Saturday, September 22, 2007

Rosa Luxemburg writings for just 3.25

We've just taken delivery of a new 240-page selection of Rosa Luxemburg's writings.. Dover have the edition on sale and, even after the bulk shipping costs are added in, we are still able to sell the book for less than four pounds. It's 3.25 if you buy it from us face-to-face in London, and a pound more if you want it by post inside Britain. Just email us a Paypal payment for 4.25.

We're selling the book at cost, so no volume discounts are available. If you're ordering more than ten, we recommend you order direct from Dover, who sell other classics by Marx, Lenin and Trotsky.

The title of the collection "'Reform or Revolution' and Other
Writings" comes from her best known work about which they write "This 1899 polemic by the famous "Red Rosa" Luxemburg explains why capitalism can never overcome its internal contradictions. An effective refutation of revisionist interpretations of Marxist doctrine, it defines the position of scientific socialism on the issues of social reforms, the state, democracy, and the character of the proletarian revolution."

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Progress disrupted by Kautsky

Socialist Resistance had its AGM last weekend; the first year of our book project was felt to have gone well. Many thanks to you, our readers, for your support.

The incoming steering committee has just been given a report on our growing online sales, through bookshops like Amazon.com. Phil Hearse's book is our best-seller over the last three months, selling more than three times more than any other book. In the US, Celia Hart's book is selling very strongly, as is Permanent Revolution.

However, we've found some problems in our first digital printing of Karl Kautsky's book, 'Foundations of Christianity'. Most importantly, in David Packer's afterword the footnote numbers and italics are missing.

Luckily, we have sold fewer than a dozen wholesale, and we are withdrawing that edition from public sale. Folk can return the book to us at any time for a replacement; the major printing of the book will be out next month.

Even large publishers have similar issues with small-scale books. Because it's important to us that readers get the most from our books, we are in the habit of making small initial runs like this to allow us to get books quickly to reviewers and activists who have an urgent need for the book. That allows us to correct, in a second edition, errors that get past our editors.

We have started to circulate to readers a list of the corrections we are making. All the errors identified so far will be corrected in that second edition.