The Encyclopedia of Roman Imperial Coins 1st Edition is now available for free online

Just thought I'd let people here know that in order to build interest in the second edition of ERIC, the author has released the first edition of it for free under a creative commons license here. This is an excellent free resource for Roman Imperial coins, and I highly recommend downloading it to everyone who has an interest in the subject matter.

 

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thanks for the link!

 

Um link might be useful LOL

 

link is the word 'here'

 

Part of me is sad that what we paid $75 for a short time ago is worthless now but the book in PDF loaded on an iPad or some similar device would make a great thing to carry to coin shows so the release is a great thing. Obviously the author is of the opinion that his new version (twice as big at twice the price) is worth the difference and will sell well. I suspect he is right and hope anyone that downloads this free version will realize that the new book should be purchased as well.

If you do Facebook, you might want to check:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Encyclopedia-of-Roman-Imperial-Coins/362124848605

 

I am with you Doug. I am not sure if Ras realizes how his actions affect his publishing efforts. If you make something free you effectively make its value zero. He may be ok with it, but people who support him through buying his books aren't. Like I said before, I was going to buy ERIC when it first came out, but then he immediately started talking about ERIC 2 and how much better it would be. Therefor I did not buy his first book.

Now I have to wonder when he will make ERIC 2 free, and if I really want to waste my money buying it, and this coming from a guy who spends well over 1k a year on ancient coin books.

 

I can see your point but as a person who collects coins and is pained when confronted with spending money on reference books (I do not collect books, I collect coins) then the value in monetary terms might have gone to 0 but value to the collector is quite astronomical and those who wish to have an expanded version can still pay and I dont doubt they will. Its like Coinarchives. That was one of the most valuable free references one could have and then they started charging and it became a choice between buying a coin or six or paying a yearly fee to use coinarchives.

Every dollar I spend on references, as a non-wealthy collector, is that much less money I have to spend on my passion which is not books but coins. Because of this I buy used references (like out of date KM but still quite relevant as a reference) at the cheapest prices and have people scan in pages that are relevant to what I need. For notgeld I still use the Lamb catalog which was published in the 60's, I got it for 5 dollars.

So I applaud him and anyone who makes valuable knowledge and references available to the collector for free. Like Doug's website, that is a valuable tool he offers for no charge. It took him time and probably money and effort but he offers it at not cost and thus it is a valuable free tool to collectors. Or Helvetica's coin ID page...that has been one of the most valuable tool to me. Coinarchive became a pay site so ACSearch went up to provide a free service (at least with ancients) and kudos to them. I am endeavoring to offer a free online english search reference for Notgeld. To me it shows they care about what is, essentially for most, a hobby.

 

Free is always nice, but of course SOMEONE must pay for it. If it is an act of love like Doug's website then he pays, out of his devotion to our hobby. Someone had to pay for ERIC 1, and now those collectors have been denied some value from their payment. People who buy books new from the publisher, (and for ancients it is usually a very expensive proposition), effective pay for the author's work. The purchasers wish to have their investment last. If I am buying a book that gets regular updates, (like Hendin, KM, etc), I want to spend less for it since I know it will be superceded. If I spend a lot of money, I want a book that will hold its value. Talking about a second edition and giving away the first volume lessens the value for buyers. I am contemplating buying ERIC II but if Ras talks about his NEXT volume, I will not. I will not buy built in obsolescence, especially now if I believe someday I can get ERIC II for free.

Maybe I am selfish, but I would not put myself in the position to buy $1,000 or more a year of numismatic work if I thought there would be no residual value after I read them. Yes, I buy a lot of works direct from publishers so I help support this hobby and new literature and research. Tell me that all authors will publish for free what is in their books within 5 years and I will stop buying immediately. I just do not wish to throw away that much money just so that others may have the publications for free. Yes, knowledge is power, but to me, that knowledge is not worth a $1,000 a year self imposed tax.

 

"self imposed tax" Pay it. If Raisel makes $1 on ERIC2 someone might deside to do a book on Greek and I'd really like to see that one.

