Dear Friends,
It was my intention to come to this forum to present myself, as well as the project...but I see that this has been done already!
I fell in love with this book as soon as I managed to get my hands on a second-hand copy fairly early on in my numismatic journey. Indeed, the line drawings allow the user to focus on the significant details, and using the book is fairly intuitive. I initially produced the translation purely for my own personal edification: I felt I could learn a lot about the subject in doing so, and I was happy to have a copy to scribble on at coins shows. But soon, other friends in the numismatic community encouraged me to publish. We all felt that it was a great shame that this wonderful book be forgotten and that it deserved a second lease of life...
Which leads me to the chosen mode of publication: as a professional working in the publishing industry, I am absolutely convinced that print-on-demand publishing is the way to go in the future for numismatic and other niche subjects. It's a pity that traditional publishers are only starting to understand this. It is very low risk, and ensures that the title remains in print indefinitely. If even big companies such as Spink who have a guaranteed audience are unable to maintain bestsellers such as the RIC in print, no other company is going to bother doing much more than a limited print run. Indeed, when I approached the original publishers (ADEVA) to publish the translation, they told me that they had given up on numismatics long ago: too much effort for too much risk. But they very kindly agreed to cede the copyright to me. Other publishers were willing to publish, but again in limited quantities, which would have lead again to the same problem of the title going out of print in a few years.
The problem with print-on-demand such as lulu or createspace is the lack of editorial safeguards, so I was delighted to have Curtis Clay (who you all know, I'm sure) and Shawn Caza (who has a very exciting project on fourth century coinage in the pipeline) on board to edit the text and check my translation. They were hard task-masters, but it was a very worthwhile exercise.
In addition to the hard-back version Victor mentioned, I also decided to do a soft-cover version: on the one hand, I want this work to live so I don't want cost to be an issue, and on the other hand, I quite like the idea of having version that I'm happy to scribble in.
More details on the project (as well as links to the the various places where the book can be bought) can be found on my website:
http://www.lateromanbronzecoins.com/ I sincerely hope that this will be useful to at least a few people - there are some real gems which have been published in the past, and it's a real shame that they be relegated to a mere footnote in numismatic history because they are no longer in print.
