William Le Queux

[pitstopbunny]

Has anyone heard of a book called The Invasion of 1910 by William Le Queux? I have been unable to get it from my local library and Amazon want silly money for a copy. I am not sure why because he is a noted author, sold over a million copies of it and it was translated into over 29 langauges! Can anyone shed any light on where I can get a cheap copy or why it is so expensive to buy?

[Buenchico]

As far as I can tell from a bit of web-searching, the book was originally published, in 1906, under the rather long-winded title of "The Invasion of 1910: With a Full Account of the Siege of London". However, later editions of the book (possibly post 1910) simply seem to bear the title "The Invasion".

If you look for the book under the abbreviated title you might be able to find it cheaper than under the original one. For example, a first edition copy (bearing the full title), in reasonable condition, can cost as much as �287.60 from a USA-based dealer on Abeboooks. However, there's a dealer in Scotland offering a tatty, but readable, copy of the later edition for the much more reasonable price of �25:
http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResult s?sts=t&an=queux&y=16&tn=invasion&x=60&sortby= 3

Prices of old books are determined on the basis of supply and demand. Booksellers know that this book is hard to come by and that there are very few copies in secondhand bookshops, so they set their prices high. Additionally, websites which offer secondhand books for sale (such as Abebooks and Amazon) charge quite high fees to dealers. Abebooks charge �25 per month for a dealer to advertise up to 4000 books but, if the books are fairly obscure titles, he might only sell just one or two of those books. The dealer has to set his prices high enough to cover the purchase price of the books and the �25 listing fee (plus 8% commission on sales) and still make a profit.

Chris