the unlocked PDF copy, free of charge.

 

I think that's a result.

[inkstainedruth]

Good! I think I've seen other works on eBay from this company and had wondered about the quality of the reprints.

Ironically, a friend of my husband's wrote software 20+ years ago to clean and de-skew pages for this sort of work. I got a job as a temp for the company he was working for, scanning in pages of insurance company annual statements and then manually repaginating the pages and double checking links from the table of contents, then burning copies of the data onto CDs for long-term storage. Apparently, by law (at least in the US), insurance companies have to have specific info on specific pages (which varies by the TYPE of insurance -- life, auto, casualty, etc). So a file for some company might have a dozen page 12s (which I had to fix to read as 12, 12.1, 12.2, etc.) or it might not have any information for that year (so you'd get to a page that read "Pages 37-43" with no other text). The first round was supposed to take a month and a half, but they had rented a scanner that could do 50 pages at a time. Later, the company we were doing the work for would just sent us the .tiff files, which had to be converted to .html. But sometimes they'd get pages out of order, and I'd have to refer back to the index sheet for that set of .tiff files.

The last year, a related company (one that scanned in old books) took over (all the companies were owned by a CMU professor -- one who my husband had worked for as an undergrad) -- and the VP of the second company said "Ok, you're now dealing with a different entity. And WE want half the money up front!"

I got the job because our friend was talking at dinner one night about having to hire an undergrad to do the scanning, and I said "For ten bucks an hour? Don't hire an undergrad, hire ME!" So I show up for what I thought was supposed to be the interview, and Bob said "You look very nice, but the interview as last Wednesday at dinner...." The business was in the basement of IIRC the Pitt Student Union. At first we were in an office off the reception area and there was at least a glass panel between us and the lobby. But later, we got moved to the end of a corridor's branch. And I'd get out of work at 5 PM going "Oh, it's actually still daylight?"

I got a fair amount of needlework done because depending on the size of the file it would take 2-10 minutes per statement for each "automated" step of the process.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Randal6393]

Wow, Ruth, talk about a nice little racket! You go, girl.

[jhylkema]

You can get a PDF of it from the Library of Congress' website. Being as it was written around the time of the U.S. Civil War, it's almost certainly in the public domain by now.

[dinupravin]

In the end, you got the book and also pointed out their fault. Its a win-win. But an unnecessary hassle.

[AAAndrew]

Many of these reprints are not of very good quality. Some are outright thievery. There is a Turner & Harrison Catalog reprint being sold on eBay at the moment which is stolen from a museum's digital collection. I actually found the catalog in the museum's collection and paid for it to be scanned. I have the scan and permission to use it for scholarly works, but the scan that's available on their website clearly states that permission must be granted for it to be reproduced.

 

I've informed the museum, and they say that it happens all the time and they try to get it taken down, but are rarely successful. I've contacted eBay, but heard nothing. I contacted the seller, who claims that proceeds from this reprint go towards some Christian charity, and I pointed out that small matter of Thou Shalt Not Steal, but heard nothing from them.

 

It's usually so much better to find the original scan. Archive.org is a great place to start. There are also some collections of online pdf versions of old penmanship books. I don't have any of the sites at hand, but some searching can probably find some. IAMPETH, I believe, has a large library of scans.

[Anne-Sophie]

It is indeed, always better to check IAMPETH, website for old penmanship manuals

 

For other subjects, libraries as well as museums and universities which, many times, were given the personal papers of famous artists and scientists.

 

Those institutions are all about sharing knowledge, in contrast to fast scanning operations which pose as publishers.

 

Thank you Sui-Generis for warning us, by sharing this very unsavory experience.

[peroride]

 

Be warned, you are better off finding the PDF version online than you are purchasing this particular book.

 

 

Sorry @Sui-Generis to hear that and thank you for warning us.

 

If it's any consolation, if the print is less wrinkled than archived versions, the orientation layout can be switched and magnified on most modern multifunction duplex machines under a slash and scan process. A copy center/print place could probably do this quicker but at a cost.

 

I've donated the Internet Archive to preserve public domain and other resources for posterity and they have a version you can compare with. The download conversion options are on right side, like pdf.

 

I haven't handwritten in eons since school (it turned out to be a Palmer variant) but after fountain pens, it all came back like riding a bicycle again.

 

I wish you the same pleasures on your writing journey

[inkstainedruth]

Someone digitized a book that I own a copy of. A guy I know was offering to make duplicates to hand out to people, and wasn't overly happy when I pointed out to him that while the original publication may be in the public domain, copying the CD without paying is probably a violation of the Berne Convention (international copyright law). He got sort of pissy, but did (AFAIK) cease and desist.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth