Originally posted by ivbaust: I have bought the printed German version of Ralf�s book for 59 Euro, which is approx. $85 (including shipping fees) and in my opinion the price performance ratio of this hardcover is excellent. I�ve spent in the past years several ten thousands dollars for SA daggers and related stuff and this book is a great source of information, which is very informative, helps to build up a collection and helps to avoid bad bargains. I have Tom Johnson�s dagger books as well and I�m not aware that - besides these 2 authors - more and/or better books on SA daggers do exist (or am I missing something?).
Alltogether, Ralf did a fantastic job and I congratulate him for doing this work and publishing the German version of his book! In my job I�m dealing from time to time with authors and book publishing. I think I can assess how much work it is to write and publish such a book and how much effort is behind these pages, which are later on read so easy. I also know how much it costs to take professional high-resolution pictures and/or photos of the items. For an "non-professional book publisher" like Ralf it was simply impossible. He had to ask other SA dagger collectors to send him photos of their daggers, since most of the times he was not able to meet them personally and to make photos of the illustrated daggers by himself. Therefore he had to rely on receiving best possible digital files of the items. And I think all in all most of the photos in Ralf�s book have an acceptable quality. Therefore a big congrats to Ralf!
Now to the English version. According to my information Ralf sold the rights to publish his book in English to someone. Obviously Ralf closed the contract without taking care that he as the author should keep the final rights for review and approval of the English version. He just sold the rights and did not think of this quite important clause in the contract and/or the deal. And obviously the buyer of the rights did not do the best job regarding translation. Additionally IMO the buyer of the rights priced it quite high.
I must admit I didn�t buy the English version (since I have already the German one and the price is in my opinion too high). Thus I can�t rate the English version.
However, I think one should keep in mind that Ralf should not be blamed for the Englih version. According to my information he more or less trusted the buyer to do the same good job in publishing the English version like he did on the German version. Obviously that was not the case. So I think it�s not fair to bash Ralf and his book in general. The one and only who should be blamed is then the buyer of the rights, since he did the bad job.
And one final thing to those who still continue to bash Ralf and his book ... I�m looking forward to seeing your book on SA daggers in the future. Bashing is easy, doing it better sometimes not
I just re-read each and every post in this thread and was unable to come up with a SINGLE instance of ANYONE "bashing" Ralf. Can you pls copy and paste the instances that you have been able to find? I noted the following from Ralf:
"Posted 14 May 2009 4:46 Hide Post Hello collector friends, the book is sold off, please dont send money on my paypal.
Now i search for an american partner who translate and print the book in the States.
It is indeed unfortunate that Ralf did not find an American partner for this book as the translation probably would have been much better!
For Ralf and/or whoever is going to publish the SS book in English, my wife is proof reader and and could help with that book. Happy to accept email regarding same!