For the record, 'free' is a hard term to pin down. For my site the main expense was coins I bought that I might not have otherwise because I needed something to illustrate a certain point on a page I was planning. Some of that expense my come back if my grandson sells my collection when I'm gone. Will you pay extra for a coin you remember as being featured on my site? I doubt it but someone in my family tree hopes so. My 'free' site has considerable expense all bourne by Bill Puetz of VCoins who supplies the free web hosting to sites like mine on Ancients.info. If you patronize VCoins you are paying a bit of the bill for my site.

The only coins books that hold value are the best and the latest of their genre. ERICII is coming out awfully close to ERICI but the same thing happens to RIC, Sear and other catalog type books when they are replaced. At the moment RIC V (not a very good book for what it covers) sells for good money but will plummet when a new and improved one goes to press even if thr original is Public Domain by then.

Book publishing has changed. There was a time you could get really good books at remaindered book sales for a couple dollars just because someone guessed wrong and printed too many. Modern technology makes it easier to avoid having 10,000 mistakes in the warehouse so I doubt you will see too many $1.98 EricII sales.

Books that hold value forever are those that are better than anything that follows or never are followed by anything remotely similar. The Hartill Chinese Cash book will hurt the demand for photocopies of some earlier books that have been hard to find for a long time. These books rarely are just catalogues with collector prices (who wants a 1975 Seaby Greek Coins and their Values?) but tend to present information as well as a laundry list of types. Collectors are terrible about not buying books that don't serve as a checklist for buying so most books end up with catalogs as well as text. I'd rather see more explanation and fewer tables but I'm wierd. I would love to see RIC published without the catalogs - just the chapter heads and plates all in one volume would make a decent book.

 

I was planning to. I was just illustrating the point SOMEONE has to pay authors for their time, and that someone is the purchasers of their books. In return for this, collectors hope that their money will not be wasted away by free dessimination a few years later.

"The only coins books that hold value are the best and the latest of their genre." Really? Historia Numorum by Head is still a valuable book, though has been superceded. I would take many older volumes over some books published 40 years later, even though some of the conclusions may be disputed now. I have many books not viewed as the best in their field that are helpful, and contain information not found anywhere else.

I buy many books Doug, supporting many authors. My post was mainly to point out that the book buyers were the primary support of new research and publication, and if authors give away their product for free it will discourage their true supporters from supporting them. You may not pay out of your pocket, but you donate your time. Many other authors spend their full time researching, and need payment from sale of their books to live. BTW I do buy on Vcoins since I know all of the efforts Bill gives to the hobby as well. I have about 80 books JUST on Roman Imperial coins, I have no dire need to have ERIC II, but I would buy it to support Ras if I was sure that the book would hold some modicum of value in time. His actions have made me question that, that is all. I buy all of Sears books direct just to make sure I support his work for our hobby, and many others as well.

Chris

 

Head's Historia Numorum and Stevenson's Dictionary of Roman Coins are good examples of century old books that have not been superceded. Head has its catalog component but the text paragraphs allow understanding matters not easily found elsewhere. The two Dictionaries by John Melville Jones are different and relatively new but not at all catalogs and filled with information that will not be replaced soon, I suspect. There are the coffee table books like Breglia, Roman Imperial Coins and Sutherland, Roman Coins that may be considered matched by Berk's new 100 Greatest Ancient Coins but any selection of great coins seems to hold value. I suppose I could write a book similar to John Anthony's Collecting Greek Coins but it would never replace the usefulness of his readable non-catalog. 'Coins are fun' books never sell well compared to catalogs but they don't go out of date just because of a new edition either.

Another book I'd like to see would be an ancient version of Frank Robinson's Confession of a Numismatic Fanatic but I don't know who would write such an obvious slow seller.

