Hi everyone,
As the details for the upcoming release of Coraline are now live on the website, I thought I’d just give you a refresh on how the rights system works in relation to this particular title. I will also discuss how and when the sale of this title will happen. For new customers or if you need more information on how rights work, please visit the FAQ page here.
RIGHTS
Coraline is the first title of the Lyra’s Press imprint. Rights are in place for Coraline for the Lettered and Numbered editions ONLY. You are a rights holder to this title if you are the registered owner of a Leather or Lettered edition of Stardust. There are NO rights carried forward from the sale of the Standard edition of Stardust (the Standard being the cloth quarter-bound edition of Stardust with marbled paper). We may not always have a Standard edition for future Lyra’s Press titles so it makes no sense to have rights. It would also be a massive job for me to keep track of and I need to spend as much of my time doing the binding work as possible, as well as developing future projects.
So, if you are the registered owner of a Leather or a Lettered edition of Stardust you will have the opportunity to match your number/letter. This means that numbers 1-100 and letters A-Z will be offered for sale privately before any public sales get underway. The Numbered edition of Coraline will be limited to 200 copies so there will be an additional 100 copies available for sale this time around after the matching rights period ends. 50 of these will carry rights to future titles, 50 will not. In future, copies numbered 1-150 will be rights copies and 151+ will be non-rights copies. This allows a number of copies to always be available for general sale.
If you bought a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray from the Classics imprint but are not the registered owner of a Leather or Lettered copy of Stardust then I’m afraid you will not have rights to Coraline. The Lyra’s Press and Lyra’s Classics imprints have entirely separate rights tracks.
The Standard edition of Coraline will be unnumbered and limited to 500 copies. This edition will not carry rights to future Lyra’s Press titles.
THE SALE OF CORALINE
The details for Coraline are now live on the Coraline project page and on the shop page. On the 12th of September I will send out emails to current rights holders and ask if they wish to purchase this title in much the same way as I did with Dorian Gray. The option for them to pre-order will be open until the 16th of September. I will be emailing and manually invoicing by myself so do bear with me! We are hoping to get customer accounts set up on the website in the new year so this process should become much easier for everyone in the not too distant future.
Once the rights holders have had an opportunity to purchase, I will then hold lotteries. If there are any Lettered copies available for sale, I will hold one lottery for this and another lottery for ALL available copies of the Numbered edition at the same time. THERE WILL BE NO LIVE PRE-SALE FOR THE NUMBERED EDITION. THIS EDITION IS AVAILABLE BY LOTTERY ONLY. The forms to enter both lotteries will be on the appropriate shop pages from the 17th to the 19th of September after which we will do the draws and contact the winners by email. If you get one of these emails you will be notified as to whether you have the option to purchase a rights or a non-rights copy for the Numbered edition. You will then have a limited time of 48 hours to make the purchase before the copy is offered to someone else.
Click here to see our rules around the lotteries on the FAQ page
The live sale of the Standard edition of Coraline will happen at 7pm BST on Wednesday the 28th of September. At this point, this will be the only edition for sale assuming all copies of the Lettered and Numbered sell out by lottery. If they don’t, the remaining copies will be made available on the website at this time also.
I have decided to do the sale of the Numbered edition as a lottery for a few reasons. Chief among them is that I have no desire for a rehash of what happened with Stardust. I have customers from all around the world and I absolutely hate the idea of someone waking themselves up at 4am only to find a crushed website, or to go all the way through the checkout only to find the edition has already sold out. It doesn’t feel good for any of us. I think lotteries are by far the fairest and most stress-free way of doing these things for everybody, especially when the books are so limited in numbers – nobody has to leave work for half an hour/wake up at an ungodly hour/worry about internet connections etc etc. You can leisurely pop your entry in a form on the website at a time that suits you and have just as much chance as anyone else. Believe me, if I thought we could do it for the Standard edition I would do that too. The stress of sales is about the worst thing for me. I am scarred for life!
I hope you like what we’ve done with Coraline!
Cheers,
Rich
