Does anyone know what happened with Allured Books?

Sunstone

Hi guys!

Does anyone know what the story with Allured Books is? Suddenly they're not selling anything anymore, and it looks like this whole giant body of knowledge evaporated overnight. What happened?

And I really wanted to get a copy of Coloring the Cosmetic World too

Perry

Allured decided to focus on their magazine and their events and let the book business go. The person who was in charge of books left too so they were just looking to sell through their inventory.

They may come back in the form of digital books but I can't say for sure.

Belassi

I found a used copy online for $130. There is no electronic version by the look of it.

Sunstone

@Belassi

Can you link me to the copy you found, please? I'd really appreciate it  

@Perry

Do you know why they decided to drop the book business? I imagine this has left a lot of authors in the lurch I wish someone would pick this up.

johnb

The two Allured magazines Perfumer & Flavorist and Cosmetics & Toiletries are livelier now than they ever were and everyone who qualities to have them should do so.

http://www.allured.com/our-markets/cosmetics-and-personal-care

http://www.allured.com/our-markets/flavor-and-fragrance

I'm not so familiar with the next one as it concerns cosmetics at the user end:

http://www.allured.com/our-markets/professional-skin-care/

Perry

You should also include GCI in that mix.  http://www.gcimagazine.com/magazine/260118771.html

Sunstone

@johnb @Perry Thank you for those resources! I'll be subscribing for sure!

johnb

I knew Stan Allured (the father of Allured publishing) having met him at numerous conferences in the 1970's - 1980's. I remember him saying about giving up the book publishing side of the business as he had more or less filled the marketplace with Allured book titles. There were very few outlets of further sales and books were becoming something of a burden. The Allured magazines were a different story, though, and he could maintain a good business by being very up to date in reporting developments in the industry.

At this time the subscriptions to the main magazines (C&T and P&F) were quite costly (but highly respected) and this, with the advertising, provided the Allureds with a nice steady income. Remember this was well before the days of cyberspace.

The situation now is that Internet versions of the magazines are effectively free to the reader, being paid for entirely by advertising, but also very up to date with news items from the industry being sent to subscribers on an almost daily basis - this, the advertisers like!

Bobzchemist

The book issue is interesting. Digital editions could be easily pirated, but print editions need storage space and other infrastructure to get them to customers. And the market is small enough that there's likely very little profit involved.

Sunstone

@johnb That's very interesting, it looks like after 30 years he succeeded in dropping books. But in doing so he also left a lot of people in the lurch, I'm afraid. Magazines are great for learning about amazing new ingredients and so forth, but the books were great for the real, practical and theoretical knowledge that can't be gotten from a promotional pamphlet. I'm learning by myself, without the benefit of a mentor or an academic program, so books are a tremendously important source of knowledge for me.

@Bobzchemist the thing about digital editions is that if you're so worried about pirating that you're going to make life difficult for your paying customers, they'll stop being your paid customers and your books will be pirated anyway (there's no DRM that can't be broken, and physical books can be easily scanned). I'm worried about the description of an online-only book on Allured's website because that's a very annoying option. I want to read my book when I'm riding for 90 minutes in the train on my way to work, where I won't have internet access, and I don't want to be stuck with some probably awful website-based reader app. Basically, .epub or bust. It seems that Chemical Publishing has the right idea selling Harry's Cosmeticology both in ePub format and hardcover (and it's definitely on my To Buy list).

Bobzchemist

And that's the reason behind just dropping their book line, I believe - keeping the books from being pirated is too much trouble, so why bother selling them anymore?

Running an online-only operation is much easier to secure, on the other hand. I suspect that annoying their readers is way, way down on their list of things to worry about. It's always seemed to me that their customer service was strongly influenced by their being a near-monopoly in a tiny market, which meant that making a profit was their first, second, and third priority.

Sunstone

I wonder how the authors feel about it. This is royalties they're not earning. I hope they get released from their contracts and decide to publish elsewhere, but I think the outcome is that most of that knowledge will not come back.

johnb

Sunstone You are ignoring the most fundamental aspect of all commerce - that is that income must exceed expenditure. Allured publishing was, and is, a commercial organisation and if a part of that organisation is losing money - as instanced by the books division in this case - then the only remedy after careful consideration is to close it.

Anyway, to try to mollify you somewhat:

https://chemistscorner.com/cosmeticsciencetalk/discussion/2807/book-available-for-free-download#latest

I know it isn't a hard (paper) copy but you might use a printer and prepare that yourself.

You could also look amongst the numerous secondhand book dealers that populate the Internet. I have bought numerous out of print books that way.

Sunstone

You're right, @johnb, I'm just a bit miffed because this threw a bit of a wrench into the works Information is hard enough to come by. Thank you for the link, I have added it to my collection!

Where do you shop for out of print books?

johnb

For 2nd hand books my first call is normally Amazon (Amazon Marketplace) where they have a very large collection of books available from a number of 2nd hand book dealers (one of them, Abe Books, is an Amazon company). Next I look in Google where there are loads of dealers. The good thing about most dealers is that if they don't have a particular title in their own stock, they will point you to a seller who has.

Sunstone

Thanks @johnb, Abe Books has quite a lot of stuff! Also, bookfinder.com seems to aggregate a lot of different shops into one search, which is also cool. Found a few things that might also come in useful to read

Still no sign of the book I originally set out to get though oh well. It'll turn up eventually.