 

Lol, just wrote about Frank's book on the "5 questions" thread. I could also write about many more, including the companion volumes Greek Coins and Byzantine Coins to Sutherlands Roman work. I like the whole set. I don't like checklist books much either, prefering the blending of history and background of the coinage with plates instead of pure listings and photos. I loved Vagi's two volume work. Too bad it never was received better. I still buy the "...and their values" works that I know will be outdated, its just the way Ras has presented his book immediately as a "first draft", and now releasing it for free, just is new and has me worried as to the long term value of ERIC II. That's all.

Also, the idea has always bothered me about everyone on the internet thinking everything should be free. Everything we know about these coins has taken thousands of man hours and many careers to obtain. These authors need to be paid, to be able to make a living what they are doing. Historically this has been by publishing, with the buyers of the books obtaining something of value. If you strip that away, I am afraid not many people would be as noble as you Doug and pay just to support the effort. If there isn't a value proposition there, then the market will dry up, along with the research. That is the fear. Free websites are fine, but it would be pretty hard to support updating RIC that way, along with many other historical volumes, along with new ideas and books. I just love my ancient coin books too much to think that some day there will not be any more printed, (published, on kindle, etc).

P.S. Robinson's book has some ancient content, amybe if we promise to buy more in his auctions we can convince him.

 

I do understand what you are saying Gao but to be honest, I would not buy a coin from Vcoins just to support Dougs site (I just bought one and often buy from there, only because I wanted the coin) and I would not buy a book I could somehow get for free simply because I worry about the author making money and I certainly would not be sad to see the works I want given away for free because you are worried about the value of the books you bought or you feel its unfair that you bought something that was later given out for free. I do not believe a person is owed a living wage off me or this hobby, if they can make one, more power to them but it is not my concern how they make money any more than it is their concern how I make mine.

As for the value of your books. If I went out and bought something that someone later started handing out for free (which has happened)...I would not care all that much as I obviously thought it was worth buying at the time. I do understand your point though, if you had waited you would have receive the info for free but there is also something to be said about having the physical volume compared to a PDF. If I buy a book I just assume that its value will plummet once I buy it and I do not think about reselling it as I bought it because I wanted it...Just like coins, I do not sell books or buy them with their resale value in mind.

I would love to at least make back what I spend on my hobby and my site and unlike Doug I pay out of my pocket to keep it up...but my site is not near as informative as his and I make my money elsewhere. I upkeep my site simply because I love coins and and to showcase them and history. I have been buying up notgeld to build a searchable reference for them...all out of pocket because I believe his is something people need. People have asked to put ads on my site and I do not allow it. All the same I have had quite a few people tell me they found my website to be greatly helpfull and I help them further if they contact me.

I know a lot of people who collect or study coins as a hobby would love to make a living doing it...I see it all the time, people trying to make this hobby they love into a living wage...good when they are trying to create something that will help collectors, bad when they are just trying to eek a few more bucks out of collectors. All the same, as a collector who only loses hard earned money in this hobby I love, I feel nobody is owed anything from me unless I want or need what they are offering and any time someone offers up information for free...all the better for me, I hemorage a little less money for what I want as there is nothing about this hobby that I NEED.

I tend to think that there are so many people out there offering up their free time to this hobby and so often I find I can get the information I need without buying references because SO MANY people produce so much for free out of a passion for the hobby...Possibly this information is not quite as good as if you have people dedicating all their professional time in research and writing but I do believe much of the information people find they need can be produced for free by dedicated hobbyist who dedicate their free time to the hobby so if people arent buying, I think the information would still be produced. I certainly almost always find what I need (with some exception) Even those references I feel I need I will not pay full price.

