Books: September 2004 Archives

Today's issue of the New York Post comes with a coupon that will get you a free copy of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Once a week for the next 15 weeks or so, you can buy the Post and get a coupon that will allow you to purchase, for $5.99, a new volume in the Post's "Family Classics Library." The Family Classics Library consists entirely of British and American books that are in the public domain, meaning anyone could print them up in book form without having to pay anyone anything. Relatedly, all of the books are available for free, in electronic form, online, from sources other than the New York Post.

If you look at the book's copyright pages, you will see that the books in the Post's giveaway are published by the "Paperview Group," which, as the pun in the company's name ("Pay Per View," get it?) implies, is a specialized printing company. Paperview, based in Belgium, makes money by printing newspaper inserts and special editions. Their website explains that they offer the Classics-promotion as a pre-packaged deal for newspapers. Judging from Paperview's website (which spells "literature" incorrectly, by the way), it looks like European readers get a more interesting range of books than Post readers do: one series features Stendahl's The Red and The Black, and another paper released a whole series of Nobel Prize-winning works.

The Post's books are a step or two above cheaply made: they are cloth bound, but the paper is of below-average quality and feels suspiciously like thick newsprint.

I've scanned in the cover of the Huck Finn edition [157 kb]. Only the cover features NY Post branding. The actual book is generic, free from any branding except a one-line reference on the copyright page. It's not clear what is being copyrighted. Perhaps the layout of the pages? I can't remember what the rule is on that.

Here is a list of the books that make up the Classics Library:

1. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
2. Moby Dick
3. Gulliver's Travels
4. Alice in Wonderland
5. The Jungle Book
6. Frankenstein
7. Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Tales and Poems
8. Robinson Crusoe
9. The Time Machine
10. The Hound of the Baskervilles
11. Treasure Island
12. Emma (Jane Austen)
13. The Wonderful Wixard of Oz
14. Around the World in 80 Days
15. The Christmas Stories (Charles Dickens)

They can all be yours for:

(14 x $5.99) + (15 x $.25) + $7.12 tax

That's a mere $94.73! Boy, it adds up. But your average price per book is $6.32. All things considered, that's not so bad. Dover Thrift Editions are a good alternative, but those are paperbacks and not as nice, but then again, they don't have the NY Post logo plastered across the front, either.