View source for Back Issue Sales

Having published over a dozen different periodical titles over more than a half-century, The Augustan Society, Inc., has an obligation to itself and to scholars to make back issues, and reprints from them, available for sale.


==[[Sales Procedure]]==

The detailed procedure for sales of reprints, back issues, and books is listed on a separate page for clarity.


==Back Stock==

The Society has a substantial stock of back issues and reprints. These are stored and ready to sell, and this stock should be consulted before printing new copies.

Be aware that many titles have the file copy, a cut-up copy for reproduction, and copies for sale commingled. Thus pulling items for sale requires some care and knowledge at present. When a digital copy of a back issue has not yet been made, it is prudent to pull a copy for scanning.

Reprints in stock do not have the current cover sheet design, so these will need to be printed, and perhaps created to the current standard. No effort to retain a file copy is needed, as all are drawn from back issues and may thus be regenerated digitally at need.

Ideally, the back stock would be separated into items to retain and items to sell, but time and space make this task difficult at present. Only ''[[Augustan Society Omnibus|The Augustan Society Omnibus]]'' (the Books), ''[[Augustan|The Augustan]]'', and ''[[Colonial Genealogist]]'' have been so processed to date.

Orders are received primarily through the [[Online Store]], though a scant few come by mail. This process assures that all orders are paid for before shipping. The [[Assistant Treasurer]] reviews the orders, confirms payment has been made, and passes the order along to [[Headquarters Staff]] for pull or print and shipping.

It is one of the [[Membership Privileges]] that such items are shipped First Class (Airmail overseas); copies for others may be shipped media rate, or such other lower rate as may be available. 

The above process is also used for the sale of new and used books.


==Out-of-Stock Items==

When an item is out of stock, but held, the procedure is to pull the item for digitizing. When there is only one copy, care is taken to avoid damage to the original, but when multiple copies are held, one may be sacrificed by cutting into separate pages to speed processing.

Pages are scanned using the ScanSnap scanner, which is a duplexing sheet-feed model. The result of this process is a PDF file. When time is short (that is to say, almost always), this PDF file is printed as is and the output sent to the buyer.

The PDF files are then converted to text using Abby software, resulting in an RTF file with poor-quality images. These cannot be printed for sale without editing.

The PDF and RTF file are both posted to the [[AugustanConvert YahooGroup]], where they may be accessed by off-site volunteers (or staff, in urgent situations). Their directions are to perfect the RTF file to the extent possible, resulting in an ODT file with the poor-quality images. When volunteers lack software able to handle ODT format, DOC format may be used.

Final editing and formatting of the ODT file is presently done under the auspices of the [[Editor-in-Chief]], who may delegate this work to others.

Editing consists of conforming the format of the text to current publication standards to the extent possible, while working to keep the page numbers of articles identical to the original. New images are inserted for the old. These are often taken from the PDF file (which has higher quality), but when recognizable or unimportant, they may be replaced by better quality images taken from other sources. Heraldic artwork should be colorized, whenever enough blazon data is available, and a copy of such sent to the editor of the [[Online Armorial]].

Back issues will be redacted only for obsolete addresses, phone numbers, prices, typographical errors, and similar. Postnominals and titles not presently recognized will be permitted to remain. Back issues that use honorifics or postnominals not presently recognized by the Society shall carry a disclaimer on the inside cover, contents page, or such other location as may be available. This disclaimer will only be applied to issues when digitized, it is not practicable to add it to those printed from PDF files.

Magazine issues that were published as a section of the [[Augustan Society Omnibus]] will need to have new covers (and inside front covers with a masthead). These should be modeled on the previous independent issue if extant, on the following independent issue if not, and at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief if neither.

Completed back issues should be compared to the [[Online Store]] to ensure that the contents data on the latter is correct. For genealogical publications, a Surname List should be added to the Store Website if one has not already been created, as that becomes a trivial task once the magazine is in the form of a text file.

Once editing is completed on an issue, it will be removed from the AugustanConvert YahooGroup to avoid duplication of effort. Given the small number of volunteers at present, duplication of effort is not a sufficient concern to require magazines to be assigned, but that would be a delightful improvement if needed.

Once a publicly accessible [[Headquarters]] is secured, efforts should be made to have a complete set of [[Back Issues]] and select [[Reprints]] available for retail sale.


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