I dont spend thousands, or even hundreds each year on reference material, I cheapside my way through everything like this so I can grow my COIN collection as I only collect coins. nuff said from me

 

hey guys, this is ras... the guy who works on the eric books. sorry i'm so late to the thread but it just came to my attention.

chris your points are really interesting and made me think for a good while before starting a reply. i can't say i agree or disagree... i'm still a bit at a loss. i can see the dilemma and it had never occurred to me that you - and i suspect others - share the same concern.

to me this project is analogous to an operating system. call it an OS for roman coins. all reference books, from numismatics to dictionaries to even online projects like wikipedia are by nature snapshots in time. without being continually refreshed each passing day they become more obsolete. for me to have rested on my laurels with 2005's eric would have been a mistake. i would have been stuck at windows 1.0 as it were and had i continued this career that could have been understood to mean that my level of expertise remained stuck at the entry level. when you buy an OS for your computer i would guess that you're investing in technology to stay relevant to today's needs. you also probably suspect that in a couple of years a new version will come out and your old software becomes worthless.

books, however, do not necessarily depreciate. while i really, really doubt that that first eric will some day be actively sought out as a collector item in its own right the extant copies shouldn't become worthless overnight either. the last ebay sale i remember seeing (post-pdf release) didn't go for much less than when first released and a copy on there now has 9 bids. amazon copies go for ridiculous asking prices. why? i'd say it's because the book, while ever more outdated, still is useful for its niche. picking up a hardcopy book is an entirely different experience than looking up something online or reading an ebook.

looking forward this puts me in a quandary. i hope you and others can give me your thoughts and advice. is it better to freeze progress in the hopes of locking in commercial gain? who's to say someone else won't come along and come up with a better, more up-to-date product anyway? i would love to make an ERIC III some day. it would be more complete, more accurate and more of whatever you as collectors think needs revising or expanding on. if i gave byzantine anonymous issues short shrift then i can roll up my sleeves and see to it that the next edition has an outstanding chapter on these. but i can't do any of that if i'm paralyzed with fear that i'll be stuck with pallets of unsaleable books.

print media as a whole is on the cusp of a new era. doug summarized in an email that, when it came down to it, the worst thing about this new book is that it's a book. it left me wondering the rest of the day whether i'd just put years of effort and oodles of money into making the equivalent of a state of the art typewriter. the new york times, i just read the other day, will someday fold because the news it carries is available for free (through no less than its own site!). cars killed the buggy. but tv didn't kill the radio. i just don't know where we're headed with coin books.

for now, people still buy new dictionaries despite the fact that old ones from grandma's attic are still essentially just as useful. that's my sliver of hope right there.

ras

 

Good thoughts Ras. I would hope someday ERIC II could be updated as well, even if I have not seen it yet. My earlier comments were regarding how you immediately said ERIC should be bigger and will start working on a new one when you were still in a position to sell ERIC. I would not do that. I would sell out ERIC II, and then consider what to do next, either a supplement to ERIC II, (works very well for SNG's and RPC's, just create a new book to supplement what you would have liked to get into ERIC), or pursue Greek coins, or something completely new. The problem is that when you create a new version of a book like this, you create new numbers, thereby making outdated earlier reference numbers. Its not that the new edition would be more complete, its that the older edition will completely be obsolete and useless, since its very reason for being, an attribution aid, is superceded. If ERIC II is as massve as I hear it is, I think any changes on your part would be well suited by a supplement, and the supplement would serve to add value to ERIC II as well. With publication of the supplement I would not be surprised if you would have to order a second printing or ERIC II as well. Look at what happened with RPC Vol I.

Regarding free electronic access to ERIC II, of course, would be a boon to the hobby. How about, though, inserting a note into ERIC II giving the link to your website where it might be listed and giving owners of ERIC II access earlier? Or at least put them on a mailing list, or giving them an address to be put on a mailing list, to get notified when it is placed online?

Like I said earlier, I think if you keep ERIC II the way it is, and publish supplements, then everyone would be happy. Maybe 10 years from now you could publish them all together or something, but to spur sales now I believe the buyers have to believe the number system will be something they can count on for quite a while, not something they are worried they need to change in another 5 years.

Chris

Edit: What I was saying about "for buyers of ERIC II" I meant generically, not saying it because I happen to be a preorder customer of it, which I am for full disclosure.

 

Thank you for making ERIC I available under a Creative Commons license, Raz.

James

 

Thanks to the OP for the link!